Tag: Gaza

Global actions target Egyptian embassies to break Israel’s closure of Gaza

26 August 2011 | International Campaign to Open the Rafah Border

Fed up with the closure of Gaza that has kept more than a million and a half Palestinians locked in to the strip’s tight borders, a beacon call is coming from Gaza and resonating across to Egypt, to break Israel’s siege and re-open the border with Egypt immediately.

Activists from South Africa, to youth leaders of the Egyptian revolution, to European, North and South American, and Asian supporters will present signatures to their respective Egyptian Consulates starting Friday August 26th to demand the permanent re-opening of the Rafah Crossing with Egypt without conditions.

Despite promises by the Egyptian government to open it, approximately 35,000 people wait daily to cross the border. Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes last week killed at least 21 people, including 2 children, and injured at least 80 more.

Actions:

Launching the campaign internationally, on Friday, August 26, South Africans in Pretoria have delivered the petition to their Egyptian embassy, in solidarity with Gazans who share similar circumstances to those under the Apartheid regime. This delegation will be supported by faxes, emails and calls to Pretoria from around the world.

The Egyptian ambassador in South Africa received the delegation, was receptive and promised to follow up. He cited security reasons for the slow flow at the crossing.

Each Friday until September 30, international actions in solidarity with Gaza and in support of the on-going Egyptian people’s movement will request that the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces honor the human dignity and freedom of its own people and the people of Gaza by opening the Rafah Crossing permanently and unconditionally.

Today, the South African embassy is receiving emails, faxes and calls from across the globe in support of the delegation to Pretoria.

The full text of the petition and signatories is available at: petition.

Click to see the petition’s Facebook page

Email contact: rafahcrossingcampaign@gmail.com

Elderly farmer murdered in Israeli airstrike in Buriej

26 August 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Ismail Nimr Ammoum worked his whole life as a farm laborer. He did not have land of his own, he worked for others, planting, watering, weeding, whatever needed done. He was a strong man, and he loved to work, work did not bother him. He kept working because he loved to work, what else would he do? He lived with his sister in Buriej, but often spent the nights sleeping wherever he was working. On Wednesday, August 24, 2011 Ismail was working for the Al-Khaldi family. He had spent the previous several days living in a small wood hut on the land. At five A.M. neighbors heard the explosion of an Israeli missile strike, but they thought that the land there was empty, they did not realize that Ismail had stayed the night in the hut. That afternoon, the owner of the land came to check up on things. When he arrived he noticed that everything things weren’t right, he opened the gate and then he saw the hut. He saw Ismail’s shattered body lying in the rubble. He had been killed in the missile strike.

Ismail’s father was from Lod. He was a refugee; his family was expelled from his home by Israeli soldiers in 1948. He fled to Gaza with his children, eventually they numbered eight, Ismail, four more sons, and three daughters. Ismail’s father is not here to mourn his son. Not because he died of old age, but because Israel killed him. He died during Cast Lead, one of the almost 1,500 Gazans murdered during those cruel three weeks. He was killed when Israel bombed the police station in Buriej.

We sit talking with Nasser, Ismail’s nephew; it is obvious that he respected his uncle Ismail. He misses his uncle, his uncle who was killed for no reason, just an old man who loved to work on the land. Nasser asks, “How can the world do nothing when innocent people are being killed, it must do something.” The world does nothing, and all that can be done in response to the world’s indifference, is, like Ismail, to get up again and go to work, to go to the land, to not abandon it, to carry on living.

Two killed in bombing of al-Salama sport club in Beit Lahia

25 August 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

At about 1:30 A.M. on August 25, 2011 Israeli warplanes bombed the Salama Sports Club in Beit Lahia. The building was empty at the time. The sports club, however, is in the middle of a residential area. Two people from a neighboring house were killed in the bombing, Salama Abdul Rahman al-Masri, 18, the son of the house’s owner, who died immediately; and Alaa ‘Adnan Mohammed al-Jakhbeer, 22, from Jabalya. Twenty five other people were injured in the bombing, including eleven children and seven women. The bombing also caused heavy damage to the Dar Al Huda School and several surrounding buildings.

