28 November 2010 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Mokles Jawad Al Masri, 15
The northern border area of the Strip is for the second day under attack of IOF snipers. Yesterday three people were shot, including a 12 year old boy, leaving one man in a critical condition. Today three more people were injured by Israeli gunfire while working in the buffer zone, amongst them was yet again a child. Mokles Jawad Al Masri (15), Mamdoe Ajesh Alsoes (20) and Mohamed Khalil Zanin (21) were shot in Beit Hanoun, north Gaza.
15 year old Mokles Jawad Al Masri was shot at 7 am this morning while collecting rubble at approximately 500 meters from Eretz Crossing. The boy was shot in the lower leg and is now hospitalized with a fractured bone in Beit Lahyia. According to the doctor, recovery will take one to two months.
“Because of the siege, there are not many options for my family to survive. We are 17 in our home and I bring food to the table by collecting and selling rubble. It’s dangerous and I only make 50 shekels a day, but it is the only thing I can do to help. I have one older brother who is in his final year at secondary school. I also go to school, but am only in grade nine; it is still easy, so I have more spare time than my older brother. He needs to concentrate in school to get good final results, so he can get a good job.”
Mokles regularly frequents the area around Eretz Crossing to go about his daily business as a scrap collector. Today he and a friend from the neighbors went out with a rented donkey cart when he was suddenly shot.
Mokles’ father used to work in Israel as a construction worker, but since 2003 the Israeli authorities have not allowed him to travel to Israel. Like 42 percent of the Gazan population, he is unemployed. According to OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the number of people living in abject poverty in Gaza has risen from 100,000 to 300,000 in the last two years.
“Every day we live in fear when he goes out to work. But it’s all we have . . . All the time we’re afraid someone will come and alert us that Mokles has been arrested or shot by the soldiers,” his father exclaims in despair.
A couple of hours later, around 9:30 am, IOF attacked again and made the second victim of the day: Mamdoe Ajesh Alsoes, age 20, was shot by snipers. Mamdoe was hit in the knee and left the hospital later that day.
Mohamad Khalil Zanin, age 21
Mohamad Khalil Zanin, age 21, was working his land when he heard a shot and saw someone being carried away in the distance. Approximately one hour later, at 10:30 am, he himself was shot too in the leg. Yet again, the shot was fired without any warning. The bullet exited his leg, but has left Mohamed with a comminuted fracture of the bone, requiring surgery: six metal pins are placed in his leg. Recovery will require six months to a full year, according to the doctor.
The family Khalil Zanin has farming land that runs close to the border, where they grow oranges and olives.
“I must have been at 130 meters from the fence. It is close, but this is our land. We have 100 olive trees that need caring. I come here often: this week I have been here every single day. For sure, the soldiers know me from their cameras. I don’t know why they did this to me.
“I had just finished working and was making my way home when all of a sudden they shot me with an M16. I couldn’t walk, so my friend had to carry me to a car to get to the hospital.”
21 years old, Mohamed is the sole provider for his three young brothers and his parents. His father had a heart attack 13 years ago and is paralyzed on one side of his body.
“I don’t know what will happen now. No one is able to go to the land except for me. It’s the first time that they have fired at me. But who knows what will happen? I don’t want people to risk their lives there either.”
Today’s shootings bring the total amount of people injured while working in the buffer zone to 15 this month alone.
27 November 2010 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Khalid Ashraf Abosita, age 22
Khalid Ashraf Abosita, 22 years, is in a critical condition after being shot by the Israeli Offensive Forces in Beit Hanoun, a city on the north-east edge of the Gaza Strip. He is currently hospitalized in Shifa hospital in Gaza City. At 6 pm, more than three hours after the assault, Khalid was trembling all over his body and was still losing a lot of blood. The bullet hit his left calf, fractured the bone and exited his leg again. According to the hospital doctor he was in an unstable state.
