On Monday 19 December 2011, the Permanent Military Court in Gaza held the ninth session in Gaza City to consider the case relating to the death of the Italian solidarity activist, Vittorio Arrigoni. Lawyers from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) attended the session in their capacity as legal representatives of the Arrigoni family.
During the session, the Military Prosecution continued to present evidence. They presented a hard disk that included footage of the victim before and after montage. It also presented the testimony of another witness. In conclusion, the Military Prosecution insisted on its demands that are included in the bill of indictment. The session was adjourned to 05 January 2012 to hear the defense attorneys.
PCHR will continue to follow up the sessions held by the Court to consider Arrigoni’s case and update the Arrigoni family on developments, in coordination with the family’s representative, Attorney Gilberto Pagani, based on a power of attorney granted by the family to PCHR lawyers.
Muhammed Salman Abu Rashad, 45, Amna Abu Rashad, 31, and their nine children live in the Jabalia refugee camp, one of the most densely populated areas on earth. The family represent just 11 of the 1.1 million refugees who make up the vast majority of Gaza’s population of approximately 1.7 million people.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Jabalia is the largest of Gaza’s eight refugee camps and is home to around 110,000 registered refugees in an area of only 1.4 square kilometres; unsurprisingly, the camp is infamous for its overcrowding. Israel’s illegal closure policy, first used to isolate the Gaza Strip in 1991, has been particularly devastating on the residents of Jabalia camp, who, like Muhammed Abu Rashad, previously relied on jobs within Israel to support their families. Since the beginning of the complete closure of Gaza in 2007, the now-unemployed residents have been forced to rely on UNRWA aid to survive.
The Abu Rashad’s home, consisting largely of a 3 meter by 3 meter room, is typical of many homes in Jabalia camp. A single room acts as the sleeping, living, studying and eating area for all eleven family members. With winter approaching, it is obvious that the house, which displays long winding cracks along its walls and an open doorway where there should be a functioning door, is entirely inadequate for the couple and their nine children, with a tenth on the way. When the rain comes it flows into the house and onto their blankets, and despite the fact it is a crisp dry day outside, the damp in the room is particularly noticeable. Muhammad is quick to point out that the conditions would be better in prison: “it is not a home but a cemetery”.
The crowding affect’s all aspects of family life, but for the couple’s 9 children the effect is crippling. A majority of the family’s children study during the evening shift in the local UNRWA school, which is forced to run double shifts to facilitate all the camp’s students. When the children return home it is dark and, given the constant power cuts, lack of space, and loud noise from electrical generators the children are unable to study. As a result, two of the Abu Rashad children have failed a year in school and been kept back.
With a lack of space to play – either in the home or in the tight, rubbish strewn, alleyways outside – the children have little physical or emotional space and tend to lash out against each other as a result. The boys resort to violence against their younger siblings and Muhammed tells me that his two daughters are unable “to behave like young girls”, instead imitating their brothers violence in an attempt to “hold their own”. Muhammed himself regrets lashing out at his children when they misbehave, saying that the stress of living in such close quarters leaves him anxious and prone to outbursts.
The crowding has repercussions not only on the family’s mental health but also their physical health. Greeting the children it is obvious they are all suffering from colds and flu. Muhammed says that “when one child comes down with an illness, with no space to isolate and treat them, the rest of the children are all rapidly infected”. Given the constant damp and cold getting the children well again once they become sick is no easy task.
While the crowding has left the family at crisis point, the situation is only getting worse. The children are currently young, the eldest being 15, but as they grow older the tiny room will become progressively more cramped. The eldest daughter Sundus, 10, will soon be too old to sleep next to her brothers. Muhammad tells us that with the neighbours building on top of their current houses in an attempt to alleviate their own crowding problems, the sun will soon be blocked entirely from the already dank family home. The result, according to Muhammad, will be “the families’ destruction”.
