Category: Journals - Page 79 - International Solidarity Movement

Speaking Truth to Power

We were back at Faraheen this morning accompanying farmers again, eying the jeeps driving along the Israeli border while our farmers removed the irrigation pipes from one of the fields we have visited regularly. Since Mohammed was shot in the leg, the farmer here has decided to give up on this field, its convenient well, and its half-grown parsley crop – 200,000 shekels worth – in case of further injury or death of harvesters. It was a quiet morning, thank goodness.

Giving up on irrigating parsley too dangerous to pick

Art from children at the Al Amal Centre, Khan Younis

Tristan is conscious and was breathing on his own until he caught pneumonia. He has a long way to go and it’s not known what will be ahead – for sure, more surgery, including on his damaged right eye.

A second time this week we spotted an Israeli gun boat traveling at 3 miles from the shoreline, all the way from near Deir al Balah to Gaza city (it kept pace with our shared taxi) as fishermen were out trying to get in a catch in, and inevitably the next day we heard that a fisherman had been shot; Deeb Al Ankaa who we understand to now be in Kamal Odwan hospital.

I met a great Manchester guy this week, Dr Sohail of Medical International Surgical Team (MIST) who has come here to do good work with peoples’ bones, for example working with amputees who have had limbs removed at a high point, to enable the otherwise impossible attachment of prosthetic limbs (if Israel lets the prosthetics through the border, which apparently is another problem of the siege…).

Thinking about bones, I immediately thought of Wafa. After wincing at the picture of her in hospital the day after soldiers shot out her kneecap, Dr Sohail said “I’m a kneecap man!” and told me a series of incomprehensible surgical things he might be able to do to give her back some movement. We rang her family today while standing in the Faraheen field (it’s a good time to get your phone-calling done) to say that Dr Sohail will see her in June if I go and take a photo of her medical records for him beforehand.

Dr Sohail spoke of the several limitations medical people are under here – mostly no access to the latest equipment – if any gets in, no access to training on how to use it – and of course very little of the ongoing training amongst their international peers that people doing tricky surgical things need to have.

In the last days there have been renewed calls for an International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes in Gaza, including for example “white flag killings” by Israeli soldiers. One of the big problems in the way is that during the attacks there were no forensic pathologists in Gaza trained to a level that would meet the requirements. (They are trying to send some people outside for training now, ready for the next time…) A second big problem is that when the International Criminal Court representatives tried to get in through Rafah to investigate the situation, Egypt refused to let them through, so they missed the February 8 deadline for submitting evidence.

And it was never going to be easy. Here is an example. One of the Al Quds Red Crescent medics talked about getting through to some of the surviving Samouni kids trapped with dead adults, on the first Red Cross/Red Crescent evacuation permitted by Israel. He said the kids (who they found in circumstances that left some of the medics who reached them, traumatised themselves) said the adults had been shot, and they had covered over the bodies themselves.

The medics knew it was important to try to take the adults’ bodies out, but the children were starving, dehydrated, and in a state of collapse. Since Israel had not permitted the medics to take ambulances, and several miles had to be covered, the medics found a donkey cart for the children. The Red Cross asked Israel to be allowed to take a donkey to pull the cart, but Israel said no.

My medic friend says: “We put the children on the donkey cart and pulled it ourselves, hurrying to get out before 4pm which was the deadline for the evacuation. And there was no room for the bodies. So a lot of time passed before those bodies could be retrieved, and while we have the verbal testimony of the children, we don’t have an early medical assessment of the adults bodies.”

I was called in to PressTV to give an interview today about what I witnessed myself, and it turned out this is because Israeli soldiers have themselves started to admit some of what went on, in the Israeli press today. This has been covered by the TimesOnline, and the International Middle East Media Centre. It includes an anonymous solider who ’says that he was told “we should kill everyone there (Gaza). Everyone there is a terrorist.”‘

The high cost of living

Sharon Lock | Tales to Tell

13 March 2009

Excerpt from ‘The high cost of living’

The price of fish…

Yesterday I went to the Kabariti family for Friday lunch, a fish barbeque. I took with me three of the “letters from the world” that were delivered by the Free Gaza boat last year. These letters were from a mother and her two daughters in California, so we decided to give them to the Kabariti girls and their mum, all of whom read English.

