Woman flees harvest to escape violent settlers and wild boars

20 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Early Thursday morning, a Palestinian woman in Beit Furik was picking olives when a settler began to chase her and set loose wild hogs to chase after her, causing her to fall and suffer broken bones in both her legs.

Muhaya Khatatba resting following injuries sustained as she fled from violent settlers

Muhaya Khatatba was in her olive groves with her two sons, aged 14 and 17 years old, when a settler descended from above the hill and began to chase her.

“I was with my kids picking olives, when a settler saw us, and took advantage of the fact that we were all alone,” said Khatatba.

Then the settler released wild boars after her. She beckoned to her boys to run ahead of her, and as she ran, she tripped on some rocks and broke her leg. She struggled to begin running again, using one leg, and fell again, breaking the other leg. Unable to stand, her boys ran back to pick her up and ran with her to meet other villagers. She broke one leg in three places, and the other leg at the ankle.

Khatatba says that when she saw the settlers she was very frightened because of the violent attacks on residents of Beit Furik in the past few years.

“But the fear I felt for myself is nothing compared to the fear I felt for my sons,” she says. “And I’m not concerned only for myself, but for all the people of Beit Furiq. They can’t go to their olives. We want a permanent solution. We want someone to stand by us.”

Khatatba is only thirty-five years old. Her husband cannot join them in the harvest because he is obliged to a full time job. She has never gone into her trees without permission from the Israeli authorities, and Thursday was one of the four days she was permitted.

Now her permission time has run out despite the many olive trees that are left.

Beit Furik is very close to the Itamar settlement, considered illegal by international law. Itamar has a wide history of brutal attacks and harassment of the native Palestinian population around them. The settlement was formed in 1984 and has grown from 300 residents to over 1000.

In the past, illegal, Zionist settlers have reportedly damaged Palestinian property, obstructed access to their farm land, stolen olives, attacked, and even shot at local Palestinians. In 2004 illegal settlers murdered a Palestinian taxi driver who was shot and killed. In 2007 three Palestinians were killed in their home, including a 10-week old infant.

In both cases, the settlers who committed the crimes did not serve time in prison.

Festival of Victory and Triumph: Families in Gaza welcome return of prisoners

by Radhika S.

18 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Thousands of Palestinians gathered in Gaza City’s Qatiba Square yesterday morning, swelling to over 200,000 as news arrived that the prisoners had safely crossed the border from Egypt into Rafah.  ISM volunteers waited for hours with local families eager to catch a glimpse of the former prisoners as they exited their buses.

“This is the best day of my life because today, good defeated evil,” said 45-year-old Saleem Abu Sa’ada.  “For us, we want all the prisoners to be free,” he added.  Qatiba Sqaure, a large sandy plaza, took on a festive atmosphere as women, men and children waved Palestinian flags, as well as flags of the various political parties. On the street, vendors sold juice, tea, coffee, bread as well as Palestinian flags.

Mother of Maher El 'Aqaad - For more images of the festival of victory, click here

One 55-year-old women from Khan Yunis who described herself as the mother of Maher El ‘Aqaad, said “I am so happy. These are all my sons, and I hope all are released.” El ‘Aqaad was captured by Israel in 2005 when he was 17 and is still serving an 8 year sentence.

Throughout the day music played in Qatiba Square. On stage, people danced and sang.  Meanwhile, those on hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners—including 3 ISM volunteers—suspended their two week strike today after Israel agreed to end solitary confinement.

“All of the prisoners are our children and all of us are so happy for our children who have been released,” said 60-year-old Saleem Ibrahim Faris, a retired teacher. “I hope unity returns to the people, that we unite our state and that we work together to achieve the state of Palestine,” he added.

 Radhika S. is an activist with International Solidarity Movement.

Honeymoon in Gaza

16 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

I had just finished off a plate of homemade bread knaffe yesterday with a family in the south of Gaza, when we got the call: farmers in Beit Hanoun, a village in the north of the Gaza Strip, requested that ISM volunteers accompany them to pick olives near the buffer zone.

The buffer zone.  I had heard of this area back in the fall of 2002 when I had come to the West Bank for the ISM’s first olive harvest campaign.  Back then, Israeli two-ton Caterpillar bulldozers were crushing homes, orchards and all other life forms to create this dead zone between Gaza and Egypt.  Israel displaced more than 10% of the population of Rafah, Gaza’s sourthernmost town, at that time, making Palestinian refugees from 1948 refugees yet again.

Today, this unilaterally-imposed 300 meter buffer zone extends all around the sliver of land that is the Gaza strip, to the north, east, and south, an effective kill zone for all who dare enter it. (To the west is the sea, also patrolled by the Israeli navy).

Nonetheless, I was excited about the idea of going out with the farmers. I love picking olives! I love being out on the land, feeling the hard purple and green fruit pop off the branches and onto a tarp spread on dirt below. And besides, we weren’t going inside the buffer zone – those trees were long gone – just in some area nearby.

