Category: Gaza - Page 40 - International Solidarity Movement

Two Palestinian fishermen, including child, kidnapped by Israeli forces off Gaza

27th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

On Monday, 20^th January, at about 6:00 am, Yousef Amin Abo Warda (age 18) and his cousin Ahmad Kamal Abo Warda (age 16) left their house to go fishing in a small boat without an engine.

Around 7:30 am they were fishing in front of the al-Waha area, in the northern Gaza Strip, and sank their fishing nets about three kilometers, or 1.6 nautical miles, offshore.

The arrest

Yousef said two large Israeli gunboats approached the fishing boats. While other fishermen were able to escape, for Yousef and Ahmad it was impossible, as their boat had no engine and was made heavy seawater seeping through a hole.

“Soldiers from one of the gunboats began shooting into the water, while the second gunboat quickly turned around us to create waves,” Yousef said.

The soldiers, as they usually do when they want to arrest fishermen, asked the two young Palestinians to undress, dive into the water and swim to the Israeli ship.

“I tried to get closer to their ship by swimming, but the ship moved away, so it became hard for me,” Yousef said. “I cried that I was tired moving my arms. I could no longer swim. The ship stopped. I went directly to the ladder that they putdown and I climbed on board the ship.”

“They made me kneel down and handcuffed my hands behind my back,” Yousef added. “They gave me some clothes and helped me put them on. They yelled to my cousin Ahmad to swim toward the ship. After about half hour Ahmad was sitting behind me. Our hands and feet were tied.” Moreover, the soldiers kicked the two fishermen on their back.

The arrival at the port of Ashdod

After about half an hour the ship reached the Israeli port of Ashdod. The soldiers removed the bandages from the fishermen’s eyes, as well as their cuffs, to allow them to get off the ship. On shore, the fishermen were again handcuffed and blindfolded. They were asked personal information: their names, place of residence, dates of birth, phone numbers. Some soldiers wrote this information in Hebrew on a paper. They asked Yousef to hold the paper in his hands and took a picture of him. Yousef and Ahmad were held in two separate rooms for about three hours. Then some soldiers took Yousef into the room where Ahmad was detained. They left them handcuffed in a room for another three hours. Then some soldiers made the fishermen get in a Jeep and brought them to Erez.

Erez and the interrogation

At Erez, the two fishermen were brought into a room and interrogated separately.

The investigator asked Yousef about his name, his family, his brothers, the age of his relatives, his work and other personal information. “The detective showed me on a computer a map of the city of Jabalia, he told me the name of the streets with specific details,” he said. “He asked me to select my house. He showed me a house in which some people working for Hamas and the al-Qassam brigades are living, and he asked me if I know them. I said no. Then he showed me other houses belonging to people connected with Hamas. He indicated more than two houses. He was trying to get information from me. I said I don’t know anything. He told me ‘Are you afraid? You are in a safe place and you can tell us everything. These people are trying to destroy your life, they are terrorists.’ He indicated about six families that live in my neighborhood”.

The investigator showed him also the beach and asked him on which part of the beach he usually works and where he keeps his boat. The investigator also asked him also about a police site in the area and how many people work there. Yousef replied that he knows only two policemen, to whom the fishermen show their permits on the beach, and that he doesn’t go to the governmental site. The investigator asked Yousef about a training site of the al-Qassam brigades. Yousef replied that he doesn’t know anything about it. “The investigator then showed me photos of some hasakat [small fishing boats] and asked me to whom they belong, and he asked me about some cafes on the beach and about the harbor. I told him that I don’t know anything about the harbor and I don’t go there. The investigator asked me ‘In Jabalia refugee camp there is a site that belongs to Hamas?’ I told him that I don’t know.”

“The investigator asked me what I thought of al-Sisi [commander of the Egyptian armed forces] and how the relation are between Hamas and al-Sisi. I told him that I do not follow the news or politics. I said,‘I go to fish and I go home’.

