Category: In the Media

Gaza wears a face of misery: interview with Philip Rizk

Adam Makary | Al Jazeera

4 April 2009

Philip Rizk, 27, a freelance journalist and blogger who has been reporting from Gaza since 2005, was arrested by Egyptian security forces after a pro-Palestinian rally in Cairo on February 6.

He was released a few days later without being charged.

While in Gaza, he filmed The Palestinian Life, a documentary highlighting non-violent means of resistance against the Israeli occupation.

The film is premiering at the London International Documentary Festival on April 4. Here are excerpts from an interview Rizk gave to Al Jazeera shortly before the film’s debut.

Al Jazeera: Why were you detained and subsequently released by Egyptian authorities at the rally in Cairo?

Rizk: On February 6, I was part of a demonstration of 15 protesters against the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip. We started from the outskirts of Cairo and walked in the direction toward Gaza. Some 12km later, we were stopped by security forces that singled me out from the rest. I was forced into their car; they blindfolded me and I had no idea where I was going. One of the protesters was a lawyer who had a car, so he and others followed the car which took me.

The police set up security checkpoints to slow them down and eventually they lost my trail.

The security men took me to three holding stations. By the time I arrived at the third destination, they gave me a number, 29, told me to forget my name and that’s where I stayed for four days. They interrogated me about everything I had ever done in my life: where I was born, who I knew … everything.

They didn’t charge me with anything, but while I was being interrogated, they accused me of being an Israeli spy. They also said I was dealing weapons to Hamas. So it seemed like they were trying to figure out what I was all about to put a file together on me.

You’ve been reporting from Gaza over the past couple of years and one of the first journalists allowed access through the tunnels. Are Palestinians still using them?

Rizk: Gazans function with whatever they have available
I lived in Gaza from 2005 to 2007 and worked there for an NGO called the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation.

Gaza wears a face of misery and the living conditions are unimaginable. Unless you visit, you wouldn’t be able to picture the kind of agony Gazans have to live through on a daily basis. They function with whatever is available.

I was completely shocked when I returned in the summer of 2008. I discovered these tunnels myself and I couldn’t believe how out in the open they were. In the past, I had heard the entrances were from inside people’s living rooms, under their beds, or underneath a table, making it hard to find if ever an Israeli soldier would search their homes.

Last summer, I came across hundreds of tents, and underneath each of these tents were entrance points to hundreds of these tunnels. Egyptians and Israelis were well aware of them as these tunnels were all the people had as a means of transporting food and goods.

At least 85 per cent of the people are dependent on food aid. If the amount of aid was reduced, they would starve.

Refugee camps receive flour, oil and rice as aid and without these donations; they would not be able to survive.

They may be living but they’re not alive. There isn’t work to do; they’ve lost their dignity because of lack of work caused largely by the siege. Fathers have nothing to provide for their kids and in front of their wives they feel ashamed because there’s nothing for them to do; they can’t even provide their families with the most basic of needs.

The ironic thing is that the main providers for employment are the NGOs being funded by international organisations, which then serve to help keep the rest of the population alive. In the meanwhile, politicians don’t look for actual solutions to the conflict.

What doesn’t the media report on?

More than 1400 people died in Israel’s latest war on Gaza. But on a regular basis, Gazans die because of all sorts of causes that we don’t hear sufficiently about in the media. The sewage system is horrible, water is polluted and diseases are becoming an increasing phenomenon in Gaza.

Hospitals can’t cope because they face electricity shortages; a lot of Palestinians are in desperate need of kidney dialysis, the kinds of diseases that are out there are getting worse, it’s simply not a livable space.

The line between the meaning of life and death becomes very thin. As a student, you can spend your whole life trying to do well in school, get good grades – but all that effort goes to waste because there is no future for the class valedictorian.

Everyone alike is left completely powerless without hope and potential future. I’m even shocked at how well kids can even perform in these schools, considering how they live in a constant state of war.

There have been reports of tensions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in Hebron. Is this a potentially explosive situation?

Rizk says the line between the meaning of life and death becomes very thin in Gaza
What happens in Gaza really stays in Gaza because some things aren’t reported. Israel has done so well at controlling the flow of information; they control everyone who goes in and out of the strip. It is easier for foreigners that are able to come in with NGOs working in Gaza. As far as the media goes, Israel hands out the permits and from mid November till the end of January or beginning of February, Israelis weren’t allowing anyone in, there was a blackout of information.

