06th March | Miguel Hernández | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
On the 3rd of May, the trial of nine Palestinian fishermen kidnapped by the Egyptian army while fishing in waters of the border city of Rafah, took place in the Egyptian city of Al Arish. Three of the fishermen are brothers, Ali Abu Hamada, 36 years old, with eight children, Mahmoud Abu Hamada, 22 years old, and Mohamed Abu Hamada, 32 years old with three children. Among the hostages there’s also a 13 years old boy.
Mohamed’s wife with their three children.
Since the end of the last massacre in Gaza the situation of the fishermen has been worse than ever. They don’t even dare to reach the four mile limit.
Despite the fact that, officially, the sea blockade imposed by the Israeli state starts at six miles, the attacks on the fishermen are continuous even as close as two miles out.
Gaza sea port
Palestinians locked in Gaza tell us how much the position of the Eyptian government and its total coordination with the Israeli state regarding the policies towards the Palestinian people surprises and saddens them.
To the destruction of the tunnels that supplied the fishermen with fiberglass, necessary to fix the bullet holes in their boats, and the spare parts for engines, has, in recent months, been added the abduction of Palestinian fishermen and vessels that fish near Egyptian waters.
The mother of the three brothers, Nasmiya, native of Yibna, a Palestinian village wiped out by Israeli colonialism during the Nakba, described the umpteenth misfortune that the creation of the State of Israel in Paletine has brought to her life.
On the 16th March 2015, her sons, along with six other fishermen from Al Shati refugee camp, located in the Northern part of the Gaza Strip, headed south to the city of Rafah, trying to escape from the continuous attacks of the Israeli occupation forces and looking for less polluted and exploited waters.
The day after, the family received a phone call from the Egyptian army telling her that the nine fishermen were dead and that their bodies were in Egypt, ready to be returned the next time Rafah border opened.
It wasn’t until two weeks later when one of her sons managed to take a picture of the nine men and sent it to his mother, that she knew they were still alive.
Despite the bad quality of the picture, the signs of torture on their bodies was clear; cigarette burns, black eyes, wounds and bruises. For security reasons Nasmiya asks us not to publish the picture.
The family still doesn’t know the outcome of the trial, and no one dares to make predictions.
11th March 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Jenny and Derek Graham
On Christmas Day 2013, a small armada of tank trucks drove around Jabaliya, the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and one of the areas severely affected during the recent floods. Clean water is in short supply here, and many households are forced to spend more than a quarter of their disposable income on this coveted resource. In a refugee camp marked by poverty, this cost is even higher than it sounds. So the truck made frequent stops to fill the water tanks on rooftops, in stairwells or in shacks of corrugated iron and tarpaulins, since the water, this time, was free.
The news of free water spread like wildfire in the camp, and people began to gather around the cars with jugs they wanted to fill, some as small as five liters. A little girl with pigtails came with a coffeepot. Others pointed to houses a few blocks away, afraid that the water would run out before the cars reached them. But the water would suffice. 2.3 million liters were distributed over a period of five weeks in a well-coordinated program. The initiators are an Irish couple, Derek and Jenny Graham, and the program was funded by the Perdana Global Peace Foundation.
This was not the first time the Grahams had taken the initiative to coordinate a similar program. In 2012, they worked for three months handing out water, all over the Gaza Strip that time in green-colored bottles. 600,000 1.5 liter bottles, purchased from an international soft drink giant’s Gaza plant, were carried into mosques and churches for further distribution to hospitals and schools, but also handed directly from the cars to the outstretched hands in the areas most affected by poverty. On Fridays, during the weekends here, the drivers also worked for free, contributing in this way to distribute water to more people in need.
Water distribution is not the only thing the Grahams do. On Christmas Evem they were in a Bedouin camp in the north with blankets and plastic sheeting they had purchased using funds raised on their Web site, separate from Perdana. Because of the simple homes the Bedouins had built, they were hit very hit by the storms that recently swept across the Gaza Strip and in dire need of help. Not only was there major damage to their homes and cattle-sheds, but most of their crops were beyond rescue. But they fell through the cracks if they were not refugees, and were therefore not supported by the UN refugee agency, UNRWA. The government’s ability and willingness to invest in infrastructure near the buffer zone near the separation barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip, facing constant shootings and incursions by the occupying power, is limited.
