Tag: Beit Hanoun Local Initiative

Beit Hanoun commemorates 3 years since operation ‘Cast Lead’

by Rosa Schiano

7 January 2012 | il blog di Oliva

(Photo: Rosa Schiano) – Click here for more images

On Tuesday there was another demonstration in Beit Hanoun against the “buffer zone” imposed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. The demonstrators also commemorated the over 1400 Palestinians killed during operation “Cast Lead”.

The demonstration started at about 11.00 am. A drone was flying over Beit Hanoun.

The volunteers of the ISM and other youth marched until they were only a few meters from the separation barrier, singing songs, among them the Italian “Bella Ciao”, and waving Palestinian flags.  During the march, they heard gunshots from Israeli soldiers.  Saber Zaaneen and other young men placed a Palestinian flag in the land.

At the end of the demonstration, Saber answered some questions.

Why do you demonstrate every week in Beit Hanoun?

We demonstrate against the Israeli occupation and against the siege of Gaza. In 2008 the Israeli army created a “no go zone” along the border that prevents the farmers from working within  300 meters of the border. We demonstrate against the “no go zone” and support the steadfastness of the farmers.

There is also a “no go zone” in the sea. The farmers and the fishermen are both oppressed by the “no go zone”.

This last demonstration had a special meaning. Today Gaza doesn’t kneel and doesn’t submit. Gaza did not raise the white flag. Gaza is still strong. Three years ago the state of Israel launched an attack on Gaza. For 23 days they used every weapon on us. They used planes, tanks, guns, missiles, bulldozers and white phosphorus. They wanted to destroy the resistence and Hamas. They did not succeed. They destroyed houses, they bombed  schools, UNRWA buildings. They massacred the Samouni family, the Idaaya family, the Abed Aldayem family, the Deeb family, the Ayel family and many others.

You placed a Palestinian flag at the border, why?

For three years we have had this demonstration in the buffer zone, so we thought today to do something  new. In the last demonstration we marched into the buffer zone and we reached an area that Palestinians haven’t reached since May 2000. I was happy to see today the flag in the same area.

How was the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative born?

It was born in September 2007, from the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli attacks. The main reason was  the killing of 18 children in Beit Hanoun, some of them were in school at the time.

We started to demonstrate in the name of our children that Israel killed at that time. It was  my idea to set it up. Our name is Volunteers for Human and Social Service. We have a psycological support group for the children and the mothers. We visit families, helping them, to harvest their lands. During Israeli attacks we help and provide first aid for injured people.

We also have a group that dances Dabka during Palestinian celebrations. Besides this, we organize events on important days every year: on Land Day, on the 30th of March, working with farmers. On the 15th of May, Nakba Day, we planted tents in the buffer zone to reflect the condition of the refugees.

How can this conflict end?

There are some decisions from the UN that could end this conflict if they would be applied. This  conflict could end if they give to the Palestinians the lands they had until 1967, but the problem is that there is still no justice in the world. The United States and Europe still support Israel, they could end this conflict if they apllied those UN decisions. Despite all the suffering Palestinians have endured for 63 years and all of the killings, the Palestinian people still fight to have freedom and justice. Our message is a request for freedom, justice and peace in Gaza and all Palestine.»

The illegal buffer zone was established 50 meters from the border, inside the Gaza strip, according to Oslo, and since then it was extended by Israel to 300 meters and in reality it often reaches 2 kilometers, preventing  Gazan farmers from working on their lands.

Gaza will not kneel

27 December 2011 | Palestine’s Youth – Local Initiative – the Popular Resistance Activists, Gaza – Palestine

Click here for more images

Twenty-three consecutive days of horrendous attacks on the Gaza Strip by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) left more than 1500 Palestinians dead and many more injured.  Most of the victims were women, children and elderly people.

According to the IOF these attacks were intended to deter the Palestinian resistance. These attacks failed completely, we continue to resist.

Three years have passed since what the Israeli entity called “Operation Cast Lead” began on December 27, 2008.  The IOF claimed that they were targeting “Hamas”, but this wasn’t true.   Most of the targets were civilians in their own homes.

We, as a Palestinian people, assert that Hamas is an integral part of the national Palestinian liberation movement and that they are not terrorists as the Israeli propaganda depicts them. We think that each political or popular party has the right to resist the occupation with all available means.

Operation Cast Lead left more than 1500 Gazan dead; most of these victims were women, children, and elderly. Three years have passed, justice is still absent.

On the third anniversary of the Israeli war on Gaza, or the “Gaza Massacre”, we call on human rights NGOs and The International Court of Justice to break their shameful silence and take some “practical” steps along with the “usual “condemnations and statements”. The Israeli occupation will not be deterred from violating human rights unless you “act” by force or you use practical methods, not only “talk”.

In its aggression on Gaza, the IOF used internationally forbidden weapons against civilians and in heavily populated areas.  For example, white phosphorous was used against civilians in Gaza; it burned many people to death in their homes.  The IOF also used white phosphorous against an UNRWA school that had many civilians in it; they were trying to escape from the IOF’s shelling of their homes.  Further, the UNRWA headquarter building was also targeted. These are war crimes. International justice must be served equally to all human beings.  Therefore, we ask you to boycott the Israeli entity in every way.  Economic and cultural boycott are good examples.

Demonstration in Beit Hanoun three years after Cast Lead

27 December 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Photo: Rosa Schiano, International Solidarity Movement, Gaza - Click here for more images

The Beit Hanoun Local Initiative remembered the 1,414 Palestinians killed by Israel during its 2008-2009 “Operation Cast Lead” attack on the people of Gaza during a weekly march in the Israel-imposed “no-go zone.”

