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Eid al-Adha highlights a Gaza family’s struggle to survive

Rami Almeghari | The Electronic Intifada

25 November 2009

Eleven-year-old Rawan at her family's home in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza.

Muslims around the world are about to celebrate Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), one of the most important dates in the calendar, marking the end of the annual pilgrimage season to Mecca. Traditionally, Muslims slaughter a lamb (or offer money for one to be slaughtered for a poorer family), as an act of faith, as the Prophet Abraham did. In many Muslim countries, it is also a festive time of year, marked by family visits, purchasing new clothing, presenting gifts and offering sweets and candy to guests.

Daoud Suleiman Ahmad, 48, an unemployed construction worker, has been unable to find work for almost three years due to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Life for Ahmad and his family in the al-Maghazi refugee camp has been desperately difficult, something that is particularly on his mind during the Eid.

“Over the past three years, I have felt a great deal of bitterness inside me as I have been unable to follow the rituals of the Eid al-Adha, as well as [meet] other daily basic expenses of my family,” Ahmad said at his home, surrounded by two of his children, daughter Rawan (11) and son Ahmad (9).

The house built by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, a few years ago, consists of three rooms: one for Ahmad and his wife, and the other two shared by all the children.

Before the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, Ahmad was among thousands of laborers who used to cross into Israel. But Israel shut out workers from Gaza, and then imposed a siege that has made it all but impossible for Ahmad to earn a living. Hours before being interviewed, Ahmad said he had quarreled with one of his sons who studies nursing. “I couldn’t afford to give him 10 shekels [three dollars] for his transportation, can you imagine?”

These daily hardships make it difficult to fulfill the social obligations of Eid. “I have two sisters who live 20 kilometers away in southern Gaza,” Ahmad explained. “Even if I wanted to visit them for Eid, I couldn’t because I cannot afford to bring with me some lamb meat or other gifts.” Because he would not want to visit family members empty-handed, Ahmad did not visit his sisters on Eid in recent years and probably will not do so this year.

Ahmad’s small home has become a sort of a prison; he prefers to stay inside rather than go outside and be confronted with the financial obligations of Eid. “If I go outside,” he said, “I need to look for things for my family and my children, things that I cannot afford for the time being.” Ahmad says his family depends mainly on food assistance provided by UNRWA.

In a corner of the home, Nadia al-Ustaz, Ahmad’s wife, prepared rice for the family’s lunch using a small kerosene stove due to the lack of cooking gas in Gaza over the past three weeks due to Israeli closure.

“What shall we do, as you can see, we can only afford food for the children,” al-Ustaz said, “and I thank God that we can provide them with it.” Reflecting on the Eid, she said, “It is a special time of the year for us. I wish my husband could give me a gift, like many other women, but I would never burden him with that, for our life is hard enough and we cannot afford such things.”

For the children, too, holiday time is one of anticipating new toys to play with. Rawan said she wished for a Barbie doll, but knew that her father couldn’t afford it. Little Ahmad had been sorely disappointed at the last Eid that he wasn’t able to have a football to play with his friends.

Ahmad estimates that new clothes for each of his children would cost over 200 shekels ($55), so buying new ones for Eid is out of the question. So his next destination was to take old clothes to a local tailor for repair and adjustment instead of buying new ones.

Ahmad handed a pair of his daughter Rawan’s trousers over to Muhammad al-Rifai, who runs a small tailor shop in al-Maghazi refugee camp. “More than a hundred households have brought clothes for repair to my shop, just before Eid,” al-Rifai said, “and of course mine is not the only shop in town.” According to al-Rifai, who used to own a larger clothing factory before the Israeli siege, this number is sharply up from previous years.

All over the Gaza Strip, families like that of Daoud Suleiman Ahmad will be unable to mark Eid in the traditional way. According to local and international estimates, the poverty rate in the Gaza Strip has hit a high of more than 70 percent of the territory’s 1.5 million residents, and the vast majority of households — like Ahmad’s — receive UNRWA food aid.

“I saw in my dreams flowers, peace and safety.” Those are the lyrics of a song that Rawan sang. Those wishes — as well as dignity — for hundreds of thousands of refugees in Gaza, are likely to remain dreams for some time to come.

All images by Rami Almeghari.

Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces shoot at Gaza bird-catchers, farmers

Eva Bartlett | The Electronic Intifada

20 November 2009

Farmer Mahmoud Mohammed Shawish Zaneen was shot in both his legs while planting wheat east of Beit Hanoun. (Eva Bartlett)

On 15 November at 8:30am, a number of young men went as usual to the land near Gaza’s northern border with Israel planning to catch birds. Amjad Hassanain, 27, was among the bird-catchers hunting near the border fence when Israeli soldiers began shooting.

The shots which missed the other bird-catchers hit Hassanain, grazing his shoulder. Cameraman Abdul Rahman Hussain, filming in the vicinity, reports having seen the group of bird-catches head north.

“We were near the former Israeli settlement of Doghit,” said Hussain, referring to the area northwest of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.

“I had gone to the border area to photograph a young bird-catcher. We were about 400 meters from the border fence, but when we heard the shooting, we moved back to around one kilometer.”

According to Hussain, the other men had to carry the wounded Hassanain one kilometer from the site of injury, then transferred him to a motorcycle and finally to a car.

“He was covered in blood, I couldn’t tell where he was hit,” said Hussain.

There to document the work of bird-catchers, Hussain was surprised by the shooting.

“They always go there to catch birds. They put their nets close to the fence in order to catch as many as possible.” Like the bird-catchers, Hussain believed the Israeli soldiers along the border were familiar enough with the bird catching activity that they wouldn’t shoot.

Two hours later, Mahmoud Mohammed Shawish Zaneen and seven other farmers took a break from their work plowing land east of Beit Hanoun.

“We had three tractors with us. We’d been working since 8am, planting wheat. At first we worked about 450 meters from the border fence, but later we were 700 meters away,” he explained.

The farmers had paused to drink tea when Israeli soldiers began shooting.

Zaneen added, “The tractors were stopped and we were sitting on them. There were about seven Israeli soldiers, on foot. They shot the other tractors and then shot mine. They didn’t give us any warning, just started shooting.”

The bullet which pierced Zaneen’s left calf continued into his right calf.

Since the end of last winter’s Israeli invasion of Gaza, at least nine Palestinians have been killed, and another more than 34 injured, by Israeli shooting and shelling in the border areas in Gaza’s north and east.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Bilin’s legal struggle continues

10 November 2009

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours | The Electronic Intifada

In addition to its weekly confrontations with the Israeli army, the village of Bilin has taken its case to a Quebec court. (Silan Dallal/Activestills.org)

Abdullah Abu Rahme can no longer sleep in his own home. A member of the Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall, Abu Rahme explained that since Bilin began its legal proceedings in Canada, Israeli soldiers have made life especially difficult for residents of the small West Bank village.

“[Israeli soldiers] came to my home and they tried to arrest me. They’re destroying my home. It’s not allowed to me to sleep in my home. I feel very bad about this. I’m suffering from this case until now,” he said. “I took my family to another place. It’s very difficult for me.”

Still, Abu Rahme and the villagers of Bilin are pushing forward in their nonviolent struggle against the Israeli occupation by appealing a Quebec Superior Court ruling in their case against two Canadian companies. The residents of Bilin are suing Green Park International and Green Mount International, two companies that, they argue, should be held legally accountable for illegally building residential homes and settlement infrastructure on the village’s land, and marketing these buildings for the purpose of transferring exclusively Israeli civilians therein.

Bilin is a small Palestinian village of approximately 1,800 residents located 12 kilometers west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Since the early 1980s, about 56 percent of Bilin’s agricultural land has been designated by Israel as “State Land.” It has been used to build the Jewish-only settlement Modiin Illit, which holds the largest settler population in the occupied West Bank with more than 42,000 residents and plans to grow to up to 150,000.

Israel began building its wall in the occupied West Bank in 2003. The wall literally cuts the village of Bilin in half. Since 2005, the residents of Bilin have held weekly demonstrations every Friday against the wall, garnering international attention and support for their efforts. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the wall was illegal under international law in a 2004 advisory opinion. A year later, the Israeli high court also ruled that the wall’s route through Bilin was illegal and should be moved closer to the boundary of Modiin Illit. However, neither the ICJ nor the Israeli high court rulings were implemented.

