Tag: Eva Bartlett

Shooting at farmers, what gives Israel the right?

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

3 February 2009

I was fairly certain that one of us would be shot today.

This morning, farmers from Abassan Jadiida (New Abassan), to the east of Khan Younis , the southern region, returned to land they’d been forced off of during and following the war on Gaza. The continual shooting at them by Israeli soldiers while they work the land intensified post-war on Gaza. The Israeli soldiers’ shooting was not a new thing, but a resumption of the policy of harassment that Palestinians in the border areas have been enduring for years, a harassment extending to invasions in which agricultural land, chicken farms, and the houses in the region have been targeted, destroyed in many cases.

Today’s Abassan farmers wanted to harvest their parsley.

Ismail Abu Taima, whose land was being harvested, explained that over the course of the year he invests about $54,000 in planting, watering and maintenance of the monthly crops. From that investment, if all goes well and crops are harvested throughout the year, he can bring in about $10,000/month, meaning that he can pay off the investment and support the 15 families dependent on the harvest.

The work began shortly after 11 am, with the handful of farmers working swiftly, cutting swathes of tall parsley and bundling it as rapidly as it was cut. These bundles were then loaded onto a waiting donkey cart. The speed of the farmers was impressive, and one realized that were they able to work ‘normally’ as any farmer in unoccupied areas, they would be very productive. A lone donkey grazed in an area a little closer to the border fence. When asked if this was not dangerous for the donkey, the farmers replied that they had no other choice: with the borders closed, animal feed is starkly absent. The tragedy of having to worry about being shot once again struck me, as it did when harvesting olives or herding sheep with West Bank Palestinians who are routinely attacked by Israeli settlers and by the Israeli army as they try to work and live on their land.

After approximately 2 hours of harvesting, during which the sound of an F-16 overhead was accompanied by Israeli jeeps seen driving along the border area, with at least one stationed directly across from the area in question, Israeli soldiers began firing. At first the shots seemed like warning shots: sharp and intrusive cracks of gunfire. The men kept working, gathering parsley, bunching it, loading it, while the international human rights observers present spread out in a line, to ensure our visibility.

It would have been hard to miss or mistake us, with fluorescent yellow vests and visibly unarmed–our hands were in the air.

Via bullhorn, we re-iterated our presence to the soldiers, informing them we were all unarmed civilians, the farmers were rightfully working their land, the soldiers were being filmed by an Italian film crew. We also informed some of our embassies of the situation: “we are on Palestinian farmland and are being shot at by Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border fence.”

For a brief period the shots ceased. Then began anew, again seemingly warning shots, although this time visibly hitting dirt 15 and 20 m from us. Furthest to the south, I heard the whizz of bullets past my ear, though to estimate the proximity would be impossible.

As the cracks of gunfire rang more frequently and louder, the shots closer, those of the farmers who hadn’t already hit the ground did so, sprawling flat for cover. The international observers continued to stand, brightly visible, hands in the air, bullhorn repeating our message of unarmed presence. The shots continued, from the direction of 3 or 4 visible soldiers on a mound hundreds of metres from us. With my eyeglasses I could make out their shapes, uniforms, the jeep… Certainly with their military equipment they could make out our faces, empty hands, parsley-loaded cart…

There was no mistaking the situation or their intent: pure harassment.

As the farmers tried to leave with their donkey carts, the shots continued. The two carts were eventually able to make it away, down the ruddy lane, a lane eaten by tank and bulldozer tracks from the land invasion weeks before. Some of us accompanied the carts away, out of firing range, then returned. There were still farmers on the land and they needed to evacuate.

As we stood, again arms still raised, still empty-handed, still proclaiming thus, the Israeli soldiers’ shooting drew much nearer. Those whizzing rushes were more frequent and undeniably close to my head, our heads. The Italian film crew accompanying us did not stop filming, nor did some of us with video cameras.

We announced our intention to move away, the soldiers shot. We stood still, the soldiers shot. At one point I was certain one of the farmers would be killed, as he had hit the ground again but in his panic seemed to want to jump up and run. I urged him to stay flat, stay down, and with our urging he did. The idea was to move as a group, a mixture of the targeted Palestinian farmers and the brightly-noticeable international accompaniers. And so we did, but the shots continued, rapidly, hitting within metres of our feet, flying within metres of our heads.

I’m amazed no one was killed today, nor that limbs were not lost, maimed.

While we’d been on the land, Ismail Abu Taima had gone to one end, to collect valves from the broken irrigation piping. The pipes themselves had been destroyed by a pre-war on Gaza invasion. “The plants have not been watered since one week before the war,” he’d told us. He collected the parts, each valve valuable in a region whose borders are sealed and where replacement parts for everything one could need to replace are unattainable or grossly expensive.