Demonstration in the no go zone, Beit Hanoun

by Nathan Stuckey

20 December 2011

Photo: Rosa Schiano, International Solidarity Movement – Click here for more images

Every Tuesday there is a demonstration against the occupation and the Israeli imposed no go zone that surrounds Gaza, stealing much of Gaza’s best farmland.  Today, it was unseasonably warm, it felt almost like summer.  We started our march from in front of the destroyed buildings Beit Hanoun Agricultural College.  Music played over a megaphone as we marched down the road into the no go zone.  As we got closer to the no go zone the music stopped, it got quiet.  Usually, when the music starts the chanting begins, but not today.  Everyone seemed to be lost in thought, perhaps pondering the green that has recently appeared in the no go zone.  The bulldozers haven’t come for many weeks to kill all life in the no go zones.  Perhaps they were remembering the olive trees, and orange groves that used to be here.  Perhaps they were thinking of the families that used to live in the destroyed houses that we were walking by.  Perhaps they were thinking of the houses that no longer exist, the houses that have been completely erased by the Israeli bulldozers.

We entered the no go zone and went to the flag that we left here several weeks ago.  It flies in the breeze, a reminder that this land is Palestinian, that while the people of Gaza might have been driven from their homes they have not yet been erased by the Israeli military like the orchards that used to grow in the no go zone.  We took the flag down.  We marched further into the no go zone, to land which no one had been to since May of 2000.  We made our way across the no go zone, land scarred dozens of times by the blades of Israeli bulldozers, to a small hill.  We climbed the hill and we planted the flag.  The ground was hard, it has not rained lately, but we found a soft spot and drove the flagpole into the earth.  We piled rocks around its base to strengthen it.  We looked out over 1948, the land which many residents of Beit Hanoun had been driven from 63 years ago.

We began to walk back to Beit Hanoun.  Through the no go zone, on land no one had been to in many years.  As always, when you go new places in Gaza you see new destruction which you had no inkling of before you stumbled upon, but it was always there, another untold story in the crimes of the occupation.  We paused by some rubble that I had seen many times on our marches into the no go zone, I never knew what it had been.  It was a well.  It had of course been destroyed by an Israeli bulldozer, all of the trees which it used to water ground under the treads of the same bulldozer.  The well is dry now.  Perhaps someday it will be repaired and orchards will once again thrive on this land.  Someday, after the occupation finally disappears into the pages of history.  Until then, it stands alongside the hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed in the Nakba, alongside the thousands of homes destroyed by Israel, as a mute reminder of the crimes of Israel.

Planting the seeds of resistance and steadfastness in the no go zone

by Nathan Stuckey

13 December 2011

Photo: Beit Hanoun Local Initiative – Click here for more images

We set off from in front of the Beit Hanoun Agricultural College under the flags of half a dozen countries, but listening to the music of Palestine.  Every Tuesday, for three years, we set off from here into the no go zone, that three hundred meter strip of death which surrounds Gaza.  We are a diverse group, the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement, and other Gazans.  We march down the road into the no go zone, the tension builds, we play music, we chant.

Today, as we approached the buffer zone a shot rang out.  Israeli soldiers shooting into the air, shooting from the concrete towers which line the border of the prison that Israel has created in Gaza.  We do not stop, we keep walking into the no go zone.  The no go zone is different this week, it is green.  Usually it is a dead brown, every couple of weeks Israeli bulldozers come and uproot any plants that manage to sprout, nothing is allowed to live in the no go zone.  It is hard to imagine that this used to be an area of thriving orchards, that their used to be houses here, they have all been destroyed, not just destroyed, erased like the hundreds of Palestinian villages which most of the people of Gaza are refugees from were erased after 1948.  Just as Palestinians have refused to be erased by the Nakba, the Naqsa, the Occupation, or the war on Gaza, the no go zone steadfastly refuses to become a place of death, green plants emerge from the land after every rain.

We march all the way to the giant ditch which scars the no go zone.  We plant a Palestinian flag.  It joins the other flags we have left in the no go zone, the orchard of olive trees which we planted here last month.  Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative spoke, he vowed to “continue the popular resistance despite the bullets of the occupation, resistance would continue until the liberation of Palestine.”  Almost on cue he was answered by the bullets of the soldiers, shots began to ring out, not at us; the soldiers were shooting into the air.  We calmly walked back to the road to Beit Hanoun; we still had work to do.

On the road to Beit Hanoun we met a tractor.  We had brought the tractor to farm, to plant the land of the no go zone.  Israel claims that the no go zone extends only three hundred meters, but in reality the danger extends much farther, just before the demonstration today the Israeli’s had shot a fourteen year old boy from Beit Hanoun while he gathered scrap metal to help support his family, he was not in the no go zone, it didn’t matter, they shot him anyway.  We drove the tractor into a large patch of unfarmed land next to the road.  We lowered the disc and began to turn the soil.  The thistles that grew here were turned under the red soil of Gaza.  Young men pulled stones from the field; they were left by the cactuses which mark the border of the land.  As soon as the soil was turned young men spread out and began to plant it, barley.  When the rains come, the barley will sprout, in four months we will harvest it.  We will harvest it under the guns of the Israeli army, just as Palestinians have done for sixty four years, steadfast in their refusal to abandon their land.  We are planting not only barley, but also resistance, steadfastness.