“The detective told me ‘If you are near the border and you get shot by the army, who will you blame and would you consider responsible?’ ‘You are responsible,’ I said. He replied ‘Hamas should be blamed, not us.’”

“The investigator then asked me, ‘What do you think of the Hamas government and what is your opinion of it in comparison with Fatah? Do you feel comfortable? Why did you elected them? You were happy under the Israeli government. Many Palestinians came here to work and had money. Can you compare your current life to the life in which Israel controlled Gaza?’ I told him that I’m only 18 years old. I can’t know and I have never gone to Israel.”

The investigator then asked Yousef about the tunnels , Yousef replied that he’s just a fisherman and has never seen one. Finally, the investigator asked him if he was feeling hungry. Yousef said yes. The soldiers brought him a shawarma sandwich and a Coke.

Yousef was then taken to another room and remained there for an hour. Meanwhile, investigators had questioned his cousin Ahmad. The soldiers then accompanied the two young fishermen to the Erez gate and told them to return to the Gaza Strip.

“They closed the door behind us,” he said.

Their relatives, frightened by the lack of news, had tried to contact the International Committee of the Red Cross and other organizations. They also asked some fishermen to look for them in the sea. But only around 11:00 pm did the ICRC inform them that the two had been arrested.

Escalation

The fishermen told us that since the beginning of 2014, there has been an increase in Israeli attacks on Gaza fishermen and the situation is worsening day by day. According to the fishermen, Israeli attacks increase during fishing seasons.

Loss and hope

The large family Abo Warda, whose name is also used to denote the area where it lives, includes about 35 fishermen, of whom about half have been arrested.

In November, two other young men from the same family, Saddam and Mahmoud Abo Warda, were also arrested. One of them suffered a light injury inthe abdomen caused by Israeli gunfire. Both were attacked while fishing on a boat without an engine, and were therefore unable to escape.

Several of the family’s boats have been confiscated and are currently in the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Yousef and Ahmad have lost their fishing nets.

“Before, we had three boats with nets,” Yousef said. “Now my family has only one boat and no nets. I ask the international community to stop these Israeli attacks.”

“Eight persons in this house are fishermen,” another fisherman said. “One of our boats was damaged during Israel’s ‘Operation Pillar of Defense’ in November 2012. We can’t fix it and need to buy new nets.”

Background

Israel has progressively imposed restrictions on Palestinian fishermen’s access to the sea. The 20 nautical miles established under the Jericho agreements, between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1994, were reduced to 12 miles in the Bertini Agreement of 2002. In 2006, the area Israel allowed for fishing was reduced to six nautical miles from the coast. After its military offensive “Operation Cast Lead” (December 2008 – January 2009) Israel imposed a limit of three nautical miles from the coast, preventing Palestinians from accessing 85% of the water to which they are entitled under the Jericho agreements of 1994.

Under the ceasefire agreement reached by Israel and the Palestinian resistance after the Israeli military offensive “Operation Pillar of Defense” (November 2012), Israel agreed that Palestinian fishermen could again sail six nautical miles from the coast. Despite these agreements, the Israeli navy has not stopped its attacks on fishermen, even within this limit. In March 2013, Israel once again imposed a limit of three nautical miles from the coast. On 22 May, Israeli military authorities announced a decision to extend the limit to six nautical miles again.

Gaza: Life beneath the drones

25th January 2014 | Corporate Watch, Tom Anderson and Therezia Cooper | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

A Hermes 450 drone – manufactured by Elbit (Photo by Corporate Watch)

In the Gaza Strip there is no escape from Israel’s drones. Nicknameed ‘zenana’by Palestinians because of their noisy buzzing, the drones (remote control aircraft) are omnipresent. Sometimes they are there to carry out an extra judicial killing and sometimes they are there for surveillance. If you are on the ground you do not know which and you have no choice but to try to ignore them.