The girls and I sat in the sunny front window and they excitedly began to read their letters and compose messages to email in reply (no postal service is possible under siege.) A few minutes later I realised I could hear shooting. Their dad M always keeps binoculars beside the sea window, but I didn’t need them. Looking out, I could see two Israeli gunboats well on this side of the horizon, looping about and firing on Palestinian fishing boats. No more than three miles from the shore

Some of the little boats began to head back to the port, so I stomped off down the street to meet them, as the shooting continued, to see what I could find out. I spoke to Ahmed Abel Aziiz, who had just tied up his boat. He said the shooting had been going on half an hour and he was giving up for the day, but he thought that more than ten boats, some medium and some small like his, were still out there. Nobody was arrested or wounded yet. I stomped back to eat my lunch, pleased to see the Kabariti kids out in the garden after their weeks of hiding inside, but eyeing the parsley in the salad and the fish on my plate with part respect and part despair.

Later on I rang M and he said that fishermen Zaki Tarouch and Talal Tarouch, and Dahr Zayad and his son, had been arrested by the Israeli gunboats. He also said we are entering the three best months for fishing, the time the fishermen depend on to get them through the rest of the year.

We went to Al Wafa Rehabilitation hospital also yesterday, said hi to Abd, delivered the chess set your donations bought him, and announced we would be practising both chess and insertion of cannulas on him next visit. He looked perturbed. E introduced me to Abd’s fellow patient, Maher, who you can assist via our Donate page (shot fisherman Rafiq is there too) who is carrying on the Palestinian tradition of being determinedly cheerful after surviving his own war nightmare. Which in his case involved not only losing those close to him, but ten minutes in the morgue refrigerator…

The fishermen were released in the night, but their boats – their method of earning a living – have been kept by Israel. As we enter the three months Gaza fishermen depend on the most.

Painting on the walls in Gaza

Asmaa

It is nothing new in Gaza seeing lots of words in great lines on any wall you pass it in Gaza. Some of them talk about the political situation, another is talking about the social events. Many of them are talking about whom left their families and died during the last war or previous Israeli military operations in Gaza, with their names and their painting faces.

It is the fast, cheap, easy way to express your opinion and to reach what you want the other Gazans to know freely. Even if it stays for a short time, because anyone else who will do the same on the same wall for another reason and subject, in the next week.

After 2006 many things changed in Gaza. The political situation affected many aspects of Gaza’s life. There is a government in West Bank and another one in Gaza. Most of the people in Gaza became don’t believe in these or those. Nothing is important except how they can get work and have enough money to cover their families needs.

Life became more difficult. You see the sadness and poorness all over Gaza. It is not just because the horrible war, but because of many reasons. The long and the unfair blockade from all sides (sea, air, and all the crossing points).

It is too hard sometimes to realize this strange ability for the Gazans to get over all that has happened to them and their families and continue the life with this fast. What happened in Gaza is hard to forget. And we still feel it In spite of our daily concerns.

But it seems that it inspires a lot of artists to get their feelings out in many ways in Gaza. If you walk in Gaza’s streets you will see every week a new painting wall by group of artists.

Many of them talked about the war. I was impressive of a long one made by 13 artists, girls and boys, all of them students in the Fine Art College in El Aqsa University. They made it on a particular type of white cloth because they couldn’t paint on the damaged wall opposite to the ruins of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

I asked one of the girls called Miysa, an art student at level 2 in the University, “What does this work mean to you?”

She said, “It means that even if they destroy our life in Gaza we will servive and stand up again to get all our rights back.“

I asked another artist who painted a big key and a complete map of all Palestine why she painted these and others that talk about the war.

