Category: Photo Story - Page 28 - International Solidarity Movement

Photos: Detainee families, supporters keep Gaza vigil on eve of prisoner release

29th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

Families and supporters of Palestinian detainees held by Israel celebrated tonight’s promised release of 26 prisoners during a weekly sit-in Monday morning.

The regular event, which began in 1995, brings comrades, friends and relatives of Palestinian prisoners together in the courtyard of the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Gaza City office.

“I and my family can’t believe Hazem is going to be released,” Taiseer Qassem Shubeir said after the event.

Shubeir is the brother of of Hazem Qassem Taher Shubeir, one five prisoners from the Gaza Strip scheduled for release.

“We had lost hope,” Shubeir said. “Now all the Israelis’ excuses have been broken. We are unbelievably happy, and the whole family is waiting nervously.”

The expected release of 26 detainees follows an earlier release that also included 26 prisoners, with 14 from the Gaza Strip, on 14 August.

Rallies have been planned to the five Gaza Strip detainees, both on their arrival at the Erez checkpoint in Beit Hanoun, expected around midnight, and later in their cities and neighborhoods.

“Families and supporters of the detainees will go to Erez,” said Osama al-Wuhaidi, a spokesman for the Hussam Association, a Gaza-based society of current and former Palestinian detainees. “After seven o’clock, people will start gathering by the checkpoint.”

“Everybody in Khan Younis is already celebrating,” said Shubeir. “I feel like Hazem is the son not only of our family, but of the whole Palestinian people.”

The Israeli government has said that the releases, part of its current negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), will free 104 detainees over nine months of talks.

These will include all Palestinians detained before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 and charged by Israeli with offenses before the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords, according to Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.

Israel first agreed to release these prisoners in its 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum with the PLO.

Photos: Israeli warplane strikes olive grove north of Gaza

29th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

On the morning of Monday, 28 October, the Israeli air forces bombed agricultural land in the north of Gaza City.

The airstrike took place at 9:25 am. An F-16 fighter jet bombed an area planted with olive trees on Mukhabarat Street, near Soudanya.

The bombing created a huge crater. The land belongs to the Shohaber family, which produces oil from the olive trees. The family also owns a trucking company that transports materials from the Karem Shalom checkpoint into the Gaza Strip.

Hazem Shohaber, owner of the land, told me his house was damaged in the bombing. His family has only lived in the new home for three months.

“I was sitting behind the wall around the yard when the bombing took place,” Hazem said. “I was shocked. I was not able to do anything. Thank God my children were not on the land. They were in school. They usually play here.”

Hazem has three sons and three young daughters who were in school at the time of the bombing. The explosion cracked the walls of his house. All its windows, as well as those of adjacent buildings, shattered.

A few meters away from the bomb site is a primary school for girls.

“The girls were in class,” Hazem said. “They fled. The situation was terrible. Teachers could not calm them. The ambulances came. Everyone feared that children had died in the explosion.”

A few meters away from the bomb site is a primary school for girls.

“The girls were in class,” Hazem said. “They fled. The situation was terrible. Teachers could not calm them. The ambulances came. Everyone feared that children had died in the explosion .”

Hazem’s wife offers a cup of coffee. His daughter, Farah, age six, hides under the table, looking shocked. Who knows how many other children will do the same today?

The ceasefire of 21 November 2012 established that the Israeli military forces should “refrain from hitting residents in areas along the border” and “cease hostilities in the Gaza Strip by land, by sea and by air, including raids and targeted killings.”

But Israeli military attacks by land and sea have followed from the day after the ceasefire,, and Israeli warplanes constantly fly over the Gaza Strip. In areas by the Israel-imposed “buffer zone,”Israeli forces have killed seven civilians since the end of the “Pillar of Defense” military offensive. At least 124 others have been wounded.

These attacks against the civilian population of Gaza continue, but are met only with silence by the international community.

Video and photos: March for Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners, Gaza

23rd October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

A march in solidarity with Ahmad Sa’adat and all the Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, Gaza City, 22 October 2013.

Photos: A morning with the resistance at Gaza’s Monday protest for detainees

23rd October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gal·la López | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

It’s 9:00 am, and today the Red Cross in Gaza City is more crowded than usual. Women, men, children and the elderly await the arrival of the resistance. In a moment, they will receive some members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement.

When the resistance members arrive, a noise of great joy spreads throughout the crowd. They distribute flowers among the mothers, wives and relatives to honor the struggle they wage, Monday after Monday, in the Red Cross.

Today more than 5,000 Palestinians are detained by Israel.

It’s important to mention that while Palestinians differ on many questions, the armed resistance, as well as the detainees, are strong points of unity.

Photos: Gaza children hold march and candlelight vigil to free Ahmad Sa’adat

19th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

Dozens of Palestinian children marched in Gaza Friday evening before holding a candlelight vigil outside the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

The event was the first in a global week of action to free Ahmad Sa’adat and other Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Sa’adat, an elected PLC member and general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was captured by Israeli forces on 3 March 2006.

During his trial by an Israeli military court, Sa’adat refused to recognize its authority, cooperate with it or answer its questions. On 25 December 2008, it sentenced him to 30 years in prison for leading an organization banned by the Israeli occupation.

The Israeli prison service held Sa’adat in isolation for over three years, from March 2009 – May 2012, releasing him into its general population only to end a a mass hunger strike of more than 2,500 Palestinian detainees from 17 April – 14 May 2012.

An earlier mass hunger strike against isolation, led by Sa’adat from 25 September – 18 October 2011, ended with the prisoner swap that freed 1,047 Palestinian political prisoners in exchange for an Israeli prisoner of war.

Protests and other events demanding his release, coordinated worldwide by the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat, will continue through 26 October.