Another thing is how there isn’t so much of an interest from media organisations around the world to keep reporting on Gaza.

To them, there’s nothing new about the situation when in fact, the story there is constantly unfolding, breaking news is Gaza’s middle name. But because this breaking news always holds the same kind of information, no one cares to report on it.

So your documentary is to shed light on the situation in Gaza?

My documentary is a response to what I witnessed in Gaza and the West Bank and they are stories that don’t make it out in the media. Palestinians are so easily identified as terrorists, wearing balaclavas, holding a gun or firing a Qassam rocket.

But they’re really everyday people just trying to make the best of their lives, putting their kids through school, finding a job, doing well in their final exams.

One thing I’ve noticed in the media is that the theme of violence is always associated with stories coming out of Gaza.

Why not focus on stories of non-violent resistance? While some Palestinians return Israeli violence with further violence, the vast majority does not, and the Arabic word for such everyday acts of non-violent protest is sumoud, which means steadfastness, perseverance.

No matter what Israelis do to the people I met, they continued fighting for their right to remain on their land, their right to stay alive. Many of the people I filmed aren’t affiliated with political parties, they are normal people like you and I.

I needed to go to Palestine to understand what was going on there. Studying and reading about it didn’t make sense until I saw the wall, the settlements and physical occupation. After doing so, and going through the kinds of experiences I went through, I wanted to translate what I saw into the medium of film.

I’m also planning a film in West Africa, and then I’d like to focus on Egypt, which is a real police state. There’s red tape everywhere so it’s going to be a challenge.

For more information on Rizk’s documentary

Municipality of Jerusalem to ‘blow up’ houses

Tsipi Malkuv | Yediot Yerushaliyim

6 April 2009

English Translation: Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

THERE WILL BE AS BLAST [or a political blow-up; its a play on words in Hebrew]  by Tsipi Malkuv

[Subtitle] The policy of demolishing homes [in Jerusalem] will continue at an increased rate

The Jerusalem municipality continues to demonstrate determination in carrying out its policy of demolishing homes, despite the strong international opposition. This week it decided to bring a new instrument into play: the blowing up of homes instead of their demolition by bulldozers.

Two weeks ago it was made public that the municipality intends to spend 1.2 million shekels on aerial photographing to track building offenders, in the eastern part of the city in particular. Mayor Nir Barakat declared “an uncompromising war against the phenomenon,” as he defined it.

It seems that also the diplomatic storm aroused by Barakat’s remarks against the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is opposed to the demolition of homes in Silwan, does not bother him. The Americans are very disturbed and have filed a sharp protest to the Prime Minister’s Office against Barakat, but Barakat termed Clinton’s remarks “air without substance.” In the meantime the municipality continues in its policy which had led until now to the demolition of 30 houses [this year], 17 of them in East Jerusalem. [The reporter is confusing “houses” with “structures;” hence the 13 in West Jerusalem.]

This week the municipality bolstered its attempts to impress on everyone its determination. On Monday, the members of the Municipal Tender Committee were asked to approve the hiring of a company specializing in demolishing buildings by means of controlled explosions. In his explanatory comments to the committee members, Ofer Mai, the head of the Building Inspectors’ Department, wrote: “In unusual circumstances there is no practical possibility to demolish complex buildings with existing equipment because of technical limitations or a lack of time, and thus the need to to conduct a controlled demolition by means of explosives. Because it is important to carry out demolition orders, and the speed of demolition is a calculation, we are interested that we have the possibility of also employing demolitions by controlled explosions.”

The municipality: “The Building Inspectors’ Departrment intends to be aided by the services of the company in cases where there is a technical difficulty in carrying out the demolition by mechanical means and the use of explosives is the only possibility. The Department has used this technology in the past with great success, without damaging adjoining buildings.”

Lost in the Buffer Zone

Eva Bartlett | Inter Press Service

A Palestinian farmer shows how to duck Israeli fire
A Palestinian farmer shows how to duck Israeli fire

6 April 2009

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza – “They’re always shooting at us. Every day they shoot at us,” says Alaa Samour (19), pulling aside his shirt to show a scar on his shoulder. Samour said he was shot on Dec. 28 last year by Israeli soldiers positioned along the border fence near New Abassan village, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

“We were cutting parsley like we do almost every day, and the soldiers began shooting. We started crawling away. When I got out of the line of fire I realised my shoulder was bleeding and that I had been shot.”

