Category: Gaza

Palestine mourns another real legend, a symbol of motherhood

by Shahd Abusalama

11 December 2011 | Palestine from My Eyes

The mother of Anees and Akram (Photo: Shahd Abusalama, Palestine from My Eyes)

My voice is muted but every feature of my face speaks sorrow and anger. There is no need to wonder why. It’s Palestine, the rich land where smiles can turn to tears and laughs can turn to sighs in a second. It’s Palestine, where series of sad stories mixed with strength, will, and glory never end.

Anees and Akram Al-Namoura are brothers who were released in the first stage of the prisoner exchange on October 18 after spending ten years, originally supposed to be two life sentences, in prison. They joined the resistance by the beginning of the second Intifada, answering the call of their occupied lands and oppressed people to defend them, ready to pay any price that their precious homeland, Palestine, would require. While Israel was aggressively and continuously attacking, killing, wounding, and detaining Palestinian citizens, the brothers took to arms against the occupying army hoping for a better future for their family, their neighbors and their community. They planted a bomb beneath an Israeli tank, killing two Israeli soldiers.

I coincidentally met Anees, the elder brother, in his hotel while I was interviewing some other former detainees. After having a short chat, I learned that he was somehow related to my mother’s family. Then he told me that his imprisonment started five months before his brother’s. I commented innocently, “I can’t imagine how hard it is for your mother to have two sons in prison at the same time. But it is a little fortunate that you and Akram met each other there.” He shook his head, smiling at my naïveté, and corrected me. “No. We were in prison at the same time, but separated by the Israeli Prison Administration for the first five years. We tried legal remedies, but no lawyers and no courts could bring us together. So we started an open hunger strike to pressure them, and we were clear that our hunger strike would end only after they had met our demands. We could eventually meet and live as brothers in Armon Prison, in the same cell, for the last five years of our imprisonment.”

Anees and Akram’s father is holding their picture (Photo: Shahd Abusalama, Palestine from My Eyes)

Anees and Akram couldn’t enjoy the blessing of kissing and hugging their elderly parents even after they gained their freedom. Israel imposed a separation of a different kind on them as they were exiled from Hebron to the Gaza Strip. But this was only additional pain from a wound that was already existed, as their 80-year-old father, a cancer patient in a wheelchair, and 65-year-old sick mother weren’t allowed to visit their detained sons for more than three years.

When I Googled Anees and Akram’s names, I encountered a video of their parents from a year ago. They were interviewed about how it felt having sons in the Israeli tyrants’ prisons. “How can an old man like me, sick with cancer, threaten Israeli security?” their father wondered with a shaking voice full of sadness. “I collected all papers that explain my health situation, which is getting worse, and tried every possible way to meet my sons again before I die.” After watching the video, I smiled despite my sadness, thinking of how merciful God is: Anees and Akram’s father is still alive and has witnessed his sons attaining freedom.

In the same video, their mother, with expressive wrinkles that evoked long years of suffering, said, “I only wish I could sit on their beds, as I used to when they were young, and play with their hair while their heads lie on my knees.” The father challenged his disability by joining his sick wife and one of his daughters in a trip to the Gaza Strip to meet their sons only six days ago. This trip couldn’t happen earlier, as their permission to leave through Jordan was denied by Israel, and they obviously couldn’t come here through the Erez border for “security reasons.” However, if there is a will, there is a way. They eventually overcame all obstacles and made it here.

Six days ago, I heard Mum speaking cheerfully to Dad about the arrival of Anees and Akram’s parents and sister safely. Today, I saw Mum’s tears for the death of their mother, who had waited long to hug her sons and celebrate their freedom. “Oh Allah, her destiny was to live and not die before she enjoyed seeing and hugging her sons between her arms once again,” Mum said with tearful eyes as she entered our home after the funeral. After ten long years of waiting, with worry, sadness, suffering, and humiliation between checkpoints as she tried to visit her imprisoned sons, she lived six days with them before passing away, leaving us a real legend, a symbol of patience, challenge, and motherhood.