He’d also told us of the chicks in the chicken farm who’d first been dying for want of chicken feed, and then been bulldozed when Israeli soldiers attacked the house and building they were in.

My embassy rang me up, after we’d managed to get away from the firing: “We’re told you are being shot at. Can you give us the precise location, and maybe a landmark, some notable building nearby.”

I told Heather about the half-demolished house to the south of where we had been, and that we were on Palestinian farmland. After some further questioning, it dawned on her that the shooting was coming from the Israeli side. “How do you know it is Israeli soldiers shooting at you?” she’d asked. I mentioned the 4 jeeps, the soldiers on the mound, the shots from the soldiers on the mound (I didn’t have time to go into past experiences with Israeli soldiers in this very area and a little further south, similar experience of farmers being fired upon while we accompanied them.).

Heather asked if the soldiers had stopped firing, to which I told her, ‘no, they kept firing when we attempted to move away, hands in the air. They fired as we stood still, hands in the air. “ She suggested these were ‘warning shots’ at which I pointed out that warning shots would generally be in the air or 10s of metres away. These were hitting and whizzing past within metres.

She had no further thoughts at time, but did call back minutes later with Jordie Elms, the Canadian attache in the Tel Aviv office, who informed us that “Israel has declared the 1 km area along the border to be a ‘closed military zone’.”

When I pointed out that Israel had no legal ability to do such, that this closure is arbitrary and illegal, and that the farmers being kept off of their land or the Palestinians whose homes have been demolished in tandem with this closure had no other options: they needed to work the land, live on it… Jordie had no thoughts. He did, however, add that humanitarian and aid workers need to “know the risk of being in a closed area”.

Meaning, apparently, that it is OK with Jordie that Israeli soldiers were firing on unarmed civilians, because Israeli authorities have arbitrarily declared an area out of their jurisdiction (because Israel is “not occupying Gaza” right?!) as a ‘closed area’.

Israel’s latest massacre of 1,400 Palestinians –most of whom were civilians –aside, Israel’s destruction of over 4,000 houses and 17,000 buildings aside, Israel’s cutting off and shutting down of the Gaza Strip since Hamas’ election aside, life is pretty wretched for the farmers and civilians in the areas flanking the border with Israel. Last week, the young man from Khan Younis who was shot while working on farmland in the “buffer zone” was actually on land near where we accompanied farmers today. Why do Israeli authorities think they have an uncontested right to allow/instruct their soldiers to shoot at Palestinian farmers trying to work their land?

If Israeli authorities recognized Palestinian farmers’ need to work the land, Palestinian civilians’ right to live in their homes, then they would not have arbitrarily imposed a 1 km ban on existence along the border, from north to south. What gives Israel the right to say that now the previously-imposed 300 m ban on valuable agricultural land next to the order extends to 1 full kilometre, and that this inherently gives Israel the right to have bulldozed 10s of houses in this “buffer zone” and ravaged the farmland with military bulldozers and tanks.

Furthermore, what gives Israel the right to assume these impositions are justifiable, and the right to shoot at farmers continuing to live in and work on their land (as if they had a choice. Recall the size of Gaza, the poverty levels)?

Nothing does.

Aid workers and journalists risk life in Gaza

International Solidarity Movement volunteers Eva Bartlett and Ewa Jasiewicz were featured on Russia Today for their activism and reporting from Gaza.

Humanitarian workers and rights activists in Gaza are helping locals put their lives back together after the three-week-long Israeli offensive. Many aid workers were in the region during the fighting and came under fire along with residents.

All we’ve got left of him

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

2 February 2009

Abdul Rahman Ghraben’s mother carried in a yellow plastic bag.  “This is his pant leg, and tiny pieces of him,”  she said, holding the knotted bag at the handles. Her husband had been explaining how fourteen year old Abed was killed on January 11.

“The Israeli forces had been bombing hard so we’d evacuated the house, gone to Fakoura (UN school which had been bombed with white phosphorous). The first 3 days at the school we had only the clothes we were wearing, no blankets, no food. At night in Fakoura it was so cold and windy, so when we heard on the radio that there would be a cease-fire between 8 am and 11 am, Abed asked if he could return home to grab a jacket. We all went with him,”  Abu Abed explained, now holding the yellow bag.

“When we were in the house, the Israeli army starting bombing in the area,” said Umm Abed. “We were very frightened, we had thought the cease-fire meant we could return home safely.  We quickly took whatever clothes and food we could and left the house.  I thought Abed was ahead of us. At the school friends told us Abed hadn’t come back.  They also said that a drone had fired a missile at our area.  People were saying the missile had hit a child and shattered him to pieces.  We didn’t know it was Abed.”