Since Israel’s partial withdrawal in 2005, there is not a permanent presence of Israeli soldiers in the majority of the Gaza Strip (although soldiers are a presence in the ‘buffer zone’, off Gaza’s coasts and during frequent invasions), but there is no doubt that the occupation is still brutally enforced -only now a lot of of it is done remotely from the skies.

Monitoring the drones

A selection of the weaponry fired on Gaza over the years collected by Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Photo taken by Corporate Watch – November 2013

During our visit to Gaza in November 2013, Corporate Watch talked to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, to survivors of drone attacks and to just about everyone we met, about the changing impact of drones on the people of Gaza.

Al Mezan is a monitoring organisation working for the protection of human rights in the Gaza Strip. As such they keep extensive records detailing all violations, with separate databases for external and internal abuses. Their files record the number of deaths, injuries and properties destroyed as well as anything that can increase the understanding of each attack, including the type of weapon used. Their initial information is collected by fieldworkers who go to the scene of an attack, assess the evidence and talk to eyewitnesses and people affected. Established in the late nineties, Al Mezan has been recording drone strikes for as long as they have happened in the Strip. This is not always a straightforward task.

According to the UK research group Drone Wars UK, the Israeli military has never, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, admitted publicly that it is using armed drones in Gaza.[1] According to Yamin Al Madhoun, one of Al Mezan’s fieldworkers, people were confused when evidence of drone strikes first started to be noticed around the year 2000. It was a new kind of warfare which changed everything: “When they started to use the drones we did not know what drones were”, Yamin said. “We did not understand. Explosions just seemed to come out of nowhere. It took us about a year to start learning about drones”.

At scenes of drone strikes fieldworkers used to find a golden cable, something that seemed to be attached to the missile, but this has now changed, with the main signifier of drone use being the type of destruction caused and the kind of target being hit. Drones are most commonly used for ‘targeted assassinations’, or extra judicial killings, of individuals and for a practice referred to as ‘roof knocking’. Roof knockings are used when the Israeli military wants to totally destroy a house but starts with a drone attack targeting the roof as a warning for the people inside to leave.[2] These attacks are usually followed by F16 strikes on the same or nearby buildings about three minutes later. If the people fleeing are lucky, this warning is enough to save their life. But often it is not.

Although there are different kind of missiles fitted on drones the strikes usually leave a hole of about 10cm on the target and cause partial destruction to buildings, making it possible to distinguish between drone, F16 and Apache strikes.

In Al Mezan’s experience Israel’s increased reliance on drones does not mean less casualties in Gaza. “When Israeli forces started to use the drones the number of people killed increased”, Yamin said. “This is a cheaper weapon for Israel to use so drones give the Israelis an opportunity to attack more and more. The people who manufacture the drones facilitate more attacks by the Israelis because they are cheaper and the drones are in the sky all the time, they don’t even have to plan the attack properly beforehand”.

For people on the ground it is almost impossible to foresee a drone attack. Although the buzzing sound of the drones is recognised by everyone, and some people report that the noise of the drone gets louder before a strike. “What can we do?” Yamin said. “When we hear an Apache or an F16 we know that it will only be there for a while and we can go into our houses for safety. Drones are in the air 24 hours a day so the people don’t hide from them. We can’t hide 24 hours a day”. On rare occasions the survivors have reported being able to see the drone before it fired, but often the a missile strike is the first warning.

Increased attacks

Because of the secrecy about Israel’s drone use in the Gaza Strip it is hard to get officially confirmed figures of the exact number of casualties caused by drone attacks, but everyone monitoring the situation has no doubt that the proportion of Israeli attacks which are carried out by drones is increasing. According to Mohammed Mattar, data entry analyst at Al Mezan, the first time the organisation was able to be sure that deaths were caused by an armed drone attack was in 2004, when two people were killed. In 2009, the number of people killed by drones was 461, nearly half of the total number of people killed that year. In 2012, the year of the Israeli invasion known as ‘Pillar of Cloud’, 201 out of a total of 255 people were killed via remote control by drones. These statistics do not include people killed by other weaponry in attacks aided by drone surveillance or people injured in drone attacks.

