Category: Journals

Volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement are encouraged to write personal reflections about the work they engage in with Palestinian communities, the events they experience, and the people they meet. These journals offer the human context often missing in traditional reports or journalism. These articles represent the author’s thoughts and feelings and not necessarily those of the International Solidarity Movement.

Children under fire

By Fida Qishta – ISM co-ordinator in the Gaza Strip

Visit Fida’s blog here.

According to news reports, over 665 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed,and more than 2950 injured. Of those, more than 214 children and more than 88 women were killed. This is the story of two of those children.

January 2, 2008 Al Qarara, Khan Yunis – According to Mahmud Mosa Alstal, 27 years old, the children`s uncle, “I was sitting down in the building. The children were playing 40 meters away from me, and they were 500 meters away from their house. I could hear the drone (Israeli unmanned drone). I thought it would attack one of the police stations or one of the government sites. I looked at it. Suddenly the drone fired a rocket. I told myself it was close. It could be targeting a car nearby. But when I ran there to investigate, Iran first to the place where the children were playing. I was shocked when I saw the three children on the ground. The head of Abed Alsatar, who was nine years-old, flew far away from the place, and also Abed Rabo nine years-old and his brother Mohammed 12 years-old were hit. I called other people to come and help me to take them to the hospital. When they saw the scene, they also were shocked and they left. I stopped a car passing by and I took them to the hospital, it was difficult for the ambulance to get there because the attack just happened and the area was hard to reach. You know that four of the children’s uncles were killed, not during this attack, but in the last few years, also by the Israeli army. What can I say. They went to see their uncles in heaven. They are together now.”

30 year-old Um Mohammed, the mother of Abed Rabo and Mohammed told us,”They were playing. They didn’t do any thing wrong. Mohammed was in fifthgrade. The first exam started Saturday, when the first and biggest attack happened throughout the Gaza Strip. The didn’t even take the exam. Today they took their lunch and went to the mosque to pray and then to play. They went to play in an empty piece of land nearby. Suddenly a drone missile hitt hem.”

“Mohammed was helpful. He helped me a lot. He was the oldest of my sons.Yesterday, I was telling them the story of our prophet Ibrahim, who God asked to sacrifice his son Ishmael. I found them telling me the next part of the story and telling me the end. They knew it.”

“They loved playing football. They played together most of the time in the playground when they were playing football.”

“I used to call Abed Rabo, Abood. But Mohammed, we called him Mohammed.They just had their lunch. Mohammed asked if he could do anything for me before he went out. I asked him to put the teapot on the fire before he left because we have no gas. He put it on the fire and put in the tea and the sugar. The tea even didn’t boil before I got the news that Mohammed was killed, and he is a martyr now.”

“The last joke that Mohammed told before he was killed, he told me and his dad about one of our neighbors. He’s a short man. He made a tent, short like him. He just made it for himself and not for other people. If a tall person wanted to visit, he would have to stoop. But they are children and short still. They can get inside.”

“God’s mercy be upon you Mohammed. I will miss you a lot. Abed too used tohelp me a lot. He used to help me when I was cooking, starting the fire with me. Today he woke up this morning, and he told me that breakfast was ready. And I found he made the tea too. He used to wake up early, everyday, starting the fire to make breakfast.”

“We want the other nations to stand side by side with us. They can’t stop the Israelis? They can stop them, but they don’t because its not their sake to stop them.”

We just look for Allah and wait for Allah to help us. Let them take their time and watch us and to see the children’s blood. I lost two of my children, but 11 children and their parents were killed from Alrayan family yesterday. I’m not better than them. I just lost two children.”

“My children were upset and felt pain when they saw what happened to the other children during the Israeli attack on Saturday. I used to change the channel and wouldn’t let them see the other children’s dead bodies so as to not scare them. I didn’t like them to see these scenes because it will effect them, Mohammed didn’t sleep all night. When they had exams, they wouldn’t try to wake me up in the morning. They would get dressed and go to school early, because they were thinking that if they went early they would come back early to play.”

“This morning I told my little daughter to wash her face. She said to me,did I sleep enough to need to wash my face? All night they don’t sleep because of the bombing and the air-strikes. What have we done for the Israelis to attack us like that! Tell me what we have done?”

“We are nine in the family, I have five daughters and three sons, I lost two and now we are seven including me and their Dad.”

“It’s true that I lost two of my sons but when I see other people’s misery I feel that my misery is small.”

“I’m like any person living here. I could die any night, killed by an Israeli attack. They just attack the area. I could be killed, who knows. I will die today or tomorrow or now. All the Palestinians here are threatened. I say every day, tomorrow I could die.”

