Tag: Ethnic Cleansing - Page 57 - International Solidarity Movement

Dheisheh Refugee camp: One family’s story

12th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Sun streams through the bedroom window of Amira, an elderly woman in her mid 70’s who has spent a lion’s share of her life living inside Palestinian refugee camps. Amira, who cannot speak and is completely immobile in her bed, shifts her emotional stare to her daughter Nisreen as she speaks about their lives inside of Dheisheh Camp after Amira and her husband’s 1948 forced displacement from their village Az-Zakariyya.

Az-Zakariyya was just one of hundreds of Palestinian villages terrorized by Zionist gangs in the 1948 Nakba, the ongoing catastrophe that originally displaced over 700,000 Palestinians. The village had a population of 1,180 on 15,320 dunums in 1945. Named in honor of the prophet Zachariah, most of its indigenous residents fled to the nearby hills, after Israeli forces executed two residents. The next two years saw the finalization of the forcible “transfer” of Palestinian’s from their homes in Zakariyya to make way for the illegal movement of Israeli settlers onto the land- and into homes still occupied by the belongings of the rightful home owners who left everything they owned, believing they would quickly return. Most of them settled in Dheisheh refugee camp. All of them are still waiting to return.

Amira sits immobile in her bedroom which frequently has teargas shot by Israeli forces seeping inside the windows

Recently as a sharp escalation in violence has swept across the occupied Palestinian territories, an escalation which has martyred 25 young Palestinians and injured nearly 1,500, Israeli forces have mostly turned their attention away from the camp which until recently had nightly raids, shootings and violent attacks by the occupying army. “Before the escalation began, they were here every night, every day. They fire teargas here at the entrance to the camp and it comes into my mother’s bedroom through the windows. She cannot move to get away from it.” But this is only one transgression in a long and tragic list of horrors that Amira’s family has endured since their village was violently depopulated.

Nisreen holds the keys to her family's home in the depopulated Palestinian village Zakariyya — Nisreen holds the keys to her family’s home in the depopulated Palestinian village Zakariyya

Amira’s 9 children have all been touched by the occupation, as have all Palestinians existing within occupied, besieged and apartheid-ruled Palestinian territories, including inside the green line. Three sons and six daughters. “All of my brothers have been arrested and placed in Israeli prisons, one of my sisters as well,” Nisreen relays. “One of my brothers was arrested on the day of his marriage after the army attacked the wedding and then jailed him for three years. My mother is so tired now because of all of this. She would leave for Naqab prison to visit him at 4am, only to arrive and be told by the soldiers that she wasn’t allowed to see him that day.”

Amira’s husband, deceased after a battle with cancer, returned to his village with a German documentary crew in the late 1980’s during a film project they were making about the Nakba. He was in his early twenties when his village was violently stolen. As most who leave a familiar space, he returned with a heavy nostalgia for the density of memories of sights, sounds and smells. The elderly man was not long on his land before an Israeli woman rushed out throwing stones at him and the film crew yelling at them to get off of her land.

Village Zakariyya, evacuated violently during the Nakba, circa 1926.

Nisreen’s brother Firas endured similar humiliation when he visited the village with the assistance of a permit he obtained through his work. “I saw my family’s home. The people who are living there now ran out and yelled at me to leave. I told them this was my family’s home and they said as a joke, ‘When you return, I will give it back to you.'” One might wonder about the immediate and boiling hatred conveyed by those who sit smugly inside of someone else’s home, on someone else’s land; wonder about the fury that must incite within the people who endure that hatred, yet Firas smiles warmly as he plays with his two year old son- one of his three children.

Firas, after thirteen arrests by the occupying forces, has lost more than four and a half years of his life to Israeli prisons. “I was once interrogated for 18 days straight. The soldiers arrest you, they start beating you immediately and then all the way to the jail where they bring you. It is very rare to find interrogators who use psychological tactics on you. It’s just beating and violence. That’s all they have.”