She said, “I meant it to tell the world that dying in Gaza doesn’t mean we forgot our land and our rights to live freely in our home on our own land.”

Another of the artists is named Mohammed El Haj and he is an art teacher and a specialist in painting walls. I asked him why most of artists in Gaza go to use the walls to paint. He simply said, “It is the cheapest way during this long siege in Gaza. There are no good colors, no material that we use to draw like the cloth and brushes. And if we find them, they are very expensive because they enter Gaza by the tunnels.”

So I found the walls the cheapest and fastest way to expresses my thoughts and feelings and share them with all people around. I will not let the siege or war effect on what I live to do, so I continue to draw my life.

Many of the artists I met come from from different backgrounds and studied English, public policy, economics, engineering, and other fields.

When I asked Ismaiel El Hefni, an architect, why he painted on the wall and not on a smaller canvas to put on exhibition, he said: “Painting on the wall is different, I found it more interesting for me to put it on the wall instead of an exhibition, even if the painting will only stay on the wall for one day. I like to paint on a big space with all this movement around me. You can share it with all the people around. You can share with them what you believe. And if the painting was good and interesting for others it will stay on the wall for a long time. I’m happy to share with another artist from a different field. We exchange ideas and create new techniques to produce good art collectively.”

After the war a lot of local and international organizations supported artists to provide a fun and enjoyable way to deal with the trauma Gazans lived, especially the children. We saw some paintings made by hands and feet of children in beautiful colors.

We can see the beauty in Gaza, even if a large part of it has been destroyed. We will see life next to the rubble.

When a second home isn’t due to wealth

Sharon Lock | Tales To Tell

Excerpts from Sharon Lock’s blog

J and L's kids - still alive because they've abandoned their house

We were visiting hospital dietitian S’s family in Al Fukhary. They all fled their home during the attacks, except for S’s dad who stayed behind to confront the tanks. And literally did – S shows us where the tanks got to: the back garden. At this point, his dad went to the back door and looked the solider in the tank in the eye. The soldier in the tank looked back. And then he turned the tank around and left. I guess Abu S has one great stern look.

As we are leaving we pass several houses totally destroyed, in amongst houses still standing. Why these houses? Nobody knows. A kindergarten is also destroyed, and there is no logic in that either. We notice that all the road ways are planted with dense cactus, and speculate if they are deliberately planted to obstruct border-originating bullets. They look fierce enough to do it. At S’s family land, near the border, Israeli tanks have destroyed the roadside cactuses, so maybe the soldiers have the same theory about them as us.

Earlier in the afternoon we were with J and L and their six kids (the youngest is 3) in Al Faraheen. You’ll remember before I referred to the fact that they stay in a house in the middle of the village now, because their regular home at the edge, about 500m from the border, feels too dangerous. Before the attacks, J and his oldest son at least were sleeping at their farmhouse, now, no-one does.

Before the war when ISMers were visiting, the Israeli army seemed to be trying to enforce (by shooting) a 300m no-go zone on the Palestinian side of the border. At the time, J was saying he was afraid it would shortly turn into a 500m no-go zone. After the Dec/Jan attacks, when E rang the Canadian embassy to tell them she was with Palestinians being fired on while picking parsley, the Canadian officials said something along the lines of “well Israel says you are in the 1km no-go zone.” The what? And who made them the boss of the world? as we used to say as kids. And does this remind anyone of how the government in the novel 1984 rewrites “facts” regularly and then everyone colludes to say those were always the facts?

What I didn’t realize til today, is that J and L are paying $100 a month rent for the village house, out of their small farming income. In the hope some compensation money might be available from UNWRA, J asks us to take photos of the damage to their house and help them make contact with the appropriate authorities.