Umm Abed stopped her recollection to take out the contents of the yellow supermarket bag. “We searched for Abed for 2 days.  People were telling us ‘your son was killed’ but we couldn’t find his body, we couldn’t believe it had been Abed.”

“Finally,” Abu Abed continued, pulling the tattered pant leg out of the bag, “we found this and knew Abed had been killed. It’s all that was left of him. Since then, since we’ve returned home we find more pieces of him.” The father pulled out a tuft of hair, a dried piece of some internal part of Abed, an inch long piece of sharp shrapnel from the drone’s missile.  “Daily we find small bits of him, all over the area.  He was blown to bits,” his father says.  Although the strike happened 3 weeks ago, the family’s pain is no less fresh.

“Why are they doing this to our children? What did my son do? Did he launch rockets? Where is their humanity when they kill a child like this?  He was a child, he had the right to live like any other child,” asked Abu Abed, voicing the questions that parents of over 400 children in Gaza are asking of the Israeli army and Israeli authorities making the decisions to bombard Gaza.

In a bullet hole in the wall beside Umm Abed,  a decorative flower had been stuck, the hole too large for the plastic stem. Efforts fall short to cover the ugly rampage of the soldiers inside a house which has been torn apart much as their lives have been torn apart. The Ghraben’s house is in the Hayid Amal neighbourhood of Attatra, in the Beit Lahia region.  Like the surrounding houses, it is puckered with scars of Israeli army firing, and bears evidence of the Israeli army’s invasion and rampage through it.  A bedroom door is torn off its hinges, clothes shredded by automatic gunfire, damage throughout the house.  Abu Yusef, an uncle and neighbour, had the day before shown his house: more extensive trashing had been done, but the family was back living in it, drafts and all.

Abu Abed made a parting plea to those outside Gaza: “We are asking the international community to cut their relationship with Israel, because Israel is killing children.  During just 10 minutes in my neighbourhood alone Israeli soldiers killed 10 children,” he said as an example to the wider massacre of children, and adult civilians, which happened during the 3 weeks of war on Gaza. “We are still not safe.  We still expect an Israeli bulldozer or tank could enter and bulldoze our homes at any time, because they have before.  There are still F-16s which fly over our house, and we never know when the next bomb will be dropped.”

Tuam Attatra

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

1 February 2009

Palestinian man surveys the damage to his home.
Palestinian man surveys the damage to his home.

In Tuam, Attatra, on day one of Israel’s declared, and immediately-violated, ‘cease-fire’ an old woman stood beside the wreckage of her 2 room cement block home. The tracks of the bulldozer which felled her home were still deeply rutted, painfully visible.

The house next her to her pile of rubble was still standing, but gutted by fire. Mohammed Abu Khusah had 19 people depending on the house whose kitchen, along with all of the bottom floor rooms, was burnt out. Upstairs, too. Six rooms upstairs completely black-stained and ravaged by fire, five downstairs.

Clothes taken out of cupboards and drawers, strewn everywhere. Sniper holes: 2 in front room, 2 in back room, 2 in a room looking onto a wide open area below. Hebrew writing, message unknown but intent suspicious, on many of the walls.

On the other side of the old woman’s rubble, another pile of blocks which had been three 3 level homes, housing 18, 10, and 6 people each.

Behind those ruins, down a slight rise of rubble, Khitam Abdel Majid sat in the dirt, shawls draped around her, surrounded by the men of her family and by twisted metal support beams. She told me that their 3 story house was bulldozed on the 15th day, along with everyone inside. Pointing at a corner room with cloth draped over the gaping hole, she explained her family was sleeping in the room. “It’s cold in there, freezing all night.”

A hand-written sign poking out of the heaps of concrete and house entrails denotes Wael el Khaldi’s former house. His house sits amidst yet another wasteland of destroyed homes. Atop the rubble, a wheelchair belonging to a 23 year old member of el Khaldi’s family sits squashed. One of the Red Crescent medics holds the crushed prosthetic legs belonging to the same amputee.

The Red Crescent teams are scouring the ruins, taking stock of blown out windows. Facing the massive destruction and 10s of destroyed houses in this northwestern area of Gaza alone, counting shattered windows seems trite, irrelevant. But the RC is doing what it can to immediately alleviate the suffering of Palestinians who can at least still stay in their homes, internal damage and desecration aside. It is winter, and the nights are cold. A window covering makes the difference between completely frigid nights and moderately tolerable nights (without electricity or gas, no means of heating except with blankets, if these have not been burned or tarnished).

Accompanying the RC team, I see a number of houses in a short time. No time for in depth testimony taking, just a surface view and understanding of each family’s tragedy.