L, the woman who had baked the deliciousknaffesnack, and J, her husband, had also lost the majority of their farmland to the dead zone. J had just finished telling me about it, and L was quizzing me about my love life.

“Do you have any children?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Why not? Children are wonderful. I have five.”

I provide the response that seemed easiest at the moment. “Well I just got married a few months ago.”

“You should be on your honeymoon!” she exclaimed.  “Where is your husband? Your husband should be here!”

Alas, I’m not sure if she really believed I was married, and I promised that next week I would bring photographs of my wedding.

The next day, Saturday, our group head to Beit Hanoun to pick olives.

“Be prepared to get shot,” said Saber, the founder of the Local Initiative of Beit Hanoun, an organization which works with farmers in the buffer zone to resist the Israeli occupation through nonviolence.  “The Israeli army, they don’t distinguish between foreigners or Palestinians,” he added, pointing to the fluorescent yellow vests and megaphone we had brought along.

Then why are we here, I wondered. Surely not for our physical prowess in picking olives. But I understood that he was making sure were fully appraised of the situation. The task may seem mundane, but here there is always a risk.

We drove out to the edge of Beit Hanoun, where the trees suddenly stopped and nothing but barren land lay between us and the border.  It was a sunny day in Gaza, and if you squinted your eyes and looked really carefully, in the distance, army towers could be seen, and beyond them, the town of Sderot in Israel.  Surely, there could be no danger from the Israelis back here, I thought, we are much farther back than the designated 300 meters.

Turns out I was right and I was wrong.

Mohamed AshureShimbari and his family had already begun picking olives by the time we arrived, on a small plot of land next to a cement block house. Every time the Israelis invaded Gaza, they locked the family in a room, and used their house as a base.  And though we were indeed, 800 meters from the border, the area was far from safe.

We began picking olives, and the elderly farmer who owned the land seemed exhausted, not from picking olives, but from living life in Gaza.  J too, though in his mi-50s and younger, had had that look as well. After his family had lost everything in 1948 and fled to Gaza, J had managed to by farmland after working in Israel for over twenty years, as an electrician, a restaurant worker — “everything” — only to see it taken yet again.

In this area of Beit Hanoun where we were picking what was now the barren buffer zone, ten years ago been filled with orchards of lemon, orange, grapefruit and olive trees.  There were also greenhouses of tomato, eggplant and cantaloupe.  Saber pointed all around, explaining what was where and how there was no clean water.  I couldn’t imagine it.  It was like pointing to the Sahara desert and saying, “ imagine these sand dunes are jungle.”

We picked for a couple of hours, occasionally breaking for tea, when someone called out “jeepat.”  Jeeps.  Israeli army jeeps were patrolling the border.  Then came a tank.  A few people stopped picking, to peer at the tank.

“What’s it doing?” I asked.

“Showing they are strong,” one of the young Beit Hanoun volunteers answered.

The army was relatively far away, but apparently, one never knows if the Israeli army will shoot at you. Since Operation Cast lead in 2009, the U.N. estimates that Israeli tank and gunfire killed five Palestinian civilians, three of whom were children and injured twenty in areas near the buffer zone.

After we stripped the trees of their olives, we dumped them into large, 40 kilo bags and then head back into town.  The day passed without incident, as it should have, but it was no honeymoon.

#TweepStrike: A call from Gaza to support Palestinian prisoners

11 October 2011 | The Electronic Intifada, Rana Baker

In solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held under harsh conditions in Israel’s jails, a new twitter trend emerged today from Gaza. The trend is #TweepStrike and is an open invitation to everyone across the globe to go on a hunger strike on Wednesday Oct. 12th.

A few months ago, I was on visit to one of the prisoners’ families. With moist eyes and a shaky voice the prisoner’s mother told me that she had, for many times, tried to visit her son but “Mr. Kalb,” Mr. dog, had always been there to turn her back home.

My instinct told me then that Mr. Kalb must be a nickname of a cruel Israeli officer. I was wrong.

Join the #TweepStrike

“Mr. Kalb is a huge police dog and he is responsible for the prison’s visits.” She had told me. “According to his mood, we’re either allowed to see our loved ones or ordered to escort ourselves back home. If Mr. Kalb is in a bad mood and barks a lot, we have to understand that visits are not allowed, if he is friendly, officers will let us in” her explanation followed.

To be humiliated to such extent, to be jailed without reason (as most cases have proved to be), and to prevent ICRC experts from testing jails’ conditions are nothing but illegal acts of a racist state that enjoys severe impunity and support of world powers, ahead  of them of course,  the United States.

Because Palestinian prisoners are denied their rights stipulated in international law and the Geneva accords, we have decided to turn this coming Wednesday into a day of solidarity with nearly 11,000 Palestinian prisoners jailed under harsh conditions.

To spread the word out we are using the following form to state our intention to join the strike:

My name is ( ___________ ) and I will go on a hunger strike on Wednesday in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners.  #TweepStrike #HS4Palestine .