ISM Gaza | Fishing Under Fire
16 June 2009
At approximately 06:00, IOF gunboats opened fire at a fishing boat in al-Waha area in the northern Gaza Strip. They then moved towards the boat and arrested two fishers: Hadi Sobhi Sa’dallah, 19; and his brother Ashraf, 26. They took the two fisherso Ashdod Harbor in the south of Israel and interrogated them. The two fishers were released in the evening.
ISM Gaza | Farming Under Fire
18 June 2009
Ahmed Abu Hashish, a Bedouin teenager of 18 years from a rural community in the northern Gaza Strip had been missing for 54 days.
A shepherd then noticed a murder of crows on a patch of land from which there was also a foul stench emanating, but he could not approach close enough to investigate. This patch of land is in what Israel calls the “buffer zone”. A strip of land within “The Strip” which abuts the border with Israel, and in which the Israeli military enforce a no-go decree by shooting, from positions on their side of the border, at anyone who breaks it. It feels like a no-mans land, typically empty of people – or at least the living.
Of course most Gazans now choose not to go there. Others go out of necessity, desperation, or a resolve not to be forced off their land. Usually they survive. The soldiers don’t always shoot with the firm intent to kill. Often the shooting‘s just very, very close – enough to terrify. Enough to make one believe that the intention of the shots are to kill, and that the next one might. And the fact is that the next one might.
Ahmed’s father, Abu Ayesh, knew that this patch of land was most likely where his son now lay, slowly decomposing in the hot summer heat. No “official” organisations could or would help him search for his son’s body in this area – even the International Committee of the Red Cross who might normally coordinate with the Israeli Military in matters such as this had refused. He then requested assistance from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, and from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
On Sunday 14th June, members of Ahmed’s family including his father, and volunteers from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative and the ISM ventured “out” into the “buffer zone“. As we arranged ourselves into a line to sweep along, and scour the land for a corpse, we could see Israeli jeeps and hummers congregating just across the border fence next to us. N from the ISM communicated with the soldiers over a megaphone, informing them of our purpose, and of our status as civilians. Many of our number were high visibility vests, drawing attention to the fact that we were a group of civilians.
Within minutes of starting our search however, the first shots rang out.
This land over which we were treading was rough, and speckled with thorn bushes. Maintaining our line, and ensuring that we didn’t pass some spot of ground unnoticed proved to be very challenging in these conditions – navigating our way through the the scrub, scanning the ground around us for a corpse, and instinctively attempting to avoid the bullets that split the air with an audible hiss.
We pressed on, and the gunfire waxed and waned – sometimes from assault rifles, sometimes from a machine gun, and punctuated with the odd explosion. Soldiers were visible on top of their jeeps, and on foot right up against the fence. N continued to communicate with them, requesting that they stop shooting at us.
Suddenly we spotted Ahmed’s body. As two of the Bedouins approached and began crouching down to examine it, more shots suddenly rang out which were obviously directed at them. They dived for cover away from the body. More of our group converged on the spot where the body was. We began wrapping it in a sheet, to carry it off the field. The stench of decay was nauseating, and a quick glance at the state of the corpse after lying there open to the elements for 54 days, was enough to induce an urge to retch.
As we rushed to take Ahmed’s body away, the shooting only intensified. We were all heading away from the fence. We’d told the soldiers over the megaphone, that we’d found the body and that we were going. Ahmed’s father hurriedly and in anguish attempted to catch up with the bearers of his son’s corpse, wailing and lamenting his loss as he did so. Still the bullets whistled past our heads, or into the ground behind us.
It struck me, when we finally got out of range of the soldiers’ guns, that our presence in that area that day must not have come as any surprise to them. It was most likely them who had shot Ahmed in cold blood some 54 days previously. They would have known where his body lay. The Israeli military never informed anyone of this. They did not pass on news of Ahmed’s murder to his family. Instead, they waited for almost two months, knowing that at some point and despite the danger, a search party might come looking for the corpse.
Was it necessary to shoot at a group of civilians on a humanitarian mission? Was it necessary to continue shooting at us as they left? Was it necessary for their bullets to force a grieving father to face his own mortality in the very moment he was compelled to recognise that of his son.
