29th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine
During the latest wave of aggression by Israeli forces against the Gaza Strip, Gaza resident Mohamed Shorrab, 70 years old, lost his family home. It was shot at and destroyed by Israeli tank fire and artillery shells from the gun turrets located on the annexation wall that separate Gaza from the lands occupied by Israel in 1948. During this wave of aggression, Israeli bulldozers also destroyed his five hundred beehives along with most of his fruit plantations and olive trees. Previously Mohamed’s twenty one sheep were killed, alongside all of Gaza’s livestock, during the 2014 massacre of Gaza by Israeli forces.
The family homeTurret from where the home was shot
In 2012, two of Mohamed’s sons were killed by the occupying army. They were killed whilst heading home during a cease-fire, when a soldier told them they couldn’t continue and had to go back to where they were coming from. Immediately upon turning back a tank fired at them. Ambulance services were not allowede to reach the two men until six hours later.
Ibrahim Jeradeh is the Gaza War Cemetery’s longtime caretaker. (Joe Catron)
On a recent, sunny afternoon, Kath Henwood, a Yorkshire paramedic volunteering in the Gaza Strip, walked through rows of headstones at the Gaza War Cemetery with a camera and notebook.
“My regular crewmate at work, in his spare time, researches World War II,” she said. “He’s really passionate about it.”
When Henwood learned of the cemetery, she said, “my first thought was to tell him about it.”
The cemetery, off Saladin street in northern Gaza City, is one of thousands maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), a consortium of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
It contains 3,691 graves, all but 474 of them for First World War troops from the Commonwealth of Nations. A further 210 are from the Second World War.
Others include Egyptian and Turkish soldiers, as well as Canadian United Nations peacekeepers.
Their memorials, from simple headstones to an imposing “cross of sacrifice” — a memorial found in numerous CWGC cemeteries — reflect their varied faiths: Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and secular.
And the careful landscaping and quiet solitude around them make the cemetery an attractive destination for everyone from picnicking families to students looking for a place to study.
After she told him about it, Henwood’s colleague sent her a list of 19 graves, and asked that she photograph them.
Ibrahim Jeradeh, the cemetery’s longtime caretaker, helped her find them quickly.
Later, sitting on a marble bench in the shade of the cross of remembrance, he spoke about the cemetery and his life taking care of it.
“Killing is no good”
“War is war, and killing is killing,” he said, passing a hot cup of sugary tea. It was a theme to which he would return again and again.
“In my mind, war is no good. Killing is no good.”
Now 77, Jeradeh started working at the cemetery, then overseen by his father, when he was 20. He officially retired as its head gardener at 65, when his son Issam replaced him.
“I don’t know about politics,” he said of the changes that have affected the cemetery over nearly a century since its founding by British forces after the Third Battle of Gaza in 1917. “I know about the trees.”
But politics have rarely left Jeradeh or his trees alone for long.
Headstones destroyed
In 2006, Israeli troops bulldozed the cemetery’s perimeter wall and six of its headstones. Months later, an Israeli military helicopter fired its cannon at one of the large memorial stones.
“Two dozen other headstones have been pockmarked by shrapnel from Israeli artillery and several have been completely destroyed,” The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported (“Fury as Israelis damage war cemetery,” 13 November 2006).
During Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military offensive against the Gaza Strip in late 2008 and early 2009, Israeli forces bombarded the cemetery, striking it with at least five shells and singing its grass with white phosphorous (“Israel shelled UK war graves in Gaza,” The Daily Telegraph, 20 January 2009).
“We repaired it,” Jeradeh said. “All of it. Alhamdulillah [Thanks to God], it is like new.”
The Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip has also affected the cemetery. In February 2009, a year after Paul Price’s appointment as CWGC’s regional supervisor for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, he had yet to be allowed by Israel to enter Gaza (“Battle still rages where my great-uncle fell in Gaza back in 1917,” The Observer, 22 February 2009).
In May 2013, a year after a seemingly simple pump failure had left the cemetery’s grass and flowers parched, the CWGC said that finally replacing the pump “proved challenging” (“Gaza war cemetery returns to former green glory,” Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 30 May 2013).
Moshe Dayan sought to exhume the five Jewish graves in the Gaza War Cemetery. (Joe Catron)
Despite its foreign affiliations — which ultimately afforded it some protection — the cemetery has also been targeted by Israel culturally, as well as militarily.
Following Israel’s 1967 seizure of the Gaza Strip, Moshe Dayan, then Israeli defense minister, sought to exhume the cemetery’s five Jewish graves and take them to Israel.
The attempt came as Israeli forces looted thousands of historical artifacts, particularly Jewish ones, from their newly-occupied territories, an effort in which Dayan participated enthusiastically as both a military official and a private collector (“Stealing Palestine’s history,” This Week in Palestine, 1 October 2005).
“I refused,” Jeradeh said, his eyes bright. “I was young then. I told him, ‘Go to our office in London.’”
“No difference”
“They are buried here. How could he take them? The Jews here are Jews, not Israelis. There is no difference here between Jews, Muslims and Christians. They are all human.”