Mohammed Ali laments the loss of the trees lining his family’s house (trees, as ever, are an important theme in Palestinians’ narrative: life, continuity, providing nourishment). “It took 12 years to cultivate these trees. We had oranges, lemons, olives, dates…” And a nice tiled patio, too, all razed with the swat of a gargantuan military bulldozer.

The next door neighbour’s front wall is missing, bulldozed. His porch swing sits inside the open room, the support beams buckling and cupboards bare for all to see.

“Henna kan fi bab. Mish maujoud,” the owner tells me. [There was a door here. It’s gone. (so is the wall, obviously)].

While the roads are only dirt lanes, the houses are spacious in this neighbourhood, and well-spaced apart. The lift would be good here, near the sea, were it not for numerous factors: the siege, the wanton destruction… We stop at a lovely olive and light green washed stucco house, again lined with trees (papaya, lemon, orange, date) and tastefully landscaped. Above the smiling faces which greet us and try to sit us down for tea, a gaping hole much larger than the original window. Bullet holes less-tastefully puncture the finish.

A villa, a seeming mansion, sits off the road, top floor window blackened from the chemical fires which raged inside. Professor Mohammed Okasha stands in his ruined kitchen, a vast kitchen arranged western-style, as is most of the house. “All of our clothes were burned. All of them. Everything,” he laments the losses in his house.

We move through the house, the walls are a uniform dripping-soot-black, and he explains:

“Every year, I went to Britain, photocopied books by Israeli authors which had been translated from Hebrew into English. Avi Schlaim, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe…”

Many houses later, less time, I’m only able to jot down notes, impressions.Many houses later, less time, I’m only able to jot down notes, impressions.

– 5 rooms damaged; missile, tank, and bulldozer. 25 people in the house, soft eyes. Background music is firing from Israeli gunboats off the coast. Importance of something as simple as plastic sheeting.

el Amoudi homeless

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

“Bissa flora,” he said. “Taste it, it’s delicious!”

“It’s used for stomach ailments, and is extremely healthy.  Has vitamins A, B, C and D,” Osama translated for me.  The botanist sat by his tree, his bulldozed tree, and went on extolling its virtues.

“The fruit helps to regulate your pulse and is good for blood circulation,” he confided.

How did he have so much knowledge about this tree, I wondered, and asked.

“I’ve got a catalogue inside my… house,” he said, gesturing at the re-piled concrete blocks, a portion of those which had formerly made up his home.  They now stood like  a Lego house, stacked 4m by 4 m and just tall enough to stand within with a slight stoop.

Back to the trees.

“I introduced this tree in Gaza.  I first saw it in Brazil and later found one in Israel, which I bought. I used to buy many trees in Israel, and I used to import many specialized trees for sale in Gaza,” he said.

Brazil?

“I’ve traveled in over 40 countries, you know. Before the siege, before it was impossible to leave Gaza.”

Why? For work? Other?

“I love to travel.”

Fair enough, so do I.

While the rest of the homeless in the el Amoudi area, in the Beit Lahia region, somewhere between Jabaliya and Attatra, were still working at making the most of their Lego shelter –cleaning up remaining rubble and rubbish, and keen to tell me about their new, completely inadequate shelters which stand roughly where larger, furniture and memory-filled homes stood until Israel’s war on Gaza –Abu Bassam was more interested in fostering my knowledge of the Bissa Flora tree.

He insisted on opening the remaining fruit for me to sample, cutting the rough outer skin pumpkin-style and scooping out an apricot-tasting pulp for me to sample.  He was right, delicious.

Curious as to which block shelter was his, I finally coaxed him away from talk of trees.  “He’s my husband, this is our house,” the woman who’d been patiently standing beside me, now and then trying to pry me away from Abu Bassam.  And so we went to see their home.  “It was 300 square metres before.  There are 10 in our family, so it was a good size,” she said, pulling back a cloth serving as a door to reveal a few mattresses spread on the floor.

“I’m sleeping here with 3 of our kids.  The others are still staying with family.  We want to live here, but you see, it’s too small and not possible to cook here.”

Like the 25 other houses in the neighbourhood, Abu Bassam’s house was first hit by Apache and tank shelling, and then bulldozed, intentionally felled, his wife explained. “The UNRWA has promised to rebuild our houses, but we don’t know if or when that will happen.  Right now, we’re just hoping for tents.  The tents are terrible to live in, but we have nothing now. Nothing.”

Looking around the wasteland of rubble and Lego houses, it became apparent that this is true, and even that what Abu Bassam has been able to salvage for a block structure is larger than some of the others, some of which measure just 2m by 2 m, barely large enough for one person to lie down in, let alone a family.