13th October 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Today at the Salaymeh checkpoint in al-Khalil (Hebron), Israeli soldiers fired four long-range tear gas canisters, and threw three stun grenades, all towards children leaving school to walk home. One tear gas grenade was also thrown directly at ISM activists documenting the military violence.
Israeli soldiers were positioned very close to the school, due to the new position of the concrete blocks that designate the end of H2 (the area of Hebron under full Israeli military control). Yesterday they were moved further away from Salaymeh checkpoint to further encroach upon Palestinian territory.
Two Israeli soldiers also occupied the top floor of a Palestinian apartment block and positioned themselves above the schoolchildren.
The Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center field teams have documented full or partial damages to 75 kindergartens and day-care centers caused during the 51 day Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip this summer.
DWRC’s field workers conducted field visits to all the kindergartens that suffered damages and collected information through filling questionnaires and affidavits from kindergarten owners in the five Gaza governorates, with a particular focus on eastern areas, where these damages were concentrated.
Among the 75 kindergartens and day-care centers that suffered damages, 12 were fully destroyed and 63 partially damaged by shelling and bombing. They are distributed as follows: 10 are located in the North Gaza governorate, 17 in the Gaza governorate, 17 in the Middle Gaza governorate, 21 in Khan Younis governorate, and 10 in Rafah governorate. These kindergartens employ 629 female workers, including educators, administrators and cleaning agents, and they used to care for and provide pre-school education to 12,671 children.
Photo by Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center in PalestinePhoto by Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center in Palestine
The owners of some of the kindergartens have undertaken repairs at their own cost in order to reopen them and others have relocated to alternative premises near their original location, while a third group has been unable to open their kindergartens or day-care centers to this day.
The Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center strongly condemns Israeli attacks on educational institutions and calls upon the international community to hold the Israeli occupying power accountable for crimes committed during its latest military offensive against the Gaza Strip. The Center stresses the need ensure special care and protection for children under all circumstances as stipulated in international human rights law and humanitarian law, and declarations on the rights of the child. DWRC also emphasizes the urgent need to rehabilitate damaged kindergartens and day-care centers, and compensate their owners as soon as possible due to the society’s need for their essential services.
Early childhood education in the occupied Palestinian territory is provided by private sector or NGOs, and receives no subsidies from the government. 99% of the workers in the sector are women, most of them paid well below the monthly minimum wage of 1450 NIS. It is a sector that has already suffered greatly from high poverty and unemployment rates, particularly in the Gaza Strip, since it largely depends on the capacity of families to pay for its services.
For further information or to access detailed data about the damages incurred by kindergartens and day-care centers, please contact us at extr@dwrc.org
21st September 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team |As-Sawia, Occupied Palestine
On the evening of the 10th September, unknown assailants broke into the As-Sawia Secondary School, forced open the door and set the school on fire. Bedouins living close to the school saw the fire and alerted the fire brigade. By the time it was put out, the principal’s office and teachers’ rooms were completely burned.
“We lost six computers, four printers, all the teachers’ books and materials, but most of all, the administrative documents and files of the students and about the school situation over the past years. The whole damage is around 140,000 shekels,” the principle Adnan Hussein told ISM. The school was closed for three days after the arson attack.
As in many schools in the occupied West Bank, the students and staff of As-Sawia Secondary School suffer from constant settler and military harassment. Three days before the arson, armed settlers who called themselves “security” from one of the nearby hilltop illegal settlements stood at the school gates. When the principal spoke to them, they claimed that children threw stones at the settler cars on their way to school.
The school is located by Road 90, which was paved in 1944 and runs across the West Bank. The road is used by Palestinians and by illegal settlers. The children have to walk alongside it to get to school in the mornings and to go home after school.
“Our school is suffering both for the settlers and the army,” explained Hussein. “We constantly have the army at our gates, checking ID’s and bothering children”
On the 3 September, armed settlers stopped in a car marked as the illegal settlement Eli’s “security” at the gate of the school. One of the settlers came out of the car, jumped over the fence and started following some of the children, who have finished their classes and were leaving for home. The principle approached the settler and told him that he is not allowed in the school with weapons, and the settler responded that he was looking for a child who threw stones and shouted at the settler car earlier.
After agreeing to move outside the school gate at the head teacher’s insistence, the settler with the machine gun was joined by another settler and they insisted that the boy in the red T-shirt was brought to them. They also wanted the head teacher’s mobile phone number so that they could call him in the future.
“I had a bad feeling that something horrible will happen and that they will start shooting,” related Hussien. “I left some teachers with the settlers and with other teachers went to escort children through another gate and send them home, when three soldiers appeared. I went to speak to them. I told them that they cannot be in school with their weapons and in their uniforms but they insisted that they wanted to speak to a boy in the red T-shirt for 10 minutes.”
The principal and staff stood between the soldiers and settlers and the pupils to protect them while they were leaving the school. By this time worried parents were at the gate and they took the children away.
Throughout 2013, the army entered the As-Sawiya 51 times and children and the staff had to put up with teargas, sound bombs and arrests of pupils.
Hussein explained, “It is a constant worry that the settlers and the army will come. It is hard enough to control 350 teenagers even in the countries where there is no occupation. It is not easy and we do what we can to try to do our best keep the education for our children going. We have no problem with Jewish people and I can say that many of them are nice and honest, but settlers are generally dangerous people. I know that people should be able to choose where they live, but that does not include taking someone else’s land without permission.”
