Every Tuesday we demonstrate at the Erez border crossing, in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip. The demonstration started at about 11:00 AM. We headed for the No Go Zone. The No Go Zone is an area taken by Israel that extends along Gaza’s entire northern and eastern border inside Palestinian territory. For all intents and purposes, the No go Zone imposed by Israel is illegal and prevents the farmers from working part of their lands. Those who enter the area are attacked by Israel with live rounds.
This week we brought with us musical instruments, small drums, and a trumpet. We marched into the No Go Zone raising our Palestinian flags, playing music, and singing Palestinian songs like “Filisteeni” and “Onadekom.” We marched on the land ruined by the Israeli bulldozers, we crossed big ditches using our hands in a vain attempt to not to fall down into the mud, and we arrived near the separation barrier.At one point, our music was interrupted by Israel firing live ammunition at us. We were speechless at the Israeli live fire. Silently we raised our arms in the sky. Silently we looked at the border. Silence fell on the land; we heard only the sound of the Israeli gunshots that are the sound of the death. They shot toward peaceful demonstrators armed only with flags and musical instruments.
They shot toward youth that have only their voices to ask justice and freedom for their land. But the Israeli soldiers don’t know our language; they only know the language of the violence.
After a short time, bravely, we started again to sing, challenging the Israeli gunshots. We placed a Palestinian flag near the separation wall and we stood there, singing and playing music. A group of youth started to dance the Dabka.
Then, near the flag that we placed, we started to sing Bella CiaoUna mattina mi sono svegliato, o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao! Una mattina mi sono svegliato, e ho trovato l’invasor…
One morning I awakened, Oh Goodbye beautiful, Goodbye beautiful, Goodbye beautiful! Bye! Bye! One morning I awoke, and I found the invader…).
As an Italian, I felt a strong emotion, singing this song with all my heart with the Palestinian people.
We came back home with a smile on our faces, the music gave us joy and strength; we will never give in to the siege. Last week, the Israeli soldiers attacked us with bullets and tear gas, tear gas between our feet and bullets over our heads. Yesterday we gave this answer to the Israeli bullets: the music of our small drums against the crack of their bullets.
We will keep demonstrating against the illegal No Go Zone, against the occupation, and against the siege. We’ll keep on demonstrating with the popular resistance, we will keep demanding freedom and justice for Palestine, we will keep on demonstrating for the right of the Palestinians to their lands.
Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.
We will keep demonstrating against the illegal No Go Zone, against the occupation, and against the siege. We’ll keep on demonstrating with the popular resistance, we will keep demanding freedom and justice for Palestine, we will keep on demonstrating for the right of the Palestinians to their lands.
Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.
“This is the life of Palestinian people,” Obada Saed Bilal said one recent morning. “If I hadn’t been detained, I would have been wounded or martyred. I was in detention for over nine years, but I still resist. My marriage and university studies are my ways to keep fighting now.”
Obada and his wife, Nili Zahi Safad, sat in the lobby of the Commodore Gaza Hotel. The Ministry of Detainees in Gaza has temporarily housed them there, along with a number of other former political prisoners who, like Bilal, were freed in the prisoner exchange on 18 October 2011.
Israel forced Bilal, a native of Nablus in the West Bank, to relocate to Gaza following his release, along with 204 other prisoners expelled from their homes in the West Bank.
Safad moved to Gaza shortly after her husband’s arrival. They had been married for only twenty days when his arrest separated them on 16 April 2002.
“I was brutally beaten for two hours,” Bilal said, recalling the 1am military raid in the West Bank village of Aghwar in which he was detained. “Then I was taken to the Petach Tikva detention center in Tel Aviv. They interrogated me for ninety days. This was my most difficult time as a prisoner. I was kept in isolation, handcuffed and blindfolded, and interrogated for about twelve hours every day.”
After his interrogation, the Israeli authorities sent Bilal to Ashkelon, where a military court sentenced him to 26 years.
Isolation
Safad, also a former political prisoner, told a similar story.
“I was detained at a checkpoint,” she said of her arrest on 11 November 2009. “I was returning from Hebron to Nablus, when they arrested me and sent me to detention. They kept me in isolation for ninety days before transferring me to the HaSharon prison for women. About 17 women were detained at HaSharon then; now there are only seven.
