International Solidarity Movement

Sewage Tsunami & Strangulation in Gaza
by Anna Baltzer, 6 April 2007

One week ago, the walls of an overused cesspool in northern Gaza collapsed, flooding a nearby Bedouin village with up to two meters of raw sewage. At least five people drowned to death, with dozens more left sick, injured, or missing.

Predictably, the international community’s fingers are pointed at the Palestinian Authority, which was warned of the danger of Beit Lahia treatment plant’s flooding but did not take the necessary steps to ensure the villagers’ safety. To many, it’s just another example of how the Palestinians are incapable of ruling over themselves. But the PA is only part of the problem. In fact, funds were secured long ago for transferring the dangerous sewage pools, but according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), the project “was delayed for more than two years due to delays in importing pipes and pumps from abroad as a result of the closure imposed by IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] on the Gaza Strip. In addition, IOF military operations in the project area prevented workers from free and safe access to the area to conduct their work. It is noted that this project is funded by the World Bank, European
Commission, Sweden, and other donors.”

Almost two years ago, Israel claimed to be withdrawing from Gaza, yet according to the Human Rights Council report commissioned by the UN last year and released two months ago, “Even before the commencement of “Operation Summer Rains”, following the capture of
Corporal Gilad Shalit, Gaza remained under the effective control of Israel. […] Israel retained control of Gaza’s air space, sea space and external borders, and the border crossings of Rafah (for persons) and Karni (for goods) were ultimately under Israeli control and remained closed for lengthy periods.” Rafah has been open an average of 14% of scheduled times, so Gazans (including sick people needing treatment in Egypt, and students) have had to wait sometimes
for weeks on end to get through either way. Last December Israel promised to allow 400 trucks a day to pass through Karni crossing, delivering among other things desperately needed food and medical supplies, and allowing produce out to support the largely agriculture-based economy. The promise has yet to be implemented, which has had “disastrous” consequences on the local economy. The report continues, “In effect, following Israel’s withdrawal, Gaza
became a sealed off, imprisoned and occupied territory.”

Last week, over fifty fishermen were arrested in Gaza when they tried to go fishing. Israel controls Gaza’s waters, not Palestinians, so the Army opened fire on the small fishing boats. Israel also frequently shoots through the cage around Gaza from sniper positions if not conducting all-out ground invasions (two this past week) or air bombardments. Israel has killed more than 700 Gazans (including hundreds of women and children) since the celebrated “withdrawal” still used by Israeli apologists to show that Palestinians can’t take advantage of a good opportunity if it falls into their laps.

Recently, perhaps the most paralyzing features of Israel’s continued control over Gaza–as well as the West Bank–is the US and Israeli-led economic embargo against the Palestinian government since Hamas’ victory last year. Doctors, teachers, elected officials, and other
civil servants have not been fully paid in more than one year, pushing the population into a humanitarian crisis (about quarter of the population is financially dependent on these salaries). Over 80 percent of Gazans are living below the official poverty line, and even issues as serious as overburdened cesspools are often left unaddressed. It is tempting to wonder why the international community should be held responsible for financially supporting the Palestinian population to begin with. The late Tanya Reinhart articulated her answer to this question during her last lecture in France. She explained that Europe, like the US, had no right to cut off food and medicine from the Palestinians:

“It was not an act of generosity which Europe could either carry on or not,” she said. “It was a choice which had been made to take on the obligations imposed by international law on the Israeli occupier to see to the well-being of the occupied populations. Europe chose not to oblige Israel to respect its obligations, and preferred to pay money to the Palestinians. When it put an end to this, it breached international law.”

The United States, Europe, and Israel (which has withheld $55 million per month in taxes collected from Palestinians on behalf of the PA) say they will only return the Palestinians’ lifelines if Hamas agrees to three conditions: (1) renouncing violence, (2) accepting previous agreements, and (3) recognizing Israel. These conditions sound reasonable enough, but are painfully ironic for anyone living on the ground here. True, Hamas has not sworn off violence once and for all, but neither has Israel! In the past year, Palestinians have killed 27 Israelis, most of them soldiers. During that same period of time, Israelis have killed 583 Palestinian
civilians (suicide bombers, fighters, or others targeted for assassination are not included). Hamas has held fairly consistently to a unilateral ceasefire since January 2005, when they announced their transition from armed struggle to political struggle. Actions speak louder than words. Hamas says it reserves the right to resist violently, but has stopped attacking Israelis. Israel claims that all it wants is peace, yet the daily invasions and assassinations continue.

