8th August 2016 | International Solidarity Movement
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 International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian-led movement with a mandate to support Palestinian nonviolent popular resistance to Israeli military occupation and apartheid. Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance includes the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel, until it adheres to its obligations under international law.
ISM volunteers also accompany children to school and farmers to harvest their olives in areas where they face ongoing settler and military violence. We find that our presence sometimes results in reducing the level of lethal force used by the Israeli military against unarmed Palestinians. Further isolation of Palestinians by denying access and/or deporting human rights activists aims to make Palestinian communities already vulnerable and suffering from abuse even more vulnerable.
As a civilian population living under military occupation Palestinians in the occupied territories are promised protection under international law. All parties signed to the fourth Geneva Convention have the obligation to insure that others, including Israel, adhere to international law. Civilians are being called on to fill in the gap created by the failure of governments and official international bodies to provide protection and fulfill their obligations.
Israel’s isolation of Palestinians both by denying Palestinians and their supporters access to Palestine as well as by denying Palestinians including human rights defenders the right to leave Palestine is not a new strategy. It is most brutal and lethal in the besieged Gaza strip but all parts of Palestine are under some degree of siege.
We condemn Israeli suppression of Palestinian nonviolent resistance. The recent announcement by the occupation authorities that they will attempt to further isolate Palestinians indicates the occupation authorities unwillingness to do the only thing that will actually bring an end to Israel’s isolation – to adhere to international law, end the occupation and grant Palestinians their rights.
See the statement By the Boycott National Committee here:
7th August 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza-team | occupied Palestine
As every year during the summer, the water shortage in the Gaza Strip is accentuated. At the same time, the energy shortage caused by the blockade prevents engines and water pumps from pushing it from wells and tanks to houses and farming fields.
The Beach Camp is one of the more densely populated areas of Gaza and therefore one of the most affected by water scarcity. In addition, because of its location, directly on the seafront, its aquifers are some of the most affected by the infiltration of seawater and wastewater.
We collected several testimonies of people affected by this problem in order to discuss them with the engineer Monther Shoblak, General Director of the Palestinian National Authority Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU).
The first testimony is that of Azzam Miflah El Sheikh Khalil, who says “the water comes only once every three days, and just for a few hours, which is not enough [to fill the tanks]. People can’t imagine how we are suffering because of the lack of water. In addition, there is no difference between the water from our wells and the sea water… The main problem is that when there is electricity there’s no running water and when there is running water there’s no electricity . The only solution we have is to buy a generator to produce electricity when there’s water, but who can buy it if there is no work?”
Azzam El Sheikh Khalil
In the next block lives the Mokhtar Kamal Abu Riela, who stressed the same problem, “when there’s water there’s no electricity, and vice versa. Maybe once every four or five days we have water and electricity at the same time for a few hours. Every day we buy gasoline to run the generator the hours when there’s running water, but the economic situation of the people is very precarious and not everyone can spend 20 NIS a day on gas just to have water in the tanks. We spend more on gasoline than in electricity or water itself”.
We asked the Mokhtar if he remembers when that problem began “ten years ago or so, with the blockade”.
Finally Im Majed Miqdad explained the difficulties she and her large family are faced with in their day to day life due to water scarcity “there’s people who build underground tanks [as those can be filled without bombs] or who buy a generator operated with gasoline. But not everyone can afford these things. I’m one of those people who can not pay NIS 20-30 a day in gasoline to run the generator. Today, for example, in my home and in the homes of my four sons and their families we don’t have a drop of water, the four tanks are empty. We are waiting until running water and electricity will coincide in order to fill them. The situation is very hard, we have no water, we have no electricity, we have no work … If water and electricity would coincide at least three hours a day it would be enough to fill the tanks enough to spend the day. People must understand that when there is no water you can not use the bathroom, you can not take a shower, you can not clean the dishes, the house, the clothes … And here the families have five, six, ten members … we are not just two or three people in each house”.
Im Majed Miqdad, who is often left without water supply
Given the frequent complaints of the population the first thing that the engineer Monther Shoblak wants to explain is that the failures in the water supply are due to the power cuts and therefore they can’t control them. “It is impossible for us to match the running water with the electricity, as to carry water from one area to the other, motors and pumps are needed and those can’t operate without electricity. We can’t control it because we don’t know which bomb will fail and when”.
Mokhtar Kamal Abu Riela
However, he explains, the water problem in the Gaza Strip is more serious than that. “Indeed there is an over-exploitation of the aquifer in the Gaza Strip. This is because the coastal aquifer, which runs from Sinai to Yaffa and that is the only source of water available today in the Gaza Strip, has been nurtured historically by rainwater and by the water from the mountains of Al Khalil (Hebron) and the Naqab. However, for decades our neighbors [the zionists] have been building dams that prevent the water from following its natural course to Gaza, leaving rainwater as the sole source of the coastal aquifer. These dams are illegal, since they involve a violation of the conventional agreements on transboundary water sources. “
Because of these illegal practices of the zionist entity “the production capacity of Gaza’s aquifer has dropped to 55 million cubic meters a year. While the water demand of the Strip is 200 million cubic meters a year”.
This overexploitation is decreasing to an alarming point the level of the aquifer, causing seawater to seep and fill that vacuum, mixing with the fresh water and contaminating the aquifer. Additionally to this chloride contamination caused by seawater seeping into the aquifer, the water is contaminated by nitrates from leaking sewage and fertilizers. “These are more dangerous than chlorides, as they can’t be detected by smell or taste”.
