4th May 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza team | Gaza, occupied Palestine
On May 1st, the workers of the Gaza Strip gathered to demand that Mahmoud Abbas and Rami Hamdallah work towards the end of the blockade. The blockade has already strangled the life in the Gaza Strip for 10 years and has raised the unemployment rate above 60%. The workers also remembered all the martyrs who died at the hands of the zionist entity while working for a free Palestine; farmers, fishermen, tunnel diggers.
Every day the farmers of the Gaza Strip are harassed by the Israeli army, who shoot at them with live ammunition and tear gas, even though they only want to work their land and do nothing to provoke such attacks. They choose to work, instead of relying on the humanitarian aid that is offered to them by the same states that conduct business with the zionist oppressors; buying and selling the very weapons that execute Palestinians.
Every day Gazan fishermen go out to sea with the sole intention of providing for their families, as workers everywhere do. However, many do not return to their home because they are ‘caught in the nets’ of the Israeli army, imprisoned and sometimes murdered- without posing a threat.
As one worker told ISM at the demonstration, “I don’t want food baskets… I am 35 years old and I’m healthy; keep the food baskets for the old and the disabled. Give me the opportunity to work and I’ll feed myself and my family”.
2nd May 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza team | Gaza, occupied Palestine
After more than six months risking their lives while ploughing, planting seeds and weeding their land, and after investing a large amount of money on seeds and on renting a tractor, the Qudaih family from the village of Khuzaa were finally ready to start harvesting their barley and the wheat two days ago.
We arrived at the fields, located around 100 metres from the fence, at 7am. Around 9am one jeep from the Israeli occupation forces stopped in front of the farmers and a group of soldiers emerged. After a few minutes they fired several shots in the air, then returned to the jeep and left.
A family member working on the land in Khuzaa
45 minutes later another jeep arrived. This time the soldiers fired shots on the ground next to the farmers and the ISM activists that were with them. The shots were near misses, just a few centimetres from their feet. As if this was not terrifying enough, next they fired shots close to the farmers’ and activists’ heads. At that moment most of the farmers started to run away from their fields terrified by the whistling sounds of the bullets flying around them: One Bedouin man that was picking herbs for his animals laid down on the ground hiding behind his donkey, while the soldiers fired shot more than five times just a few centimetres from him. The shooting didn’t even stop when everyone started to run away, preventing the farmers to secure their horse cart holding what little harvest they had collected until they were attacked.
The Qudaih family harvesting their barley on their land.
These families now have to choose between losing all the money invested as well as their main sustenance for the year, or continue trying to harvest the crops on their land – despite the risk of someone getting killed or disabled.
18th April 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Gaza, occupied Palestine
Last Thursday 14th April marked four years since the disappearance of Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza, under the Israeli blockade. According to subsequent statements and investigations carried out by Hamas, ISM activist Vittorio’s body was discovered the following day, having been kidnapped and executed by the previously unheard of “Brigade of the Gallant Companion of the Prophet Mohammed bin Muslima,” a Salafist splinter-group. His alleged murderers were eventually arrested and sentenced to life-imprisonment (reduced to fifteen years on appeal).
Vittorio wearing a kaffiyeh
Before his death Vittorio was a committed, passionate ISM activist who spent the best part of three years of his life in Gaza between 2008 and 2011, working in solidarity with the Palestinian people suffering from the Israeli blockade. He first went to Gaza as part of the Free Gaza flotilla that broke the blockade in August 2008. Vittorio worked in solidarity with farmers and fishermen, attended demonstrations and documented, for both ISM and other media outlets, the countless examples of Israeli human rights abuses that he witnessed. This was none more evident than in his work during Operation Cast Lead, in which hundreds of civilians were massacred.
Despite the difficulties he encountered in his work Vittorio was an incredibly positive, happy and optimistic person. He described the breaking of the blockade in 2008 as the happiest moment of his life, stating that, “it became clear, not only to the world but Palestinians also, that there are people who are willing to spend their lives to come and hug their brothers here in Gaza.”
Vittorio was a born activist whose grandfathers “fought and died struggling against occupation, a fascist Nazi one. For that reason presumably in my DNA, my blood, there are particles that push me to struggle for freedom and human rights.”
Gaza: Stay Human
Hundreds of Palestinians gathered in Gaza last week, where Vittorio is considered a Martyr to the cause of peaceful resistance, to commemorate the anniversary of Vittorio’s death- singing, dancing and showing a film dedicated to his life. Vittorio’s memory is still honoured in Gaza by the street and school that carry his name. A book of Vittorio’s daily dispatches to Italian media – “Gaza: Stay Human” – was first published in 2010 with an introduction by Ilan Pappe.
ISM continue in Vittorio’s spirit, to support and show solidarity to the Palestinian people in their peaceful, non-violent opposition to the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.
“We must remain human, even in the most difficult times … Because, despite everything, there must always be humanity within us. We have to bring it to others.”
3rd of March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine
At around 9am on Thursday, the 31st March, four Israeli bulldozers entered the Gaza Strip at El Fakhuri. They came in order to destroy agricultural lands located near the border, once again violating the indefinite truce that ended the 2014 Israeli aggression against Gaza.
Meanwhile more than thirty tanks were located along the fence line, pointing at the Palestinian farmers who kept working on their lands despite the great risk that they face doing so.
In less than a month the wheat harvest season will start. The families who own land near the border don’t know what will happen then, as no one seems to do anything to stop the systematic aggression. The wheat harvest is vital for the families ability to feed their children.
29th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine
During the latest wave of aggression by Israeli forces against the Gaza Strip, Gaza resident Mohamed Shorrab, 70 years old, lost his family home. It was shot at and destroyed by Israeli tank fire and artillery shells from the gun turrets located on the annexation wall that separate Gaza from the lands occupied by Israel in 1948. During this wave of aggression, Israeli bulldozers also destroyed his five hundred beehives along with most of his fruit plantations and olive trees. Previously Mohamed’s twenty one sheep were killed, alongside all of Gaza’s livestock, during the 2014 massacre of Gaza by Israeli forces.
The family homeTurret from where the home was shot
In 2012, two of Mohamed’s sons were killed by the occupying army. They were killed whilst heading home during a cease-fire, when a soldier told them they couldn’t continue and had to go back to where they were coming from. Immediately upon turning back a tank fired at them. Ambulance services were not allowede to reach the two men until six hours later.