Eva Bartlett | Inter Press Service
18 June 2009
While diminishing water resources are a global concern, in Palestine the struggle for water is not against global warming or multinational corporations, but for access to water, and against contamination of what precious resources there are.
Mohamed Ahmed, director of the Water Control Department in the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), says “there continues to be a very rapid depletion and deterioration of ground water.”
The main source of water is the coastal aquifer and ground water, which serves Gaza’s agriculture, commercial, industrial and public sectors, says Ahmed. But through the three weeks of Israeli attacks on Gaza last December and January, much of the water network infrastructure was destroyed or damaged, rendering already scarce water all the more scarce.
The destruction caused by Israeli shelling, tanks and bulldozers throughout the Strip further damaged Gaza’s sanitation network, causing 150,000 cubic metres of untreated and partially treated sewage waste water to flow over agricultural and residential land and into the sea during the attacks. The daily average of wastewater being pumped into the sea is still a staggering 80,000 cubic metres.
The water treatment crisis has been a catastrophe in the making for decades. In 2004, a report on water alternatives published by the Islamic University of Gaza’s Department of Environment and Earth Science said groundwater had already “deteriorated to a limit that the municipal tap water became brackish and unsuitable for human consumption” throughout the Strip.
Techniques introduced for improving water quality included desalination and reverse osmosis, importing bottled water, and collecting rain water. But these initiatives have been rendered increasingly futile in the face of years of Israeli assaults on Gaza’s infrastructure, combined with its sanctions and siege regime, heightened since June 2007 when Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip.
The siege has meant an increasingly long waiting list of spare parts, pipes, and building materials. This directly affects Gaza’s ability to maintain its sanitation and water treatment facilities.
“We’ve been waiting for three years for these items to enter, along with desalination units,” says Ibrahim Alejla, media officer for Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utilities (CMWU).
In its January 2009 Damage Assessment Report, CMWU speaks of 5.97 million dollars damage to Gaza’s water and wastewater treatment facilities and infrastructure. Some of the greatest damage was done in northern Gaza, where three new facilities were totally destroyed. Severe damage was caused to the North Gaza Emergency Sewage Treatment Plant, as well as to wastewater distribution networks throughout the north.
Government sources say that more than 800 of Gaza’s 2,000 water wells were destroyed or rendered not useable from the last Israeli attacks.
Central Gaza also suffered. The Sheikh Rajleen Waste Water Treatment Plant, the largest in the Gaza Strip, was shelled, causing pipelines to rupture and raw sewage to flood more than a square kilometre of agricultural and residential land.
The CMWU says it had provided coordinates for all water and wastewater facilities to Israeli authorities. Yet throughout Gaza sites were hit. Much of the damage was to pipelines, torn up by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. Pipes are among the items Israeli authorities bar from entering Gaza.
The PWA’s Mohamed Ahmed says the sandy nature of the Sheikh Rajleen region brought wastewater permeation into ground water. “Areas with clay and soil tend to slow the drainage, but in Sheikh Rajleen the sewage water very quickly drained into the ground water.”
Ahmed says “we’ve found the presence of detergents in our monitoring wells, indicating that wastewater and ground water have mixed.” Monther Shoblak, CMWU director, said this type of contamination occurred also in Beit Hanoun to the north of Gaza City where facilities were destroyed.
Central Gaza’s Wadi Gaza region is one of the most visible and noxious sites of sewage dumping. The black sludge streaming into the sea is seen and smelt by passengers on the ride south from Gaza city.
Ibrahim Alejla of CMWU says the flow of sewage into the sea is not only dangerous, but wasteful. “If the borders were open, and we could get the chemicals and equipment needed to treat the water, it could be re-used in agriculture.”
Mohamed Ahmed says nitrate levels have for the past two years been three times the World Health Organisation (WHO) limit. Nitrates are believed to be carcinogenic.
“It is too soon to see all of the negative impacts,” says Mohamed Ahmed. And with Gaza’s Islamic University chemical laboratories bombed during Israel’s attacks, “Gaza has no facilities for testing water for the presence of heavy metals and other contaminants.”
Ahmed believes numerous chemical pollutants will be found when the tests are carried out. “The war occurred during winter, during our rainy season. When it rained, the chemicals and pollutants in the air went directly into the ground water.”