A month later, out of necessity, Samour was back in the fields. Like many other impoverished labourers from the Khan Younis area, Samour is employed by farmers to harvest parsley, spinach and pea crops in the fertile eastern region. He brings home 20 shekels (five dollars) per day of labour, his contribution to a family where the father cannot earn enough to cover their food needs.

Sayed Abu Nsereh works on the same land. Well accustomed to the firing from the Israeli soldiers at the border, Abu Nsereh explains how farmers on the field crawl to a ‘safe’ area – a slight depression in the field – when the shooting begins. Lying face down, they are temporarily safe, though they must still wait for the shooting to cease and the soldiers to leave before they can leave.

The field is roughly half-way into a kilometre-wide band of land running along the Gaza side of the Green Line (Gaza’s border with Israel), an area unilaterally designated by Israeli authorities as the ‘buffer zone’, or more recently, the ‘no-go zone’. At inception a decade ago, the ‘buffer zone’ encompassed a 150 metres wide stretch of land flanking the border south to north. In this region Palestinians could not walk, live or work due to what Israel described as ‘security reasons’. It became wasted land, though extremely fertile.

At the end of Israel’s three weeks of attacks on Gaza December-January which left more than 1,450 dead and over 5,000 injured, many critically so, Israeli authorities declared an expansion of the ‘buffer zone’ into what they dubbed a no-go zone expropriating yet more land from farmers and civilians in the area.

Prior to the attacks on Gaza, PARC reported that of the 175,000 dunams (42,000 acres) (1 dunam is 1,000 square metres) of cultivable land in the Gaza Strip, 50,000 dunams (12,000 acres) had been damaged by the Israeli army. These are the most fertile and productive agricultural areas, the ‘food basket’ areas, the group reports. Following the attacks on Gaza, international bodies put the amount of destroyed land much higher: 60,000-75,000 dunams of farmland they say is now damaged or unusable.

In early February, the Guardian reported on the severe hit to Gaza’s agricultural sector. The article quoted representatives of the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) as saying that anywhere from 35 percent to 60 percent of the agriculture industry was destroyed by Israel’s attacks on Gaza, much of it not useable again due to the damage.

Even before the attacks, Gaza’s farming sector had been seriously devastated by the crippling siege on Gaza. Whereas Gaza had been producing half of its agricultural needs, the combination of siege and warfare on Gaza has led to the “destruction of all means of life,” including destroyed farmland along with hundreds of greenhouses, hundreds of wells and water pumps, and farming equipment.

The ability to produce food is vital to combating staggering malnutrition levels in the Gaza Strip, a region rendered impoverished by Israel’s blockade and the consequent soaring unemployment levels. According to PARC, due to the Israeli ban on fertilisers, seeds, plastic sheeting for greenhouses, and irrigation piping, among many other things, there has been a steady regression away from qualitative and productive farming practices: now farmers are planting crops requiring less care, such as wheat and barley, in place of the diversity of vegetables formerly grown. Many, such as Jaber Abu Rjila, believe that Israel’s real intention is further land annexation and control. Abu Rjila lives on a farm just under 500 metres from the border in Al-Faraheen, slightly south of Abassan. He and neighbours had jointly cultivated the 300 dunams of land between his home and the border fence, growing a variety of crops including wheat, chickpeas and various greenhouse vegetables. But now, he says, he is only working on four dunams of land.

Since November 2008, Abu Rjila, his wife and their six children have not been able to live at home. The house, pock-marked by bullet holes along its border-facing walls, was subject to regular Israeli army shooting and violence prior to the recent 22 days of Israeli attacks.

In May 2008, all but 500 of Abu Rjila’s 3,000 chickens were killed by invading Israeli soldiers, said Abu Rjila. Soldiers at the same time also destroyed what Abu Rjila said was a 12,000 dollar grain harvester and an 8,000 dollar tractor. The asbestos roofing covering the chicken barn shattered from the explosions below which tore out barn walls and killed the poultry.

According to Abu Rjila, the Israeli soldiers destroyed two water pumps for his cistern, and used bulldozers and tanks to raze costly irrigation piping, along with approximately 2,000 different fruit and olive trees and grain plantations over 150 dunams. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report on the invasion noted that 225 dunams of agricultural land had been razed in the area.

