The ISM Gaza Strip team joined over 50 Palestinian fishermen on a demonstration to call for an end to the siege of Gaza – both on the land and in the sea. As Israel’s stranglehold tightens day by day, Gazan fishermen and farmers struggle to provide a local food source for a population under siege. This is in the face of arbitrary restrictions imposed on them by Israeli occupation forces.
Israel has declared a six-mile limit on the Gazan fishing zone, contrary to prior agreements and international regulations. This limit is dictated solely by the gun and Gazan fishermen endure daily aggression from Israeli naval gunboats, resulting in injuries and damage to their boats. 15 fishermen have been killed by the Israeli navy since 2000.
The fishermen also protested against the abduction of 15 of their colleagues from Gazan territorial waters on 18th November, who have since been released. They demanded the return of three of their trawling vessels confiscated by the Israeli navy during the same operation, depriving hundreds of people of a livelihood. They also opposed the illegal detention of three International Solidarity Movement volunteers who were accompanying them at the time.
Fishermen carried banners with slogans including:
“No to the occupation piracy in Palestinian waters. Yes to fishing freedom.”
The fishermen marched from Gaza City port to the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, where they spoke to a UN representative. There were also speakers from the Fishing Syndicate, PNGO and the Palestinian Campaign against the Siege.
In the morning of Sunday the 23rd of November, several international human rights observers accompanied Palestinian farmers to plough their field close to the green line, in the village of Al Faraheen, east of Khan Younis. At about 10 o’ clock Israeli soldiers behind the fence started to shoot. A tank could also be seen moving in the area behind the fence. The international HROs used their megaphones to communicate the international presence and to demand that the shooting cease immediately.
The Palestinian farmers decided to postpone the work. The international HROs remained in their positions till the moment that it seemed that the shooting has stopped. Then they accompanied the Palestinian farmers towards their houses. At some point there was some more shots, probably against one of the Palestinian residents who had left the group, following the path to his house, cross the field. The international HROs immediately positioned themselves between him and the green line, from were the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers were shooting, until he left the area. Despite the fact that the agricultural work was not concluded, the international presence may have prevented a more serious attack like the ones that often occur all along the Green Line, leaving Palestinian civilians injured or even dead. (An incident like that was reported on the 24th of November, at the northern border of Gaza strip, where a Palestinian civilian was shot in the leg by Israeli troops).
The internationals remained in Al Faraheen and accompanied another Palestinian family who lives near the Green Line and has repeatedly suffered attacks from the IOF before. For a while, they accompanied the family and their friends during their work in the vegetable garden right beside the house, where they have been attacked by the Israeli army many times in the past. Some of the internationals continued the accompaniment for the rest of the day and throughout the night, until the next morning. No other incidents were reported.
On Friday 21 November over 500 villagers from Jayyus and international activists gathered to take part in a peaceful demonstration against the apartheid Wall that for 6 years has separated them from their land and vital olive crop. Villagers destroyed sections of the Wall, sparking confrontations with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and the invasion of the village.
Following the Friday prayer, more than 500 protesters advanced on the Wall’s gate in the south of the village. The IOF was not present, and villagers proceeded to destroy the gate and the surrounding Wall and enter their lands.
Occupation forces arrived on the scene after the Wall was destroyed, firing on the crowd with tear gas and sound bombs as well as rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition. Upon pushing the villagers away from the Wall, the army forced its way into the village, where the demonstration continued in the village. Jeeps entered from all directions and imposed a curfew on the village. Soldiers attacked protesters in the streets openly defying the military orders.
Upon leaving the village two members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Waleed A’saf and Tayseer Khalid, were detained and later released. Five internationals were also detained and later questioned at Ariel police station and released without charge. The IOF continued to maintain a strong presence in the village into the evening, undertaking house-to-house searches targeting the village youth.
In 2002 Israel began construction of the Wall that now separates the village from its agricultural land. In July 2008 Israel agreed to change the route of the Apartheid Wall near Jayyus village by replacing a 2.4km stretch with 4.9km of Wall closer to the Green Line (approximately 4km inside the West Bank).
The change in the route of the Apartheid Wall will return 2,609 dunums (out of almost 9,000 dunums) of agricultural land to its Palestinian owners, while 5,585 dunums will be confiscated once and for all and will be used for Zufim settlement expansion plans. A further 277 dunums of land will be destroyed for the new path of the Wall. Farmers will be completely cut off from their lands that are on the other side of the Wall as the gates in this section of the Wall will be completely closed. The IOF have already uprooted 200 olive trees along the planned route.
Villagers are determined to continue with weekly demonstrations. Mohammed Abu Eliees of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in the West Bank stated “it seems our battle is long” and restated the ruling by the International Court of Justice that the “Wall must be demolished. The Wall is illegal as it is on occupied Palestinian land”. The rerouting does little to reverse the devastation brought on by more than 20 years of settlement activity on village land and is merely an attempt to deflect criticism away from Occupation policy and practice.
On November 20th at 1pm a demonstration for the children of Ni’lin against the construction of the illegal annexation wall gathered in the centre of the village. The demonstration was organised to mark the Universal Children’s Day
The children of Ni’lin had made signs saying “no to the wall” and “we will never forget what you did to Yousef and Ahmed”. The last, referring to 10 year old Ahmed Mousa, who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at close range with live ammunition earlier this year close to the construction site of the annexation wall outside of Ni’lin. Yousef Amaira, 17, was killed as the Israeli army shot him twice in the head with rubber-coated steel bullets as they attacked Ahmed’s funeral.