Equipped with a horse carriage, Khalid tries to make a living as a scrap collector. He married eight months ago and is trying to establish a family. However, living conditions in the border areas are tough: a recent Save the Children UK questionnaire reported that 73% of households near the buffer zone live below the poverty line, compared with 42% of the general population in Gaza. Like hundreds of men and youth, collecting stones, metal, pieces of concrete, and brick in the border areas–under the eye of Israeli snipers in the control towers–is the only way of making an income.
This afternoon Khalid was roughly 500 meters away from the fence when suddenly two shots were fired. The first one hit Khalid in the lower leg while the second bullet hit his horse in the neck. His friends who were collecting rubble in the neighborhood came to the rescue him and carried him close to Eretz border where an ambulance picked him up.
Khalid Ashraf Abosita's leg was fractured by the bullet
“Khalid has been working in this area for the past seven months. I’m sure the soldiers know him, but they shot him without warning”, says his elder brother.
When Khalid recovers from the assault, it is likely that he will have lost his source of income as the horse was left in an uncertain condition at the place of the attack.
Ma’an also reports that a 12 year old boy was mildly injured by a gun wound in the foot earlier today while working as a scrap collector in the northern border area. His identity remains unknown and the boy had already left the hospital when ISM volunteers arrived. This brings the total number of IOF buffer zone attacks to 12 within this month alone.
21 November 2010 | International Solidarity Movement
House bombed in Deir al-Balah
Rubble of bombed house in Deir al-Balah
The afternoon of November 19th an Israeli fighter plane bombed a house in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The house of the Dar Shorafa family, located 400 meters from the border fence, has disappeared. At the center of the date palm garden is a 3 m deep crater with the rubble of the former house scattered around.
At the time of attack the residents were absent, but the neighbors witnessed the attack. The Abu Mustafa family lives opposite them, approximately 50 meters from the bombed house. When the strike happened they were in the back yard hosting visitors. A moderate strike was heard and while the family was looking for shelter, a loud explosion rocketed debris through the air. Four people were hit and the roof of the family’s basic house was pierced five times.
3 meter deep crater at the centre of the date palm garden, scattered with rubble of the destroyed house
Rokia Shaban, a 52 year old woman, was hit in the abdomen, the upper leg, and on the shoulder. She left the hospital this morning and is now recovering in her damaged home. Wijdan Samir (29), Abdal Aziz (20) and two year old Ibrahim Sulayman were slightly injured. Because the scene is close to the buffer zone, it took the ambulance more than 30 minutes to arrive. Palestinian public services, like police cars and ambulances, cannot come this near to the border without coordinating with the Israeli authorities on the risk of being shot. The buffer zone runs along the Israeli fence and “officially” has a width of 300 meters on the Palestinian side. Israel claims this is a no-go-zone and deems it legitimate to shoot people within the area. However, according to a recent UN report the danger zone runs up to 1.5 km.
Sulaiman Ibrahim Abu Mustafa, the head of the family, firmly states that there is absolutely no resistance taking place on this site, contradicting the terrorist accusations of the Israeli military spokesperson.
Rubble in place of obliterated house in Deir al-Balah
“The Israelis are lying by claiming that resistance is taking place here. This is but an agricultural zone: we grow olives and eggplants. Even during the attacks in Cast Lead, we were spared. I don’t know why we were attacked; it comes totally unexpected; we are normal civilians trying to live off our land.”
Israeli tanks hold daily incursions on the Palestinian side of the barrier here, but today the army has remained invisible.
“Maybe they finally went to sleep after they bombed us”, laughs Suleiman Ibrahim while comforting his crying two year old son.
Farmhouse bombed in Khan Younis
31 year old farmhouse guard Mohammed Abdel Hassan Abuhussien in Europa (Khan Younis) hospital bed, shrapnel in his side and shoulder
The previous night, a suspected Israeli drone bombed a farmhouse in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, severely injuring a man and mildly a child.
