Tag: Gaza

#TweepStrike: A call from Gaza to support Palestinian prisoners

11 October 2011 | The Electronic Intifada, Rana Baker

In solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held under harsh conditions in Israel’s jails, a new twitter trend emerged today from Gaza. The trend is #TweepStrike and is an open invitation to everyone across the globe to go on a hunger strike on Wednesday Oct. 12th.

A few months ago, I was on visit to one of the prisoners’ families. With moist eyes and a shaky voice the prisoner’s mother told me that she had, for many times, tried to visit her son but “Mr. Kalb,” Mr. dog, had always been there to turn her back home.

My instinct told me then that Mr. Kalb must be a nickname of a cruel Israeli officer. I was wrong.

Join the #TweepStrike

“Mr. Kalb is a huge police dog and he is responsible for the prison’s visits.” She had told me. “According to his mood, we’re either allowed to see our loved ones or ordered to escort ourselves back home. If Mr. Kalb is in a bad mood and barks a lot, we have to understand that visits are not allowed, if he is friendly, officers will let us in” her explanation followed.

To be humiliated to such extent, to be jailed without reason (as most cases have proved to be), and to prevent ICRC experts from testing jails’ conditions are nothing but illegal acts of a racist state that enjoys severe impunity and support of world powers, ahead  of them of course,  the United States.

Because Palestinian prisoners are denied their rights stipulated in international law and the Geneva accords, we have decided to turn this coming Wednesday into a day of solidarity with nearly 11,000 Palestinian prisoners jailed under harsh conditions.

To spread the word out we are using the following form to state our intention to join the strike:

My name is ( ___________ ) and I will go on a hunger strike on Wednesday in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners.  #TweepStrike #HS4Palestine .

Gaza: Planting in something dead

5 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza 

Around Gaza is a 300 meter “buffer zone,” a no go zone, a land of death.  Gaza is not just a prison, it is a shrinking prison.  Every time that Israel expands this zone, Gaza gets a little smaller.  Every Tuesday, the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative and the International Solidarity Movement march into the buffer zone to challenge the occupation and the theft of Palestinian land.  Today, we also marched in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners who are on hunger strike in the jails of the occupation.

What could be more logical than one group of prisoners marching in support of another group of prisoners?

We gathered near the Agricultural College of Beit Hanoun at 11 a.m.  We loaded olive trees, shovels, and big jugs of water onto the van.  There was no space in the van, so all of the goods rode on top of the van.  We set off down the road toward the buffer zone, slowly so that nothing would fall off the van as we drove down the rutted road.  We reached the buffer zone, stopped the van, and began to unload the olive trees and everything necessary to plant them.  These olive trees would join the others that we planted last week.  We plan on slowly returning the lands of the buffer zone to what they were before the Israeli’s declared the area a zone of death, we plan on making olive groves flourish in the buffer zone.  Our struggle is not just to return life to the buffer zone, but to make a regular life possible in the areas close to the buffer zone.

The buffer zone is now a little greener than yesterday after planting 20 trees in the buffer zone.  The death that haunts this area is a result of the occupation and its relentless destroying bulldozers.  The same bulldozers that crushed Rachel Corrie to death in Rafah in 2003.

Sabur Zaaneen from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative spoke.  He said that we must “affirm our right to land and cultivate and strengthen the resilience of farmers and their return to work the land despite all the terrorist practices of the Israeli occupation.”

“[We] need for a mass movement to support the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.”

Gaza protest supports Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike

3 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Today over a thousand Palestinians converged on the International Committee of the Red Cross building in Gaza, Palestine, continuing a tent protest that began outside the walled compound yesterday and bolstering a weekly sit-in by the families of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.

These events began a week of action in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on their seventh day of an escalating hunger strike against the inhumane conditions in Israeli prisons. 35 Palestinian activists joined the prisoners in their open-ended hunger strike and a number of others, including the Gaza leaders of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, announced their participation in a one-day strike.

“I was in prison from October 15, 2003 until December 31, 2005,” said Mohammed Abu Uda, one of the many former prisoners in Gaza. He was arrested because someone had mentioned his name under torture, claiming that he was part of the resistance. He was taken to the prison in Ashkelon, where he was subjected to 68 days of investigation. “I was kept in solitary confinement for 30 days, I went out only for questioning. These interviews lasted from 8 to 24 hours, periods in which I could not eat nor drink nor sleep. Once I was questioned for 64 hours straight.”

Abu Uda was held from October 15, 2003 until December 31, 2009, serving a year beyond his initial sentence.

Abu Hamza, one of the organizers of the garrison to the Red Cross, explained that Palestinian prisoners “are kept in isolation, they are prevented from communicating with family or with anyone.” He also mentioned Palestinians like Abu Khaleel Khandeeja, Haragano Ishaq, Ali El Jaafri, and Elraiy Ibrahim, who have died in Israeli prisons due to torture, the denial of medication, and previous hunger strikes.