The Palestinian refugee crisis is one of the largest and most longstanding refugee problems in the world; today approximately one in four of the entire world’s refugee’s are Palestinian. The rights of Palestinian refugees, and in particular the ‘right of return’, are protected in numerous UN Resolutions, including UN Security Council Resolution 194. However, for as long as the international community refuses to enforce international law, these resolutions will continue to bear little relevance for the Gaza Strip’s refugees, whose fundamental human rights continue to be systematically denied.
Photo: Beit Hanoun Local Initiative – Click here for more images
We set off from in front of the Beit Hanoun Agricultural College under the flags of half a dozen countries, but listening to the music of Palestine. Every Tuesday, for three years, we set off from here into the no go zone, that three hundred meter strip of death which surrounds Gaza. We are a diverse group, the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement, and other Gazans. We march down the road into the no go zone, the tension builds, we play music, we chant.
Today, as we approached the buffer zone a shot rang out. Israeli soldiers shooting into the air, shooting from the concrete towers which line the border of the prison that Israel has created in Gaza. We do not stop, we keep walking into the no go zone. The no go zone is different this week, it is green. Usually it is a dead brown, every couple of weeks Israeli bulldozers come and uproot any plants that manage to sprout, nothing is allowed to live in the no go zone. It is hard to imagine that this used to be an area of thriving orchards, that their used to be houses here, they have all been destroyed, not just destroyed, erased like the hundreds of Palestinian villages which most of the people of Gaza are refugees from were erased after 1948. Just as Palestinians have refused to be erased by the Nakba, the Naqsa, the Occupation, or the war on Gaza, the no go zone steadfastly refuses to become a place of death, green plants emerge from the land after every rain.
We march all the way to the giant ditch which scars the no go zone. We plant a Palestinian flag. It joins the other flags we have left in the no go zone, the orchard of olive trees which we planted here last month. Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative spoke, he vowed to “continue the popular resistance despite the bullets of the occupation, resistance would continue until the liberation of Palestine.” Almost on cue he was answered by the bullets of the soldiers, shots began to ring out, not at us; the soldiers were shooting into the air. We calmly walked back to the road to Beit Hanoun; we still had work to do.
On the road to Beit Hanoun we met a tractor. We had brought the tractor to farm, to plant the land of the no go zone. Israel claims that the no go zone extends only three hundred meters, but in reality the danger extends much farther, just before the demonstration today the Israeli’s had shot a fourteen year old boy from Beit Hanoun while he gathered scrap metal to help support his family, he was not in the no go zone, it didn’t matter, they shot him anyway. We drove the tractor into a large patch of unfarmed land next to the road. We lowered the disc and began to turn the soil. The thistles that grew here were turned under the red soil of Gaza. Young men pulled stones from the field; they were left by the cactuses which mark the border of the land. As soon as the soil was turned young men spread out and began to plant it, barley. When the rains come, the barley will sprout, in four months we will harvest it. We will harvest it under the guns of the Israeli army, just as Palestinians have done for sixty four years, steadfast in their refusal to abandon their land. We are planting not only barley, but also resistance, steadfastness.
Nedal Khaleel Hamdan (Photo: Rosa Schiano, il blog di Oliva)
This morning at the Eretz border in Beit Hanoun, Israeli soldiers shot a 14-year-old boy, Nedal Khaleel Hamdan. We went to the hospital to meet him. We found him sitting on the bed with his left shoulder bandaged, surrounded by his family.
Nedal was collecting metal along with other boys in an area near the border. Often young people his age collect metal, then sell it to earn some money and help their families as well. At about 8:30 in the morning, Israeli soldiers started shooting at them; Nedal and the other fled, but while they were running Nedal was hit in the shoulder by a bullet.
He was transported on a cart to Balsam Hospital, which provided first aid, and was then transferred to Kamal Odwaan Hospital in Beit Hanoun. There the doctor told us: “We made an incision to remove the M-16 bullet. There is a total lack of supplies in the emergency room. We have to ration everything. People get a lot less medicine than they need. ”
Nadal’s recovery time will be a month. Fortunately, there have been no complications.
