25 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
On Monday 24 October, Gaza’s Ministry of Detainees welcomed 163 prisoners from the West Bank who were freed in the exchange between the government of Israel and Hamas.
The Ministry promised to have permanent housing for each ex-detainee within one month, as well as offering them free education in any university in the Gaza Strip and the guarantee of obtaining a job. They also assured that they would work hard to help those with families to relocate them to Gaza if requested.
While some of the freed prisoners were joined by family members, one father-of-five was less fortunate. He explained, “I miss my daughter, she was two when I was arrested and now she is thirteen and even when she visited me in prison they forbade me from hugging her.” His daughter and wife have so far been unable to get permission from Israel to leave their home in Bethlehem to welcome their father to Gaza.
The 163 in attendance came from all areas of the West Bank, but have been sent to the Gaza Strip, in contradiction of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
I saw an Israeli naval warship for the first time yesterday, a concrete monster the color of ash, guzzling up the Mediterranean and spurting it out in its wake.
I rose early to go out with the Oliva, a small white boat used by Civil Peace Service (CPS) Gaza to monitor the Israeli navy’s conduct vis-à-vis Palestinian fisherman.
My colleague Joe and I walked across Gaza’s sandy shore, past a dozen wooden boats painted in bright shades of pink, blue, green and yellow and then jumped onto the Oliva. CPS’s white and blue flag billowed as Captain Salah started the boat’s engine and we pulled out of the harbor. Burgundy carpets with geometric designs lay across the boat’s floor. Three orange life jackets sat within an arm’s reach.
“Oliva to base, we are now leaving the port,” Joe radioed.
Fishing in Gaza - Click here for more images
Because of weather conditions, we didn’t get started until about 8:20 a.m. Joe showed me how to work the radio and we were off. Dozens of small wooden boats – hasakas as they call them here – docked in Gaza’s peaceful harbor floated above the water, and if I didn’t know better, I may have felt like I was on a Middle Eastern pleasure cruise.
“So this may sound obvious, but if the Israelis water cannon you, don’t just stand there,” Joe informed me. “Duck,” he said in a matter of fact tone. “Oh, and go to the front of the boat, they generally target the engine.”
We sped towards the infamous 3 nautical mile line – another unilaterally-imposed “no go” zone imposed by Israel in June 2007 – cutting through the waves. Under the Oslo Accords, specifically under the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994, Palestinians are permitted to fish 20 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza. Israel reduced this amount in 2002 to 12 nautical miles, and began enforcing a 6 nautical mile limit after Shalit’s capture in 2006.
“How are you feeling?” Joe asked me. At least one other international human rights observer had gotten sea sick on her first journey, and had asked if I would like to take something in advance of the journey for sea sickness.
“Oh I’m totally fine,” I responded. This was nothing. I mean the Mediterranean — it wasn’t even an ocean, how bad could it be? I declined the pills. And besides, I was tough. I sat back on the seats and chatted with Saleh for a bit in Arabic. He had 25 years of experience on the sea and told me the name of his village in what is now Israel from where his family was pushed out of in 1948.
At about 2 nautical miles I checked our position. We could see the Israeli naval ship moving towards five hasakas, headed our way. We continued forward, and then stopped our engine as one of them pulled up beside us.
“The Israelis shot live fire at us and we came back,” one of the men on the blue, yellow and white boat said. All of the hasakas came towards us, as fast as their small engines would be allow.
We all floated around for a while, until the navy moved away and the fisherman head back out. The Oliva straddled the 3 mile line, engines off, monitoring the situation. The fishermen explained what I had already read, that there were no fish to catch within 3 miles from the shore. The fish were 5, 6, 7 miles out. And so, the fishermen went out every day, sometimes fishing within 3 miles, sometimes going out further, in an attempt to ply their trade.