Salama was sitting with seven friends of his in the back yard of his family’s house. After evening prayers they often sat there. This evening, Salama had went shopping for gifts for Eid before joining his friends. Fourteen people lived in Salama’s house, his parents, three of his brothers, five of his sisters, and the wife and baby of one of his brothers. Salama was a hardworking young man. He wanted to help his family have a better life. He worked two jobs, one in a store that sold chickens, and another in at a falafel stand. He did this while he studied to retake the Tawjihi, the exam to enter university. Ambulances arrived quickly, only ten minutes after the bombing, but it was too late for Salama, he was killed instantly when a piece of shrapnel from the bombing struck the back of his head. His brother wants the international community “stop pretending that giving aid is enough, the people who were killed here were civilians, we are treated unfairly, we had to support us in our quest for our rights, not just provide food. Our problem isn’t food, it is that we are refugees expelled from our land and denied our rights.”

His friend Alaa was not so lucky. He died from his wounds two hours later. He and Salama had met through Salama’s older brother, they had become close friends. Despite the fact that Alaa wasn’t from Beit Lahia he often came to Beit Lahia to spend time with Salama. He had recently finished his degree in Islamic Law from a center run by the Waqf in Beit Lahia.

The Salama Sport Club is a large building. Three floors, the top floor was used as area to play sports, basketball, volleyball, football, the middle floor was used for practicing karate and other sports, the lower floor was devoted to weight lifting. The entire building is now destroyed. The bomb penetrated the top floor and exploded in the middle floor. The roof has collapsed onto the lower levels. Equipment lies scattered around the rubble. Thankfully the Israeli’s did not choose to bomb the club a day earlier, it was full of people having a celebration. The club opened in 2005 and served hundreds of local residents, providing much needed recreational possibilities in an area that lacks many choices. Employees don’t understand why the club was bombed, it was a public club, it was not affiliated with any political party, it was only a place for local young people to exercise and play games.

Next to the Salama Sport Club is the Dar Al Huda School. Unlike the Salama Sport Club the school wasn’t empty when the bomb struck. Workers were inside painting it, getting it ready for the new school year which starts soon. Two of them were injured. One of them is in the hospital now, in critical condition.

The Dar Al Huda School serves about three hundred and twenty students. Two hundred students in a kindergarten and 120 students through the sixth grade. When we arrived children were collecting books from the rubble, piling them up, trying to salvage what they could. The building is heavily damaged, the wall on the side facing the sport club is totally destroyed. Rubble fills the classrooms. The walls are still adorned with murals of cartoon characters, Bambi and Snow Whit seem to be the most popular. Dar Al Huda is a private school. It attracted students from all over North Gaza, families of refugees, from Haifa, from Lod, from Ashdod, from Beersheba. They came for the art programs, for the small classes. Now, the children’s paints lie scattered in the rubble, their art projects hang from the ceiling covered in dust. The walls of the kindergarten are still covered in posters of fruits and animals, but no students will be studying there any time soon. The front of the school is covered in plaques thanking donors who helped to build the school. The Canadian International Development Agency has wasted its money, they built a school, but Israel has destroyed it. No more students will be learning to paint in their building. We walk around the school with its director, he asks us why Israel would destroy a kinder garden, did the children learning to paint threaten them? Did the children learning to read threaten it? In truth, the existence of the children is a threat to Israel, they are living reminder of the Nakba, of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. If only the children would disappear Israel might be able to convince the world that its crimes are all in the past, that they are somehow less real. The children exist though, now they live in Gaza, not in their homes in Ashdod, Beersheba, and Lod.