Israel currently detains over 6,000 Palestinians, including about 270 held under “administrative detention” without charge or trial.

Three cousins die in Gaza tunnel collapse

30 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Shortly after 5:00 pm on Sunday, September 25, three Palestinians died when sewage leaking from an Egyptian pipeline caused a tunnel connecting the Egyptian and Palestinian sides of the Rafah border, in which they were working, to collapse.

It was the second time that the pipeline, which pumps sewage east into the Sinai, had sprung a leak in the area.

The three, all cousins, lived in the south of the Gaza Strip. Feras Ahmed Al-Shaer, 18 years old, lived in Khan Younis with his parents, one brother, and seven sisters. He was completing his last year of high school. Fady Mostafa Al-Shaer, also 18, lived in Rafah with his parents, four brothers, and two sisters. He had decided to work in the tunnels to help support his family, which lived in two rooms. Anwer Eid Al-Shaer, age 22, lived in Rafah and needed money to finish his final year of studies at Al-Quds Open University.

After the collapse, other tunnels workers were able to escape to the Palestinian side. The bodies of the three Al-Shaer cousins, who had been closest to the Egyptian side, lay in rubble and sewage for two days until Egyptian rescue workers were able to excavate them at 5:00 am Tuesday.

Mohammed Abu Al-Shaer, the cousins’ uncle, spoke of the helpfulness of Egyptian authorities and said that the Al-Shaer family had brought oil to fuel the rescue workers’ lights.

“We hope that this siege will end soon, so others won’t be forced to take similar risks in the tunnels. We want to live like people everywhere else,” he said.

International activists in Gaza defiant despite repeated attacks

26 September 2011 | Islam Online, Hama Waqum

The Civil Peace Service (CPS) Gaza human rights observation boat has returned to the waters off the Gazan coast after being grounded for two months due to Israeli naval attacks.

CPS Gaza aims to monitor human rights violations committed off the coast of Gaza, in which Gazan fishermen are invariably the victims.  However in July, the CPS boat, Oliva, was attacked three times, with the final attack forcing the boat to retire to shore after the engine was rammed beyond repair. On September 25th, the boat made her first trip at sea, in which she was not attacked by the Israeli Navy.

Continuation of attacks

On 13 July, the Oliva crew and captain were encircled by one Israeli Navy warship, which fired water cannons continuously for fifteen minutes, aiming for the faces of the crew, as well as their cameras and radio equipments. The engine broke in the attack and the boat struggled to escape as the attack continued.

The following day, the boat was attacked by two Israeli Navy vessels, the force of the water cracking a section of the boat’s floor. The crew was forced to seek refuge on a fishing boat in order to make it back to shore. Once aboard the fishing trawler, one crew member reported that one Israeli naval officer instructed another to sink the boat with the water.

In this attack, the Navy officers also intimidated the fishermen with whom the CPS crew had sought refuge, demanding, ‘Where are your fish? Where are your fish?’ After the crew attempted to deter further attacks on the fishing boat by informing the Israeli Navy that they were international observers, a Navy officer responded by saying, ‘Leave and if we see you here again we will shoot you and the children [on board the fishing vessel] and the Europeans or Americans,’ according to one of the CPS crew members.

We won’t be intimidated

On July 20, Oliva suffered the attack that would ground her for two months, in front of a journalist from the Guardian Jerusalem office. For 20 minutes the boat was attacked with water by two Israeli Navy boats, and then rammed by one of the Israeli warships, which had a maniacal clown poster on its side.  The engine was wrecked in the attack and Oliva had, until now, been stranded ashore.

Vera Macht, a German member of the CPS Gaza project explained that the project will continue to run and document human rights violations, “We won’t be intimidated,” she explained, “Olivia will sail out again to document abuses until international law is respected by Israel in the sea of Gaza. Fishermen are harassed, attacked, arrested and even killed by Israeli armed forces, even within the imposed 3 nautical mile limit.”

On September 25, 2011, Oliva set sail again, despite warnings that the human rights observers would be shot if the project continued. The boat cut its trip short because of weather conditions; the crew experienced reduced intimidation by the Israeli Navy and were not directly attacked.

Every Israeli attack on the Oliva has occurred within the Israeli-imposed 3-mile nautical limit, which forbids vessels from travelling further out to sea. This limitation overwhelmingly affects fishermen in catching adequate fish as the three miles have been fished extensively in the four years since the limit was imposed. According to the Oslo Accords agreements, a fishing limit of 20 miles was agreed, but fishermen have been restricted to three miles since Hamas took control of the costal enclave in 2006. This prevents Gaza’s fishing communities from accessing 85% of the Oslo-agreed fishing waters.

Joe Catron, a US citizen, was aboard the CPS Gaza boat during two of the warship attacks, “The bravery of Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast is like nothing I’ve ever seen. These courageous men, who continue struggling to provide for themselves, their families, and their country, despite the raw military aggression they face on a daily basis, inspired all of us. I’m honored to have played a small, fleeting role in supporting their fight.”