What quickly becomes clear when you talk to people in Gaza is that the alarming numbers of deaths do not tell the full story. The psychological impact of these weapons is everywhere. In al-Quarara outside Khan Younis we talked to a family who go inside their house every time they hear a drone in the sky after their daughter was arbitrarily killed in a drone strike in 2009. In Meghazi our interview with the head of the refugee council is interrupted when his 10 year old son comes home from school and tells us that there was a drone buzzing above his classroom in the morning, making it hard for the children to concentrate on their schoolwork.

The most common complaint of all is about the drones’ interference with the TV reception -whenever the signal breaks up you know that it is because of Israeli drone activity in the area. “I like to watch Arabs Got Talent” Rida, our translator at Al Mezan says shyly, “but lately I have not been able to because of the drones”. It might not sound like much, but in a place like Gaza, with its closed borders and 12 hour power cuts, it is a final reminder that even the tiniest bit of escapism is at the mercy of the occupation forces.

We will be publishing the personal stories of families affected by drone attacks over the coming months.

Take Action

Protest at the Parc Aberporth facility in Wales where the Watchkeeper drone is flight-tested (Photo by Corporate Watch)

With alarming increases in Israeli use of drones being reported by human rights organisations Al Mezan and Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and with drone technology developed by Israeli companies such as Elbit and IAI being sold as ‘battle tested’ in Gaza to almost 50 countries, it is urgent that we increase anti-militarist boycott, divestment and sanctions actions. We can not allow Israel to continue to use its repression of Palestinians as a sales pitch to sell killer drones to war criminals around the world.

In the UK the Ministry of Defence has bought drones from both Elbit and IAI and is working with Elbit to develop the Watchkeeper drone, modeled on the Israeli Hermes 450. The Watchkeeper programme is carried out by U-TacS – a joint venture company owned by Elbit Systems and Thales UK. Although the Watchkeeper is currently being described as a a surveillance drone, Drone Wars UK has pointed out that during the 2011 DSEi arms fair in London, Thales exhibited the Watchkeeper with missiles attached.

Further reading: Both Drone Wars UK and War on Want have recently published detailed reports about Israel’s killer drones with a lot of information for action.

Locations involved in the Watchkeeper programme:

U-TacS – Scudamore Road, Leicester, LE3 1UA, UK. Phone: +44 1162 870 621 email: aerospace@uk.thalesgroup.com

UAV Engines – Elbit subsidiary which makes the engines for the Watchkeeper – Lynn Lane, Shenstone, Lichfield WS14 0DT, United Kingdom, Phone:+44 1543 481819

Parc Aberporth – Site where the testing for the Watchkeeper is carried out by British firm QinetiQ – Parc Aberporth Technology Park, Aberporth, Ceredigion, SA43 2BN, United Kingdom

Footnotes

[1] Drone Wars UK, Israel and the Drone Wars (2013) -http://dronewarsuk.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/israel-and-the-drone-wars.pdf, page 6

[2] United Nations (2009), Report of the United Nations fact finding mission on the Gaza conflict – http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2009/09/15/UNFFMGCReport.pdf, page 13

Israeli warplanes kill member of Palestinian armed group and his cousin in Beit Hanoun, Gaza

23rd January 2014 | Palestinian Centre for Human Rights | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

In an extra-judicial execution attempt, on Wednesday 22 January 2014, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a civilian car in Beith Hanoun, Northern Gaza. As a result, both passengers, a member of a Palestinian armed group and his cousin, were killed immediately.

