Every Tuesday we demonstrate at the Erez border crossing, in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip. The demonstration started at about 11:00 AM. We headed for the No Go Zone. The No Go Zone is an area taken by Israel that extends along Gaza’s entire northern and eastern border inside Palestinian territory. For all intents and purposes, the No go Zone imposed by Israel is illegal and prevents the farmers from working part of their lands. Those who enter the area are attacked by Israel with live rounds.
This week we brought with us musical instruments, small drums, and a trumpet. We marched into the No Go Zone raising our Palestinian flags, playing music, and singing Palestinian songs like “Filisteeni” and “Onadekom.” We marched on the land ruined by the Israeli bulldozers, we crossed big ditches using our hands in a vain attempt to not to fall down into the mud, and we arrived near the separation barrier.At one point, our music was interrupted by Israel firing live ammunition at us. We were speechless at the Israeli live fire. Silently we raised our arms in the sky. Silently we looked at the border. Silence fell on the land; we heard only the sound of the Israeli gunshots that are the sound of the death. They shot toward peaceful demonstrators armed only with flags and musical instruments.
They shot toward youth that have only their voices to ask justice and freedom for their land. But the Israeli soldiers don’t know our language; they only know the language of the violence.
After a short time, bravely, we started again to sing, challenging the Israeli gunshots. We placed a Palestinian flag near the separation wall and we stood there, singing and playing music. A group of youth started to dance the Dabka.
Then, near the flag that we placed, we started to sing Bella CiaoUna mattina mi sono svegliato, o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao! Una mattina mi sono svegliato, e ho trovato l’invasor…
One morning I awakened, Oh Goodbye beautiful, Goodbye beautiful, Goodbye beautiful! Bye! Bye! One morning I awoke, and I found the invader…).
As an Italian, I felt a strong emotion, singing this song with all my heart with the Palestinian people.
We came back home with a smile on our faces, the music gave us joy and strength; we will never give in to the siege. Last week, the Israeli soldiers attacked us with bullets and tear gas, tear gas between our feet and bullets over our heads. Yesterday we gave this answer to the Israeli bullets: the music of our small drums against the crack of their bullets.
We will keep demonstrating against the illegal No Go Zone, against the occupation, and against the siege. We’ll keep on demonstrating with the popular resistance, we will keep demanding freedom and justice for Palestine, we will keep on demonstrating for the right of the Palestinians to their lands.
Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.
We will keep demonstrating against the illegal No Go Zone, against the occupation, and against the siege. We’ll keep on demonstrating with the popular resistance, we will keep demanding freedom and justice for Palestine, we will keep on demonstrating for the right of the Palestinians to their lands.
Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.
25 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Strip
Gaza was treated to a strange new sight today, not really new, but something that has not been seen in Gaza in a long time: tear gas. In Gaza protests are not smashed with tear gas and clubs like in the West Bank, they are met with live ammunition. In a continuation of Israel’s policy to separate the West Bank from Gaza, nothing is overlooked. The sub-human status they wish to cement in the world’s mind when it comes to the people of Gaza is adhered to brutally. On May 15th 2011, when over a hundred demonstrators were shot near Erez, only one canister of tear gas was fired. Before that the protesters faced live ammunition and tank fire. In the three years that regular demonstrations have been carried out near Erez by the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, regulars tell me that this was the first time they had seen tear gas.
The demonstration started like all the others. We gathered near the half destroyed Beit Hanoun Agricultural College and marched towards the no go zone. There were about forty of us, men and women together. As always, the demonstrators were armed only with a megaphone and our voices. Today, we planned to hike from Erez to the east of Beit Hanoun, near the site where two young men were murdered last week while catching birds and collecting rubble near the no go zone. The no go zone, which used to be an area of flourishing orchards has been reduced to yielding rubble to recycle into concrete.
Israel bans the import of concrete into Gaza. Only humans would need concrete to rebuild the thousands of houses Israel destroyed in the 2008-2009 massacres they carried out in Gaza. In Israeli eyes, Gazans aren’t really full people; they are half people to be murdered at will for even thinking of coming close to the no go zone.
