2 August 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
The buffer zone is a place of death. 300 meters of destroyed land, land that used to be alive, that used to be filled with orchards, houses, and fields, now, all dead. To enter the buffer zone is to risk your life, even to come close to it, the Israeli’s shoot farmers, shepherds, scrap collectors, anyone who comes close to the buffer zone is in danger. Every Tuesday, the people of Beit Hanoun attempt to bring the buffer zone back to life. They gather at the Agricultural College and march to the buffer zone.
Ramadan began on Monday, in honor of Ramadan, this week’s demonstration would involve going to the buffer zone to pray. We gathered, about thirty of us, under the hot sun. Thankfully, a breeze was blowing. It is summer in Gaza, and Ramadan is particularly hard this year, it isn’t easy to march under the hot sun while you are fasting. We walked to the buffer zone, newly bulldozed by the Israeli’s; our flag planted merely a week before, gone. The men laid down a white cloth, held it down with clumps of dirt, spread prayer rugs, and Abu Issa recited the call the call to prayer. It echoed over the buffer zone, joining the symphony of calls from Beit Hanoun. As the men prayed we looked around nervously, today was quieter than usual; maybe because of Ramadan there was none of the usual background noise of construction to repair previous Israeli destruction. After finishing prayers, we marched back to Beit Hanoun, at least for a little while, the buffer zone had been returned to life. For a short while, something lived in it, people prayed in it, may justice come soon.
GAZA CITY — Popular resistance activists held noon prayers on Tuesday in the “buffer zone” in northern Gaza.
International solidarity activists joined dozens of Palestinians to pray on lands recently bulldozed by Israel near Beit Hanoun.
Israeli forces impose a “buffer zone” 300 meters from the border inside Gaza. Israel’s army says it considers the area a combat zone and frequently fires at Palestinians who enter the area, killing many civilians.
In practice, the no-go area extends over a kilometer inside the Gaza Strip in some areas. It encompasses around 20 percent of the coastal enclave, including fertile Palestinian farmland.
Activists said they organized prayers in the buffer zone as an act of resistance to Israeli forces who were watching from behind the concrete wall.
Hani al-Asi, a fisherman since the age of 11 and a father with 12 mouths to feed, had just begun throwing his lines into the Mediterranean when an Israeli gunboat sped towards his traditional hasaka.
With a machine gun mounted at the rear and half a dozen armed soldiers on the bridge, the navy vessel repeatedly circled the small fishing boat. The rolling waves caused by the backwash threatened to swamp it.
Asi had stopped his boat over an artificial reef created by dumped cars to attract the dwindling fish population. He was just beyond the limit of three nautical miles from the Gaza shoreline set by the Israeli military for Palestinian fishermen, beyond which they are forbidden to fish for “security reasons”.
“We see them every day,” he said, shrugging at the gunboat’s presence. “I got used to this. Every day they are around us – shooting, damaging the boat, sometimes people are injured. If we were scared, we wouldn’t fish. But we have nothing else to do.”
With the boat rocking forcefully, the gunboat’s crew addressed Asi in Arabic through its loudspeaker. “You are in a forbidden area. Go back.” Asi pulled in the lines and headed back to port.
“The best place to fish is more than 10 miles out,” he said. “But every time we exceed three miles, they shoot at us, use the water [cannon], take the nets. Even today when foreigners are with us, they were trying to tip the boat over.”
Under the 1993 Oslo accords, Palestinian fishermen were permitted to fish up to 20 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza. Over the past 18 years, the fishing area has been successively eroded, most recently in 2007 when Israel imposed a limit of three nautical miles as part of its land and sea blockade of Gaza after Hamas took control of the territory.
But fishermen and human rights groups say that, since the war in Gaza in 2008-09, the Israeli military regularly enforces a limit even closer to the shore.
The restriction has devastated Gaza’s fishing industry. “It is a catastrophic situation,” said Khalil Shaheen of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. “Sixty thousand people are dependent on [the fishing industry], and 85% of daily income has been lost.”
