Vittorio waves the Palestinian flag on a boat off the coast of Gaza.
After leaving Cairo this morning at dawn, the 80 activists of the ‘Restiamo Umani’ convoy have entered Gaza at 4pm after crossing five Egyptian check-points.
The convoy will remain in the Gaza strip until the 17 of May to meet the Palestinian people who day by day are trying to resist the Israeli military occupation. The convoy will also join the commemorations for the thirtieth day of Vittorio’s death and for Nakba, the day of the Palestinian catastrophe, which will take place between the 14 and the 15 of May.
Meanwhile, a second convoy, with over 100 buses, will leave from Tahir square in Cairo, the square that has become the symbol of recent popular revolutions in the Middle East , and will try to cross the Rafah pass on the 15 of May. This is a collective movement that wants to show full support to the fight of the Palestinian people for self-determination, to their everyday resistance against military occupation and to the right of all Palestinian refugees to come back to their land.
A year ago this month, Israel shocked the world when it attacked a humanitarian convoy on its way to Gaza in international waters, killing 9 civilians, injuring dozens more, and kidnapping hundreds. Today — as Hamas and Fatah negotiate internal unity and Egypt moves to permanently open Gaza’s southern border, consequences of the Arab Spring — the international solidarity movement musters an even greater flotilla of ships to challenge Israel’s illegal actions against the Palestinians. As anticipated, Israel promises to do everything it can to once again stop an organized, nonviolent force of civil society standing with Palestinians in their struggle for equal rights and self-determination.
Threatening to hijack boats in international waters and kill or kidnap passengers is, of course, a serious crime. But Israel’s threats and actual uses of force are nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking international vessels throughout the Mediterranean and kidnapping or killing passengers. To understand the current situation involving civil resistance to Israeli policy, a glance at Israel’s aggressive history in international waters is in order.
In 1976, according to Knesset member Mattiyahu Peled, the Israeli Navy began to capture boats belonging to Lebanese Muslims — turning them over to Lebanese Christian allies, who killed the owners — in an effort to abort a movement towards reconciliation that had been arranged between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel.
Then after a prisoner exchange in November 1983, a front-page story in the New York Times mentioned 37 Arab prisoners who had been held at the notorious Ansar prison camp, and who “had been seized recently by the Israeli Navy as they tried to make their way from Cyprus to Tripoli [Lebanon].”
In June, 1984, Israel hijacked a ferryboat operating between Cyprus and Lebanon five miles off the Lebanese coast with a burst of machinegun fire and forced it to Haifa, where nine people were removed and held, including one woman and a schoolboy returning from England for a holiday in Beirut. Two passengers were released two weeks later, while the fate of the others remained unreported.
In its report on the Israeli “interception” (more accurately, hijacking) of the ferryboat, the Times observes that prior to the 1982 war, “the Israeli Navy regularly intercepted ships bound for or leaving ports of Tyre and Sidon in the south and searched them for guerillas,” as usual accepting Israeli claims at face value. Syrian “interception” of civilian Israeli ships on a similar pretext might be regarded a bit differently.
On April 25, 1985, several Palestinians were kidnapped from civilian boats operating between Lebanon and Cyprus and sent to secret destinations in Israel, a fact that became public knowledge (in Israel) when one was interviewed on Israeli television, leading to an appeal to the High Court of Justice for information; presumably there were others, unknown.
In late-July 1985, Israeli gunboats attacked a Honduran-registered cargo ship a mile from the port of Sidon, delivering cement according to its Greek captain, setting it ablaze with 30 shells and wounding civilians in subsequent shore bombardment when militiamen returned the fire. The mainstream press did not even bother to report that the following day Israeli gunboats sank a fishing boat and damaged three others, while a Sidon parliamentarian called on the UN to end U.S.-backed Israeli “piracy.”
It is considered Israel’s prerogative to carry out hijacking of ships and kidnappings, at will — with the approval of opinion in the United States — whatever the facts may be.
When a popular nonviolent uprising by Palestinians in the occupied territories began in December 1987, Israel responded with harsh violence, mass beatings and deportations. After Israel ignored a January 1988 United Nations Security Council resolution calling on the state to “ensure the safe and immediate return” of deportees, the PLO organized a Ship of Return for 130 deportees to sail from Cyprus to Israel. More than five hundred international supporters and journalists also intended to sail — including Israelis who risked arrest for boarding the ship.
Menacing reactions to the ship plans by Israeli heads of state were reported and passed without comment by the major media. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called the planned voyage “a declaration of war” — remarking the ship would be carrying “murderers (and) terrorists” — while Defense Minister Rabin added that Israel was “compelled not to let [the organizers] achieve their purpose, and we will do that in whatever ways we find.”