We watched as the Israeli navy played the game of cat and mouse with the working fisherman of Gaza, shooting at them when they came out, then moving south to shoot at another set of fisherman, then coming back towards us, and back again. Some of these fishermen had been detained by the Israeli navy in the past, taken to Ashod and then released, their boats damaged or confiscated.
“There are two more Israeli ships farther north,” Saleh explained.
I jotted down some notes, and, suddenly felt a wave a nausea. Taking notes was making me sick. I lay down. Joe periodically radioed the base to report our coordinates. At times, we could hear the crackle of the radio as the Israelis talked amongst themselves, sometimes in Hebrew, sometimes in English. I tried to recall the Hebrew I had learned years ago, but that too, made me sick.
“The navy is back,” Saleh reported. “Look they are very close to the fisherman.” I sat up and tried to take a few photos and some video footage, inhaling the engine’s fumes as the Oliva rocked in the sea. I lay back down. I was the world’s worst human rights observer at sea.
Saleh continued to explain the situation in Arabic, but my brain stopped working. I crawled up, leaned over the side of the boat and gagged a few times. And then, well, my breakfast came up. All of it. And dinner from the night before as well.
As my head dangled over the side of the boat, I wondered if the Israeli navy was watching us with their binoculars. Didn’t they have anything better to do then harass these poor fisherman? I mean really, the navy is supposed to be one of the most prestigious units for Israelis, and here they were spending all day, every day chasing after skinny fishermen riding in tiny pastel-colored wooden boats. Gilad Shalit was free, so really, why the 3 mile limit? Were they worried that Palestinians were going to fling sardines at them using 18h century technology?
After about ten minutes I came back up. Captain Saleh had started the boat and he let me drive it for a few minutes, since apparently that cures sea sickness. It did. Around 11 a.m. the fishermen head back and so did we.
Back on shore, we saw the group that had initially reported the gunfire and they showed us their meager catch of silvery fish – selling for about 20 shekels ($4) a kilo. They would be back out again tomorrow, Israeli gunfire and all.
While 1,000 Palestinian prisoners will be released, 1.8 million people living in Gaza are still not free.
The prisoner exchange agreement concluded between Israel and Hamas has brought relief to thousands of families eager to see their loved ones return home. In the midst of Israel’s prolonged belligerent occupation, we are witnessing a rare moment of unified Israeli and Palestinian celebration. However, this event, and the resultant media fanfare, must not distract attention from the underlying tragic reality.
The real issues demanding attention centre upon Israel’s 63-year belligerent occupation, and the routine violations of international law perpetrated by the occupation forces. The most glaring example of this is the absolute closure imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip.
Israel first initiated its closure policy with respect to the Gaza Strip in 1991. In recent years, it has been progressively tightened, following the election of President Abbas, the detention of Gilad Shalit, and the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. Today, the closure is absolute.
As many as 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza are cut off from the rest of Palestine, and the outside world. This economic and psychological suffocation has decimated the Gazan economy, driving unemployment, poverty and aid dependence to record levels. An entire generation has been isolated and denied access to the outside world.
Civilians have been placed in the eye of the storm. Repeated incursions, attacks, and the 2008-2009 Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip have targeted civilians: their homes, their property, and their means of economic subsistence. Thousands of houses and tens of thousands of dunums of agricultural land have been systematically razed. Today, 35 per cent of Gaza’s agricultural land is off-limits to farmers, isolated in an illegal Israeli-imposed “buffer zone”.
Through its closure, Israel has publicly and unashamedly targeted civilians, the so-called “protected persons” of international humanitarian law.
Israel has explicitly referred to its closure policy as a form of “economic warfare”, designed to exert pressure on Hamas through the civilian population. One of the stated goals of the closure has been the release of Gilad Shalit, and the operation of the border crossings has been consistently linked to his status.
The closure of the Gaza Strip is unquestionably illegal. It is a form of collective punishment explicitly prohibited by customary international law and by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. One does not need to be a lawyer to understand the illegality and the inhumanity of the closure. It is straightforwardly, unambiguously illegal, and those involved in its creation and enforcement are criminally responsible.