When we asked Nedal why he works there, told us: “We try to sell the metal to give our families the money they need to live.”
His father, Khaleel, has 16 children, and cannot work due to a problem in his legs. Lack of money forces his children to work in these dangerous areas, even if they do not earn more than 10 shekels for the sale of the metal. Sometimes his family depends on this money. Khaleel adds: “We live in a situation of injustice in Palestine and suffer from this occupation, but we want to work and need some way to make money. We hope that this occupation and the siege end soon and we can have a better life.”
How long can such crimes continue? Here they fire on children, while the world keeps its eyes and ears closed.
Children walk past a poster welcoming freed Palestinian prisoners in Qalandiya refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah, October 19, 2011. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
Twenty-eight cases of children being shot at by the border fence between Israel and the Gaza strip whilst gathering building materials like gravel, or working by the fence, have been documented by Defence for Children International in their latest report ‘Children of Gravel’.
The shootings reportedly took place between March 26 2010 and October 3, 2011, according to Defence for Children International (DCI)-Palestine Section . According to DCI, the Israeli soldiers often fire warning shots to scare off workers by the border. Their report also states that ‘these soldiers sometimes shoot and kill the donkeys used by the workers, and also target the workers, usually, but not always, shooting at their legs.’
‘That children are in a situation where they need to work to help their parents meet basic family needs is an infringement of their rights. That children are in the line of fire to meet these needs is appalling,’ says World Vision Programme Director for Gaza, Siobhan Kimmerle.
Forty percent of Gaza’s population is unemployed and 80% of the population is completely reliant on foreign assistance. In addition, Israeli restrictions limit the amount of construction material entering the Gaza borders for reconstruction and development. As a result, many workers collect gravel and sell it to builders to use for concrete. The children among the gravel collectors earn about US$8-$14 per day to help support their families.
The North Gaza governorate is one of the most impoverished governorates in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) and the neediest in the Gaza Strip. In comparison to the other governorates in the Gaza Strip, North Gaza’s food insecurity rate is the highest at 60% and the unemployment rate the second highest at 39%. World Vision works with communities in North Gaza to help improve family livelihoods and help ensure their children are cared for and protected.
Currently there are 2,411 registered children in World Vision’s North Gaza Area Development Programme, with 7,061 beneficiaries and as many as 22,594 indirect beneficiaries. World Vision’s programming in North Gaza includes rural development, job creation, and child empowerment projects.
The blockade of the Gaza Strip, including Israeli restrictions on items entering the borders, continue to harm Gaza’s deteriorating economy. The Israeli military continues to restrict Palestinians’ access to the land on the Gaza side of the Israeli-Gaza border, maintaining that anyone that comes within 300 metres of the borders puts his/her life at risk, which has had a negative impact on the physical security and livelihoods of Palestinians living in that area. DCI’s documentation indicates that children have been shot at while being between 30 to 800 metres within the Israeli border fence.
World Vision continues to work for the well-being of children and advocate for an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. World Vision believes that this conflict threatens the lives of all Palestinian and Israeli children, and one of the greatest obstacles to achieving fullness of life for each and every child is the ongoing conflict and the perpetuation of violence.
On Monday 19 December 2011, the Permanent Military Court in Gaza held the ninth session in Gaza City to consider the case relating to the death of the Italian solidarity activist, Vittorio Arrigoni. Lawyers from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) attended the session in their capacity as legal representatives of the Arrigoni family.
The Palestinian refugee crisis is one of the largest and most longstanding refugee problems in the world; today approximately one in four of the entire world’s refugee’s are Palestinian. The rights of Palestinian refugees, and in particular the ‘right of return’, are protected in numerous UN Resolutions, including UN Security Council Resolution 194. However, for as long as the international community refuses to enforce international law, these resolutions will continue to bear little relevance for the Gaza Strip’s refugees, whose fundamental human rights continue to be systematically denied.