“While being interrogated, women are treated exactly like the men,” she added. “We were deprived of food, sleep and even access to the toilet. They shouted insults at us. I was kept handcuffed and blindfolded. Once they chained my hands to the ceiling for four days.”
Bilal and Safad told The Electronic Intifada that their conditions barely improved after they were transferred to prisons following their ninety-day interrogation periods.
“Our daily life was harsh and difficult,” Bilal said. “Our basic human and medical needs were routinely denied. The jailers treated us poorly, the food was awful and we were routinely denied any contact with our families. I wasn’t able to see mine for three years. We were kept handcuffed for ten hours a day, and only given one hour for recreation. Sometimes they punished us by denying even this.”
The Israeli authorities seemed determined to prevent contact with family members inside the prison. “Once I met my two brothers in prison. But when the jailers learned that we were brothers, they separated us,” Bilal said. “And when my wife was arrested, I asked to be placed with her, but the prison administration refused.” Their reunion seemed less likely after Safad completed her sentence and was released on 10 July 2011.
Renewed vows
The authorities also tried to prevent inmates from forming any bonds with each other. “They transferred us among prisons only to confuse us. As soon as we made new friends, they would transfer us again. This was psychological punishment,” Bilal explained.
He had a problem with his eyesight before his arrest, and it became worse in prison. “But they refused to treat it,” he said. “It deteriorated until I couldn’t see at all.”
The International Middle East Media Center reported in late November that there were at least forty persons living with disabilities, such as Bilal’s blindness, among the prisoner population. Many prisoners have died due to systematic medical negligence and torture (“Forty disabled Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel,” 30 November 2011).
Today, Bilal and Safad’s lives go on in a new city, far from their families and community in Nablus.
Bilal, an An-Najah National University public relations student when arrested, has returned to his studies, this time in politics and religion at the Islamic University of Gaza. He and Safad continue supporting Bilal’s brothers, Moad and Othman, both current political prisoners.
The couple also marked the end of their separation by renewing their marriage vows. “We held another wedding party after I was released and my wife came to Gaza, to celebrate our life and resistance,” Bilal said. “This is our message to the world, that we must celebrate our struggle and keep fighting.”
Joe Catron is an international solidarity activist and boycott, divestment, and sanctions organizer in Gaza. He blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com and tweets at @jncatron.
For the third week in a row, the Centre for Political and Development Studies (CPDS), a Gaza-based think tank, held a video link to explore issues related to the Palestinian cause, with the presence of Palestinian and international activists. Huwaida Arraf, the co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, chair of the Free Gaza Movement, and a prominent Palestinian-American activist, talked to Gaza activists about “The Palestine solidarity movement: Countering Zionist propaganda globally.”
Choosing discourse to communicate with others is one of the basic requirements to get one’s voice heard. Zionists have mastered this, while Palestinians have been misrepresented in the West. Ironically, Palestine’s just story isn’t getting out. “Through the years we have not done a very good job of conveying our plight, and that’s largely because telling our story was left to our ‘official spokespeople’ who didn’t know how to communicate well with the western media”, said Arraf. “On the other side, Israel depends largely on PR, a fundamental part of its strategy. One of the biggest propaganda projects is The Israel Project. Its annual budget for last year alone was eleven million dollars. This is not counting the official support of the Israeli government, companies, and AIPAC”.
“Israel is losing the PR battle for various reasons: law and justice are on our side, there is an increasing awareness among Palestinians, the growth of alternative media like Facebook and Twitter, and, I believe, the effect of the International Solidarity Movement”, Arraf continued.
The second Palestinian Intifada, which was characterized by Israel’s aggression against Palestinian civilians and the role of the media in covering it, pushed Arraf, with the help of other colleagues, to found ISM. It grew to include 8,000 activists, who have worked hard to expose Israel’s grievous and vivid violations of human rights in Occupied Palestine.
“One of the reasons we founded ISM was because we noticed what was happening in terms of Israel’s massive use of violence”, said Arraf. “The media was not portraying the truth of what was happening. We realised that the Palestinian civil society, and Palestinians as a whole, especially after Oslo, needed a resource to be able to stand up and confront what Israel is doing”.
ISM turned out to be something practical, not merely a plan on paper. Its first campaign included 50 people. Since then, over 8,000 activists have actively worked on the ground to help the Palestinian people.