The shelling of the farmhouse began approximately at midnight on Friday night. The first hit next to the livestock farm and 31 year old Mohammed Abdel Hassan Abuhussien, on guard duty, tried to scramble for cover as the shrapnel flew scattering into the surrounding walls and roof, injuring 2 bulls and a cow. The second followed quickly after and this time Mohammed could not avoid the shrapnel flying directly at him. Luckilty his co-worker who was nearby came to rescue him.
“It’s just a farm yard, it’s a deserted place, that’s all there is there. It has never been a dangerous place – just livestock and a few factories. They have no idea why they’d hit the farm,” said his brother at the hospital. Mohammed was lying with his eyes half closed unable to communicate. He had a piece of shrapnel embedded in his shoulder and another in his right side that had penetrated his lung.
Livestock hit by shrapnel in Khan Younis farmhouse
His wife, four months pregnant, and two young sons and daughter were at his bedside. They say it will be hard for them now and much will depend on Mohammed’s father to handle the situation. His brother was injured in the first intifada when he was 5 years old and still has the bullet inside his body. “We expect nothing less from Israel than to just attack innocent people like this— a guy sitting as a watchman for some cows and bulls. He’s just a worker with a growing family. His life was difficult enough,” he told us.
On the visit to the farm there were two holes in the roof of the barnyard where the shells landed; one made a dent in the concrete floor between two bull pens. It was apparently another attack from an Israeli drone and the explosive impact sent shrapnel flying around the farmhouse, injuring 2 bulls and a cow. The shrapnel is still inside the large animals’ bodies, and one is now unable to walk. At the time of the attack, the security guard Mohammed had been sitting between them at one side. The roof of the barnyard is littered with holes.
Hole in roof of Khan Younis farmhouse
“It will cost 20,000 U.S. dollars to fix the roof,” said the farm owner Salah Saleem Afana. But this is not the first time for Salah. The Israeli forces destroyed 2 dunums of his land next to the border with Egypt during the war, turning to rubble a 400m2 house he had there.
“We also lost hundreds of animals and two relatives were injured when the car they were in was bombed. The cost of all that was 120,000 US$ — and our crime? Living and farming near to the border? Just like what will happen for us here, there was no compensation and no justice. It’s the same way the international community treats all the crimes against us everyday from the siege, the bombings, the destruction and the killings. When it’s the Palestinians they just look away.”
20 November 2010 | International Solidarity Movement
Palestinian demonstrators march in Nabi SalehYesterday, 19th November, the weekly demonstration in An Nabi Saleh was again met by violent opposition from the Israeli Army. One young villager is scheduled to undergo surgery to insert a platinum implant in his leg where the bone was crushed from the impact of a high-velocity tear gas projectile.
The demonstration was blocked in its effort to reach the village spring located near the illegal settlement Halamish by massive tear gas attacks. Throughout the day the Israeli army and border police shot tear gas and rubber bullets toward demonstrators, sometimes directly at people.
11 demonstrators were injured during the demonstration, mostly by rubber bullets and tear gas, and 4 of the injured required hospitalization. One villager was shot by a rubber-coated steel bullet in the leg. An international received a cut on his face from another bullet that bounced off a wall. Several people suffered from the effects of tear gas.
Active Stills: high velocity tear gas canister shot at demonstrationIllegal, high-velocity tear gas canisters were used. Unlike usual tear-gas canisters, they were made to be capable of breaking through walls, can fly long distances without a sound, do not emit a smoke tail, and have a propeller to accelerate the weapon mid-air. Thus they are very difficult to detect and substantially more dangerous than regular tear gas. In the past, demonstrators have been severely injured by high velocity tear gas canisters hitting them. In April 2009, Bassem Abu-Rahma, had been killed by a high velocity tear gas canister fired directly at him during the weekly demonstrations in the village of Bil’in. In March 2009, the American activist Tristan Anderson was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister, for which he suffered severe brain damage and disability.
