They are young, and they are fearless. In Gaza, a growing nonviolent movement, led predominantly by youth, is challenging Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands in the so-called “buffer zone” — a unilaterally demarcated and militarily patrolled area that, according to Harvard researcher Sara Roy, now absorb[s] nearly 14 percent of Gaza’s total land and at least 48 percent of total arable land.” The zone officially extends 300 meters into Gaza’s territory, but attacks against civilians take place anywhere up to approximately 1.5 kilometers inside the border fence,” according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. (That’s about a mile into a strip of land that is seven miles at its girth.) In this video, some 300 protesters are shown under fire from Israeli guns, too far to see but no less lethal for it. The protestors’ crime? They were planting citrus trees to replace those destroyed by Israel’s ongoing occupation, which daily deprives Gaza’s more than 1.7 million Palestinians of access to their farmland, to the sea that borders them, to the airspace above them — and, crucially, to their fellow Palestinians. With more than 10 percent of the worldwide Palestinian population living in Gaza, no serious discussion of the conflict or its resolution can exclude them.
15th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Strawberries in Beit Lahiya. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)
A recent report by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in Gaza says the Israeli authorities have closed Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) checkpoint, the Gaza Strip’s only commercial crossing, for 150 days, 41% of working days, during 2013. The reports points out that the continued closure of the commercial crossing constitutes a violation of the ceasefire agreements reached in November 2012 after the Israeli “Operation Pillar of Defense” military offensive.Normally Israel keep the commercial crossing open 22 days per month, says the report, closing it on Fridays and Saturdays. but The crossing was closed also during the Jewish holidays for “security reasons.'” According to the report, in 2013, 55,833, 1,578 fewer truckloads of goods entered Gaza than in 2012. Israel allowed the export of 187 truckloads of goods from the Gaza Strip to European markets, compared to 234 truckloads, mostly agricultural products, 2012.
The report also describes the impact of the Egyptian closure of the tunnels since July 2013. This closure caused huge economic losses over the past six months as a direct result of the interruption of economic activities and a fall in production, resulting in a decline of 60% of gross domestic product. Unemployment exceeded 39% at the end of 2013.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ report on the Gaza Strip’s crossings from 1st-30th November 2013 documents the impact of the ongoing Israeli siege imposed on Palestinians, affecting their economy and social condition. While Israel claims to have eased the blockade, the Gaza Strip has a lack of services, fuel and building materials. According to PCHR’s statistics, the materials Israel has allowed to enter don not meet the needs of Gaza Strip’s population. In November, Israel closed Karm Abu Salem crossing for ten days, 30.3% of the total period. Most imports are consumable. The entry of various raw materials continues to be prohibited, with the exception of very limited types imported under complicated procedures.
Israel has continued to impose a near-total ban on exports to markets in the West Bank, Israel and other countries, excluding limited amounts of agricultural products. Exceptionally, during the month of November, Israel allowed the exportation of 20 truckloads carrying agricultural products, including mints, garlic, basil, strawberries and flowers.
Here we come to a crucial point. Israel allows that minimum exports of Palestinian products only to European and non-European markets, not to the West Bank. Why does Israel not allow Palestinians from Gaza to market their products in the West Bank, within Palestine?
It appears that on the one hand, this practice is part of the collective punishment of the blockade which aims to not allow any economic growth in the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, Israel wants to protect its own market and sell its product in the occupied territories.
“We face many difficulties, mainly due to the closure of the crossing,” a farmer in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, said. “Generally exports take place twice a week. Sometimes we had to freeze strawberries, due to the closure. There are no exports to the West Bank. They are not allowed.” The use of the term “export” to refer to the marketing of Gaza products in the West Bank, as if speaking about two different countries, shows the division caused by the barriers of the pccupation and its practices that have separated a population. “There is no international law in Gaza,” the farmer said. The farmers have to face not only the expenses of transportation, but also the costs of labor and the packaging. According another farmer in Beit Lahiya, a 2.5 kilogram crate for strawberries costs to twelve shekels, about three euros. They receive 25 shekels, or 5.25 euros, then earn 13 in profit.