“The first campaign started in August, 2001”, said Arraf. “Fifty people came. We started another campaign. We tried to say the conflict is not about a religion against another. It’s about freedom versus occupation. It’s not Muslims against Jews. We wanted the mass media to know this. ISM aimed at forming advocacy groups and helping the Palestinian people sustain their struggle and get their stories heard”.
Palestinians share values with all other nations, based on tolerance, understanding, and working together for the good of humankind.
“Once, I organised a meeting between a Palestinian farmer from Bodrous village in the West Bank, named Ayed Murra, and a Vermont senator on Capitol Hill”, said Arraf. “We talked about how the wall affects farmers in the West Bank. We spent an hour talking to the senator, who lives in an area full of farmers”.
Israel tries to tell the world that the entire Palestinian movement is Hamas. They play on an anti-Islamic atmosphere in the West. This clearly distorts history and the facts on the grounds.
“Hamas was founded in 1987” said Arraf. “What about the ethnic cleansing in 1948 and 1967? Op-eds and articles were written on Hamas accepting a truce with Israel. In 2003, the late Palestinian president, Yasser Arrafat, arranged a ceasefire included all Palestinian factions. In the first two-and-a-half months, Israel killed 74 Palestinians and destroyed 480 Palestinian homes”.
Absence of leadership is one of the things Palestinians are discussing today. “The current leadership does not represent the Palestinian people, particularly who live in the Diaspora”, said Arraf. Elections should be held to represent the Palestinian people as a whole. This will help them win representation for their aspirations and dreams.
“The Palestinian leadership is gone, of course”, said Arraf. “Direct elections to Palestinian National Council should be held. After years of not having a strong Palestinian official voice to be able to refer to in terms of what to do abroad, there came the unification of the Palestinian civil society in the form of BDS”.
“CPDS is looking forward to work hand-in-hand with ISM to help the Palestinian people get heard”, said Dr. Mahmoud Alhirthani, CPDS chairman. “It would be a good idea to organize lectures and courses with your help to make this idea a success”.
Next Sunday, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) in the United Kingdom will talk with Gaza activists at CPDS on how to be a good ambassador of Palestine when in the U.K. This link is part of a programme named “For you, Palestine”, aiming at drawing Palestinian people’s attention to global issues that can help them represent their cause.
25 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Strip
Gaza was treated to a strange new sight today, not really new, but something that has not been seen in Gaza in a long time: tear gas. In Gaza protests are not smashed with tear gas and clubs like in the West Bank, they are met with live ammunition. In a continuation of Israel’s policy to separate the West Bank from Gaza, nothing is overlooked. The sub-human status they wish to cement in the world’s mind when it comes to the people of Gaza is adhered to brutally. On May 15th 2011, when over a hundred demonstrators were shot near Erez, only one canister of tear gas was fired. Before that the protesters faced live ammunition and tank fire. In the three years that regular demonstrations have been carried out near Erez by the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, regulars tell me that this was the first time they had seen tear gas.
The demonstration started like all the others. We gathered near the half destroyed Beit Hanoun Agricultural College and marched towards the no go zone. There were about forty of us, men and women together. As always, the demonstrators were armed only with a megaphone and our voices. Today, we planned to hike from Erez to the east of Beit Hanoun, near the site where two young men were murdered last week while catching birds and collecting rubble near the no go zone. The no go zone, which used to be an area of flourishing orchards has been reduced to yielding rubble to recycle into concrete.
Israel bans the import of concrete into Gaza. Only humans would need concrete to rebuild the thousands of houses Israel destroyed in the 2008-2009 massacres they carried out in Gaza. In Israeli eyes, Gazans aren’t really full people; they are half people to be murdered at will for even thinking of coming close to the no go zone.
This is why we march, we deny the no go zone, and we deny the occupation. The refugees of Gaza, thrown from their homes during the Nakba, want to return to their homes.
We walked down the muddy road that leads to the no go zone. As we got close to the no go zone, the shooting began. Shooting is not unexpected; bullets are the language of the occupation, at least the language that you hear. Ethnic cleansing, oppression, and torture are also languages the occupation speaks, but the loudest voices of the occupation are the bullets and the bombs. The bullets passed over our heads; they slammed into the dirt in front of us. Then, the unexpected happened; the tear gas began to fall. The clouds of tear gas were smaller than I remember from protests in the West Bank. Perhaps the shells are old, they are used so seldom in Gaza that maybe the inventory is old.