The demonstration was joined by international and Israeli solidarity activists. As the demonstration non-violently moved towards the construction site of the wall, Israeli soldiers started shooting teargas straight into the crowd of protesters. They were soon shooting rubber-coated steel bullets directly at the children.
At 5pm the soldiers stopped shooting and the demonstration ended.
The village of Ni’lin has had several demonstrations a week since the construction of the wall on their lands started in April 2008. The Israeli army has responded with brutal force and as well as two deaths, over 600 have been injured and more than 50 people have been arrested.
Universal Children’s Day imarks the promotion of welfare for the world’s children. In a town where many children have already been injured, arrested, interrogated and killed by the Israeli army for their participation in the non-violent resistance, it is important to recognize the protections that ought to be afforded to them as children. Those who have not suffered injuries themselves are not untouched; they must bear witness to the brutal effects of the occupation on those they love, their families.
According to the Declaration on the Rights of Children, adopted on November 20, 1959, every child, without any exception whatsoever, shall be entitled to these rights, without distinction or discrimination on account of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, whether of himself or of his family. A broken promise on protecting of children by a signing member of the Convention on the Rights of the Children, Israel, must be challenged.
On 8th November 2008, at 1:15am, more than 20 Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Burqa, near Nablus, throwing over 100 sound bombs throughout the area. The soldiers entered fifteen houses in the village, forcing villagers at gunpoint to fingerprint mysterious documents written in Hebrew.
Gharib Saif stands in front of his house, looking slightly embarrassed as he recalls the night almost one week ago when Israeli soldiers invaded his home, dragging all of his family out into the cold night, with a gun to his wife’s head. At 2am the soldiers woke the family with sound bombs, before entering the house through the small convenience store the family run underneath. Gharib had been out harvesting olives for many days, and explains that he was very, very tired. Initially, explains his wife, Nihaya, four soldiers entered the house, screaming that they wanted to make the house into a “nuktah” – a military command post set up inside a Palestinian house when a village or city is invaded. Instead, after they were joined by a further eight soldiers, the soldiers targeted her husband. Putting a gun to both his and his wife’s heads, soldiers told him to fingerprint the a piece of paper, blank but for a few words in Hebrew at the top. “They didn’t say why”, recalls Nihaya, “they just kept saying ‘Sign! Sign!”.
When Gharib refused, he was carried out to the Israeli jeeps waiting in front of the house, where he was beaten by the soldiers. He was then returned to one of the front rooms of the house, where he was further beaten, and where Israeli soldiers forcibly took his hands, and inked and fingerprinted him.
The family were left to wonder what it was that had just been done to them in the 45 minutes during which the operation had taken place; and why it was that they were then instructed to keep the front door of their home open for the next two and a half hours.
This same process took place in home after home, most of them along the main street of the village. Next in line was the home of Hussam and Tharwat Saif, across the road from Gharib’s house, where soldiers again woke the family with sound bombs before invading the house. There four soldiers ransacked the house, turning over all of the furniture, breaking some of it, as they had done in Gharib’s house.
Tharwat and her five children were forced to stand by and watch as the soldiers demanded Hussam produce his identification, taking a photo of him holding it next to his head. Tharwat recalls that the soldiers then took Hussam outside and beat him, before taking him back inside and forcibly fingerprinting him.
At yet another house across the street, belonging to Ahmad Zeki, the soldiers stole 1000 shekels while undertaking the same operation there.
No one in the village has any notion as to why the men were fingerprinted that night. “We search, we search”, says Mohammad Masoud of the village municipality. “We want to know exactly what was written on the paper, but no one in those houses can read Hebrew”.
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While being forced to fingerprint documents they do not comprehend is new for villagers in Burqa, home invasions are not. Seemingly every family in the village has a story about Israeli soldiers invading their homes.
Abu Sami tells about how four years ago his house would be invaded and occupied by Israeli soldiers with great regularity – up to three times each month. One night his wife gave birth to one of their children, Kais, soldiers invaded the house, forcing all of the family, including the mother and the five hours old baby into the street, where the temperature was close to zero degrees. After this incident the baby became so sick that he had to be taken to hospital for treatment everyday for six months. “That’s what happens here”, he says. “That’s what happens to everyone”.
While many Palestinian villages are subject to regular invasions, Burqa’s woes seem to be the result of their proximity to the now evacuated settlement of Homesh. Just as the evacuation has not meant an end to the settler attacks villagers endure, it has also not meant an end to the military incursions the village faces. .
Um Eyad, mother to a large family, suffers regular home invasions by Israeli soldiers. “Every time they enter the village they come to my house”, she says. “And every time they break something. Now they have broken two wardrobes; the washing machine and the refrigerator”.
Another young student from the village, Mohammad, tells about how four months ago, Israeli soldiers invaded and occupied his house for two hours, keeping the family locked in the kitchen.
It seems that until the land of Homesh is returned to the villagers, as they have begun demanding in weekly demonstrations, there will be no peace for the residents of Burqa.