The second condition involving previous agreements is hard to take seriously given Israel’s consistent violations. In one of her last speeches in New York at St Mary’s Church, Tanya cited an early 2006 interview in the Washington Post in which “Hamas Prime Minister
Haniyeh explained that according to the Oslo Accords in 1993, five years later in ’98, there should have been already a Palestinian state. Instead, what Israel did during this whole period was appropriate more land, continue to colonize, to build settlements, and it did not keep a single clause of the Oslo Agreements.” When will the US demand that Israel adhere to previous agreements in order to receive the billions that we hand over every year?

And finally, the last and crucial condition is that Hamas must recognize Israel. The question is, what exactly is meant by “Israel”? Does “Israel” mean a place where Jewish people are
respected and secure, or is it something else? Israel defines itself as “the state of the Jewish people.” It’s not the state of it’s citizens; Israel is the state of a bunch of people who aren’t its
citizens, and not the state of a bunch of people who are its citizens. Palestinian citizens of Israel don’t have equal rights to Jews (for specific examples, read my recent “Existence is
Resistance” report), because so many laws are aimed at condensing or chasing away Palestinian communities in order to fully “Judaize” the country. Israel has an artificial Jewish majority that was created and is maintained through various forms of ethnic cleansing. Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state is conditional upon the dispossession and either expulsion or bantustanization of the indigenous Palestinian population. If you ask one of these Palestinians if he recognizes the right of such an Israel to exist, a country built on his land that explicitly excludes him and discriminates against him, and that Palestinian says “no,” is he being racist or anti-Semitic? Or is he himself defending against racism and anti-Semitism? (Remember that Arabs are Semites, too.)

Israel cannot specify what exactly it wants Palestinians to recognize because Israel doesn’t actually recognize itself. Israel has refused to clarify its own borders, because they keep expanding as the Jewish state establishes more settlement “facts on the ground.” In spite of all of these things, the PLO actually agreed to recognize Israel, renounce terror, and sign agreements with Israel almost twenty years ago. Israel responded with continued colonization and resource confiscation in the occupied territories and bombardment of Lebanon to root out the PLO, which was becoming dangerously moderate (see Chomsky classic, The Fateful Triangle). Hamas too has indicated that it would consider peace if Israel withdrew to its internationally recognized 1967 borders leaving Palestinians with just 22% of their historic homeland, but Israel says full withdrawal is out of the question. It is Israel who has yet to recognize Palestine’s right to exist, not the other way around.

One more point of irony is that Israel justifies the ongoing siege of Gaza as a response to the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit even though such collective punishment is cruel, illegal, and hugely hypocritical. Just last week, the Israeli Army abducted and imprisoned 29 Palestinians, including one child. The week before that they took 37 Palestinians, including five kids. The week before that they took 61, and the week before that 63, and the week before that 107 Palestinians. Israel has “captured” (“kidnapped” would be a more appropriate word for many since most of the abductees were civilians) at least 860 Palestinians this year, and it’s only April (for week by week statistics, visit http://www.pchrgaza.ps/). Palestinians are illegally holding one Israeli, and Israel is illegally holding more than 11,000 Palestinians (http://www.mandela-palestine.org/), including about 40 elected officials and almost 500 women and children. If the Israeli Army is justified is collectively starving and bombarding 1.3 million Gazans to avenge the capture of one of their fighters, what could the families of 11,000 Palestinians claim is justified?

In reality, Israel is holding more than 1.3 million Palestinians prisoner with its ongoing siege of Gaza. Most of them are refugees, encaged in one of the most densely populated places in the world while many can practically see their land through the cage around them, but are forbidden from ever returning because they are not Jewish (I, on the other hand, could go live there next month if I wanted to). The Beit Lahia sewage treatment plant was designed in the 1970’s to serve up to 50,000 people, but the local population has since risen to 200,000. The “sewage tsunami” is as much a result of population density as anything else. In comparison, the land-rich West Bank feels like paradise, but perhaps not for long. As the Wall continues to snake around West Bank towns and villages, cutting inhabitants off from their land, jobs, schools, hospitals, and each other, Israel’s intention seems clear: those Palestinians who won’t leave the West Bank altogether will be squeezed into bantustans, each of them a new Gaza. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority, civilians, and popular resistance will continue to be demonized with claims of “anti-Semitism” even though the worst crimes are not their own. The guilt and responsibility are not just Israel’s. They are all of ours.