This is why we march, we deny the no go zone, and we deny the occupation. The refugees of Gaza, thrown from their homes during the Nakba, want to return to their homes.
We walked down the muddy road that leads to the no go zone. As we got close to the no go zone, the shooting began. Shooting is not unexpected; bullets are the language of the occupation, at least the language that you hear. Ethnic cleansing, oppression, and torture are also languages the occupation speaks, but the loudest voices of the occupation are the bullets and the bombs. The bullets passed over our heads; they slammed into the dirt in front of us. Then, the unexpected happened; the tear gas began to fall. The clouds of tear gas were smaller than I remember from protests in the West Bank. Perhaps the shells are old, they are used so seldom in Gaza that maybe the inventory is old.
This isn’t an issue in the West Bank, there the protests are coated in tear gas, men are killed or severely injured by tear gas canisters shot at them like Mustafa Tamimi and Bassem Abu Rahma who both passed away, or Tristan Anderson, who survived. Women are suffocated by it, woman like Jawaher Abu Rahma. It is fired into houses, schools, fields, villages; tear gas is omnipresent. In Gaza, tear gas is a blast from the past, here the occupation has discarded that language, in Gaza, it only speaks with bullets and bombs.
At first it wasn’t clear if the protest would continue. People were shocked by the use of the new weapon. Quickly though, a decision was reached: We would continue. We walked east along the edge of the buffer zone. Soldiers in concrete towers hundreds of meters away fired live ammunition at unarmed protesters walking on their own land–soldiers in concrete towers built on the land these protesters were ethnically cleansed from.
The black flag that flies over the occupation did not come down after the massacre of Kfar Kassem, it is still there, it is just that it has been flying for so long that no one remembers anything else. the black flag is like the sun, people do not remember a day before it was in the sky.
Walking in the no go zone isn’t easy. The ground is uneven from the constant destruction of the bulldozers which Israel uses to make sure that nothing takes root there. The ground is littered with the past: irrigation pipes, metal rods and concrete rubble from the destroyed houses. Slowly all of this is ground up under the blades of bulldozers and treads of tanks. We walked east, the shooting stopped for a bit. Two soldiers appeared on a hill to the north, they raised their guns. They lost sight of us behind a hill. We emerged from behind a hill: we saw a tank on another hill. Jeeps sped along the border. The shooting began again. Bullets flew over our heads.
Beit Hanoun demonstration under fire – Click here for more images
We reached the eastern edge of our prison and turned south. Soldiers appeared again on a new hill. Shooting resumed, tear gas canisters from 500 meters arced over our heads. We stopped and reminded the soldiers that this was a nonviolent demonstration by people on their land.
They continued to shoot, then the soldiers on the hill began to yell at us with a megaphone, “Gazans are donkeys.” Gazans are not donkeys, they are people, but perhaps if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe, people like these soldiers. We passed the carcass of a horse, rotting. A donkey grazed to the east of the dead horse. At least the donkey was still alive.
The soldiers continued to shoot at us, bullets and tear gas. Just as Gaza did not kneel after the 23 day massacre three years ago, we will not be stopped by bullets and tear gas. We will continue to protest until the occupation disappears. We will continue to protest until we achieve justice. Without the end of the occupation and true justice, peace is impossible. We will not accept the peace of silent oppression. We will never accept the occupation. Gaza will not kneel.
Nathan Stuckey is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.
Israeli Apaches and land forces shelled an area east of Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday morning, January 18 2012.
Two young men were killed and another was injured. As we hurried to the scene we met an ambulance driving at high speed. Upon arriving we heard immediately that one of the young men, 20 year old Mohammed Shaker Abu Auda, had died instantly, while the other man was rushed to the hospital.
We went to the Beit Hanoun hospital morgue, and we saw the massacred body of Mohammed. While we were at the morgue we heard that the other young man was in critical condition at Kamal Adwan Hospital. While we were moving to that hospital, we learned that Ahmed Khaled Abu Murad Al-Zaaneen, 17 years-old, had also died.
We waited for his funeral.
Mohammed Shaker Abu Auda, martyred at the age of 20
Family members and friends told us that the two young men went near the border to find building materials to sell. The poorest youth of Gaza frequently go to the border, in the so-called no go zone of 300 meters imposed by Israel, to find building material to sell.