Fishermen on both sides of the three-mile limit, he said, were subjected to harassment, live fire, confiscation of boats and nets, and water cannon, sometimes impregnated with foul-smelling chemicals.
Since early June, a coalition of Palestinian and international organisations under the umbrella of Civil Peace Service Gaza has been monitoring encounters between fishermen and the Israeli military from its own boat, the Oliva.
But in the past fortnight, the Oliva itself has become a target for the Israeli navy, with repeated assaults on it by military vessels. Last Wednesday, the Guardian hired a boat to accompany the monitors plus a handful of hasakas out to sea.
At around the three-mile limit, the small flotilla was approached and repeatedly circled by two Israeli gunboats. The engines of the hasakas were cut as the waves caused by the gunboats’ backwash rose and fell. After about 20 minutes, the gunboats withdrew as a third military vessel, deploying water cannon, arrived.
A powerful jet of water was targeted at the Oliva, causing the boat to rock dangerously and drenching those aboard. After repeated dousings, the Oliva’s captain ordered the four passengers to clamber on to an adjacent hasaka, fearing his boat was about to sink. As the Oliva’s engine was hit by the military vessel, he too was forced to abandon ship.
From a distance it seemed impossible that the Oliva would not go under. But its captain and other fishermen managed to secure a rope to try to tow it back to port. The military boat followed the Oliva and the other boats at some speed, still firing its water cannon, for several minutes.
According to Salah Ammar, the Oliva’s captain, the boats were within the three-mile limit. “We don’t even reach two miles before they chase us with guns and water [cannon],” he said.
However, GPS co-ordinates taken by the Guardian during Wednesday’s encounter showed the position of the boats to be outside the permitted zone.
In a statement, the Israeli Defence Force said: “The ongoing hostilities between Israel and Palestinian terror organisations create significant security risks along the coast of the Gaza Strip. Due to these risks, fishing along the coasts has been restricted to a distance of three nautical miles from shore. Fishermen in Gaza are aware of these restrictions as they have been notified of them on numerous occasions. The restrictions and their enforcement by the Israel navy are in complete accordance with international law.”
The United Nations and human rights organisations say the fishing restriction is collective punishment in violation of international law.
Shaheen rejects Israel’s justification. “The Israeli navy has never found evidence that fishermen involved in violations have been involved weapons smuggling,” he said. The “environment of daily harassment” was part of Israel’s “illegal collective punishment and closure of Gaza”.
The Oliva’s engine was damaged in Wednesday’s encounter but Ammar was planning to go out to sea again the next day if he could locate the parts he needed to fix it. “Every time I know what will happen. They will shoot water on me, fire bullets. But I get hundreds of calls asking, ‘When will you go out?'” The fishermen, he says, want the protection they believe is afforded by the presence of international monitors on board the boat.
Asi, back at the port after his aborted fishing trip, was puzzled by the military’s aggression towards fisherman whose faces, he says, the soldiers must recognise after repeated encounters. “The point is not security for the Israelis. They know everything. They arrested many of us and searched many boats and never found anything.”
His morning’s haul consisted of one large sea bass, sold for 150 shekels, and three smaller, worthless fish. After deducting 50 shekels for fuel, 50 shekels for bait, and 10 shekels to put aside for his boat’s maintenance, he and his assistant pocketed 20 shekels (£3.60) each for their day’s work.
Would he be going out again the next day? “Inshallah [if God wills it]. This is the only source I have to feed my family.”