Firas didn’t finish his high school education until he was in his twenties. “Because the Ministry of Education is related to the Civilian Administration, which is ruled by Israel, after being imprisoned you cannot get permission to return to your school unless you become a collaborator working with the Israeli government. Because of this, many do not return to school.” Another transgression against Palestinian’s whose lives they rule, streets they own, homes they steal and whose children they imprison.

Nisreen takes us through the part of the camp where her family lives. It is like most other Palestinian refugee camps, overcrowded and insufficient for the massive population existing inside of it. Dheisheh camp is home to over 15,000 registered Palestinian refugees, all living on less than one kilometer of land. Nisreen shows us a construction site spraying clouds of dust into the air of the narrow streets, “We cannot build out, so we build up.”

We spend an hour at LAYLAC at the entrance to the camp; the Palestinian Youth Action Center for Community Development. Its director, Naji Owda’s passion for the amazing things LAYLAC is doing- and has done since its 2010 inception, is vibrantly evident. “We have 40 volunteers currently. People come from all over the world to work with us. We work in public spaces. We make actions in the street to connect with the people.” LAYLAC has an impressive, if not overwhelmingly so, list of community actions, festivals and projects both in its wake and in its immediate future.

“We have a theater department, a department for social work, alternative education and children’s rights. Sometimes we don’t even have enough money for the basics to get by, but we manage, we always manage.” Members of LAYLAC will soon be traveling to France as well as locally holding theatrical actions at the Yalla Yalla Festival happening in Bethlehem on October 23rd. Owda, who was jailed in Israeli prison 7 times, has conducted hunger strikes both inside and outside of prison to simultaneously protest and better conditions for prisoners, as well as participating in solidarity strikes from the steps of the Red Cross building where he slept with others to show support for striking prisoners. “I’m not one to cry about the occupation. We do good work here. We tell our story. We don’t create anything. We teach about our lives. Our daily lives.”

LAYLAC community center in Deheishe refugee camp

Ending our stay at Dheisheh camp means sitting with Nisreen’s family who are all laughing and talking over hot tea with mint. Firas’s son is about to blow out candles on a birthday cake. “Its not his birthday,” Nisreen says laughing, “Every time we make a cake, we sing happy birthday to him.” In a room nearby, Amira rests silently after a lifetime of struggle that shows no sign of relenting. And Firas’s words rest heavily in the air, “The camp is our identity, but its not our personality. I belong to my village. The house I live in inside the camp is owned by the UN. Here I do not even own the tree in front of my home. But in Zakariyya, I have land, my father’s land. I have the documents that say I own all of the trees on our land. We never stop dreaming that we will return home. Every generation here, even the children, know about the village they’ve come from. They sit with the elders and ask for stories about where they are from. Our dreams were bigger than this. I never miss an opportunity to see my village, to see each stone, to see how each stone has been moved.”

In Gaza no figures can express the sorrow

26th September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza Strip, Occupied Palestine

If there is any reason for our existence, at least it should be our capacity to inform about a story while it is happening, in a way that nobody can say: “We did not know, nobody had told us anything”

Robert Fisk

I don’t know if pain can destroy or fortify, I only know that pain changes everything. I also know that the recollection of such suffering shall remain, has to remain in my memory. At the beginning of the Israeli aggression, the first days of last July, I had promised myself not to forget the names of the children that were killed, those who I photographed horrified in the nightmare’s morgues in Gaza under fire.

In that moment I didn’t know that it would be impossible to keep that promise. More than 500 names of children, destroyed by bombs should be now pronounced by my voice, one by one. However, I do not forget, I can not nor want to forget.

The crimes and brutality do not deserve forgetfulness nor forgiveness, only rage. An unmitigated rage that drives us to act, to fight to prevent that their murders go unpunished, so that death won’t be in vain, even though the death of children always is. They are gone, we cannot bring them back to life, but we can, have to punish their executioners.

It is 10 am and several drone’s fire impact onto a house in Deir Al Balah while a Bulldozer recovers the remains of a family, buried under a one-ton bomb dropped by a F-16, those that leave craters, smoke and smell of death, where before were homes, affections, dreams, lives.