The sun is gleaming through silvery olive trees into our office window as I look out across Palestinian land and homes that still remain intact in spite of the Occupation and all its crimes. There is still hope for the West Bank, but only if people speak out and act now. There are so many ways. Visit Palestine. Support the nonviolent boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement called for by Palestinian civil society. Join a local solidarity group and educate
your community. Forward this message to your friends and family. Write your representatives. Anything but staying silent.

The Untold Stories: Tragic, but Not Enough to Mention
by Anna in Palestine

Today I visited my friend Dawud in Kufr ‘Ain for the first time since he lost his six-month-old baby at Atara Checkpoint. It was heartbreaking to hear the details of the story from a man who just one month ago was asking me when I would come visit his family for pleasure, not just to take a report. He said there was more to Palestine than the sob stories. But today was all about grief. We watched a video of the funeral in silence, and saw Dawud’s mother break down and say she couldn’t take it anymore. She’d already lost two sons to natural causes, but apart from moderate and treatable asthma, Khalid had been a happy, healthy, chubby little boy.

Last time I visited Kufr ‘Ain I took reports from one family after another regarding nightly incursions by the Army. A 14-year-old girl told me how the soldiers woke her, her mother, and her five younger siblings (her father is working in the United States) up in the middle of the night with sound bombs, forced everyone out in their pajamas with no shoes and isolated the young girl to question her before enclosing the mother and children in their living room and ransacking the house. She said the soldiers put explosions in her room and in the family’s well.

Another family told me how they were woken with sound bombs, rushed out into the cold, and then the young men were stripped, handcuffed, and lain on their front lawn before being taken to a neighbor’s living room for interrogation. The neighbor’s family was meanwhile locked in their bedrooms with the lights off, warned against any sound or movement.

There were more stories. Too many, in fact. Eventually I had to stop taking reports, partially because I had to be somewhere, but more because as I recorded the stories I had a sinking feeling that the incursions were simply too common, too unremarkable to catch anyone’s attention. This would not be a human rights report that any legal or humanitarian organization would follow up with.

Major operations in Nablus or Ramallah make headlines, but incursions into many small West Bank villages are just a part of daily life. For example, for the past two months, the Army has come nightly to Marda village, throwing sound bombs, arresting men, abducting boys. They steal IDs and refuse to return them until their holders give names of kids in the village who put stones in the settler road that cuts through Marda. They spontaneously shut the village completely, preventing residents from entering and visitors from leaving. Two weeks ago soldiers broke into the house of a family with three sons. The middle son Ahmad, 19, who was studying for an English exam the next day when he heard soldiers outside, told me his story:

“I left my books to go see what all the commotion was about. There were about 14 soldiers total surrounding my house, and three jeeps. Soldiers were kicking our front door and throwing sound bombs. When the soldiers saw me, they grabbed me and began to hit me. My parents and my brother Qutaiba–he’s only 13–tried to intervene but the Army pushed my mom and dad to the ground and hit Qutaiba in the stomach. Each time my little brother tried to stand up they would punch him in the gut again, and my mother began screaming for them to stop. It seemed like each time she screamed they beat him again. Suddenly my mother began to wail and I saw that two soldiers were covering Qutaiba’s face with their hands so that he could not breathe, suffocating him until his face began to turn red. Eventually they allowed him to breathe.”

I asked Qutaiba what happened after that.

“The soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed me and Ahmad and brought us in their jeeps to the entrance of our village. They dragged me out of the jeep by lifting my cuffed hands behind my back, which hurt my shoulders. Several soldiers beat me with their fists, bats, and guns, and then they started asking me questions about which village boys were throwing stones. I told them I was cold and sick, and one soldier said that this was nothing; he would punish me to the point of death. They took my cap and began throwing it above my head, laughing, making fun of me. After half an hour they got bored and left me to walk home. They drove away with my brother still blindfolded and handcuffed in the jeep.”