Gaza attack: “My uncle died in my arms”

by Ruqaya Izzidien

9 December 2011 | Al Akhbar English

“My uncle was breathing when I found him under the rubble,” said Migdad Elzalaan. “He told me, ‘Look after our family, look after the children. Look after them,’ and then he died, right in my arms.”

Photo: Ruqaya Izzidien, Al Akhbar English – Click here for more images

At around 2am on Thursday night, Israeli forces bombed the area beside the Elzalaan household in northern Gaza City, injuring thirteen members of his family and killing his uncle. Migdad’s 12-year-old cousin, Ramadan, died in hospital from his injuries less than a day after the attack.

As 20-year-old Elzalaan stood recalling the night’s attack, he dislodged blocks of rubble poking through large holes in the roof, fearing that they might fall on our heads. He stumbled through the remains of his home while rubble cracked and snapped underfoot, small pieces of house falling occasionally while a drone buzzed heavily, circling above the ruins of the house.

Elzalaan was sitting at the computer before the first bomb hit.

“I brought my younger sisters, Samaa and Samar into the living room, with my grandmother. I tried to shield them and as the first bomb hit, I was injured in my back and leg by pieces of falling rubble. Afterwards, I took my family out of the house to safety.”

After the second bomb struck, Elzalaan headed to his uncle’s house, which shares a wall with his own. “My uncle, his wife and their baby were under the rubble. My aunt told me to leave her, just to take her baby, Ahmed, to safety. I picked him out of the rubble and handed him to someone.”

As soon the 6-month-old was taken to safety, Israeli forces dropped a third bomb. “I shielded my aunt during the third bomb, and then afterwards helped her out of the house.” Elzalaan then returned for his uncle, Bahjat, who was buried underneath the rubble.

The 33-year-old father-of-five told Migdad to look after his family before dying in his nephew’s arms.

“I carried my uncle out of the building and then we brought a jeep to take everyone to hospital, because no ambulances came. By the dawn call to prayer, we were on our way to hospital.”

“During the bombing I was yelling and pulling my hair out,” Elzalaan explained, “Absolutely everyone was injured – thirteen members of my family. My two cousins are still in hospital, they are critically wounded. They are ten and twelve years old.” Hours later, Ramadan, the elder of Elzalaan’s cousins, died of his injuries.

Elzalaan’s neighbor passed through the house, pointed to the rubble and yelled, “This is what Israel does. There were no fighters here, just children and a family. This isn’t a home anymore.”

Migdad Elzalaan’s home was also badly damaged in an Israeli airstrike during the 2008-2009 war and repaired by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Still casting lead: Israeli air force attack kills 2, injures 12 in single family

by Radhika Sainath

9 December 2011 | Notes from Behind the Blockade

Midhad El Zalaan in his home after Israel’s bombing (Photo: Radhika Sainath, Notes from Behind the Blockade) – Click here for more images

Update: Midgdad’s 12-year-old cousin died yesterday.

“This is the occupation,” a neighbor mumbled as we stepped into what remained of twenty-year-old Migdad El Zalaan’s cement-block home in the north of Gaza City this afternoon.  The Israeli Air Force dropped the first of three bombs near Zalaan’s home at approximately 2 a.m. this morning killing his uncle, wounding El Zalaan and the rest of his twelve family members, and destroying his home.

In one corner of the living room a baby doll lay on a mattress buried under shards of tin roof.  Cement blocks squashed plastic party hats and red stuffed bears, and  El Zalaan family’s modest possessions lay buried under layers of dust and rubble.  El Zalaan was on his computer right before Israel attacked.

“After the Israelis dropped the first bomb, I took my family and left my home,” explained El Zalaan, periodically looking up at the sky, where the ceiling once was. “Then the second bomb dropped and I went to my uncle’s home to find out if they were okay. My uncle’s wife [Saada El Zalaan] called me from under the rubble. She was holding her baby, I took the baby and then Israel dropped the third bomb.”  El Zalaan then helped his aunt out of her house despite her pleas to get her son out and leave her.