Bodies of children killed in Israeli attack on Gaza last year

The ambulance fills with wounded persons in seconds, a man enters carrying a small body of a child about six or seven years old, the boy lacks the right calf, his foot is hanging from a tendon or a shred of skin, I don’t know, I don’t want to look, but I do.

The boy squirms and his intestines are out of his belly, I help the man to lay down the child on the floor of the ambulance – the only stretcher is already occupied by another injured person. The ambulance drives fast to the Al-Aqsa Hospital, located in the central area of the Strip, the same hospital that has been attacked by Israel leaving seven dead and over seventy injured.

At each turn the child’s blood is spilled on the floor of the ambulance, I put my hand over his eyes to prevent him seeing his own intestines, I don’t want to see them either, or step on his blood; I don’t want to see his father mourn and cry in despair. But who cares about what I want? What his father wants? With all the impotence of his anguish, with all the force of his love, everything is banal, useless, tiny compared to death.

Boy wounded by Israeli forces during last year's attack on Gaza on the ambulance floor — Boy wounded by Israeli forces during last year’s attack on Gaza on the ambulance floor

The murderers do not care about anything nor the world. For Israel it is easy to kill, Israel is massacring children for free.

A man in the ambulance asks, demands the father to pray, and then they start to pray together, everybody who can articulate a word inside the crowded vehicle prays, I don’t do it, I don’t know how, I just hold his light head of shaved hair in my hand with the other I still cover his eyes.

I look at him and strange details are recorded in my mind, terrible and tender ones. His little face is beautiful despite the agony that deforms his face. I think he has his hand clenched into a fist because of the pain then I look again and it is not a fist – the Israeli bomb has torn all his fingers and the little bones are now protruding from his knuckles, they are fragile, white and thin, like those of a bird.

The boy stops squirming slowly and his lips turn pale, I’m relieved that he is no longer struggling, that his intestines stop escaping from his belly, I’m relieved by this calm so close to the end, it relieves me so much that I feel guilty. Till this day I do not know his name, I only know that he died minutes after arriving at the hospital.

“On the ruins of my house I hoisted the Palestinian flag, it is our symbol of resistance,” tells me Ahmed without any drama and then smiles, “now my family lives in a crowded shelter in a school”.

Less than a block away, in Beit Hanoun, seven little girls are sitting on a rickety mattress under a makeshift tent, here called “Jaima”, located next to some rubble that once was their home. Through an unstable triangle of collapsing walls the girls enter into this concrete tomb to retrieve a doll, rescued from an abyss of desolation and then smile.

The joy, that bombproof joy, I think amazed, resists death in Palestine, and sometimes just sometimes wins the battle, and if it doesn’t win at least dignifies it, dignifies and saves it from brutality and impunity.

More than 100.000 people have lost their homes under the Israeli bombs that devastated Gaza during the fifty one days of cowardly attacks.

Shelling from F-16s, Apache helicopters, drones, tanks, mortars and all the machinery of war they have – thanks to the support of the so called western democracies – the occupying entity sadly known as Israel uses machinery of war that allowed them to raze entire neighborhoods from the infamous distance of their powerful ships, but did not allow them to defeat the Palestinian resistance in the field, in a man to man combat because that requires that there were men on both sides. The courage and love for the land cannot be purchased with US Dollars in the arms market.

Zionist aggression caused a real slaughter, the almost 70 years of Israeli occupation still remains and it will continue causing damages and death mainly among women, youth and children, as Israel’s military objectives are always homes, mosques, schools used as shelters, ambulances. That’s where those perish who had previously survived the cowardly brutality of Israel, to die after, to continue dying a thousand times in this slaughterhouse called Gaza.

The numbers speak for themselves but today I cannot contain human suffering into figures. Sorrow is not measurable, sorrow is just that and it is everything.

Testimony of Khuzaa’s massacre

8th September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Khuzaa, Gaza Strip, Occupied Palestine

One year after Israel’s attacks in the Gaza Strip, the massacre in Khuzaa is vividly remembered by one of its inhabitants.

Dr Mohammed Qudaih lived with his family in Khuzaa, in the southern Gaza Strip, less than a kilometre away from the Israeli fence, the military turrets, and from the Palestinian land occupied in 1948.