The Grahams’ solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza did not start here. In 2008, Derek was on the Free Gaza and Liberty boats when they broke the siege, even if only temporarily. Later that year, he sailed on the Dignity which was boarded by the Israeli military, resulting in a short detention. More attempts followed, on Humanity in 2009, and with Jenny on the Rachel Corrie and Challenger I and II in 2010. In 2011, they made an effort with the MV Finch, but were forced away, and into Egyptian waters, by the Israeli military about 400 meters from their goal. A three-week detention on board the boat, docked in al- Arish, followed. According to Israeli terminology, they are probably classified as repeat offenders. That they tried to bring medicine to a health care system desperately in need because of the blockade, as well as cement for reconstruction, is not likely to be seen as a mitigating factor. The cargo the MV Finch carried, a total of 7.5 kilometers of PVC sewer pipe, finally entered Gaza, with help from the UN, after an eight-month battle.
Their work for the Palestinian people has resulted in an impressive network of contacts with influential people at multiple levels within the community, necessary contacts for the plans they are making for the future. Recently they received approval from the port authority and support among fishermen for an experiment to significantly reduce fuel consumption relative to the catch, something important when fuel prices have doubled since Egypt demolished the tunnels, and with catches gradually decreasing already due to Israeli military limits on fishermen’s ability to pursue their profession. Among their plans is also a sea rescue unit, an effort that is already underway and a project that finds legitimacy in the fourth Geneva Convention.
But what is it that compels them to do all this? They are now in their sixth year, starting from when they first entered by sea. They do not seek fame, and the compensation they receive from Perdana is only paid when they perform projects on its behalf. And why Gaza? Jenny looks up from her laptop when I ask the question, shrugs, and explains for me the similarities between the Palestinian situation and the Irish people’s suffering during the British occupation: the arbitrary arrests, the denials of human rights, and the desire for freedom and self-determination that cannot be extinguished even by force of arms. They have no trouble identifying their history with the Palestinians, and it feels completely natural to assist them. Derek nods in agreement, adding that they cannot reach the West Bank after their time in Israeli detention, and the Gaza Strip is the only part of Palestine where they can reach and work. There are moments when we wonder how long we will cope, he tells me, but when we see that our efforts are making a difference, it is easier to continue.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos brutally attacked Freedom Flotilla 1, killing eight Turkish and one American passenger on board the Mavi Marmara, most having been killed at close range, execution style. They injured more than 50 other passengers, both on the Mavi Marmara and on the other four boats sailing to the embattled territory of Gaza to bring the attention of the world to Israel’s illegal blockade of 1.6 million Palestinians. Not only were our passengers murdered and maimed, but the Israeli government has refused to return over $1 million in money and equipment, including cameras and videos which are of evidential value.
In the 15 months since Israel’s unwarranted attack on five boats carrying human rights watchers, Israel has been trying to spin the story that their well-armed soldiers were the victims and we were the aggressors. Several reports have already been written, most squarely blaming Israel for its attack on unarmed civilians.
The UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission took evidence from 112 eyewitnesses, reviewed forensic evidence, including autopsy reports and inspected the Mavi. It found that, because a humanitarian crisis exists in Gaza, Israel’s blockade is ulawful and ‘cannot be sustained in law…regardless of the grounds” used as justification. Israel’s blockade is collective punishment and in violation of article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, inflicting civilian damage disproportionate to any military advantage. Therefore, since Freedom Flotilla 1 neither presented an imminent threat to Israel nor was designed to contribute to any war effort against Israel, intercepting the flotilla was ‘clearly unlawful’ and could not be justified as self-defense.
Israel refused to cooperate with this UN panel even though the United Nations and governments all around the world called for just such an independent investigation of the events.
Instead, the Israeli government set up its own investigatory panel, The Turkel Commission, led by Israeli retired Supreme Court Judge Jacob Turkel and three other Israelis issued a report on January 23, 2011 exonerating the commandos, then saying the blockade was legal. The commission did not interview a single passenger or crew member from any of the boats but only received testimony from the Israeli military.
On January 28, 2011, Amnesty International condemned the Turkel findings as no more than a whitewash. “Despite being nearly 300 pages long, the report crucially fails to explain how the activists died and what conclusions the Commission reached regarding the IDF’s specific actions in each case.”
Free Gaza shares Amnesty International’s analysis that the conflict between the Israeli armed forces and unarmed civilians was NOT armed conflict, making international humanitarian law (IHL) the wrong framework; international human rights law and law enforcement norms should have been applied, which would have made the use of force – and especially lethal force –an act of last resort.