According to investigations conducted by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), at approximately12:05 p.m., an Israeli drone fired a missile at a civilian Citroen car. Ahmed Mohammed Jom’aah Khalil al-Za’anin (21), member of an armed group, and his cousin Mohammed Yousif Ahmed al-Za’anin (22), both from the al-Sekah area in Beit Hanoun were inside the car which was parked in front of the house of Ahmed’s father. As a result, the car was completely destroyed, and the bodies were maimed completely. The house of Mohammed Jom’aah al-Za’anin, the victim’s late father, was severely damaged with windows being smashed, a number of doors being broken and the walls being cracked.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that Ahmed al-Za’anin was targeted and killed. He added that Al-Za’anin had been responsible for launching rockets over the past few days at the Israeli towns adjacent to the Gaza Strip and was also responsible for planning to carry out military operations against military and civilian Israeli targets.

This attack is the second of its kind in 2014. On Sunday 19 January 2014, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a motorbike that was being driven by an activist of the al-Quds Brigades (the armed wing of Islamic Jihad) in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabalya. The activist was seriously wounded, while a passing child was injured.

Israeli forces have used drones in attacks against targets in the Gaza Strip previously. According to PCHR’s documentation, since 2004, 640 Palestinians, including 395 civilians (including 184 children and 14 women), have been killed and 440 others, including 402 civilians (including 365 children and 4 women) have been wounded in attacks carried out by Israeli drones.

PCHR is deeply concerned over the latest Israeli escalation, and:

1. Strongly condemns such Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), which reflects Israel’s disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians;

2. Reiterates condemnation for extra-judicial executions committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian activists, which serve to escalate tension in the region and threaten the lives of Palestinian civilians; and

3. Calls upon the international community to immediately act to stop these crimes, and reiterates its call for the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their obligations to ensure protection for Palestinian civilians in the oPt.

Palestinians gather next to a destroyed car after it was hit by an Israeli air strike in Beit Hanoun. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images — Palestinians gather next to a destroyed car after it was hit by an Israeli air strike in Beit Hanoun (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)

Photos and video: Israeli forces’ gunfire blocks Palestinian farmland in Gaza

22nd January 2014 | Resistenza Quotidiana, Sil | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sV8WwE0-SY

Since the Zionist occupation forces’ bulldozers had destroyed part of Khaled Qudaih’s field in Khuza’a, east of Khan Younis, he and his family went out to sow it again. The military responded with about half an hour of gunfire, threatening to strike Qudaih directly if he had not moved away.

Qudaih had sown wheat a little less than a month ago. It was growing, it was green and in May would be ripe. On 19th January, he went to his lands with his family to spray fertilizer. Samiha, his twelve year old daughter, wanted to get closer to the separation barrier, but she knew that it was forbidden : mamnua in Arabic.

She came as close as she could, until she reached foreign activists with yellow jackets. She approached and, with the voice of a twelve-year-old child, with the slightly clumsy behavior of those approaching foreigners for the first time, explained that the land is forbidden to her .

“I am forbidden to approach the barrier more than this,” she said. “Over there, there are the Israelis and they shoot. That land is prohibited (mamnua). It is my family’s land and is prohibited. Sometimes the Israelis shoot even when we are away from the barrier, but today it is quiet. Will you come back when we will harvest? For the harvesting, the whole family will come. There will also be my grandfather, uncles … a few days ago the bulldozers came and destroyed this plot of land that we had sown. Now it is destroyed.”

It gives a certain feeling to hear that horrible word mamnua from a young girl referring to her family’s land, “prohibited.”

In any case, on the 19th, fertilizer was sprayed fertilizer and there was no Zionist aggression.

Qudaih, however, was not entirely satisfied.

There was the land he had planted at the edge of the field, beside the barrier, which had been destroyed by occupation bulldozers. Even that was his land. The Zionists had no right to prevent him from cultivating it, to prevent him from reaping its benefits. He would be back the next day to reclaim it. That land could not be mamnua, “forbidden,” because it was his land, because he had also sown there, because the grain was used to make bread for his family, because the stems and bran are used to feed the sheep in his backyard , and they produce milk to drink and wool for warmth. No, not even the extreme limit of his land, 50 meters from the barrier, could be mamnua land.