The CMWU and PWA say that many of the most affected areas have had their water networks repaired. “The municipalities chlorinate water to eliminate contamination,” says Ahmed. But difficulties arise when Israeli authorities prevent the entry of chlorine into Gaza. “Then the government issues advisories not to drink the network water.”
Ahmed warns of the effect on rural residents from contaminated ground water. “Many people depend on wells for their drinking water,” he says.
The water problems extend beyond consumption of tainted water. The Gaza health ministry and WHO have issued swimming advisories, listing seven extremely polluted areas as high-risk for diarrhoeal and skin diseases.
Khaled Al-Habil, a fishermen at Gaza city port, says the waste-polluted sea is destroying marine life.
“If you open the fish up, they are black inside. Not like normal fish. The sewage is destroying the fish. People who swim in the water at the port, their skin becomes irritated, like a rash,” Al-Habil said.
“I’m a fishermen, I know fish. But there are others who don’t know it’s from the port, who buy and eat them,” he said.
18 June 2009
On Friday, 5 June 2009, ‘Aqel Sror, 35, was killed when a border policeman fired a live, 0.22 inch caliber bullet at his chest during a demonstration held in Ni’lin. Four other demonstrators were injured by 0.22 bullets that day. One of them suffered a severe wound to the spinal cord, which his physicians estimate will leave him permanently paralyzed.
B’Tselem’s investigation indicates that Sror, who was part of a group of youths who were throwing stones at border policemen, was shot while he ran to aid a young man who had been injured a few seconds earlier. The shot was fired by a Border Police sniper, from a distance of 40 to 50 meters away. Sror and the injured person whom he had gone to aid were struck in their torsos. B’Tselem demanded a criminal investigation in the matter.
0.22 bullets are live ammunition that used to be fired from a Ruger rifle. Their impact may be lower, but they do cause injury, at times very serious, and even death. For this reason, the former Judge Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Menachem Finkelstein, ordered that use of these bullets stop. The order was given in 2001 after several children in the Gaza Strip were killed by this ammunition, and after OC Central Command had already prohibited its use. At the time, Ha’aretz quoted an army official who saying that “the mistake was that the Ruger came to be seen as a means to disperse demonstrators, although it was originally intended to be a weapon to all intents and purposes.”
Surprisingly, a few months ago, the army returned to using this ammunition to disperse demonstrators, without giving any explanation for this sudden change in policy and without taking any measures to prevent the expected injury to civilians. Indeed, since then, 0.22 bullets have killed or injured many Palestinians in the West Bank, and also at least one foreigner. In February, ‘Az a-Din al-Jamal, 14, was killed in Hebron when after throwing stones with other youths. B’Tselem also knows of persons who were injured in Ni’lin, Bil’in, Jayyus, Bitunya, and Budrus. Most of the victims were struck in the legs, suffering light to moderate injuries.
Following the renewed use of 0.22 bullets, B’Tselem wrote to the Judge Advocate General in March warning of the potential danger lives in use of this ammunition to disperse demonstrations. The response of Maj. Yehoshua Gortler, of the Judge Advocate General’s Office, was received only in June, after ‘Aqel Sror was killed, and after another letter from B’Tselem.
In his response, Major Gortler states that the rules applying to 0.22 bullets are “comparable, in general, to the the Open-Fire Regulations applying to ‘ordinary’ live ammunition… The IDF does not consider the Ruger rifle a means to disperse demonstrators or persons engaged in public disturbances, and the weapon is not a substitute for means used to deal with public disturbances (such as stun grenades, rubber bullets, and so forth).”
This response does not reflect the reality in the field. B’Tselem’s observations at demonstrations in Ni’lin clearly indicate that security forces have consistently used 0.22 bullets since the end of 2008, and that they see them as an additional means to disperse demonstrators.
First, following the killing of ‘Aqel Sror, the IDF Spokesperson himself stated that soldiers had fired at demonstrators with a Ruger rifle, “which is a means to disperse demonstrators that fires ammunition similar to live ammunition but at low intensity.”