A few minutes later, at the farmhouse, J points out the “donkey radar” – consisting of a donkey in the field on the border side, nose pointing towards Israel – insisting that the donkey’s ears will go up if jeeps arrive. It is easy to tell J’s heart and soul are in farming and he loves his land. He practices crop rotation on the remaining 4 denems, close to the house, that it seems worth risking his life to access. In the past he shared 300 denems with his brothers and neighbours – 3 denems were olives, 6 were fruit trees, 50 were wheat, 50 were peas… Israel totally destroyed the fruit trees in previous incursions and since the rest of the land goes all the way up to the border, he has given up on it.

...but then even the remaining chickens were poisoned by phosphorous.

Before the army incursion in May 2008, he also had 3000 chickens, but the army killed 2,500 of them then, also destroying 30 pieces (each 1m X 2.5m) of shed roofing, breaking his tractor and his wheat picker (worth about $12,000), breaking the pump for his well, and shooting up his kitchen fridge, water tank, solar water heater, self-designed solar dryer, as well as the walls of the house.

The remaining 500 chickens died in January 09 after eating plants poisoned by phosphorous bombs, and another 30 pieces of shed roofing went the way of the first lot. J had to destroy a crop of radishes still in the field when he realised they’d been similarly poisoned. What this will do long term to his land, no-one knows. The family’s TV and computer were destroyed in the Dec/Jan attacks as well when shelling caused part of the roof to fall in on top of them.

Mohammad’s story

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

10 March 2009

An elderly man saw me walking the other morning. “Bless you, bless you,” he said, holding out his palm as I gave him 20 shekels.

What has rendered a man in his late years impoverished and begging, in a manner Palestinians are not accustomed to?

I followed him home yesterday. It took some doing, as the name he had told me, while correct, didn’t seem to register with his wife when my friend Mohammed called. Establishing that he was the same man I’d met on the street took some time two days ago. Then locating his home in a swirl of alleys after the Sahaa market area took more doing.

But we finally reached it and I saw the same beaming older man, greeting us with the same enthusiasm and gratitude of two weeks ago.

Mohammad Ahmad Kahawish lives in the Tuffahh area, a neighbourhood in Gaza city’s older area. His family is unusually small for a Palestinian family, with only 3 children. His house is also small, and now is quite damaged from the intense shelling during Israel’s 3 weeks of attacks on Gaza.

“The house jumped from side to side with every missile,” his wife explained.

He’s fortunate that none of the missile hit his home, but suffers nonetheless from a combination of debilitating factors, including at least a natural one: age. He is nearly 70, born in 1940 in Jaffa, in the former Palestine.

Mohammad, wife (right) and daughter inside leaky bedroom with broken walls

Mohammad’s medical report and referral for surgery outside of Gaza

Until Mohammad fell off of his bicycle 6 months ago, injuring his lower left leg, he had worked as a cleaner, on the street, in homes, wherever he could get work. Post-accident, his doctor strongly advised him not to walk excessively, though out of necessity he’s had to ignore this. When I met him, he was walking in the other end of town, by the marina, collecting sellable bits of rubbish and imploring passersby for some token shekels.

Out of work, injured, and also blind in one eye -[he has a cataract in the left eye (Left traumatic vitreous hemorrhage) which he cannot get treatment for in Gaza. Despite having a referral for surgery in Israel he has yet been denied an exit permit by Israeli authorities]-Mohammad has his family to provide for, and now a house to try to repair.

The reverberations for the bombing around his home caused cracks all along where walls meet ceiling. Some of the cracks are a couple of inches deep, wall torn from roof. Cold air and rainwater stream in. The entire ceiling leaks, there isn’t a dry corner in the tiny 2.5 room and a kitchen home. One room, where his daughters sleep, has no actual roof: the ceiling, a layer of overlapping planks of plywood, is all that shelters from the elements.

Mohammad’s son is 34 but doesn’t contribute to the family income. “He’s got psychosis,” the parents explain. “And at night he cannot see at all.” In 1987, during the 1st Intifada, Israeli soldiers had come to the house and beat the boy, around 12 or 13 at the time.

My original query, how did this dignified elderly man end up so, begging and grateful for the smallest scrap, was answered yesterday.