The case against the Canadian companies was heard in Montreal in June 2009. However, Judge Louis-Paul Cullen found that the Israeli high court, not the Quebec Superior Court, was the best venue to hear the case. This ruling was centered on the issue of forum non conveniens, the Latin term for “inappropriate forum.” According to Emily Schaeffer, an Israeli attorney representing Bilin, the term states that “if there’s a better forum for the case, for various reasons, then the case should not be held or heard in the court it’s being brought to but rather in another court.”

Schaeffer maintains that the Quebec court is the only legal forum that can possibly hear the case, since both companies are domiciled in the province. “Israeli courts have repeatedly refused to examine the issue of the legality of settlements. Because that’s the issue for the case in Canada, there’s no other forum than the home of the companies who are registered and domiciled in Montreal,” she said.

“The decision to appeal is because we believe we’re right. We believe that the judge made an error. Our position is that the Israeli courts cannot and will not hear this case. Legality of settlements is not an issue that can be brought to Israeli courts,” Schaeffer added.

The Canadian federal legal system has adopted the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court under the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Statute. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 bars an occupying power from transferring part of its civilian population to the territory it is occupying. To do so is considered a war crime under the Rome Statute.

Setting a precedent

While the overall decision was disappointing, the judge’s sub-rulings can be seen as minor victories, Schaeffer explained. “The village of Bilin prevailed in almost every single aspect, and in two of the three motions. Something that we took as a victory [was that] corporations do have liability under Canadian law for their actions and violations of international law abroad. That’s precedence-setting,” she added.

For Schaeffer, a positive ruling would mean setting a precedent to stop other international companies from abetting Israeli war crimes. “If Bilin succeeds in this appeal, it will make more waves [in Israel] and that’s a good thing because what we also want is to discourage other companies from taking similar actions and taking part in war crimes in the occupied territories,” she explained.

Schaeffer added that she was as of yet unsure whether the entire case will be open to appeal, or if only the issue of forum non conveniens would be examined, and that the appeal will likely take several months before being processed.

The struggle continues

According to Freda Guttman, a Montreal-based activist who recently spent three months in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), being involved with the Bilin campaign in Canada felt like something she needed to do. “It’s a very important cause. If they win this, it will set a precedent not just in Canada but everywhere. It feels like something very important to be involved in,” Guttman said.

Spending time in Bilin demonstrated to Guttman just how strenuous it is for residents to keep fighting the occupation, and the immense burden it places on their daily lives. “My excitement about [the appeal] is sort of tempered by the fact that I see the toll it’s taking on peoples’ lives there. They never know when the army is going to come. It’s just constant,” she said.

For his part, Abdullah Abu Rahme explained that the ruling by the Canadian court left the villagers of Bilin feeling disheartened and upset, but they haven’t lost hope.

“We are very sad about the decision about refusing the case in Canada but we hope to have another decision. We hope to [be restored] our rights and to have justice in this court,” he said. Abu Rahme added that the outpouring of support from international activists has been a huge motivator for residents of Bilin, who are organizing the village’s biggest demonstration yet for the five-year anniversary of their weekly nonviolent demonstrations next February.

Guttman, describing the Canadian legal proceedings as “a roller coaster,” said she too is prepared for the long haul. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy and I don’t think it’s going to be quick. [Bilin is] a very important movement at the forefront of the struggle,” she said.

According to Abu Rahme, that struggle will continue until justice is achieved in Bilin, the West Bank and all of Palestine. “Every Friday we are there. We want to continue our struggle. Until now there is no justice, for the wall and the settlements. We will continue our nonviolent struggle with the support of the internationals and our faith to have justice and to remove the wall and the settlements and the occupation.”

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a student and freelance journalist based in Montreal. More of her work can be found at jkdamours.wordpress.com.

A generation traumatized

Rami Almeghari | The Electronic Intifada

21 October 2009

Ten-year-old Hiba Hammad at the center.

Like many other children in the region, 10-year-old Hiba Hammad from the northern Gaza Strip witnessed atrocities by the Israeli army against the population of Gaza during its assault on the coastal strip last winter.

Hiba’s smiled returned only after four months of intensive psychological therapy at the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution.

“Thank God that Hiba returned back to normal after we almost lost hope of her recovering. Right after the war, Hiba kept silent, isolated, fearful of everything around her, especially strangers. But now she is getting much better as she scored 91 percent in the final exams of her school year. Moreover, she now smiles, socializes and even jokes, thank God,” said Hiba’s sister Ettaf, who lost her husband during the attacks.