Abu Sami. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)
“In 1967, Beit Lahia has begun to grow strawberries,” Abu Sami, a farmer in Beit Lahiya, said. “Here, before the arrival of the Palestinian Authority, we marketed our products as Israeli products through the Israeli company Agrexco. As Israeli products, not Palestinian products. Subsequently, the European countries called on Israel to allow the Palestinians to market their products as Palestinian and without taxes. Here we export many kinds of agricultural products such as beans, green zucchini, strawberries and many kinds of vegetables. We focus on the cash crop and flowers. After the siege, since 2006-2007, Israel closed the crossings and we could not export anymore. The European Union has called on Israel to allow the Palestinians to export their crops as Palestinian crops, but we should sell our products through Israeli companies.” He showed the cardboard box used to export strawberries, on which was printed the brand name of the Palestinian cooperative and the logo of the Israeli company Arava Export Growers.
“The Paris Agreement has tied the Palestinian economy to the Israeli economy,” Abu Sami continued. “Most Palestinian products go to Europe, and some to Russia. We asked to sell our products in the West Bank, but the Israeli authorities have refused. They told us, ‘this is a political decision.'”
Israeli companies also receive 6% from the exports of Palestinian products. ”The farmers here have lost a lot,” Abu Sami said. “Before 2005, we were planting approximately 2500 dunums. Now it’s only 700. We started planting herbs in Khan Younis and Rafah, green pepper, cherry tomato. At this time, the cost of strawberries in Europe is too low. We stopped the exports.” There will be meetings in the coming days, and the farmers will decide what to over the next few weeks. The cost of material is high. Farmers can not earn anything from the exports allowed to Europe. The more profitable market in the West Bank is closed to them.
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
The Paris Protocol, an agreement on economic relations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, was signed on 29th April 1994 as part of Oslo Agreements. It has made the Palestinian economy a prisoner of Israel, in both the productive sector and the trade of goods. Imports and exports are under complete control of Israel, which determines quantity, documents, customs, taxes and time.
Due to the ban on exports, the economic growth of the Gaza Strip is even more difficult. The economic growth could be possible not only with the resumption of exports to foreign markets, but especially through economic and trade exchanges with the West Bank.
11th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
On Wednesday, 8th January 2014, 27-year-old Palestinian fisherman Mohammed Sultan Al Khader had was arrested by the Israeli navy in Gaza waters. He had been fishing with his two brothers, Ahmad and Hamdi, on a small fishing boat, called a hasaka. Al Khader was released in the evening.
“We went fishing at about 6:oo am,” he said at his home in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. “Around 8.40 am, two Israeli speedboats approached our boat and the Israeli soldiers started shooting into the water.” The three brothers were less than one nautical mile off the coast of Soudanya in the northern Gaza Strip.
The Israeli soldiers shouted for them stop the engine and approached the front of their boat. “Stop the engine, approach us, raise your hands,” they shouted to the fishermen.
“Then they asked us to jump into the water,” Al Khader said. “I told them that my brother was too young and could not swim. I took off my dresses and jumped into the water. Some soldiers pulled me on board the Israeli speedboat. One of them asked me about the two other fishermen. I told him that the young one could not swim and the other one was sick and would have died. ‘I will let your brothers go home and I will take you’, he told me.”
The soldiers gave Al Khader some clothes. Then they forced him to again jump into the water and swim until he reached a large Israeli gunboat about 90 meters away. On board the gunboat, the soldiers blindfolded him, dressed him and cuffed his hands and feet. “Then I did not see what else was going on,” he said. “I could not see anything.” In the Israeli port of Ashdod the soldiers uncuffed his feet and removed the blindfold from his eyes. Then he was interrogated. During the investigation, the soldiers again cuffed his hands and his feet. He said there were two persons, one speaking Arabic and the other Hebrew. Investigators asked him about his name, age and phone number, personal details about his brothers and family, and other personal information. Then they hooded him and left him alone in a room for about an hour and a half. “Then five soldiers came, including one speaking Arabic,” he said. “He said, ‘I will show you some pictures and you will tell me what you see.'” He asked me on which part of the beach I used to work. He showed me pictures of it. They had pictures of each area. ‘Select one of the pictures’, he told me. I chose a picture of the beach area in which I work. The investigators told me to show a governmental site close to the beach and asked how many people work there. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anyone one working there.’ I said. He asked me how it was possible that I did not know anyone if I need to go there to get my permit to work as fishermen. I told him I only know two persons who came on the beach outside the governmental site. Then the investigator asked me about another governmental site of the civil defense. He asked me if the police there had guns. I told him that I did not know, that some of them did and others didn’t.”