Surrounded by fields of grass and rows of colorful flowers and polished stones, the troubles of occupation and siege seemed as distant as Jeradeh’s clash with Dayan.
Maintaining the cemetery’s immaculate condition is hard work, Jeradeh said, even in retirement.
“This is the best, cleanest place in Gaza,” he said. “I work hard to keep it nice.”
Officially, since his mandatory retirement, Jeradeh has served as the cemetery’s night watchman. “I keep this place completely safe,” he said.
In practice, his work as a gardener has continued, if not at the same rate.
“I don’t buy plants,” he said. “I use the ones from my nursery. And I teach the people who work with me.”
“You see all that?” he asked, his arm sweeping across the cemetery. “My drawings.”
“I am always here. Where else should I go? Twenty-four hours a day.” Still, he acknowledged that his pace may have slowed. “Seventy-seven years is a long time.”
He also spends time with visiting family, including four sons and nine daughters. When asked how many grandchildren he had, he laughed.
“I don’t want to remember,” he said, gesturing at a group of small girls peering curiously from behind a row of headstones. “More than a hundred. But they live outside, in Gaza.”
“I like to study,” he added. “I read books on history, geography, horticulture, medicine, everything. I am always reading. And I like writing. Every day, I write what happened to me.”
When asked how long he has kept his journals, he laughed again. “I don’t remember. I have books like this,” he said, gesturing at the height of his shoulder.
“But I started when I was young, and continued day by day, year by year.”
“You are happy writing here,” he said, pointing to a notebook. “The head is clear for it.”
He showed his study, a detached building, behind the larger gardener’s quarters at the cemetery’s edge, equipped with a personal computer and filled with stacks of books and printed articles.
“The pencil is dangerous,” he said. “The man who succeeds in his life writes the facts.”
Returning to the lush greenery of the cemetery, he said, “I don’t feel any problems here … Any man, if he likes others, the others like him. If you do good for others, others do good for you.”
“Everybody knows that war is war, and killing is killing,” he repeated, gesturing again at the thousands of stones surrounded by his carefully-tended flowers.
“Now everything here is history. No one here hates anyone else.”
16th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gal·la | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip harvest olives during the month of October. Several years ago, a large amount of land was planted with olive trees. They were completely destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, and Palestinians were prevented from replanting them by the so-called “green line.” Today the olive oil industry is a small part of the local economy. The export of this olive oil is also prevented as a consequence of more than seven years of the Zionist blockade.
17th August 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Immatin, Occupied Palestine
Immatin is a village situated in close proximity to the annexation wall and flanked by the illegal settlements of Qedumim, Gilad and Immanu’el. Recently, three brothers from the village went to work on their land. However, when they arrived, they found that construction workers, under instruction from the Israeli authorities, were bulldozing and clearing areas of the land to erect electricity pylons. The brothers had not recieved any verbal or written request to use the land nor had they recieved any order that would confiscate it.
The brothers tried to stop the work, as the land is used for olive trees by the family and they fear the destruction of the trees. However the army were then called by the construction workers who when arriving threatened to beat and then arrest the brothers unless they left. The army said that the building work would be between the olive trees, but it is not known what will happen in the future, nor if it will still be permitted for them to access their own land, once these Israeli power lines are in place. When threatened with arrest the brothers left their land, powerless to assert their property and individual rights because they are Palestinian.
International activists visited the land with one of the brothers when the work was still taking place and it can be seen that the olive trees are at high risk from being destroyed during the construction. This case shows the belief that the Israeli occupation has in their own impunity, when they are able to construct, demolish and confiscate without even issuing papers. Even when demolition, confiscation and stop work orders are given, Palestinians have very little chance in overturning them in the Israel courts. The private land under construction is area C which means it is under full Israeli control, where Israel is obliged to look after the rights and administer for all the inhabitants.
16th July 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Qaryut, Occupied Palestine
On the 3rd of July 2013, settlers from the illegal colony of Shilo bulldozed land belonging to Qaryut, destroying around two hundred recently planted olive trees. Citizens of Qaryut are now concerned that new houses for the illegal settlement are being built on this stolen land.
Settler bulldozer on Qaryut land (Photo by Qaruout Alsmood)
At around 10am, five settlers with a bulldozer entered onto Qaryut land near to their illegal settlement, bulldozing several dunums of land and destroying around two hundred young olive trees planted recently by the landowners. Two jeeps full of heavily armed Israeli soldiers also accompanied the settlers onto the land.
The illegal settlement of Shilo is built on land belonging to Qaryut, and the land surrounding the colony also belongs to Palestinian villagers. Although the people of Qaryut have ownership papers for this land, they say that one of the settlers also has forged papers, stating that it is his land. The Qaryut land next to the settlement is considered by the Israeli authorities Area C, meaning that it is under Israeli control for both civil and security matters; this means that it is not possible for Palestinians to build there, nor to expand their village. On the other hand, the settlers from the illegal settlement of Shilo are regularly granted access to build and expand their colonies onto Palestinian land – this is the case across the West Bank.