Dr. Mohammad in his office. Photo by ISM

Mohammed, who is a surgeon, worked in his little clinic when the Israeli aggression started last July. He and his family decided to stay in Khuzaa despite the bombings were getting worse. “They raged specially over homes, schools, hospitals, ambulances… Israel’s favourite targets”.

Suddenly his tiny clinic was full of wounded people and neighbours, who believed that a health care centre would be a safe refuge against the one-ton bombs thrown by the F16 planes. Sadly they were wrong. Many of the wounded families were attacked again when the occupation forces launched the ground invasion with their powerful war machine, funded by the so-called “Western Democracies”.

Many villagers of Khuzaa, survivors from the horror of the first attack, wounded but able to survive, were killed when they were receiving medical treatment by Dr Mohammed. Both the office and Dr Mohammed’s house were crowded with hundreds of refugees and wounded people. Women’s hijabs were transformed under the snipers’ fire into bandages to stop the bleeding of children, women and wounded men. The kitchen table was quickly transformed into a surgery table, the windowless bathrooms in useless shelters against the barrage of bombs and gunshots.

Ahmed, the younger brother of Mohammed, who was only 22 years old, bled to death from a mortar while helping a woman in the clinic courtyard. 130 people were cowardly murdered by the occupying forces only in that area of Khuzaa. 520 more were wounded, mostly children and women, all of them severely injured, in face of the ruthless war weapons used by Israel against an unarmed and defenseless civilian population. More than 500 homes were completely razed in Khuzaa during the 51 days of the slaughter. But one year after Dr Mohammed clarifies “the massacre continues. Gaza is still blocked by land, sea and air, closed up tight. Where are the UN and the other agencies supposedly responsible for protecting human rights? Where are the International community and the Media? Where is the reconstruction? Where is our freedom? We won’t stop resisting as long as they keep oppressing us. We hope all these sacrifice will bring us our freedom…”.

Dr. Mohammed's father holding the picture of his 22 year old martyred son, Ahmed and pointing to the exact place where he was murdered while trying to help a woman. Photo ISM — Dr. Mohammed’s father holding the picture of his 22 year old martyred son, Ahmed and pointing to the exact place where he was murdered while trying to help a woman. Photo ISM

Dr. Mohammed's home. Photo ISM — Dr. Mohammed’s home. Photo ISM

Reham Dawabshe’s funeral

8th September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Duma, Occupied Palestine

Yesterday, Monday 7th September, at approximately 1pm, thousands of people where waiting for martyr, Reham Dawabshe, to arrive to Duma to attend her funeral.

After struggling for five weeks from severe burns all over her body, Reham Dawabshe died in the hospital. Reham’s home was attacked by illegal Israeli settlers on July 31st, by smashing the windows in the middle of the night, throwing in flammable liquids and molotov bombs and setting the whole house on fire. Her 18-month-old baby, Ali, died in the flames trapped in the house and her husband, Saed, died one week later in the hospital.

Saed, Reham and Ali Dawabshe, now all gone. Photo credit: Rex Features

Until this day, only 4-year-old, Ahmad, has survived but is still struggling from severe wounds in the hospital.

4 year old Ahmad Dawabshe is still in the hospital.

Thousands of people mourned the mother’s death in Duma, including hundreds of teachers and dozens of students from the Jurish School for Girls, where Reham worked as a math teacher. Many government representatives were present, including the Governor of Nablus, Akram al-Rujoub, and the Minister of Education, Sabri Seidam.

Thousands march in funeral procession in Duma. Photo credit ISM

Message from Directorate of Education of South Nablus. 'Gardens of Eternity, Martyrs go to Paradise, Oh, martyr, Reham Dawabshe' Photo credit ISM — Message from Directorate of Education of South Nablus. ‘Gardens of Eternity, Martyrs go to Paradise, Oh, martyr, Reham Dawabshe’ Photo credit ISM

Funeral procession where people demanded for justice and political unity. Photo credit ISM

Reham's funeral march. Photo credit ISM — Reham’s funeral march. Photo credit ISM

Palestinians marched towards the family grave. Photo credit ISM

Reham was buried next to her husband and son. Photo credit ISM

Soon after the funeral procession was finished, clashes broke out in the entrance of the village of Duma, where Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters and sound grenades towards Palestinian youth.