24 July 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
On Saturday the ISM crew for CPS Gaza rode out on the trawler that rescued us during the second attack on the Oliva on Thursday, July 14th. As I mentioned before, the Oliva project is currently on an indefinite hiatus. Nils, Joe and I went to the port at 7:10 am and we rode out to sea around 7:30. There were 3 adult Palestinian men on the boat and two young boys. Joe, Nils and I sat on the deck of the ship’s bow and the captain and other passengers stayed in the middle and back of the vessel. Around the 2 to 2.5 mile point we spotted the Israelis coming towards us from the north. When they were still about a mile’s distance from us I called them over the radio and said that we were “Unarmed international observers on board, 2 United States citizens and one Swedish citizen.” I repeated this a number of times but they continued to approach us at a high speed. Joe and I were on the bow of the boat when we noticed that the Israeli Navy was now about 100 meters from us and had fired 2 shots into the water. We retreated to the center of the boat where the steering cabin is and I repeated again over the radio that we were “unarmed international observers.” This did nothing to sway their actions and they fired live rounds both in the water and directly at the boat for around 15 or 20 minutes. Joe returned to the front of the boat and tried speaking to them over the megaphone, repeating the fact that we were internationals and that the boat had no hostile or military intentions and the captain and his crew were just going to fish. By this point the trawler had reached the 3-mile limit. The captain desperately wanted to go further out to 4 or 5 miles because the 3-mile area is completely overfished and he said “it’s better to return home than to even bother fishing here.” While the shooting was still taking place, we decided to have Nils speak to them over the radio so they could hear someone with a Swedish accent. We were holding out desperate hope that our status as internationals would save the boat and allow the men to fish. At one point the gunboat retreated slightly—only to double-back and continue harassing us. Nils repeatedly said over the radio, “Israel, why do you do this? We are peaceful people, we mean you no harm.” After at least 30 minutes of creating turbulence and shooting live rounds at us the boat retreated again, this time for good. I jumped back on the radio and told them to “let us go, we are not hostile and the captain only wants to fish.” The Israelis responded and claimed that we were past 3 miles and were somewhere between 4 and 5 miles out to sea and insisted that I tell the captain to go back to the 3 mile mark. The captain said that we were basically 3 miles, then he corrected that we were 3 miles and about 700 meters. He asked me to tell them that he wouldn’t go past this point and only wanted one hour to fish here because there wouldn’t be any fish within the 3-mile limit. He said they need to fish for food for Ramadan and there would be no food if we were to move further in to shore. I said this to them in English several times awaiting a response since it had only been a few minutes since they had communicated with us directly. After this the captain and his friend took the radio and begged them in a broken mixture of Arabic and Hebrew to let the boat stay where it was for one hour—just to fish—just to get food for Ramadan. It was heartbreaking to watch. It’s perverse that the Palestinians should have to beg for this right from an illegitimate occupying force. Although it seemed that the Israelis weren’t concerned with the status of the international passengers as they were shooting at us, I have to assume that it would have only been worse had we not been on board. The captain seemed used to this procedure and was firm in his decision to stay at sea to fish—in the face of Israeli violence. After about 10 minutes had passed and the captain was still on the radio begging to be allowed a few extra hundred meters for just one hour, the gunboat left and another warship equipped with the water canon took its place. The intensity of the water pressure seemed stronger than ever and the hit the boat for 20 or 30 minutes before we were able to get away. Unfortunately at this point the captain saw no use in staying out there and brought the ship back to the port. While we were riding back I leaned over the edge of the bow and saw the new bullet holes from the day’s attacks.
When I went out today, one of my intentions was to observe the situation in the absence of the Oliva, and after this experience I can say two things with confidence. My first conclusion is that this harassment is a frequent, if not daily occurrence for Palestinian fishermen. The second is that Israel’s claim that the Oliva is a “constant provocateur” has not a shred of validity (not that it did before, but this confirms it) as the Israeli Navy is equally if not more violent without the Oliva and its observation crew at sea.
A longer version of this report originally appeared on Against Empire, the blog of International Solidarity Movement – Gaza Strip member Alexandra Robinson.
Footage of the second water-cannon attack by the Israeli navy against the Civil Peace Service Gaza boat “Oliva” on Thursday, July 14, 2011. The camera used was lost in the sea when the crew evacuated the “Oliva,” recovered in a fishing net, and returned on Wednesday, July 20.