PCHR notes that the destruction of civilian property, including agricultural land, and the targeting of civilians are illegal under international human rights law including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The siege is undeniably on Palestinians’ minds, but for farmers in the “buffer zone” it is the regular and ongoing shooting from Israeli soldiers that concerns them. Their worries are reasonable: at least two farmers have been shot dead and at least five more injured by Israeli soldiers’ gunfire, all since Israel declared ceasefire Jan. 18.

Maher Abu-Rajileh (24) from Huza’ah village, east of Khan Younis, was killed by soldiers that day when he returned with his parents and brother to farmland 400m from the Green Line following Israel’s announcement of a ceasefire. At 10 am, after he had spent two hours cleaning up the land from the destruction wreaked by Israeli bulldozers and tanks, Israeli soldiers opened fire, shooting Maher in the chest, killing him instantly.

On Jan. 20, Israeli soldiers fired on residents of Al-Qarara, near Khan Younis, shooting Waleed Al-Astal (42) in his right foot. Soldiers opened fire on Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis, on Jan. 23, shooting Nabeel Al-Najjar (40) in the left hand. On Jan. 25, Israeli soldiers shot Subhi Qudaih (55) in the back while he was on Khuza’a village farmland. On Jan. 27, just outside of Al-Farahin, also east of Khan Younis, soldiers killed Anwar Al-Buraim (26), shooting him in the neck while he picked vegetables on land approximately 500m from the Green Line.

On Feb.3, Ismail Abu Taima was among a handful of farmers working to harvest parsley on his land near the border.

“The plants have not been watered for six weeks,” Abu Taima said, picking up valves and pieces of irrigation piping. The piping, destroyed by an Israeli army invasion prior to the war on Gaza, has become valuable in a region whose borders are sealed and where replacement parts for most things are unattainable or grossly expensive.

Over the course of a year Abu Taima invests about 54,000 dollars in planting, watering and maintenance of crops on his land. From that investment, if all goes well and crops are harvested monthly, he can bring in about 10,000 dollars a month, enough to pay off the investment and support the 15 families dependent on the harvest. “The borders are closed. We have no feed for our animals,” said Abu Taima, pointing to a lone donkey grazing in growth close to the border fence.

Before the afternoon’s work had finished, we were subjected to around 45 minutes of intense shooting from three or four soldiers visible on a mound less than 200 metres away, bullets flying within metres of the farmers’ heads and feet.

On Feb. 17, farmers returned to harvest land approximately 500 metres from the Green Line where Anwar Al-Buraim was shot dead weeks earlier. As the farm workers were leaving the land, Israeli soldiers targeted Mohammad Al- Buraim, a deaf 20-year-old and cousin of Anwar. Mohammad was with a group of approximately ten farmers pushing their stalled pick-up truck loaded with harvested produce when Israeli soldiers began sniping, hitting Mohammed in the right ankle and continuing to shoot as the farmers, surrounded by international human rights observers, moved away from the field and took shelter behind a nearby house.

The incident was sufficient to deter farmers from returning to that area for a month. When Mazen Samour and Sayed Abu Nasereh returned Mar. 19 to the plot they had been working for roughly two years, it was not to harvest but to rip out the plastic irrigation piping they had carefully laid down months before. At roughly 70 dollars per 250m bundle, the 30 bundles of piping covering the fields was too great an investment to simply leave behind.

“We haven’t come back here since Mohammed was shot,” said Abu Nasereh. Now, too afraid of being hit by Israeli border soldiers’ bullets, the men are abandoning the land for safer ground further inland.

Samour was present when his nephew Alaa Samour was shot in December, as well as when Anwar Al-Buraim was fatally targeted. “We can rent land much further away from the border,” said Samour.

Across the border, on the Israeli side, tractors and crop-dusters can be seen working the land immediately next to the Green Line. The ‘buffer zone’ has been imposed solely on the Palestinian side.

These rural eastern border areas of the Gaza Strip are emptying, the land becoming more and more barren because farmers, many of whom have farmed here for generations, are now too frightened to live and work on their own land. The confines of the Gaza Strip, which is just 40 kilometres long and ten kilometres wide, are being shrunk even further by relentless Israeli invasions, by the imposition of an arbitrary and expanding “buffer zone” and by the targeting of civilians and farmers trying to live on and earn a living from their land.

* Eva Bartlett is an activist-journalist who came to Gaza in November on the third Free Gaza boat. Along with other international witnesses, she was present with farmers during many of the shooting incidents reported.