Ahmad continued his story when Qutaiba had finished: “It was terrible listening to my little brother being beaten, and I was almost grateful when we drove away. The soldiers took me to the Ariel police station, where they beat me for several hours all over my body, especially in my head and temples. All the time I was blindfolded so I could not anticipate where the next blow was coming from. It was very scary. One soldier put his boot in my mouth. I asked the commander for some water and he told me to ‘Go to Hell.’ Suddenly one of them kicked me very hard in the groin and everything went black. The next thing I knew they were splashing my face with cold water, and when they saw I was awake they began to beat me again, accusing me of throwing stones, destroying settlers’ cars, and being a member of Hamas. After four hours they finally let me go and I walked home.”

Ahmad’s father Rasmi cut in. “When my son came home after 1am, it looked as if he had taken a blood shower. He had to go into school the next day but his English teacher let him postpone the exam. I teach my children good values, to respect others and to never use violence. But how can they continue to be peaceful when they are constantly surrounded and threatened by so much brutality? I’d like to live peacefully with the Jewish people. They build their state, and we build ours. They take care of their children, and I take care of mine. I lived in Chicago for 15 years. I know that in America it’s a sin to hit your children. Here, soldiers can hit other people’s children and nobody says a thing! But even if they kill my children, I will not kill theirs. These are my values, what my parents taught me and what I teach my children.”

As Rasmi spoke, a car drove by and the whole family jumped. They laughed nervously when they realized it was just a neighbor. Rasmi said the soldiers returned three days later and took Ahmad again, this time with his older brother Samiah. They blindfolded and handcuffed them, and brought them to an abandoned warehouse off of the main road. Ahmad was still fragile from his fresh head wounds, but the soldiers still beat him and his brother, first in silence, then cursing them and accusing them of harboring weapons. When it began to rain, the soldiers brought the young men outside, removed their jackets, and began hitting them again. Eventually they let the boys go, after stealing all the money in Samiah’s wallet, 70 Jordanian dinars and 60 Israeli shekels. This in addition to 400 shekels that they stole from the house the first time, all together the equivalent of more than $200 (not to mention the CDs and toys that they broke when they ransacked the home). They also took the university documents that were in Samiah’s wallet.

Although Marda villagers call us more than most, Marda’s situation is far from unique. Most village’s have simply given up on us. We recently met a 56-year-old grandmother named Hilwe who was shot in the face three weeks ago by soldiers hiding behind a corner in her village, Qarawat Bani Hassan. One rubber-coated metal bullet (don’t let the name fool you; rubber bullets can–and do–kill) grazed her face, tearing and detaching a segment of her right nostril, disfiguring her and requiring 20 stitches. I asked Hilwe what the soldiers were doing in her village and she shrugged, “They come every day. It’s nothing special.” I asked why nobody had called IWPS to respond to the incursions and Hilwe’s brother answered straightly, “What are you gonna do, take a report?”

We encouraged the family in Qarawat to call us more, but I won’t blame them if they don’t. How much are we really helping by writing these reports that policymakers and even most activists will never read? How much are we just creating false hope and forcing families to relive painful episodes that they’d rather forget? The best we can do is to offer our services and be honest about what we can and cannot do. We cannot bring criminals to justice; we cannot get innocent men out of jail; we cannot keep the soldiers from invading, or settlers from stealing land. Pretty much all we can do is write and look sympathetic, and occasionally remind soldiers that we are watching.

Even our village seems to have given up on us. The jeeps still come, but nobody calls. Yesterday I heard by chance from a friend that a boy from Haris was kidnapped by soldiers because he was wearing too much olive green. They said that color is for the Army. The soldiers drove him onto a quiet road between our village and Kifl Haris, made him take off all his green clothes (everything but his underwear), and left him half-naked to hitch his way back. He hid behind the olive trees until one car took pity on him and brought him some clothes.

Like Ahmad’s and Hilwe’s, the Haris boy’s story will never make headlines. But there will always be the stories that do get out. The well-known Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy recently followed up on two of our recent reports: Dawud’s baby and the 11-year-old human shield. The latter made it to the New York Times and other mainstream media, and the Israeli Army has officially stated that it intends to look into the human shields charges (meanwhile, other Israeli soldiers and spokespeople have stated that in fact the invasion “was pretty boring, we barely felt any action.”

Photos by Anna

Anna Baltzer is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in the West Bank and author of the book, Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories.