Palestinian farmer injured by Israeli gunfire in the Gaza Strip

16th November 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

Mneifi Abu Abdullah. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)
Mneifi Abu Abdullah. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)

On Wednesday, 13th November, gunfire by Israeli occupation forces injured a Palestinian farmer near al-Maghazi refugee camp, in the center of Gaza strip.

Mneifi Abu Abdullah, age 25, was working with three other farmers about 600 meters from the separation barrier.

Abu Abdullah is a worker who ears 30 shekels per day in the fields.

Farmworkers near al-Maghazi are used to hearing gunshots. The Israeli military presence is constant in areas along the barrier.

On Thursday, some of Abu Abdullah’s uncles, as well as another farmer present during the shooting, visited his room in al-Shifa hospital.

The witness said he suddenly heard three shots, injuring Abu Abdullah in at his right shoulder, around 2:50 pm. Another bullet struck near his feet.

The farmers transported Abu Abdullah roughly one kilometer before reaching an ambulance that brought him to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir el-Balah.

The witness added that he had not seen Israeli soldiers, but military vehicles had been moving along the barrier.

On the same day in Deir el-Balah, another farmer, from Abu Daher family, was wounded in his leg by Israeli gunfire and rushed to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital.

Abu Abdullah is married and has two children. His work in the fields is his family’s only source of livelihood.

He was transferred from al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital to al-Shifa hospital. The bullet entered and exited his shoulder. He needs surgery, as the bullet severed a nerve.

The ceasefire of 21st November 2012 established that Israeli occupation forces should “refrain from hitting residents in areas along the border” and “cease hostilities in the Gaza Strip by land, by sea and by air, including raids and targeted killings.”

However, Israeli military attacks by land and sea followed from the day after the ceasefire, and Israeli warplanes fly constantly over the Gaza Strip. Seven civilians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces since the end of their last major offensive, “Operation Pillar of Defense,” and more than 130 have been wounded.

These attacks on the Gaza Strip continue amid international silence.

Gaza farmers succeed in tending to olive harvest — with international support

16th November 2013 | The Electronic Intifada, Joe Catron | Gaza City, Occupied Palestine

Palestinian workers sort olives at a press in Gaza City, October 2013. (Ashraf Amra / APA images)
Palestinian workers sort olives at a press in Gaza City, October 2013. (Ashraf Amra / APA images)

During the recent olive harvest, which lasted from the end of September through October, dozens of Palestinian volunteers joined farmers in their groves near the tense barriers of the Gaza Strip.

The volunteers worked during a week at the height of the harvest season, from 20 to 27 October, in two of the farming districts most often targeted by Israeli forces: Beit Hanoun, around the Erez checkpoint in northern Gaza, and al-Qarara, a town in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip.

Along with others near the “buffer zone” separating Gaza from present-day Israel, these areas face regular incursions by Israeli forces, which often send tanks and bulldozers to level farmland. Even more frequent are the bursts of gunfire aimed at farmers or others near the barrier erected by Israel.

These attacks have claimed vast tracts of productive farmland stretching hundreds of meters into the Gaza Strip, converting them to wasteland or fields of low-maintenance crops, most of which are wheat.

Abeer Abu Shawish, project coordinator for the Protection for Better Production campaign — a project of the Arab Center for Agricultural Development — said that more than fifty volunteers joined the effort.

The mobilization involved farmers’ organizations, like the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and other groups across Gaza.

“Our partner organizations mobilized volunteers to help farmers in the restricted area harvest their olives,” Abu Shawish said. “They’re other farmers, civil society activists, women: all these people joined us this year.”

Destruction

“We can just plant wheat and wait,” said Abu Jamal Abu Taima, a farmer in the village of Khuzaa outside Khan Younis. “Other crops need to be tended every day.”

Abu Jamal’s 50 dunams (a dunam is equivalent to 1,000 square meters), which he plans to sow with wheat after the November rains begin, once contained olive groves as well as greenhouses for an array of vegetables.

“We used to grow enough olives for seventy large bottles of olive oil,” he said. “Now? Six.”

In 2002, Israeli forces began razing Palestinian agricultural areas near the barrier, as well as along the Philadelphi Route by the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt.

This included the demolition of Abu Jamal’s olive groves and greenhouses, as well as his home. “The Israelis destroyed them with four bulldozers, five huge tanks and three Hummers,” he said.

Since its occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 1967, Israel has uprooted 800,000 olive trees in those territories, Oxfam reported in 2011. As the graphic design activism initiative Visualizing Palestine recently illustrated, those trees would cover an area33 times the size of New York City’s Central Park.