Thousands of dunums confiscated for Israeli settler road near Nablus

Ma’an News Agency

2 April 2009

Israeli authorities issued orders to confiscate more than one thousand dunums of Palestinian lands of the village of Qaryut south of Nablus, head of the villages and municipal affairs office in Nablus Ghassan Daghlas said on Thursday.

On the land a road will be constructed linking the three illegal settlements, He noted that “this decision aims at to construct a three kilometer road to link the Israeli illegal settlement of Shilo, and the illegal settlement outposts of Hayovel and a second known locally as the “Qaryut” outpost.

Daghlas noted that Israeli bulldozers had been surveying the area for days, and that there seemed to be a coordinated effort between soldiers and settlers, who constructed a road barrier near the village of Der Sharaf, while military crews expanded the Yitzhar road after confiscating Palestinian lands adjacent to it.

The village representative also mentioned that several home demolition orders were served in the past weeks in the nearby villages of Tana and At-Tawila, both south of Nablus.

Head of the village council of Qaryot, Abed An-Naser Badawi, told Ma’an that “the settlers along with the soldiers blocked the southern entrance of the village and began to confiscate the land.” The day before he said settlers distributed written orders saying the land would be confiscated.

Qaryot village has a population of more than 2700 people is surrounded with a number of Israeli settlements.

Israeli exports hit by European boycotts after attacks on Gaza

Rachel Shabi | The Guardian

3 April 2009

Israeli companies are feeling the impact of boycott moves in Europe, according to surveys, amid growing concern within the Israeli business sector over organised campaigns following the recent attack on Gaza.

Last week, the Israel Manufacturers Association reported that 21% of 90 local exporters who were questioned had felt a drop in demand due to boycotts, mostly from the UK and Scandinavian countries. Last month, a report from the Israel Export Institute reported that 10% of 400 polled exporters received order cancellation notices this year, because of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

“There is no doubt that a red light has been switched on,” Dan Katrivas, head of the foreign trade department at the Israel Manufacturers Association, told Maariv newspaper this week. “We are closely following what’s happening with exporters who are running into problems with boycotts.” He added that in Britain there exists “a special problem regarding the export of agricultural produce from Israel”.

The problem, said Katrivas, is in part the discussion in the UK over how to label goods that come from Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Last week British government officials met with food industry representatives to discuss the issue.

In recent months, the Israeli financial press has reported the impact of mounting calls to boycott goods from the Jewish state. Writing in the daily finance paper, the Marker, economics journalist Nehemia Stressler berated then trade and industry minister Eli Yishai for telling the Israeli army to “destroy one hundred homes” in Gaza for every rocket fired into Israel.

The minister, wrote Stressler, did not understand “how much the operation in Gaza is hurting the economy”.

Stressler added: “The horrific images on TV and the statements of politicians in Europe and Turkey are changing the behaviour of consumers, businessmen and potential investors. Many European consumers boycott Israeli products in practice.”

He quoted a pepper grower who spoke of “a concealed boycott of Israeli products in Europe”.

In February, another article in the Marker, titled “Now heads are lowered as we wait for the storm to blow over”, reported that Israelis with major business interests in Turkey hoped to remain anonymous to avoid arousing the attention of pro-boycott groups.

The paper said that, while trade difficulties with Turkey during the Gaza assault received more media attention, Britain was in reality of greater concern.

Gil Erez, Israel’s commercial attache in London, told the paper: “Organisations are bombarding [British] retailers with letters, asking that they remove Israeli merchandise from the shelves.”

Finance journalists have reported that Israeli hi-tech, food and agribusiness companies suffered adverse consequences following Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza, and called for government intervention to protect businesses from a growing boycott.

However, analysts stressed that the impact of a boycott on local exporters was difficult to discern amidst a global economic crisis and that such effects could be exaggerated.

“If there was something serious, I would have heard about it,” said Avi Tempkin, from Globes, the Israeli business daily.

Israeli companies are thought to be wary of giving credence to boycott efforts by talking openly about their effect, preferring to resolve problems through diplomatic channels.

Consumer boycotts in Europe have targeted food produce such as Israeli oranges, avocados and herbs, while in Turkey the focus has been on agribusiness products such as pesticides and fertilisers.

The bulk of Israeli export is in components, especially hi-tech products such as Intel chips and flashcards for mobile phones. It is thought that the consumer goods targeted by boycott campaigns represent around 3% to 5% of the Israeli export economy.