They also told us that the two young men were catching birds.
The body of Ahmed was at about 300-400 meters from the border.
Saber Zaaneen of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative told us that Ahmed was losing blood from his head but that “he was still alive, he was breathing heavily” when he found him.
The ambulance could not reach the body of Ahmed immediately because tanks and soldiers were continuing to shoot and it was too dangerous to approach the area.
The ambulance was forced to back away because of the continuous fire.
The entire time the father of Ahmed was crying, “I want to see my son! I want to see my son!”
Ahmed was still alive when he reached the ambulance.
The day after, we went to the mourning tent and we met the families of the two victims.
Ahmed’s mother did not stop crying. I remained seated with her and the other women of the family, silently, I was speechless at so much pain.
Then we went to the other mourning tent. Here, the brother of Mohammed, Zahor Abu Auda, told us that the two young men were catching birds to sell them for pets.
If they were lucky, they made 100 shekels from the sale of the birds (100 shekels are equivalent to about 20 euros).
His mother can’t walk, Mohammed took care of her.
Zahor told us, “Let the world know that the Israelis killed a man that was only trying to get money to live. The Israeli forces, supported by the Americans. kill people in Gaza regularly and nobody hears about it, the world is silent.”
Missile fired by an Israeli Apache during the attack
Meanwhile we knew that Israeli spokespersons were spreading the story that the two victims were armed militants and that they were about to place explosives in the area of the border.
These Israeli declarations and their powerful influence on the mass media induce a feeling of powerlessness. Members of the families and friends told us that Mohammed and Ahmed were not part of armed groups.
Mohammed and Ahmed were civilians, they were just workers.
We join the appeal of Zohar, and we will continue to give a voice to the people of Gaza so that the silence will never completely obscure all of this pain over the agony of the mothers and over the bodies massacred.
Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement. You can read more of her writing at il Blog di Oliva.
Every Tuesday we gather next to the half destroyed Beit Hanoun Agricultural College. At eleven o’clock, we set out into the no go zone. This week there were about thirty of us, members of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement, and other activists from Gaza. At eleven o’clock the megaphone starts to play Bella Ciao and the flags are hoisted in the air, soon we start to march down the road into the no go zone. Today feels strange, something is different, there is only one body in the sky, the Israeli blimp that constantly hangs over Beit Hanoun watching our every move is missing, today only the sun is over us in the sky, the sun and some Israeli F16’s.
Entering the no go zone is always a strange experience. First, you always remember the danger, Israel claims the right to shoot anyone who enters the no go zone, every week, someone is shot for doing what we are doing. They are shot for going to their land, sometimes to gather cement to rebuild the houses shattered during the massacre the Israeli’s call Cast Lead, sometimes searching for metal to recycle and sell for a few shekels, sometimes shepherds with their sheep. The no go zone is like a dystopian future, the people who used to live there have all been expelled, they live as internal refugees in the prison that is Gaza. When you walk in the no go zone you are sometimes reminded that people used to live here, you find shredded irrigation pipes, wells, the foundations of houses, and today, for the first time, I saw an old quarry that used to provide rocks for building. The orchards and fields that used to cover the no go zone have been thoroughly erased, there is no more evidence that they even existed. In 1948 the Zionists plant forests to hide the ethnically cleansed Palestine villages, in Gaza, they do not bother, they just grind the evidence up under the treads of bulldozers. The orchards have already disappeared, there is no trace of them, most of the houses have disappeared, with time even the wells and the remaining foundations will slowly be ground to nothing. Only the quarry will remain. The land here is not like the rest of Gaza, walking is difficult, the bulldozers have left it completely scarred, jagged mini hills and ridges are everywhere.