“Finally, the soldier told me ‘Thank you for your help,’” Al Khader said with a hint of irony. “Then I was forced to talk to someone on the phone who asked me my name again, personal information, the number of my identity card. They left me alone for two hours. Then the soldiers came back with a paper which was written in Hebrew. They made me wear nice clothes, asked me to hold the paper and took a picture of me.” He didn’t know what was written on the paper. Another fisherman said it was likely tobe a medical report about his health condition that the Israelis could use in proceedings against them in court.
“They covered my face again, they handcuffed me and made me undress,” Al Khader said. “Then a soldier asked me to get up and sit down three times. Then they again made me wear the clothes. I was handcuffed, hooded and taken by car to the Erez crossing, at about 6:10 pm.”
Al Khader is married with a two-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son. He lives in a small, two-room, house, waiting to move into a new house under construction. “Due to the siege, there is lack of building materials,” a relative said.
Fishing is the only source of livelihood for his family, like hundreds of others.
These attacks by Israeli military forces are increasingly restricting the fishing area allowed to the Palestinian fishermen preventing them from accessing waters north of Gaza Strip. The practical limit imposed by Israel on waters north of Gaza is not six nautical miles, but one to two.
Moreover, it seems clear that through these detentions, the Israeli authorities are trying to obtain information about people and places in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip affects Palestinians’ economic and social conditions. More than 75,000 people depend on the fishing industry as the main source of their livelihood.
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.
7th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
(Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
On Saturday, 4th January, the Israeli navby shot at five fishermen and their boat, a hasaka, three nautical miles from the shore of Gaza, well within the highly-restricted part of Palestine waters in which the occupation forces officially allow them to fish. Despite damage to the boat, and water that flooded it, Majed Baker, age 55, and his four relatives managed to return to port and get the boat onto shore. A total of nine bullet holes were counted, some below the waterline.
Previously, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Information in Gaza, the Israeli military had restricted waters in the north. It thereby expanded the nautical “buffer zone” by Israeli waters through military force, and without declaring its intentions in advance. Nor has it made any statement in retrospect. The restriction of the fishing waters in the north is confirmed by the affected fishermen. The same pattern can be discerned in the rest of the increasingly narrowed zone. According to Zakaria Baker, coordinator of the Union of Agricultural Workers Committees (UAWC)’s fishermen’s committee, all boats that tried to sail further than four miles from the coast have been attacked since the beginning of the year, and the “buffer zone” in the south, by Egyptian waters, has been curtailed drastically. This means boats in Rafah must sail north along the coast for some distance before they can venture into fishing grounds.
These restrictions affect the fishing industry severely, especially now, during the peak season. As a result of Israeli aggression, the total catch has fallen by 42% since 2000, and the number of registered fishermen has declined from about 5,000 in the 1980s to less than 3,000 today, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Attacks and shootings against Palestinian fishermen, sometimes resulting in fatal and other injuries, arrests and seizures of boats, and destruction of fishing gear, are common and documented by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Since neither the Palestinian fishing industry nor fishermen themselves endanger the State of Israel, these abuses cannot be understood as anything other than collective punishment, which violates the fourth Geneva Convention, Article 33.
Behind all the numbers and statistics lurk people. When an occupying power, in this case Israel, is allowed to continue to violate international conventions by the world community, it allows other nations to do the same. This erosion of established conventions is a threat to the people they are meant to protect, and can eventually affect relations between states. The attack on the five fishermen is therefore a concern for the entire international community, and not an internal matter between Israel and those living under its occupation.
Small fishing boats, or hasakat, moored in the Gaza seaport. (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
On 17 December, Palestinian fishermen and their supporters erected a tent — a traditional venue for protest, as well as celebration and mourning — inside the Gaza seaport.
“It was to highlight the situation, the crimes of the Israelis against fishermen here,” said Amjad al-Shrafi, treasurer of the General Union of Fishermen. “We wanted to send a message about the blockade against the fishermen and how we cannot fish freely.”
The protest, organized under the title Free the Holy Land Sea, ended two days later with the delivery of a letter to the nearby office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, demanding international protection for fishermen.
Over three days, hundreds of well-wishers visited a crowded tent decorated with banners and posters supporting fishermen. The organizations represented on its walls ranged from human rights centers to prisoner support groups.
Under fire
“One of our main goals was to push governments around the world to force Israel to give fishermen free lives and let us sail without any limits,” al-Shrafi said. “It’s our right to sail freely in our waters.”