Wearing a red dress, Hiba sat opposite to her therapist, Haniya Balousha, at the center. It was her first visit there since her treatment was completed four months ago. On that day, Hiba received gifts to celebrate the end of her treatment and her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Hiba described her trauma confidently and with a smile. “I saw on TV children being dragged from under rubble. From the roof of the house, I saw a tank dragging another [child], I also saw my three cousins’ martyred and mutilated bodies.”

Hiba merrily responded to her sister’s request that she tell us a joke. Hiba proceeded, “Once someone asked his friend, ‘Why is the ambulance parked next to the bakery?’ The friend answered: ‘In order to give first aid to the burnt bread.'”

Even her jokes reflect an ongoing problem in Gaza where Israel continues to periodically attack the Palestinian population. Parents cannot guarantee the safety of their children in the Strip.

Therapist Haniya Balousha in her office.

Following last winter’s attacks on Gaza, Balousha explained that Hiba’s performance at school suffered while previously, “she used to get high marks in her exams.” Balousha added, “Throughout our observation and treatment of Hiba, I noticed that she feared strangers, kept isolated and withdrawn. Hiba suffered [post-traumatic] stress disorder.”

Balousha added that Hiba began to gradually respond to the treatment after three sessions, after which her self-confidence began to be restored. She described the means she used to treat Hiba: “In the beginning I used to encourage her to express herself by drawing what she had seen during the war. Then I asked her to inflate balloons and then pop them. At the beginning she appeared frightened of the balloons because they reminded her of the sound of Israeli bombardment and shelling during the war. But eventually she began to be responsive until she was totally recovered as you see [her now].”

According to Balousha, Hiba’s case is quite similar to the situation of many children in Gaza during and after Israel’s attacks. She explained that since the war came to an end in January, the center treated more than 350 children suffering from PTSD.

Fourteen-year-old Yasser, who declined to give his last name, was also in a therapy session at the center. Therapist Saed al-Sersawi explained that Yasser had witnessed the killing of his father in eastern Gaza City.

“Mr. Saed teaches me how to express myself, he helps me to draw and write poetry sometimes. With his help I am feeling better now to the extent that my relations with [my environment] have improved, thank God,” said Yasser.

According to the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), more than 60 percent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer PTSD symptoms.

The GCMPHP’s survey also shows that hundreds of children were exposed to white phosphorous fired by the Israeli army during the 22 days of attacks on Gaza.

Abdelaziz Thabet, who works with the GCMHP, said that exposure to white phosphorous has made the majority of children and parents in Gaza feel unsafe.

“The most common traumatic events still include hearing sonic booms from the jet fighters, hearing shelling of the area, witnessing mutilation on TV, deprivation from water or electricity during detention at home, [and] shooting by bullets or rockets or bombs,” Abdelaziz explained.

Asked what kind of treatment the GCMHP offers, Abdleaziz responded, “We are doing programs like school-based intervention such as role-playing or story telling. We have also reached the most-hit regions in Gaza, such as al-Attatra, Ezbet Abed Rabo and Zaitoun. According to our own assessments there are more than 45,000 children in Gaza who need mental health treatment.”

Figures from Palestinian and international human rights organizations estimate that more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces during last winter’s invasion, including more than 300 children. The three-week-long war also left approximately 6,000 others wounded, 4,000 houses completely or partially destroyed as well as hundreds of institutions and mosques.

According to Abdelaziz, the mental suffering children face will not disappear since “the majority of children fear the return of Israeli attacks to the region.”

All images by Rami Almeghari.

EI exclusive video: Protesters shout down Ehud Olmert in Chicago

Maureen Clare Murphy, The Electronic Intifada

16 October 2009

Approximately 30 activists — mainly students from area universities — disrupted a lecture given in Chicago by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday which was hosted by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. While Olmert’s speech was disrupted inside the lecture hall, approximately 150 activists protested outside the hall in the freezing rain.

Protesters inside the hall read off the names of Palestinian children killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza last winter. They shouted that it was unacceptable that the war crimes suspect be invited to speak at a Chicago university when his army destroyed a university in Gaza in January. They reminded the audience of the more than 1,400 Palestinians killed during the Gaza attacks and the more than 1,200 killed during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Both invasions happened during Olmert’s premiership.