Active Stills: A Palestinian man collects a sample of skunk waterIn the early afternoon, a military jeep entered the village and sprayed skunk water at houses and demonstrators. Skunk water is considered a cultural weapon and has thus been condemned by the international community. It is made up of several different, unidentified, bad-smelling chemicals that cast a wretched smell which lasts for weeks and is nearly impossible to remove.
Late in the day, a tear gas canister smashed the window of a house, filling it with gas. Beside it, a car was damaged by rubber bullets.
A Palestinian woman is seen after she was injured from tear gas shot directly into her house during the demonstrationAs in previous weeks, early in the day all roads leading in to the village were blocked in an attempt by the Israeli Army to prevent International and Israeli activists from participating in the protest. In solidarity, activists within the village waited to begin their demonstration while activists were forced to walk for an hour from a neighboring village.
The demonstration lasted until sunset, when the military finally retreated from the village.
17 November 2010 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
28 year old Ibrahim Yousef Ghaben from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, personifies the trials of life for Palestinians and their families, and the multitude of hardships brought by Israel’s siege and violent attacks. It would not normally have been Ibrahim’s choice to collect rubble with a donkey cart as a means of providing for his sick mother, wife and 8 young children. But in Gaza, external pressures force people to make choices that anywhere else would be deemed beyond reason and perhaps beyond imagination.
Collecting rocks near the Erez Border, Beit Hanoun
Ibrahim Yousef Ghaben, 28, from Beit Lahia
Bassem Qassem 23 years old, from Beit Hanoun
Omar Sabri Hamad 24 years old, from Beit Hanoun
Nazmi Salim Tanboura, 50 years old, from Beit Lahia
The shooting on the 10th of November was the latest setback for Ibrahim, the most recent of the 10 rock collectors shot near or in the Israeli imposed ‘buffer zone’ during the last 3 weeks. The buffer zone is a 300m wide strip of land that runs along the border from where Israel justifies shooting those who enter, although according to a recent United Nations report people are at risk up to 1500 metres from the border. Ibrahim couldn’t speak because he was in so much pain, as he lay in his hospital bed with his right leg plastered and bolted.
His brother Atif described, “he was shot by Israeli soldiers stationed at a border control tower in his right leg when he was about 600 metres from the fence. Friends put him on a donkey cart and took him to an ambulance. The bones in the lower part of his leg have been shattered, and the doctors think it was a ‘dum dum’ (explode on impact) bullet. He had been collecting rubble for 5 months with his donkey cart in the Beit Hanoun border area.”
Every day hundreds of men and youth collect stones, metal, pieces of concrete and brick in the border areas despite common knowledge that Israeli snipers are at every control tower. They get around 50 shekels for a donkey cart but, like Ibrahim, many of them end up in a hospital bed with a cast wrapped around their bullet wounds.
So why do they do it? The recurring reasons given by scrap and rock-collectors is a complete lack of available work.
Israel’s siege has torn the economy apart and left 67% of the population without jobs. The few imports allowed in are costly and Israel continues to ban all exports from the Strip. The economic value in Gaza of ‘rubble’ has emerged only over the last two years, due to the huge demand for building materials and the very limited supply. Israel allows literally no concrete and building materials to enter the Gaza Strip and although inefficient, recycling the stones and rocks is still cheaper than the small amounts of high priced concrete brought in through the Rafah tunnels from Egypt.
Most of the rubble collectors are based in the North in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya where incursions are frequent, hence the larger number of border side houses and other buildings that have been bulldozed or bombed by the Israeli Occupation Forces. What’s more in Beit Hanoun near the Erez crossing was the site of an industrial centre built by Israel before their forces were redeployed to the border areas in 2005, an area with a high concentration of concrete and stone.
Intensifying the dire need for building material was Israel’s operation: ‘Cast Lead’: the 3 week bombing and land assault over the new year of 2009 that destroyed or damaged beyond repair over 20,000 houses, schools, universities, hospitals, office buildings and mosques. The attack also killed 1400 people including over 400 children; a further 5300 were injured. Ibrahim’s house in Beit Lahiya was destroyed by shelling during the attacks nearly 2 years ago and on Wednesday he became the tenth rock collector in three weeks to be shot collecting rubble.