“Another was to pressure the Israeli forces to release the boats and fishermen they have captured.”
Palestinian fishermen in coastal waters off the Gaza Strip frequently come under fire byIsraeli naval forces, which target their boats on both sides of a boundary imposed by Israel.
Through its subsidiary, HP Israel, the US corporation won a contract to run the Israeli navy’s computer and communications network in August 2006 (“HP Israel wins navy IT outsourcing contract,” Globes, 14 August 2006).
The fishing area permitted by Israel, which doubled in size as part of the ceasefire agreement ending eight days of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and retaliatory fire by Palestinian resistance groups in November 2012, now officially reaches six nautical miles from the shore.
But fishermen say the Israeli navy often shoots at them and sometimes captures them and their boats well within the zone it ostensibly allows them.
Captured
Fishermen and supporters hold posters with images of colleagues captured by Israeli forces, in Gaza City on 19 December 2013. (Photo by Joe Catron)
“We were far from the prohibited zone, 500 meters away,” said Saddam Abu Warda, a 23-year-old fisherman whom the Israeli navy captured along with his 18-year-old brother Mahmoud around 9am on 10 November.
“They were shouting, ‘You must get out of here in five minutes.’ We had to cut the net to pull it out of the water. Then they started to fire bullets close to our hasaka [small boat]. As they came close to us, their boat looked like a big building with lights.”
The Abu Wardas’ small boat had no engine. “We tried to escape by paddling quickly,” Saddam Abu Warda said. “They forced us to take off our clothes and raise our hands. They were firing bullets in the air and in front of our hasaka. One soldier was shouting, ‘You have to leave your hasaka and get in the water.’ I was shocked. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know why.”
Finally, gunfire forced the brothers into the cold water. “They didn’t stop firing bullets over our heads,” Abu Warda said. “I was far from my brother. He started shouting, saying, ‘I am injured.’ He wasn’t able to keep swimming. I swam back to my brother to try and save him. His blood was [spilling] in the water. Then two small boats came close to us. They pulled my brother from the water. They didn’t take me.”
When Abu Warda reached the Israeli gunship, he lost consciousness after soldiers bound, hooded and kicked him. He awoke in a detention facility in Ashdod, a port in present-day Israel beside his brother Mahmoud, whose right abdomen was stitched by military physicians. The brothers said that Israeli bullets caused the wound.
During an interrogation after he awoke, an Israeli soldier tried to convince him otherwise. “I told him, ‘Three of your gunboats were around us. They were firing bullets. My brother’s blood was everywhere in the water. He was injured by your soldiers.’”
After a lengthy interrogation that continued both in Ashdod port and after their transfer to a detention center by the Erez crossing between Gaza and present-day Israel, Israeli forces released the Abu Wardas into the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun around 10pm — 13 hours after their capture. Their boat and its equipment remained behind.
“We have three hasakas in the Ashdod port,” Abu Warda said of his family’s prior losses to the Israeli navy.
Severe damage
The Abu Wardas’ experiences echo many more documented in a new report by thePalestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). The PCHR, which supported the Free the Holy Land Sea campaign, is translating the document — already published in Arabic — into English.
Over four years, from 1 September 2009 through 31 August 2013, the Israeli navy killed two fishermen, wounded 24, and captured 147, according to the report. The navy also seized 45 boats and destroyed or damaged 113 more.
The report also records the losses incurred by about thirty bombings of four fishing ports during Israel’s November 2012 attacks on the Gaza Strip, including damages to an additional 80 boats and destruction of a health clinic and a youth center used by fishermen.
“There was severe damage to different fishing facilities during the military offensive,” said Khalil Shaheen, director of PCHR’s economic and social rights unit.” At the ports in Gaza City, Middle Area, Khan Younis and Rafah, different facilities were targeted and destroyed.”
“The report also documents the impact of the total damage to fishermen and the fishing sector,” Shaheen added. “One of the main impacts was the loss of 85 percent of income in the fishing sector, as the result of access restrictions and the naval blockade.”
Casualties have continued to mount in the four months since the period covered by the report ended. The PCHR publishes regular reports on human rights abuses in Gaza. These reports indicate that Israel has shot at fishermen at least 37 times since September, as well as seizing six boats.
“I would like to thank all the solidarity campaigns who were involved in this action and show solidarity with Palestinian fishermen,” al-Shrafi said.
“We ask that the international community continue to pressure their governments, to ask for dignity and a free life for us.”