Now there is the Palmer/Uribe report due to be released tomorrow, which apparently adopts the same faulty IHL framework.
According to Audrey Bomse, Board member and Legal Adviser to Free Gaza : “If the leaks we’ve heard from Israeli officials are correct, the holes in this report are big enough to sail a flotilla of ships through. There are serious problems with the Panel’s composition, mandate and legal analysis. But most disturbing of all is the fact that the Secretary General’s Panel apparently condones Israel’s gross violations of the human and national rights of the Palestinian people and the rights of those in solidarity with them.”
The Panel has 4 members, one from Israel and one from Turkey, plus Geoffrey Palmer, former prime minister of New Zealand and ex-president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe. The choice of Uribe as vice-chairman is suspect, given his intimate association with the military and paramilitary practice of murdering civilians in Colombia. The Panel, was only tasked to review the reports of the national investigations by Turkey and Israel (the Turkel Committee), not to conduct an in-depth objective investigation. Its ultimate goal, was to “positively affect the relationship between Turkey and Israel.”
International humanitarian law (IHL, the law of armed conflict) is the wrong legal framework to be used as the basis for judging the lawfulness of the actions taken by Israel both against the civilian population of Gaza (the blockade) and against those resisting the boarding of the MM. The conflict between the Israeli navy and unarmed civilians on the Mavi Marmara was not armed conflict. International human rights law and law enforcement norms should have been applied, which would have made the use of force – and especially lethal force –an act of last resort. Nor should the legality of the blockade of occupied Gaza be analyzed in the framework of the law of armed conflict.
If indeed the Uribe Report has concluded that the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza – a serious measure of war – is legal and in accordance with international law, then this Report will contradict numerous other UN reports and resolutions, most recently that of the Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission, on the issue of the legality of the Gaza siege.
As the Human Rights Council Fact‐Finding Mission observed, “public confidence in any investigative process … is not enhanced when the subject of the investigation either investigates himself or plays a pivotal role in the process.”
Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian lawyer with American and Israeli citizenship. In 2001 Huwaida co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Huwaida is co-author of “Peace Under Fire: Israel, Palestine, and the International Solidarity Movement.” She taught in a human rights law clinic at Al-Quds University, the first legal clinic in the Arab World. She was one of the initiators and organizers of a delegation of American lawyers to Gaza in February 2009, and co-edited the report on their findings. Huwaida is currently the Chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement. Since August 2008, she has led 5 successful sea voyages to the Gaza Strip. She was one of the primary organizers of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, traveling with it when it was lethally attacked by Israeli forces on 31 May 2010.
تحمل المحامية الفلسطينية هويدا عراف الجنسيتين الأميركية والإسرائيلية. وقد ساهمت في العام 2001 في تأسيس “حركة التضامن الدولي” التي تم ترشيحها مرتين لنيل جائزة نوبل للسلام. كما شاركت في تأليف كتاب ”السلام تحت النار : إسرائيل وفلسطين وحركة التضامن الدولي.” وفي سنة 2009 قامت بالتدريس في عيادة قانونية لحقوق الإنسان في جامعة القدس في القدس، وهي أول عيادة قانونية في العالم العربي. وكانت قد بادرت مع مجموعة من الأشخاص في تنظيم انتقال وفد من المحامين الأميركيين إلى غزة في فبراير/شباط 2009، فأخذت على عاتقها تحرير تقرير تقصي الحقائق الذي يعرض النتائج التي توصلوا إليها. ترأس هويدا في الوقت الراهن حركة غزة الحرة، وقد قادت منذ أغسطس/آب 2008 خمس رحلات بحرية ناجحة إلى القطاع. هذا بالإضافة إلى كونها أحد المنظمين الرئيسين لأسطول الحرية الذي هدف إلى فك الحصار عن غزة وكانت على متنه حين تعرض إلى هجوم مميت من قبل القوات الإسرائيلية في 31 مايو/أيار 2010.
Freedom Flotilla 2 is setting sail to Gaza soon. Despite claims that the flotilla is not needed because “Rafah is now open”, the people of Gaza are still trapped and suffocated by Israel’s cruel blockade. Please watch this short video and share it far & wide to spread awareness about our action and why Gaza and all of Palestine needs us!
A video to inspire the international community and continue the support for the Freedom Flotilla II – Stay Human.