Iftar at the House of the Ezkadenia

24 August 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Israel’s latest round of attacks on Gaza has made it too dangerous to demonstrate in the buffer zone. The people of Beit Hanoun do not demonstrate because they want to die, they demonstrate because they want to live. They want to live in dignity, they want to be able to farm their lands, they want to be able to return to their grandfather’s lands. On Tuesday we did not march into the buffer zone. We had Iftar at the house of the ezkadenia. The ezkadenia is small fruit that I have never seen outside of Gaza. This is the house where I remember Vittorio before he was killed. He was draped on a hammock, smoking his pipe, drinking tea and trying to stay out of the sun. We were planning our return to the buffer zone, vowing that we would not give up. Vittorio, we have returned to the buffer zone, we have not given up.

We did not gather here just to have Iftar, but to plan, to remind ourselves why we struggle. Local farmers from the buffer zone had been invited, both so that they could meet us, the International Solidarity Movement, and the Local Initiative of Beit Hanoun which spearheads the demonstrations against the buffer zone in Beit Hanoun. Over a meal of chicken and rice we explained to them what we did, and they told us about their lives.

Abu Alaa told us how the Israeli’s have three times destroyed his trees, his crops. Each time, he replants. He will not give up, it is his land, much of it too dangerous for him to farm, or even to visit, but nonetheless it is his land and he will not give it up. He asked me to feel his head, there was a crease in his skull, he had been shot in the head by the Israeli’s. He has actually been shot three times by the Israeli’s. Still, he does not quit. He has ten children, they must eat, he must pay for weddings and university. For this he needs his land. For this he needs the buffer zone to disappear. We met his son, Hussein, an English student in university. We looked over the balcony into the distance, at the buffer zone, the farthest light that we could see was Abu Alaa’s house.

Our struggle against the buffer zone is a struggle for dignity, for the right of people to live and work on their land. Nobody in Gaza wants to live on charity; they are forced to by the siege, by the occupation, by the Nakba. Most of the people of Gaza are refugees, forced from their land in 1948, they do not want to live on charity, they want to return to their homes, to their grandfather’s olive groves and orange trees, to their grandfather’s shops and factories. This is what we struggle for, for the right of people to live in dignity on their land.

Night of Israeli violence: Al Aqsa Mosque barricade, house demolition, gang beating, arrests

22 August 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Just after midnight on Monday, August 22  the Israeli military took the opportunity to trap 1500 Palestinian youth inside al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, blow up a house in Hebron (injuring 30 people in the ensuing riots), and arrested a member of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin.

In Jerusalem, thousands of Palestinians gathered to protest the Israeli escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip. Starting from the Bab Al ‘Amoud (Damscus Gate) area and marching toward Salah El Deen Street, the protesters suddenly found themselves under attack by Israeli soldiers after the latter claimed that a soldier had been stabbed. Israeli soldiers and border police closed off the Bab Al Amoud area and Salah El Deen Street and kidnapped several Palestinian youth who were taken to the Al Maskobiyya interrogation center, west of Jerusalem. They also ttacked Palestinian medics and ambulances in the area.

The protesters continued their march into the Old City, prompting hundreds of policemen to break into several homes and cause damage in the area. The protesters ended up inside al-Aqsa mosque, where policemen trapped them inside, closed off the mosque, placed ladders on walls surrounding the mosque, and provoked protesters and those who were simply there to pray and worship during the last ten holy days of Ramadan.

In another incident in Jenin, Israeli soldiers surrounded the Freedom Theater at 2 am, closed off the area, and arrested Mohammed Naghnaghiye, the security guard and technician of the theater. On the way out, they fired live ammunition to disperse the crowd of Palestinians who had gathered.

This is the third attack on the Freedom Theater by the Israeli military this month.

This comes following a daytime attack by a gang of 15 masked settlers of a 10 year old Palestinian boy near Ramallah, outside the settlement of Ramat Migron. The boy is in the hospital being treated for deep wounds.