“They want us to leave our homes, but it is in their dreams. They are wrong. We will not leave our homes. We will always stay here. It will not be like the 1948 war. We will stay in our homes, and we prefer to die in our homes. It’s an honor to die in our country rather than to escape. They will not evacuate our land and take it. They occupied our land and they came to us. Why did they come to us? We didn’t go to their homes but they came to ours. I don’t know what they want from the Palestinian people, or why they occupied us? We are strong in our faith, and God will always help us.”

Pity for the tiger is injustice to the sheep

By Fida Qishta – ISM co-ordinator in the Gaza Strip

Visit Fida’s blog here.

The situation has been exploited very cleverly by the Israeli Ministry of War. Yes, the Ministry of War. The soldiers who call themselves soldiers defending Israeli security are continuing a bloody history of war crimes against Palestinians, from 1932 until 2009. During the last two days when since ground incursion started, things have been unbelievable, hard to watch or to talk about.

When the Israeli army evacuated people from the city of Jabalya city, the people moved to UN schools. They thought it would be safe, but it wasn’t. An Israeli tank shells attacked them. 42 were killed, most of them children, and more than 95 were injured. That increased the total number of children and women victims, until this minute when I wrote this piece, to 665 killed. 215 of them were children, and 89 were women. And more than 2950 people were injured. The numbers will maybe help you see the truth.

The Abu Asha family is one of the families that decided to leave the northern Gaza Strip to be in what they imagined would be a safe place. They were moving to the town of Deir Al- Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip. But on their way on the road along Gaza’s seacoast, Israeli gunboats attacked them, and all of them were killed. Seven members of the same family were killed. They thought that they would be in a safer place. But there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip, and no safety with these killers.

Many Palestinian paramedics have been killed. The last week six paramedics were killed and many injured. Most the fire stations have been attacked. Do these people or these stations represent Hamas? What’s happening in Gaza Strip is a war crime, and we need the honest people in the world to stop it.

These outrages, which have shocked the consciences of the world’s civilized nations, but they haven’t moved their governments. These governments hope to shape a new reality in Gaza and in Palestinian affairs.

The situation remains extremely tense. What is happening in Gaza Strip is the outcome of 14 years of failed consultation and negotiation. This is Israelis peace and the world’s democracy. I still don’t understand, if the world didn’t like Hamas as a Palestinian party, why did they accept their participation in Palestinian elections? When they won, the world didn’t like them. Why then did the UN send observers to monitor the elections? There are many questions in Gazans’ minds which lead them to believe that there is no democracy in this world, at least not from the USA not EU. Does the world call right-wing parties in the Middle East terrorist because they are Islamic Parties, and then accept Israelis right-wing and left-wing Israeli parties who are killing Palestinians now in Gaza?

A big deal has been made of the homemade rockets which hit the Sderot settlement which sits on Palestinian land stolen by these settlers in 1948 from Palestinians who then became refugees in nearby Gaza. And nobody paid attention to the children and women who were killed in Gaza when the world thought there was a truce. There was no truce because over 21 Palestinians were killed and over 70 injured by the Israelis army. Did you hear about them? I guess not. You just heard about the rockets that hit Sderot, especially the Israeli woman who was injured yesterday and the 42 year-old woman who was killed. No worries about Palestinians and Gazans.

The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate in the Gaza Strip. Over 80 children, 40 women and 250 total civilians have been killed. Most of these people were killed at home, or coming home from school or work. Humanitarian aid is still a big problem, including the lack of medicine and food. The Israeli government said that they opened the border crossings to let Palestinians travel to Egypt for medical treatment and for humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip. It’s like the wolf killing the sheep and then selling its leather. Why did they shoot them if they want them to be in good health? Why didn’t they stop the airstrikes before they killed and injured all these civilians? They tell the world that the food trucks enter the Gaza Strip. Do you know how many trucks? Do you know that the Gaza Strip is cut into two parts now by the Israeli army? That means that if the humanitarian aid gets through into Rafah, it will never reach Gaza City, because they cut the main road into two parts. It reminds me of the Abu Holy checkpoint which used to divide the Gaza Strip in two. My friends and I used to wait to go to our university for hours and hours. And at the end of the day we went back home, without attending any classes. Our only class was on how to wait.

My mother is sitting in the door of our house counting the drones and the F16s. I think that if I asked her to count the airstrikes she would do it. People here still joke sometimes. One of my friends sent me a text message that said:

Look outside, the F-16 smiling for you,
The missiles are dancing in front of you,
The Zanana (drone) is singing for you,
Because the Israeli nation requested them all to wish you a Happy New Year

In the Shadow of Gaza

By Tara

While the world watches in horror as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise, in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army is taking the opportunity to unleash a level of deadly force, in the knowledge that, under the shadow cast by their war on Gaza, these atrocities will go unseen by the international community.