This isn’t an issue in the West Bank, there the protests are coated in tear gas, men are killed or severely injured by tear gas canisters shot at them like Mustafa Tamimi and Bassem Abu Rahma who both passed away, or Tristan Anderson, who survived. Women are suffocated by it, woman like Jawaher Abu Rahma. It is fired into houses, schools, fields, villages; tear gas is omnipresent. In Gaza, tear gas is a blast from the past, here the occupation has discarded that language, in Gaza, it only speaks with bullets and bombs.
At first it wasn’t clear if the protest would continue. People were shocked by the use of the new weapon. Quickly though, a decision was reached: We would continue. We walked east along the edge of the buffer zone. Soldiers in concrete towers hundreds of meters away fired live ammunition at unarmed protesters walking on their own land–soldiers in concrete towers built on the land these protesters were ethnically cleansed from.
The black flag that flies over the occupation did not come down after the massacre of Kfar Kassem, it is still there, it is just that it has been flying for so long that no one remembers anything else. the black flag is like the sun, people do not remember a day before it was in the sky.
Walking in the no go zone isn’t easy. The ground is uneven from the constant destruction of the bulldozers which Israel uses to make sure that nothing takes root there. The ground is littered with the past: irrigation pipes, metal rods and concrete rubble from the destroyed houses. Slowly all of this is ground up under the blades of bulldozers and treads of tanks. We walked east, the shooting stopped for a bit. Two soldiers appeared on a hill to the north, they raised their guns. They lost sight of us behind a hill. We emerged from behind a hill: we saw a tank on another hill. Jeeps sped along the border. The shooting began again. Bullets flew over our heads.
Beit Hanoun demonstration under fire – Click here for more images
We reached the eastern edge of our prison and turned south. Soldiers appeared again on a new hill. Shooting resumed, tear gas canisters from 500 meters arced over our heads. We stopped and reminded the soldiers that this was a nonviolent demonstration by people on their land.
They continued to shoot, then the soldiers on the hill began to yell at us with a megaphone, “Gazans are donkeys.” Gazans are not donkeys, they are people, but perhaps if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe, people like these soldiers. We passed the carcass of a horse, rotting. A donkey grazed to the east of the dead horse. At least the donkey was still alive.
The soldiers continued to shoot at us, bullets and tear gas. Just as Gaza did not kneel after the 23 day massacre three years ago, we will not be stopped by bullets and tear gas. We will continue to protest until the occupation disappears. We will continue to protest until we achieve justice. Without the end of the occupation and true justice, peace is impossible. We will not accept the peace of silent oppression. We will never accept the occupation. Gaza will not kneel.
Nathan Stuckey is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.
24 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement
Image from Poica.org – Click here for more information
In a peaceful demonstration into the Gaza no go zone that began around 10:30am today, January 24 2012, demonstrators report that at least 50 rounds of live ammunition were fired directly at Palestinian and international solidarity activists.
Contact:
Nathan Stuckey, International Solidarity Movement activist
Phone Number: 00970597650864
Email: GazaISM@gmail.com
At least two Israeli soldiers have been visible on the ground, while a large military tank also took position approximately 15 minutes following the initial shooting of live ammunition. With a momentary pause in gunfire that lasted for approximately 15 minutes, shooting of live ammunition has resumed in Gaza’s No Go Zone. At least 50 bullets have been shot thus far.
Every Tuesday Palestinians and supporters march from Beit Hanoun into the buffer zone , where the fertile land has been made inaccessible to Palestinians due to the imminent danger of violence by the guarding Israeli military, who also bulldoze land that has been an agricultural resource for many locals in the northern Gaza Strip.
This week we brought with us musical instruments, small drums, and a trumpet. We marched into the No Go Zone raising our Palestinian flags, playing music, and singing Palestinian songs like “Filisteeni” and “Onadekom.” We marched on the land ruined by the Israeli bulldozers, we crossed big ditches using our hands in a vain attempt to not to fall down into the mud, and we arrived near the separation barrier.At one point, our music was interrupted by Israel firing live ammunition at us. We were speechless at the Israeli live fire. Silently we raised our arms in the sky. Silently we looked at the border. Silence fell on the land; we heard only the sound of the Israeli gunshots that are the sound of the death. They shot toward peaceful demonstrators armed only with flags and musical instruments.
Then, near the flag that we placed, we started to sing Bella CiaoUna mattina mi sono svegliato, o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao! Una mattina mi sono svegliato, e ho trovato l’invasor…