Today, we walk deep into the no go zone. Deeper than we have ever gone before, to land no Palestinian has been on since 2000. Sometimes it feels like a nature walk, instead of watching out for tigers or lions we watch out for jeeps or tanks. We finally reach the barbed wire that lays about 20 meters in front of the wall, there is no way through it. A smaller balloon than the usual one begins to rise over the wall. Sabur Zaaneen from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative speaks, “We would like to welcome all of the activists who have to come to Gaza with the Miles of Smiles Convoy, I hope that many more activists come to Palestine to work in the towns and refugee camps of Palestine where they can confront the state terrorism of Israel directly.” We climb a nearby hill and plant a flag. We spot a jeep; it drives up to the concrete tower embedded in the wall. The soldiers climb the stairs and begin to shoot at us. We begin to walk back to Beit Hanoun. The soldiers climb down from the tower, get in their jeep and drive to higher hill overlooking the no go zone. They get out, and aim their guns at us again. It does not matter that they are under no threat, that we are a completely nonviolent demonstration of civilians on their own land. In Gaza, the occupation is reduced to its most basic, the tracks of bulldozers and the crack of rifles. The bulldozers erase all evidence that anybody ever lived there, the rifles erase the people that live here. We will not be erased. The olive trees that we plant in the no go zone will feed the children of Gaza. The martyrs will live on in our hearts. The popular resistance will outlast the occupation.
11 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
The No Go Zone – Click here for more images
Every Tuesday we gather in front of the Beit Hanoun Agricultural College, members of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement and other activists from all over Gaza. We gather, and we march into the no go zone. Sometimes we are shot at, sometimes there is no response. We accept both of these. We cannot control when the Israeli’s will shoot at us, at unarmed civilian demonstrators on their own land. We are not discouraged by the appearance that nothing changes, you never know when change will happen, but you can be sure that if you do nothing, nothing will change. So every Tuesday, we march into the no go zone, the rest of the week, everyone struggles against the occupation in their own way. Teachers teach, farmers farm, fisherman fish, but under occupation all of these things can become revolutionary things, life itself can become a revolutionary act.
The megaphone announces the start of the demonstration; Bella Ciao is our marching song. We set off down the road into the no go zone. There about thirty of us, men, women and children, somehow, it feels like more this week. We do not take the usual path into the no go zone, once inside the no zone we turn to the left. We walk toward the road that leads to Erez, one of the few gates into and out of the prison that is Gaza, few Gazans are permitted to use it, it is mostly for NGO workers. We stop about twenty meters from it; we plant a flag in the ground. This flag joins the others we have planted in the no go zone, unlike wheat which requires months to go grow and is inevitably destroyed by the periodic assaults of Israeli bulldozers in the no go zone flags can be planted fully grown. Eventually Israeli bulldozers will come and grind them beneath their wheels and we will have to plant new flags to replace them, but until then you can see our flags wave over the no zone. The wall that surrounds Gaza is studded with Israeli flags, in case anyone should forget who it is that imprisons Gaza.
We planted our flag, then, Sabur Zaaneen from the Local Initiative spoke, he denounced “encounters with the leaders of the occupation and negotiations with the occupation, instead we must work toward the prosecution of the leaders of the occupation in international forums.” He also said that “resistance to the occupation must continue, it will continue until the end of the occupation, the resistance must unite to confront the occupation.” As we walked back to Beit Hanoun it was impossible not to admire our flags floating in the wind, three of them lining the no go zone, and the wheat that we had planted last month, growing. Israel can destroy, but things will always grow again. Oppression inevitably breeds resistance, a resistance that will continue to grow until the oppression is removed.
This week we brought with us musical instruments, small drums, and a trumpet. We marched into the No Go Zone raising our Palestinian flags, playing music, and singing Palestinian songs like “Filisteeni” and “Onadekom.” We marched on the land ruined by the Israeli bulldozers, we crossed big ditches using our hands in a vain attempt to not to fall down into the mud, and we arrived near the separation barrier.At one point, our music was interrupted by Israel firing live ammunition at us. We were speechless at the Israeli live fire. Silently we raised our arms in the sky. Silently we looked at the border. Silence fell on the land; we heard only the sound of the Israeli gunshots that are the sound of the death. They shot toward peaceful demonstrators armed only with flags and musical instruments.
Then, near the flag that we placed, we started to sing Bella CiaoUna mattina mi sono svegliato, o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao! Una mattina mi sono svegliato, e ho trovato l’invasor…