With interventions coming every few minutes throughout his appearance, Olmert had difficulty giving his speech and often appeared frustrated. At one point he appealed for “just five minutes” to speak without being interrupted.

The demonstration was mobilized last week after organizers learned of the lecture, paid for by a grant provided by Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Within hours an appeal was issued, urging those concerned with Palestinian rights to call the university and demand that the lecture be canceled. The call was put out by major community organizations such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)-Chicago, American Muslims for Palestine and the United States Palestine Community Network, as well as solidarity organizations al-Awda, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the International Solidarity Movement, the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago and area campus groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at DePaul University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as the Arab Student Union at Moraine Valley.

The security presence at the lecture was severe with university police, the US Secret Service and Israeli security present — many of them visibly armed — with Israeli security checking in those who had registered in advance to attend the lecture. Video and photography was banned inside the hall and media were not allowed to cover the lecture. Despite these restrictions, activists managed to take video inside the hall and drop an eight-foot-long banner from the mezzanine that read “Goldstone” in both English and Hebrew, referring to the recently published UN report investigating violations of international law during the Gaza invasion. One activist was arrested and put in a headlock by a police officer, witnesses said, and released around midnight. Approximately 30 supporters waited for him at the police station while he was detained.

Towards the end of the lecture, Olmert put his hand over his brow and squinted to search out the source of the shout, “There’s no discussion with a war criminal — the only discussion you should be having is in court!” That call was made by Ream Qato, who graduated from the university in 2007, and added, “You belong in the Hague!” Qato told The Electronic Intifada that yesterday’s protest “Set the stage for University of Chicago students and students in the Chicago area … no one should be afraid of speaking out against someone.” She added that the demonstration was significant because “The Palestinian community [in Chicago] for the first time went to a university campus to protest.”

Second-year medical student Afshan Mohiuddin was removed from the hall after she voiced her disapproval at the Harris School dean’s on-stage assertion that Olmert was invited to express his views. “He can do that at the International Court of Justice, not at this university,” Mohiuddin shouted, adding, “[Olmert] belongs in a cage, not on a stage!”

Mohiuddin told The Electronic Intifada that “it was ironic that they searched us [instead of him],” considering that Olmert is suspected of war crimes. She added, “As a University of Chicago student I was upset with the lack of commotion on behalf of the student body before the event … No one has protested the event.”

Mohiuddin’s frustration was echoed in a commentary published by the University of Chicago’s student publication The Chicago Maroon earlier this week, in which third-year student Nadia Marie Ismail decried the lack of protest by the university community towards the Olmert speech. She contrasted this silence with the pressure the Center for Middle Eastern Studies faced after a lecture earlier this year by The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah (who was the first to disrupt Olmert’s speech yesterday), University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein, whose lost bid for tenure at DePaul University is attributed to outside pressure by Israel government apologists. “[T]hat University center was put under unprecedented pressure for weeks before and months after the event, with claims that University centers and schools should not host ‘one-sided’ speakers,” Ismail wrote.

Olmert’s lecture in Chicago was one of several scheduled throughout the United States. His speech at the University of Kentucky the previous day was disrupted by activists and met with a protest outside. These demonstrations are part of a wave of notched-up dissent towards Israeli officials implicated in war crimes and racist policy. In 2003, former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky was greeted with a pie in the face by an activist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Last year at the UK’s Oxford University, a speech by Israeli President Shimon Peres was drowned out by protesters outside while students inside the hall disrupted his talk.

One of the organizers of the protest, Hatem Abudayyeh, National Coordinating Committee member of the United States Palestine Community Network, hoped for a larger count of protesters despite the adverse weather. However, he said, “The fact that there’s people around the world who know about it, the fact that PACBI [the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel] sent us a letter of support and endorsement of our action, the fact that there was coordination with the outside protest and the inside disruption — all of these components and aspects of the action made it one of the more successful ones that we’ve done.”

He added, “There is real change happening, whether it’s the international response to the Lebanon war or the international response to the Gaza war. The US is the most powerful country in the world, Israel is a powerful military as well, but the Palestinians have the world on their side.”

Video shot and produced by The Electronic Intifada.

Maureen Clare Murphy is Managing Editor of The Electronic Intifada and an activist with the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago, which co-sponsored the demonstration.