Category: Journals

  • Fishing in Gaza – no day at the beach

    Fishing in Gaza – no day at the beach

    24 October 2011 | Notes from Behind the Blockade I saw an Israeli naval warship for the first time yesterday, a concrete monster the color of ash, guzzling up the Mediterranean and spurting it out in its wake. I rose early to go out with the Oliva, a small white boat used by Civil Peace…

  • Ashraf Abu Rahmah was arrested for being himself

    Ashraf Abu Rahmah was arrested for being himself

    23 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank To some soldiers of the Israeli army, staying alone, being quiet, and carrying a flag is a crime. To them, people who act in that way should be arrested. At least we can come to that conclusion when we think about the arrest of Ashraf Abu…

  • Honeymoon in Gaza

    16 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza I had just finished off a plate of homemade bread knaffe yesterday with a family in the south of Gaza, when we got the call: farmers in Beit Hanoun, a village in the north of the Gaza Strip, requested that ISM volunteers accompany them to pick olives…

  • There is no east: Olive harvest in Gaza

    There is no east: Olive harvest in Gaza

    15 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Gaza doesn’t have very much farmland left.  The expanding no go zone imposed by Israeli bullets and bulldozers constantly erode the amount of land left for Palestinians to farm in Gaza.  Mohamed Ashure Shimbari lives on the edge of the no-go zone.  If you look east from…

  • The lonely olive tree of Bil’in

    The lonely olive tree of Bil’in

    14 October 2011  | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank Near the concrete wall which separates Bil’in from Modiin Illit colony, occupied by ultra-Orthodox Jews, there is an olive tree.  It is impossible to know how it survived the construction of the wall and how it continues to resist to the lack of a few cares that the specie demands – a lack caused by the Israeli barbed wire fence that prevents the access of the residents…