Palestinian communities in the West Bank have responded to the war on Gaza with daily demonstrations in cities and villages throughout the region. Taking the form of marches, sit-ins and candlelight vigils, as well as stone-throwing by young boys, these demonstrations have met with lethal repression from Israeli soldiers in their role as an occupying army.

In the village of Ni’lin, West of Ramallah, two young men, Arafat Al-Khawaje and Mohammad Al-Khawaje were both brutally murdered in a spray of live ammunition from Israeli soldiers during a demonstration against the war on Gaza. Arafat, aged 22, was killed immediately as a bullet cut through his back, stopping his heart. Mohammad, who was shot in the head, held-on in Ramallah hospital in a critical condition for four days, before dying on the evening of Wednesday 31st December. A third young man, Mohammad Sror, was shot in the leg. International eye-witnesses to the slaughter describe the attack as being “callous and calculated”, with Israeli soldiers feigning an invasion of the village to lure the young men into the olive groves, where they had concealed themselves, before opening fire from a distance of just 15 metres.

The attack took place with full knowledge that there was no ambulance in the village, as Israeli forces had refused to permit it to pass through the checkpoint. Once the shooting occurred, the ambulance was detained for a further five minutes at the checkpoint, before the soldiers allowed it to enter the village.

In the village of Silwad, another young man, 17 year old Mohammad Hamid, was shot by Israeli soldiers from a guard-tower whilst at a demonstration – dying in hospital from three gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen.

On 4th January, in Qalqiliya city, another young man was assassinated by Israeli soldiers for throwing stones over the Apartheid Wall that surrounds the city. Mofed Saleh Walwil, 20 years old, was killed with a single sniper bullet to the forehead, when an Israeli jeep opened fire on the boys.

Two more young men are in a critical condition after also being shot by Israeli soldiers whilst demonstrating against Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead”. Hammam Al-Ashari, 17 years old, from Abu Dis, near Jerusalem, was shot in the head with three rubber-coated steel bullets at close range, while he was walking up a stairwell with friends. For 30 minutes, the soldiers prevented a waiting ambulance from reaching Hammam, significantly worsening his condition.

17 year old Mohammad Jaber is also in a critical condition after Israeli soldiers again opened fire on a Gaza protest in Hebron, on Sunday 28th December, shooting him in the head. In the period of two days from 28th-29th December, Israeli soldiers in Hebron wounded at least 21 demonstrators with live ammunition, according to doctors at Hebron’s al-Ahli hospital. International human rights workers living in the area, describe this as a significant “escalation in the violence used by the Israeli Occupation Forces”.

The number of Palestinian youth shot by Israeli armed forces in the West Bank continues to rise, with at least 3 more young men injured by live fire from Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th December.

Severe repression has also been leveled at Gaza demonstrations in the form of arbitrary mass arrests. In East Jerusalem 90 people were arrested for taking part in a non-violent street march. Protesters were all released upon the condition that they not enter Jerusalem’s old city for ten days, despite the fact that many of the arrestees reside there. Many Palestinians living in East Jerusalem now express fear of taking part in non-violent demonstrations, saying that the consequences for such acts are too high.

Suppression of public dissent seems to be the motivation behind many of the repressive tactics being executed by Israeli Authorities. This is exemplified by the denial of entry to Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s old city on Friday 2nd January for any men under the age of 50 years, under the pretext that the first Friday prayers since the air strikes on Gaza began would foment further protests. Further, Thursday 1st January saw Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak momentarily invoke of curfew across the entire West Bank for Friday 2nd; later downgraded to a closure of all checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel, including East Jerusalem.

In light of the violence and repression being leveled at Palestinians in the West Bank, claims made by Israeli military spokespeople – that they are attacking Gaza in order to put an end to rocket fire – ring hollow. As Israeli authorities protest that their massacre in the Gaza Strip is self-defensive, and that the civilian casualties are an unfortunate by-product of Hamas members “hiding” amongst the civilian population; as they proffer their occupation of the West Bank as an example of their even-handed, democratic restraint in the terrain of Palestinian Authority governance (“There are no rockets fired from the West Bank, so we don’t need to attack them”); the realities on the ground paint a very different picture.

As the Israeli government continues their brutal occupation of the West Bank – killing and injuring youths; firing tear gas in to Palestinian civilian homes (leading to a house fire in the village of Ni’lin on Thursday 1st January); continued invasions of cities and villages, involving curfews, house occupations and arbitrary arrests; the continued imprisonment of some 11000 Palestinian political prisoners – including 327 children; and continuing settlement expansion and settler violence – claims that Israel is not targeting Palestinians as a people are increasingly difficult to believe.