Second, soldiers frequently use 0.22 bullets along with other crowd-dispersal means, such as tear gas and stun grenades. This conduct indicates that soldiers in the field and their commanders see 0.22 bullets as one of the means available to them for dispersing demonstrators.
Third, soldiers often do not have any weapon suited to shooting rubber-coated metal bullets, which are intended for crowd dispersal. Rather, they only have 0.22 bullets. This situation is reflected in the number of demonstrators wounded by these bullets in Ni’lin: since the army renewed use of these bullets, at least 28 demonstrators have been injured.
Fourth, analysis of the repeated use of 0.22 bullets in demonstrations in Ni’lin clearly demonstrates that, in the vast majority of cases, neither soldiers nor other persons were in life-threatening situations, which is the only case in which it is permitted to use live ammunition.
In its letters to the Judge Advocate General, B’Tselem noted that treating 0.22 bullets as a means for dispersing demonstrators has led security forces to see this ammunition as non-lethal and harmless, whose use does not have be restricted. Accordingly, forces have increased use of it and have begun to fire it in non-life-threatening situations.
This incorrect perception is especially dangerous because soldiers are almost never held accountable for illegal use of weapons. The lack of accountability results from the Judge Advocate General’s Office’s policy of not opening Military Police investigations in cases in which Palestinians are killed or wounded, except in rare circumstances in which the operational investigation, made by the same soldiers who caused the injury, raises a suspicion of criminal conduct. This policy has led to very few investigations, and consequently grants impunity to soldiers who breach the law.
B’Tselem demands that the army immediately cease use of 0.22 ammunition in circumstances that are not life-threatening, and that measures be taken against members of the security forces who have opened fire in breach of the regulations, causing death or injury to civilians.
Independent Jewish Voices Canada
16 June 2009
Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) voted to join the growing international campaign in support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, at its first Annual General Meeting this past weekend. This decision makes IJV the first national Jewish organization in the world to do so. The adopted resolution states that IJV will “Support the Palestinian call for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and complies with the precepts of international law, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”
“Independent Jewish Voices has voted to join the international boycott campaign because we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and support their right to self-determination,” says Diana Ralph, Co-Chair of IJV. “We are calling on the Canadian government and all Members of Parliament to push for immediate sanctions on Israel.”
“The time has come for people around the world to rise to the challenge in Israel/Palestine, as we did for South Africa,” says Fabienne Presentey, Steering Committee member of IJV. “All voices that can be raised against this injustice must be.”
The resolution, which passed with the support of 95% of voting delegates, also calls on the Canadian government to “1) cease its one-sided and uncritical support for Israel and 2) insist that Israel abide by international law”.
The international call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions originated from 170 Palestinian civil society organizations and has sparked a growing global movement, modeled on the international campaign that successfully ended South African Apartheid. Many prominent organizations around the world have joined the BDS campaign, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), UNISON (UK), Transport and General Workers’ Union (UK), Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Canadian Union of Public Employees-Ontario, six Norwegian trade unions, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Scottish Trades Union Congress, and Intersindical Alternativa de Catallunya.
Independent Jewish Voices is a member-led organization, with chapters in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Resolution
Adopted at the Annual General Meeting of Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) on June 14, 2009.
Whereas there will be no lasting peace without implementation of international law, United Nations resolutions and respect for the human rights of both Palestinians and Jewish-Israelis, and
Whereas the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed resolution 242 in November 1967, calling on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, which it had invaded and occupied in June 1967, and
Whereas Israel has refused to implement resolution 242 and instead has illegally established Jewish-only settlements in these areas in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and
Whereas Independent Jewish Voices is based on a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights, and
Whereas it is our view that the grave situation in the Middle East threatens the future of both Israelis and Palestinians as well as the stability of the whole region, and
Whereas we support a negotiated peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples and oppose attempts by the Israeli government to impose its own solutions on the Palestinians,
Therefore be it resolved that Independent Jewish Voices will:
1. Support the Palestinian call for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and complies with the precepts of international law, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
2. Work towards an end to military assaults and other acts of violence that target civilians.
3. Demand that the Israeli Government immediately and permanently withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights and cease all discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.
4. Call on the Canadian government to 1) cease its one-sided and uncritical support for Israel and 2) insist that Israel abide by international law.