“I kept digging, looking for my uncle, then I found him, buried, but still breathing. He told me ‘take care of my family, take care of my wife and my children’ and then he died in my arms.”  Bahjat El Zalaan was 33-years-old and the father of 5 when he died.

El Zalaan described how during the bombing he was screaming and pulling his hair out, and how he was trying to protect his mother, father, grandmother and siblings from the shrapnel by holding them in his arms. “I got rubble in my leg and back,” he explained, wincing in pain throughout the interview.

He took his family to Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Two of his siblings, ages 8 and 10, remain in critical condition.  Israel had destroyed the roof of his home before, during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009.  On the outside of the home, a small plaque hung near the broken window, “This shelter was repaired by UNRWA through a generous fund from the Federal Republic of Germany.”

Before leaving, El Zalaan asked if he could take a photograph with us and his cousin, who snapped a photo on his cell phone. As we left I asked him if he worked, and he said no, “we stay at home because there’s no work.”

Commemorating the anniversary of the First Intifada in the no go zone

by Nathan Stuckey

6 December 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Photo: Rosa Schiano – Click here for more images

Twenty four years ago, on December 9, 2011 a revolution began.  The revolution began in Gaza, it was the First Intifada.  After twenty years of Israeli occupation Palestinian resistance exploded in full force.  Boycotts, demonstrations, tax refusal, all of these were the strategies of the Intifada.  Over one thousand Palestinians would be killed by Israel during the Intifada;over one hundred thousand Palestinians would go to prison during the course of the Intifada.  For six years the Intifada burned, Palestinians were united in a massive nationwide campaign of popular resistance.

Today, in Beit Hanoun, we marched in remembrance of the beginning of the Intifada.  We gathered near the Beit Hanoun Agricultural College, the same place we have gathered every Tuesday for the last three years.  We were about forty people in all, activists from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement, and people from around Gaza.  Bella Ciao echoed over the loudspeaker, that was our signal to begin marching.  We marched down the road toward the no go zone, the three hundred meter strip of land along Gaza’s border where Israel murders any who dare to enter.  Just as we refuse the occupation, we refuse the no go zone, every Tuesday, we march into the no go zone.  We began to chant, “No to the Occupation”, “from Beit Hanoun to Bil’in we are all resistance”, and “A steadfast people will never be humiliated”.

As we reached the edge of the no go zone, we paused.  Many members of the demonstration wrapped their faces in keffiyehs and empty bottles and sling shots were taken out of bags in honor of the weapons of the First Intifada, the revolution of stones.  We march into the buffer zone, our hearts cheered by the Palestine flag that still flies where we planted it several weeks ago, reminding everyone, that this land isn’t naturally dead, that even if the bulldozers come and destroy everything, as they do every couple of weeks, resistance will always rise up anew.  We stop by a giant piece of rubble that we have painted with a Palestinian flag.  Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative speaks, “this march commemorates the martyrs of the first Intifada, the glorious uprising of stones which began 24 years ago.  The revolution continues, the Intifada and the resistance will continue until the Palestinian dream of an independent state with its capital as Jerusalem and the return refugees is achieved.”  We march back to Beit Hanoun.  Next Tuesday, we will march into the no go zone again if the occupation has not ended by then, but our resistance, will continue every day until the end of occupation and the return of the refugees.

Military court in Gaza holds the 9th session to consider the case relating to the death of Italian solidarity activist, Vittorio Arrigoni

5 December 2011 | Palestinian Center for Human Rights

On Monday 05 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 Court heard witnesses presented by the Office of the Military Prosecutor.  One of the witnesses heard by the Court is a member of the Civil Defense Service, whose headquarter is located opposite Arrigoni’s former house in Gaza City.  The Court adjourned the case to 19 December 2011 because of absence of the second witness.

During the session, the legal representative of one of the accused persons requested the release of his client on bail, but the Judge refused this request.

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.