To date, the international community has turned a blind eye to this collective punishment. Bland statements have been issued referring to the closure as “unsustainable”. The result has been the institutionalisation of this illegality. Tony Blair now checks coffee and mayonnaise quotas, while 1.8 million people continue to be illegally punished, and their very dignity undermined.
Underlying and perpetuating this reality is the pervasive absence of the rule of law. The history of the occupation has been characterised by persistent violations of international law and total impunity for these crimes. Not once has a senior Israeli military or political leader been held to account in accordance with the clear requirements of international law.
The consequence has been further violations of international law and continued civilian suffering. Impunity has become so pervasive and violations of international law so routine, that Israel now feels comfortable admitting publicly that its closure policy targets the civilian population.
What is required is the application and the enforcement of international law. This is not a Gazan or a Palestinian invention. It is a fundamental human right. It is also an urgent necessity: Denied the rule of law, Palestinians are consigned to the rule of the jungle. This is not only a violation of our human rights; it paves the way for a future devoid of justice, peace or security.
The release of prisoners is something to be welcomed, but it is one-off measure. As many as 1.8 million Gazans remain locked inside the world’s largest open-air prison. The international community cannot allow this crime to continue. Palestinians must be treated as equals and their human rights respected and protected.
The pretext of Shalit’s detention no longer exists as (an abhorrent) motivation for the closure. The illegality of this collective punishment has been confirmed by all human rights organisations and the ICRC. This is not a political issue; it strikes at the core of our shared humanity and demands immediate action.
23 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
To some soldiers of the Israeli army, staying alone, being quiet, and carrying a flag is a crime. To them, people who act in that way should be arrested. At least we can come to that conclusion when we think about the arrest of Ashraf Abu Rahmah, from Bil’in village, who was arrested on Friday, October 21.
The demonstration had not yet finished when the Israeli soldiers, in four jeeps, went into the village. It was a surprise to everyone, but not an unexpected act, because Israeli incursions into Palestinian villages is something regular. The surprise comes because people were going home, far from the place of the demonstration. Ashraf was arrested just on his way home.
He was charged with throwing stones, but he did not throw anything not at the time he was arrested, nor during demonstration itself. He just stood with his Palestinian flag, talking to friends, looking at the bombs that were thrown, running away from the gas, sometimes coming close to the barbed wire which rolls through Palestinian land.
The ISM volunteers can testify that Ashraf did not throw stones at any moment. But he will be dragged to court tomorrow under that charge. Journalists and friends will take photos with them to prove that he wasn’t throwing stones.
Last Friday’s demonstration was one of the most violent ones in recent times in Bil’in. When the Palestinian, Israeli, and foreigner activists came near the wall, the soldiers began to throw tear gas without pausing. The park which is being built by the villagers on the lands Israel was obligated to give back, lands it had stolen after a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2007, was full of gas and dust for a long time.
Ashraf Abu Rahmah’s last peaceful demonstration – For more images click here
People who were on the top of the hill, far from the valley where the confrontation took place, also suffered from the burning smoke. Some cases of asphyxia were registered because of the gas inhalation, and the flames in brush and olive groves decorated the sky. Some of them became great fires, the trees and other plants.
To the economical life of villagers, it means a great loss, because the economic basis of Bil’in is agricultural, like the majority of Palestine’s villages. And to some, Ashraf being taken away on false charges by an occupying power can in some way be labeled as a loss. Yet the trees and plants and landscape that are Palestine, they can be replanted to grow a new future. That is the nature of Palestine. Ashraf will grow back in Bil’in. In shrub, tree, or voice , peaceful resistance will continue to grow from the root that is Palestine.
23 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Olive farmers and volunteers were picking olives on 23 October 2011 when they were circled by two Apache helicopters and were faced by four tanks at certain points in the day. This video shows one of the tanks.