Amidst the barrage of rehearsed Israeli government rhetoric, Palestinian civilians are being killed by Israeli soldiers, in greater or lesser numbers, regardless of where they live, or what their political affiliations. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian youths will continue to die under the shadow of Gaza, as Israeli forces act with impunity – immune to the international gaze and any potential censure that may accompany it.

Where would you go?

By Eva Bartlett in Gaza
ingaza.wordpress.com

If your unbelievably small and overcrowded land was being terrorized, pulverized by bombs from the world’s 4th largest military, and your borders were closed; if your house was not safe, mosque (church) not safe, school not safe, street not safe, UN refugee camp not safe…Where would you go, run, hide?

Over 15,000 have been made homeless, internal refugees from Israel’s house-bombings, shelling, and shooting. Some have been housed in UN schools around Gaza. In Jabaliya today, Israeli warplanes bombed one such school. Shifa’s director conservatively estimates 40 dead, 10s injured. It must be higher. I will go to the recieving hospital and look at the mutilated survivors, maybe see the corpses come in. Then I will tell and show you, if I’m not bombed.

The Shifa director also told me that emergency medics still cannot reach the Zaytoun house that yesterday morning was bombed with inhabitants locked inside. There are two main accounts of the story, both criminal. One: Israeli soldiers rounded up the inhabitants of the multi-story house, separated the men –15, I was told–and shot them point blank in front of the women and children of the family, 20, I was told. Then, laid explosives around the house and bombed the rest of the extended family.

Two: Israeli soldiers rounded up the inhabitants of the multi-story house, locked them in one room for a day, and bombed it the following morning.

Either way, Israeli soldiers intentionally imprisoned and bombed the inhabitants of the house. And are actively preventing medics from reaching any potential survivors. The medics have tried to coordinate with the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) without success: no one can reach the house.

Is this logical, humane, moral? What’s going on with the ICRC? Would this happen in any other place, with any other invading force?

A house in Beach camp, off the coast and in Gaza city, was shelled yesterday around 8:30 am, seven killed, including five children.

And of course, the bombing of residential houses in the north goes on. I’m cut off from what happens in the central and southern areas, until I’m able to sit with journalists and get the news. But I know they are not excluded from this carnage.

I’ll tell you how he died

By Eva Bartlett in Gaza
ingaza.wordpress.com

A good, brave, and very funny man was killed yesterday as he loaded the body of a civilian twice-killed into an ambulance. Emergency medical workers, Arafa Hani Abd al Dayem, 35, and Alaa Ossama Sarhan, 21, had answered the call to retrieve Thaer Abed Hammad, 19, and his dead friend Ali, 19, who had been fleeing the shelling, when they were themselves hit by an Israeli tank’s shell.

It was after 8:30 am on January 4th, they were in the Attattra region, Beit Lahia, northwestern Gaza, around the area of the American school bombed the day before, killing a 24 year old civilian night watchman inside, tearing him apart, burning what remained.

Squealing in pain, right foot amputated and shrapnel lacerations across his back and body, Thaer Hammad tells how his friend Ali was killed. “We were crossing the street, leaving our houses, when the tank fired. There were many people leaving, not just us.” Hammad stops his testimony, again squealing with pain. For the past two days, since the Israeli land invasion and heightened bombing campaign began, residents throughout Gaza have been fleeing their houses. Many haven’t had the chance to flee, have been caught inside, buried alive, crushed. The doctor continues the narrative. “After they were shelled, Thaer couldn’t walk. He called to Ali to carry him.” The rest goes: Ali had carried Thaer some distance when Ali was shot in the head, a bullet, shot from an unseen soldier in the direction from which they fled. Ali dead, Thaer injured, and people fleeing, the ambulance was called.

When Arafa and Alaa arrived, they managed to load Thaer into the ambulance, and were working on getting Ali’s body to the clearly-marked vehicle when the shell came. Ali lost his head, killed twice. Alaa is riddled with shrapnel over his body and to his groin. Arafa’s lung came out.

His funeral was hurriedly held, a procession, a burial, and the traditional mourning tent. The tent was shelled, mourners inside. Another medic tells me of Arafa’s brother on the phone, calling the news radio station: “we’re being shelled, someone come to get us.”

A science teacher by profession, Arafa had volunteered as an emergency medic for 8 years. He was delightful, warm, had a nice singing voice, and was not at all shy about being silly. I remember him stomping ridiculously around the now-vacated Jabaliya PRCS office (Israeli soldiers have taken over the area) saying he was hungry, very hungry, and chomping down on the bread and cheese that we had for a meal.

I had the privilege of working one night with Arafa, of seeing his professionalism and his humanity. “He wanted to die like that, helping our people,” Osama, a fellow medic told me. Not a martyr complex, so engineered by living with death, occupation, invasions, humiliation, and injustice for so long, but a dedication to his work, to people.

His killing has since been followed by those of 3 more emergency medics.