By 2013, according to the Palestinian ministry of agriculture in Gaza, Israeli forces had leveled “some 20,000 dunams of land areas planted with half a million trees” in the Gaza Strip, contributing to a local deficit in olive oil production of 60 percent (“Israeli crimes against farmers cause 60 percent deficit in olive production,” Palestine News Network, 24 September 2013).

In the West Bank, the destruction of olive trees by both Israeli settlers and occupation forces continues. Stop the Wall and the Palestinian Farmers’ Union have organized an accompaniment project there, the You Are Not Alone campaign. By 8 November, its volunteers had documented the burning and uprooting of 1,905 olive trees by settlers during this harvest season alone.

Toxic sewage

A report by Stop the Wall states that its list of attacks does not “pretend to be complete.” Among the problems encountered by farmers trying to reach their olive trees are “settlers pump[ing] toxic sewage water on agricultural land” (“Settlers burn and uproot 1,905 olive trees during the harvest season,” 8 November 2013).

On 28 October, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published excerpts of a list of settler attacks on Palestinian olive groves and farmers maintained by the Israeli army (“Israeli attacks on Palestinian olive groves kept secret by state.”

The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din has reported that Israeli occupation police “overwhelmingly failed to investigate the incidents and prosecute offenders,” noting that of 211 investigations actually opened between 2005 and June 2013, only four produced indictments (“97.4 percent of investigative files relating to damage of Palestinian olive trees are closed due to police failings,” 21 October 2013).

On 11 September, the Israeli army’s West Bank commander said his troops would destroy olive groves in the town of Yabad for unspecified “security purposes” (“Israeli authorities to destroy olive groves for ‘security purposes,” Ma’an News Agency, 9 November 2013).

“We are still here”

But the destruction of olive trees in the Gaza Strip is largely complete. For years Israel has used armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, accompanied by tanks, to clear away olive trees in the “buffer zone.” Farmers in the area, who face the constant threats of both gunfire and leveling of land, have little reason to plant any crop needing regular attention or significant resources, much less crops that require years of careful cultivation and maintenance.

“I want to plant more olive trees, and other things, but cannot,” Abu Taima said. “For now, I plant wheat.”

With exceptions — most notably a 28 October airstrike on an olive grove near Soudanya in the north of Gaza — the Strip’s olive harvest passed more quietly than most agricultural activities in the territory.

“We try to bring international attention to the farmers and discourage Israeli attacks on them,” the Protection for Better Production campaign’s Abu Shawish said. “By supporting them, we encourage them to access their lands and keep using them. It shows the Israelis we are still here, and we can access our lands without any fears. Farmers in the restricted area can resist the occupation by existing on their own lands.”

The Arab Center for Agricultural Development’s programs for farmers do not end with accompaniment, Abu Shawish explained. The organization has conducted intensive leadership training for 100 farmers from the Gaza Strip’s five governorates, in farmers’ rights as well as skills like public advocacy. It has also held awareness-raising workshops for 500 more farmers.

“We are interested in building a social movement for farmers in Gaza,” she said.

The workshops also aim to build popular support for boycotts of Israeli products and the purchase of Palestinian goods among farmers.

“These workshops are about how to encourage farmers themselves to be involved in the boycott campaign, and how they can help the national economy by boycotting Israeli agriculture,” Abu Shawish said.

“We try to encourage farmers to boycott Israeli agricultural goods and buy Palestinian products to support the local economy. It’s raising awareness. At the same time, it’s about getting farmers involved in the campaign itself.”

Abu Taima, too, has a path of resistance.

“For us, the land is something very important,” he said. “We cannot just leave it. We will not have another 1948. We will not leave our lands again.”

Joe Catron is a US activist in Gaza, Palestine. He co-edited The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag, an anthology of accounts by detainees freed in the 2011 prisoner exchange. He blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com and tweets @jncatron.

Israeli surveillance balloon over Palestinian farmland in ‘buffer zone’ near Beit Hanoun – 6/11/13

8th November 2013 | Corporate Watch, Tom Anderson and Therezia Cooper | Beit Hanoun, Occupied Palestine

An Israeli surveillance balloon was hovering above farmers working in Beit Hanoun in the 'buffer' area – 6/11/13.
An Israeli surveillance balloon was hovering above farmers working in Beit Hanoun in the ‘buffer’ area – 6/11/13.
Close-up of surveillance balloon – Beit Hanoun, 6/11/13
Close-up of surveillance balloon – Beit Hanoun, 6/11/13
A Palestinian farmer sorts vegetables underneath the surveillance balloon – 6/11/13
A Palestinian farmer sorts vegetables underneath the surveillance balloon – 6/11/13
Israeli surveillance balloon over Palestinian homes in the 'buffer' zone – 6/11/2013
Israeli surveillance balloon over Palestinian homes in the ‘buffer’ zone – 6/11/2013

 

Photos: Israeli warplane strikes olive grove north of Gaza

29th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)

On the morning of Monday, 28 October, the Israeli air forces bombed agricultural land in the north of Gaza City.

The airstrike took place at 9:25 am. An F-16 fighter jet bombed an area planted with olive trees on Mukhabarat Street, near Soudanya.

The bombing created a huge crater. The land belongs to the Shohaber family, which produces oil from the olive trees. The family also owns a trucking company that transports materials from the Karem Shalom checkpoint into the Gaza Strip.

Hazem Shohaber, owner of the land, told me his house was damaged in the bombing. His family has only lived in the new home for three months.

“I was sitting behind the wall around the yard when the bombing took place,” Hazem said. “I was shocked. I was not able to do anything. Thank God my children were not on the land. They were in school. They usually play here.”

(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)

Hazem has three sons  and three young daughters who were in school at the time of the bombing. The explosion cracked the walls of his house. All its windows, as well as those of adjacent buildings, shattered.

A few meters away from the bomb site is a primary school for girls.

“The girls were in class,” Hazem said. “They fled. The situation was terrible. Teachers could not calm them. The ambulances came. Everyone feared that children had died in the explosion.”

A few meters away from the bomb site is a primary school for girls.

“The girls were in class,” Hazem said. “They fled. The situation was terrible. Teachers could not calm them. The ambulances came. Everyone feared that children had died in the explosion .”

Hazem’s wife offers a cup of coffee. His daughter, Farah, age six, hides under the table, looking shocked. Who knows how many other children will do the same today?

The ceasefire of 21 November 2012 established that the Israeli military forces should “refrain from hitting residents in areas along the border” and “cease hostilities in the Gaza Strip by land, by sea and by air, including raids and targeted killings.”

But Israeli military attacks by land and sea have followed from the day after the ceasefire,, and Israeli warplanes constantly fly over the Gaza Strip. In areas by the Israel-imposed “buffer zone,”Israeli forces have killed seven civilians since the end of the “Pillar of Defense” military offensive. At least 124 others have been wounded.

These attacks against the civilian population of Gaza continue, but are met only with silence by the international community.

In Gaza, hundreds of miles from the battlefield

28th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

The "buffer zone" is seen from the second floor of Nasser Abu Said's house in Jahr el-Deek. On 28 April 2011 the house, which stands 300 meters from the separation barrier, was shelled by Israeli tanks and partially destroyed. (Photo by Desde Palestina)
The “buffer zone” is seen from the second floor of Nasser Abu Said’s house in Jahr el-Deek. On 28 April 2011 the house, which stands 300 meters from the separation barrier, was shelled by Israeli tanks and partially destroyed. (Photo by Desde Palestina)

Drones fly over rooftops at night, awakening peoples’ memories. They may only patrol, or carry deadly cargo with them. F-16 planes draws streaks across the sky. Here on the ground, no one knows what order the pilot has for the day. Tanks raid across the separation barrier, devastating farmland. Do farmers plant more seeds, or is it too late in the season?

Boats patrol off the coast. For how many nautical miles do they allow fishing today? Enough for it to be meaningful? Or will they start shooting like so many times before, ruin fishermen’s gear, seize their boats, and take away their livelihood, forcing the men on board to strip naked and swim over to them, laughing at them, humiliating them, arresting them for trying to support themselves and their families in their own waters?

Medicine cabinets sit empty in the hospitals. Only the labels are left for antibiotics and other vital medicines. During long power cuts, only the generator in the basement of the hospital keeps dialysis patients alive. Will they get more gas for it before it runs out?

It’s a scene from a war. But the battle is not here. Nor is in Jerusalem or the West Bank.

Palestinian and international activists hold signs in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by the buffer zone in Zeitoun on 9 February 2013.
Palestinian and international activists hold signs in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by the buffer zone in Zeitoun on 9 February 2013. (Photo by Desde Palestina)

The battlefield is in the West. That is where the war can be won. The battle is against the media, lobbyists and companies that do not have a column for people in their annual reports. Victory getting people to understand what is happening, getting them to take off their blinders, engaging them and winning their hearts . Victory is to expose the true nature of politicians who insist that some people are not people and therefore are exempt from human rights. Victory is to show the unvarnished truth , the naked truth without censorship or editing. Victory is forcing the democratically-elected leaders of the West to take responsibility.

Victory will be achieved by people exercising their power to influence, either individually or in groups. This is where the battlefield is.