Clashes broke out in the entrance of Duma after the funeral. Photo credit ISM

To this day, the perpetrators of the arson attack that killed Ali, Reham and Saed Dawabshe have not been arrested. Israeli authorities only arrested a few random settlers right after the event occurred in order to show in the news media that they were working to make justice, but soon after most of these suspects were released.

It is important to note that the great majority of attacks perpetuated by illegal Israeli settlers towards Palestinian villagers are always ignored by the Israeli authorities, whereas Palestinians are harassed, imprisoned and beaten by Israeli soldiers on a daily basis for no reason.

Surviving in Gaza’s caravan houses

27th May | Miguel Hernández | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

The family El Najjar was expelled during the Nakba from the Palestinian village of Salamah. This village was the subject of a total ethnic cleansing by the Zionist colonizers.

Nowadays just ten houses remain from the almost 2000 that formed the village. In its place today we can find the Tel Aviv suburb known as Kfar Shalem.

Refugees since 1948, many of them established themselves in Khuza’a, a peasant village in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. For the last eight months a great part of the family has been living in caravans, as more than 45 homes belonging to the El Najjar family were bombed during the 2014 massacre.

In one of those, ISM members met Ashraf El Najjar, member of the family who also lost his home during the umpteenth Zionist massacre.
Ashraf is 41 years old and has seen how the Zionist entity bombed his home two times already. The first one was in 2009, during the massacre known as “Operation Cast Lead”, in which Israel also murdered one of his brothers. After that it took him several years to rebuild his home. However, once rebuilt, he could enjoy it just for 18 months, as in 2014 the Israeli occupation once again reduced it to a pile of rubble. This time they also murdered his father, two brothers, two sisters and his cousin.

With a smile on his face, despite his terrible circumstances, he shows ISM the caravans were most of his relatives survive nowadays. “We don’t have any hope regarding the reconstruction. No one has been here to check about our situation or needs”.

The first caravan he shows ISM is the one of Youssef El Najjar, who is now in the Hospital accompanied by his wife.
In the caravan we find Youssef’s daughter Azhar, 18 years old, taking care of the rest of the family. She is responsible of her grandmother, who lies disabled in the only bed in the caravan, and her younger siblings. The youngest, four years old, can only move around by crawling on the ground, as a birth defect prevents him from walking.
Azhar explains ISM how the life is in the caravans, “In winter we suffered a lot from the cold and the caravan flooded every time it rained. One time the water reached more than one meter’s height. Another time when the water rose the floods dragged all the sewage into the caravan. Now, in summer, the heat is unbearable, as an oven. I feel like I’m living in a grave”.

The next caravan we visited is the one of Asisa El Najjar, 65 years old. She lives there along with eight more people, five of whom are children. Her husband is in the hospital as well, therefore, he cannot work.
Three of the five children belong to Wasfi El Najjar, son of Asisa who was killed by the Zionist army during the last massacre, being just 26 years old. The older one is four years old and the youngest, who is only five months old, never met his father.
Asisa tells ISM how she and her husband suffer from asthma since they live in the caravan. She also shows us how the sewage of the bathroom goes to the only room of the caravan.

A few meters from there we find Mohamed and Suher El Najjar with their five children. Mohamed is unemployed, and the five children suffer from respiratory problems since they live in the caravan.

Hasma El Najjar, 75 years old, lives alone in a caravan that like all the other has the wooden floor completely rotten by the last winter rains. Which has caused her to fall several times already.

Finally ISM visits the caravan of Khadia EL Najjar, 53 years old, who lives with her husband and her grown children. One of the daughters has cancer and due to the criminal blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt she can’t receive the treatment needed.

Ironically, these caravans have been provided by the UK government. The same country that colonized Palestine for 26 years and later on handed it over to the Zionists, opening the doors to 67 years of land theft, occupation and genocide.

Text and photos: Miguel Hernández