17th September | Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
This is what seems to be the last thing I will write from Gaza. Not that there is nothing more to tell, there lies a new story under every stone, but because I will soon leave this small coastal strip where there is so much to be found.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
Suffering, deprivation, death, dismemberment, despair, shattered homes, and lives without a future. But also so much love, so much kindness, smiling faces and playing children with catching laughter. And this curiosity and immediate acceptance of me as a stranger, so very distant from my soon-to-be home in Europe.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
This will be my thanks and goodbye. A sincere thank you for giving me the opportunity to publish my thoughts, reflections, and observations. A humble thanks to all of you who wanted to read them. And a little special thanks to those of you who have contacted me because of my stories and articles; it has sometimes made me slightly embarrassed, but also made me, secretly, of course – proud.
It has driven me to continue to write, and given me this urge to improve, to make the necessary contacts in order to write another story to keep describing Gaza for those who want to read it.
There is so much more to write and report on. There are already many orphans in Gaza, and the recent war has ripped away another 1,500 children their parents. Not all of these children will be placed in an orphanage, most will probably be taken in by relatives. This is just one of hundreds of stories that will remain on my mind, after I have left Gaza.
There is a farming season approaching, but many farmers have had their houses and fields destroyed. Tanks and bulldozers have already penetrated into the Gaza Strip in violation of the ceasefire. Fishermen have been shot at several times, six have been arrested, and a boat has been seized. This also in violation of the ceasefire.
Photo by Charlie Andreasson
There are 100 shelters that have been erected, donated by the United Arab Emirates. This is a good start, but not even ten thousand such barracks would be enough, and soon winter and rain will arrive.
There is so much still to write about.
There are not many days left until I shall try to leave, and I will spend my time finishing projects, not beginning new ones. Al-Mazan, an organization working closely with the UN and HRW, has asked for copies of my photographic evidence of war crimes, my role in the Ark-project is over. After a lot of struggling, we have finally started to move forward on the issue of our presence among the fishermen on a far more regular basis. This is a project I will not see completed before I leave. It came to a temporary stop when the war began, and it has tentatively started to continue once again.
It stings a little in me that I cannot be on that journey, and it is pointless trying to hide that. If I did not have to go home, that project alone would be worth staying another year for. Instead, I will focus on cleaning out my apartment, trying to get an afternoon for myself and Moby Dick at a beach cafe, trying to get out for a last night with the fishermen at the sea, to say goodbye to the friends I have found and to thank them for everything, and complete this text, the last one.
5th September 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday, 300 orphans staged a protest following the demolition of Al-Rayyan Dairy Factory, north of Hebron, which occurred in the early hours of 1st September 2014.
Photo by ISM
The future of the children remains unclear as the two orphanages they live in, the Hebron Charity House for Girls and The Hebron Charity House for Boys, are dependent on the profits made by the dairy factory. Both the orphanages and the dairy factory are owned by the Islamic Charitable Society.
The dairy factory, which housed 150 cows and produced six tones of milk products, such as yogurt and cheese, had run for 24 years, ever since the Islamic Charitable Society received funding from the Kuwait government in 1991 to set up the factory. The purpose was for the Society’s orphanages and schools to have their own source of regular income, rather than relying on donations. The dairy products were distributed to Hebron and the surrounding villages.
The Israeli government, since 2002, has targeted the dairy factory. The first demolition order was based on concerns about environmental regulations, saying that the waste produced by cows was not dealt with suitably. Despite solving this problem, the dairy farm continuously fell under threat by the Israeli military, especially since it was located in Area C, the area of the West Bank completely under Israeli military control. Claims were also made by the Israeli Council for Planning that parts of the farm were illegally built; however, Abed Al-kareen Farrah, one of the lawyers working with the Islamic Charitable Society, confirmed that the farm received approval from the Israel Antiquities Authority for a license to build. He said, “The farm has been under fire for years with a lot of administrative issues, and Israel constantly put pressure on it to close.”
In June 2014, the dairy farm received a second demolition order, accusing the Islamic Charitable Society of having affiliation with Hamas because one of the dairy farm’s workers had been an administrative detainee for the past twenty months. The Chair of the Islamic Charitable Society’s Board of Directors, Hatim al-Bakri, stated that the society is not funding Gaza. On the 3rd of July 2014, Israeli forces confiscated all of the farm’s machinery before demolishing the entire farm a few days ago.
Photo by ISM
Hatim al-Bakri added that the farm would be impossible to rebuild, not only because it would cost two million dollars to do so, but also because of the heavy resistance they would face from the Israeli forces. Anything built on that plot of land would risk being demolished again and again.
“The future is dark for the orphans in Hebron,” he says. “I don’t know how we will be able to continue to fund the orphanages, or the seven schools the Islamic Charitable Society runs in and around Hebron. This question should be asked to the occupation.”
The demolition of the dairy farm is yet another example of how collective punishment affects hundreds of Palestinian people every day. Not only does the entire workforce of the farm have to lose their jobs because of one administrative detainee working there, but children, far removed from the workings of the farm, will also suffer the consequences.