So Qudaih promised that the next day he would return. He would come back with hoes to clear the ground , and with the donkey and plow for after sowing. If it was not under Zionist threat he would do it all with the tractor. But not here. This area is too close to the separation barrier. The Zionists would not let him use a tractor.

Qudaih’s case is not an isolated one. Indeed, one can almost say that he is lucky, because usually, it is impossible to approach the less than 300 meters from the separation barrier. This is not only to attack the freedom of movement of Palestinians in their own land, but also their right to work, and , even worse, their food self-sufficiency. The Gaza Strip’s population density is among the highest in the world and, with its demographic explosion in progress, the enclave is becoming increasingly dependent on external aid, unable to meet its own needs.

Qudaih reaches his land with his wife, his wife’s sister, and three of his sons. Wael, no older than ten years, is also among them. Some foreign activists accompany them. A donkey cart carries the seeds, hoes and plow; Qudaih leaves the cart at the edge of the field, farthest from the barrier, and carries everything by hand. The Zionists cannot claim they could not see what was on the cart, and nothing, neither the donkey nor the material it brought could pose a threat to Israel’s security or the safety of the soldiers of the occupation forces.

Qudaih and his sons aggressively work the ground with hoes. After about ten minutes a Jeep arrives. A few seconds after it stops, the Zionists shoot a few rounds of gunfire, without any warning, without any provocation toward them. Qudaih and his sons, including Wael, are not intimidated and continue to work. Their land cannot be mamnua just because a racist and unjust occupation force has decided so. Who is stronger, the occupation forces with all their weapons and armor, or these farmers armed with hoes? The older children continue to pave the way. Khaled holds the plow in the right position while Wael drives the donkey. It takes a long time to plow the land with the donkey, because it cannot pull a heavy plow, only a small plow, which must go back and forth several times.

While the farmers continue to work, several Jeeps pass on the other side of the barrier. They continue to shoot every now and then, just to remind that they are not gone, and that the land is mamnua. But Qudaih and his family do not move away until a soldier exits a Jeep. He remains a few minutes hidden behind a mound of earth, created to hide the occupation forces,, and then comes out shouting, in Arabic with a strong Hebrew accent, that they have to leave otherwise he will have shoot to hit them.

While it is nice to think that the presence of internationals helped ensure the soldier got the first shot in the air, and that it has discouraged them from directly targeting Qudaih, on the other hand, it is frustrating to realize that if this happens it is only because the world is fundamentally racist , and a witness from the West is more inconvenient than a Palestinian witness.

Meanwhile, the soldier continues to shoot. Not only single shots, but also bursts of gunfire. At first Qudaih continues to plow the land. Then he must desist: He has a family, he can not afford to get hurt, he needs be able to continue working. Then, half an hour after the first rounds of gunfire, all of us return to where the donkey had been left, with the cart, in safer territory.A few grains of wheat remain on a spot that Qudaih has not been able to plow, in a Palestinian land where a violent occupying force said mamnua.

Photos: Rally to save sick prisoner Ibrahim Bitar follows Gaza sit-in for detainees

20th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

Dozens of Palestinians joined a rally organized by the Popular Campaign to Save the Life of the Captive Patient Ibrahim Bitar outside the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Gaza office this morning.

The gathering followed a weekly sit-in by families and supporters of Palestinian detainees that has been held in the ICRC courtyard every Monday morning since 1995.

Bitar, a resident of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, has been sentenced by Israeli forces to 17 years and is held by them in Nafha prison. He has been diagnosed with blood disorders and leukemia, and recently underwent back surgery to remove a tumor, according to Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. The Hussam Association, a Gaza-based society of current and former Palestinian detainees, reports that Israeli forces have prevented his family from visiting him for the past two months.