The successive attacks on the Gaza Strip have severely affected the sewage systems and destroyed thousands of septic tanks, causing in many cases wastewater to end up in the acquifer.
In addition, due to the lack of resources of local authorities only 72% of Gaza is ecquiped with sewage systems, the rest depends on septic tanks that are built without supervision. “The occupation never provided the necessary services, such as mandated by international law. They didn’t build enough plants for wastewater treatment in order to protect the environment. If we look at the objective data it seems that their intention was just the opposite. These plants shouldn’t be built in sandy areas, to avoid leaks, and should have an exit to the sea to prevent overflow in case of emergency. However they built the main one in Beit Lahia, the sandiest area in Gaza and without exit to the sea. So when there is an overflow, which is quite common, wastewater inevitably ends up in the acquifer and contaminating farmlands in the area”.
Gaza water supplies
At the same time several cases of viral meningitis arose all along the Gaza Strip, with some mortal cases. Those seem to be caused by wastewater contamination. This situation has forced the local authorities to close many swimingpools and advice the people not to swim in the sea during the next weeks.
5th July 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza team | Gaza, occupied Palestine
Just in the last 3 months Gaza’s fishermen had 21 boats stolen and 2 sunken by the Israeli occupation forces.
Each small boat sustains at least 20 people on average and each one of the big ones at least 100 people. That means that just in the last 3 months around 550 people lost their source of income and were left in a situation of severe food insecurity.
Palestinian fishing boat
All of these attacks took place within the fishing limit imposed by the occupation, as one of the fishermen interviewed by ISM pointed out: “they always know who they are taking, it’s not by chance or because we cross any of the limits they impose on us. They come for us. They kidnapped me and my cousin while we were less than a mile from the coast, and on that day the limit they gave us was for 6 miles”.
It is known that one of the main reasons to kidnap the fishermen is in order to try to buy them or blackmail them into becoming collaborators.
Fishermen kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces
One fisherman that insisted on remaining anonymous, given the sensitivity of this matter, explained to ISM what happened to him while he and his cousins were in Ashdod port: “they sat us in a room and we had in front of us a table with two trays, one with money and another one with gold. They told us that if we work with them all of it would be for us. Then they started asking us about our neighbours, relatives and anyone they thought we could know something about”.
Most of the fishermen kidnapped are tortured during the interrogation in Ashdod port and suffer from several kinds of physical and verbal abuse. They are beaten, their heads get rubbed on the floor or with a dirty mop and the soldiers step on their faces with their military boots. Those are just some common examples from most testimonies.
But humiliations already start in the sea, where most of the fishermen are told to strip off their clothes and swim naked towards the warship of the occupation forces. In many cases by that moment they have been already injured by rubber coated steel bullets, buckshot-filled sacks or even live ammunition.
12th June 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza-team | Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine
Last Wednesday Rajab Khaled Abu Riela, 30 years old, his brother and two cousins left Gaza’s port at 12 pm. They stayed out fishing until 1:30 am. “When we started our way back to the port one Israeli warship approached, the soldiers started insulting us through the microphone and immediately after started shooting against our two small boats with live ammunition”. “Then their warship crashed against us. In that moment I decided to try to escape, but I was immediately shot in the leg with live ammunition”. They took Rajab and his brother to Ashdod port, where they wouldn’t give him any medicine or treatment for the injury he sustained by the Israeli forces. “I was left bleeding until 9:30am”. Finally they were sent back to Gaza, where an ambulance took him directly from Erez border to the hospital, where he had to undergo surgery.
When he finally reached Shifa Hospital, doctors managed to remove the biggest pieces of the bullet – but many small pieces still remain in his leg.
Rajab’s mother shows the bullet removed from his leg
“Our future [for the fishermen] is uncertain; we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Israel assaults us every day, takes our boats, shoots at us… Since 2005 I have pain in my chest due to an attack of the occupation, and as well my brother was injured while fishing in 2008. I’m responsible for providing for my family, we are 21 members… Now no one is providing for us, as I’m injured and they took our boat and motor. How I can work now without a boat?”
4th May 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza team | Gaza, occupied Palestine
On May 1st, the workers of the Gaza Strip gathered to demand that Mahmoud Abbas and Rami Hamdallah work towards the end of the blockade. The blockade has already strangled the life in the Gaza Strip for 10 years and has raised the unemployment rate above 60%. The workers also remembered all the martyrs who died at the hands of the zionist entity while working for a free Palestine; farmers, fishermen, tunnel diggers.
Every day the farmers of the Gaza Strip are harassed by the Israeli army, who shoot at them with live ammunition and tear gas, even though they only want to work their land and do nothing to provoke such attacks. They choose to work, instead of relying on the humanitarian aid that is offered to them by the same states that conduct business with the zionist oppressors; buying and selling the very weapons that execute Palestinians.
Every day Gazan fishermen go out to sea with the sole intention of providing for their families, as workers everywhere do. However, many do not return to their home because they are ‘caught in the nets’ of the Israeli army, imprisoned and sometimes murdered- without posing a threat.
As one worker told ISM at the demonstration, “I don’t want food baskets… I am 35 years old and I’m healthy; keep the food baskets for the old and the disabled. Give me the opportunity to work and I’ll feed myself and my family”.