On Thursday 21st October, we met 23 year old Bassem Gassem and 24 year old and Omar Sabri Hamad who that morning had both been shot in their right foot in Beit Hanoun near to Erez crossing. They were near to the Israeli imposed ‘buffer-zone’.
“There were 50 rock collectors around the area I was shot, without a warning.” Bassem told us. “I was hot and walking so didn’t feel the pain initially, but once I came to the hospital the pain began. He had plied this trade for nearly one and a half years and still can’t see another option once he has recovered. “I used to work the markets with fruit and veg from Erez crossing when it was open but that work dried up. So I began collecting rocks after the war. This is part of life for our families, the siege, the shootings of people guilty of nothing but hard work when there are not jobs. People around the world see the circumstances we have here but they do nothing.”
His mother by his bedside explained the responsibility that was on Bassem’s shoulders: “His father was injured and paralysed during the war. There are 14 family members altogether and he’s the only one providing a regular wage for us. But he’s a strong boy; he’s been working for the family since the 5th grade. I told him not to do this job because of the danger and go back to the markets – but he knows that 30-40 shekels a day is not enough for the family.”
“I will go back there, it’s the only work there for me”, said Bassem
Omar from Beit Hanoun is married with 2 children and the bullet broke bones in his foot, requiring surgery. He will not be going back. “It was my first day collecting rubble, I need the money for my family and there’s no jobs here, no means of providing for my family. A few hundred metres from the control tower at 9am with no warning they shot me in the leg and friends had to carry me out. That’s it for me, I’ll never do that again.”
The other area with numerous border attacks is around Beit Lahiya where Nazmi Salim Tanboura, a 50 year old father of 10 was shot through his thighs at 8:15am on Sunday 31st October. He was approximately 800m from the fence when one bullet went through the back of both of his thighs. “I caught a glimpse of two Israeli soldiers stationed on a small hill. They shot me and I was shouting for my son but he was far away. A friend nearby came and put me on a donkey cart. I was taken to Beit Lahiya corner where an ambulance arrived and took me to the hospital. I’m the only one supporting the family and my sons are all married.”
Like the others, the circumstances around him had left Nazmi with no choice. “There are no jobs, there’s no work. Many people go there despite all the stories of people getting shot. My cousin was shot collecting rocks last month but I didn’t think of stopping. But I’m old now. I’ll buy a new donkey for my cart and try going back to work on the vegetable markets. I don’t depend on people on the outside because we’re always sending messages out but the world doesn’t see us or listen to us. Look how we live! I only have God to turn to here.”
Last Wednesday, as we left Ibrahim in Beit Lahiya hospital, his father was wiping his son’s brow while his 10 year old son stood crying at his bedside. There was a fear as to the ordeal still ahead for Ibrahim’s slow and painful road to recovery. Brother Atif said he and his brothers’ families would take care of him and his children but doesn’t see much hope for Ibrahim to go back to work. “The doctor said his leg is smashed and he’ll be in this condition for 6 months. We don’t know what he’ll be capable of doing in 6 months, or what he has the will to do. Before this he was a farm labourer.”
A cousin Mohammed was not hopeful that the hardships faced due to the Israeli occupation and siege would recede any time soon: “The only thing Ibrahim cared about was earning a wage to provide for his family. If the siege was ended and the concrete and building materials could arrive like in any other country, people like my brother wouldn’t be forced to risk their lives doing this. And the response – bullets while the world watches.”
Atif said that everyone faces danger no matter how they try and live in Gaza: “We have large families in Gaza and we want to work but we’re deprived of our livelihoods, our dignity. Its not just rock collecting. People in the cities are all at risk from bombing, shelling. I’m a University graduate in Psychology, I have no job and I now may work in the Rafah tunnels where there are frequent casualties from Israeli attacks, just to make ends meet.”