Following Israel’s vows to prevent the voyage, the ship was bombed in port before sailing. After the explosion, the Times quoted an Israeli Transport Ministry official who remarked that, should another ship attempt to sail against Israel’s will, “its fate will be the same.”
The next attempt came twenty years later, in August 2008. This time it was the newly formed Free Gaza Movement, a group of international Palestinian solidarity activists, who decided to gather ships to violate Israel’s criminal siege of Gaza, imposed after Hamas was democratically elected in January 2006. Shortly before the ships sailed, leading Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported on discussions of defense officials who concluded that “allowing the ships to reach the Gaza Coastline could create a dangerous precedent.”
Despite Israel’s threats to stop the voyage, two small fishing boats, “Free Gaza” and “Liberty,” successfully reached the Gaza coast, becoming the first vessels to reach Gazan shores in over 41 years. The Free Gaza movement would organize four more successful sea voyages to Gaza over the next four months. During and in the months following Israel’s massive 22-day assault on Gaza in December-January 2008-09, which killed more than 1400 people, Israeli naval forces violently thwarted three Free Gaza vessels, culminating with Israel’s massacre of civilians aboard the Gaza Freedom flotilla last May.
Israel has arrested, beaten, gassed, tortured, deported and killed internationals — essentially a taste of the measures it inflicts daily against the Palestinians. But nothing has succeeded in deterring the international solidarity movement from resisting Israel’s violence and aggression, and nonviolently supporting the Palestinian freedom struggle. Despite the impunity with which Israel operates, thanks to firm U.S. support and participation, civil resistance to Israel’s actions continues to grow exponentially.
International law looks good on paper, but its enforcement requires political will. As the Civil Rights and other social change movements in the United States and elsewhere have shown, citizen action is an important part of creating political will, limited only by the choice to act. People acting together in the name of freedom, human rights, and democracy, can constitute a powerful force that even the most oppressive regimes cannot withstand.
The success of the next flotilla — and all those to follow — will largely depend on the will and choice of the international community to resist U.S.-backed Israeli crimes in the occupied territories and on the sea — and to stand with Palestinians until the death and the suffering ends and a lasting and honorable peace is achieved.
10 May 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
The Israeli army fired on 50 Palestinian and international activists protesting the Israeli-enforced closure of the “buffer zone” at Erez Crossing in Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip today.
The demonstration, organized by the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, was joined by activists from the International Solidarity Movement – Gaza Strip.
Led by farmers and other Beit Hanoun community members, it was forced to withdraw by machine-gun fire after nearing the Israeli wall and its gun towers at 11:45 am.
As protesters retreated, bullets struck the ground around them.
“We are fighting for our rights. This is peaceful, popular resistance,” said Saber Al Zaaneen, Beit Hanoun Local Initiative coordinator. “They opened fire directly at the demonstrators. Thank God no one was injured. This shows the aggressive way Israelis deal with these demonstrations.”
The illegal “buffer zone” was originally established 50 meters into the Gaza Strip, according to the Oslo Accords, and has been unilaterally increased by Israel since then.
Now reaching 300 meters according to Israel, and often stretching up to 2 kilometers in practice, it prevents Gaza Strip residents from accessing large portions of their coastal territory, including 30-40% of its farmland, without grave danger.
30 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
“I dreamt of my wife last night, she said the day would have a surprise in store for me”. Nasser Abu Said (37) is pleased: an NGO has confirmed a 2000 dollar contribution to the construction of his new house. He often smiles, but his face is predominantly characterized with the traces of worries from his daily struggle for survival. I think how good it is to see him laugh, it reminds me of the happy family picture I saw of him with his wife and five children. That must have been shortly before last year’s atrocity which has caused for physical and psychological displacement of his family. On July 13th 2010, on a warm summer evening that the Abu Said family was enjoying outside, the Israeli Occupation Forces attacked them. “Five tank shells and a flechette shell”, Nasser told me, again, two days ago, with blank expression. The flechettes riddled the body of his wife, and while ambulances were prevented from entering the area, she died. Her five children, aged 3 to 12, watched her succumb and saw how her body grew lifeless.
In the evening of April 28th, Nasser was still cherishing his dream of his wife, whilelaying in the bedroom, when all of a sudden, the Israeli Occupation Forces attacked the house at 8:10 pm. Within five minutes, four shells were fired from a tank, stationed by an Israeli base by the border, 3 kilometers from the family house. The first one went straight through the bedroom wall, were Nasser was resting. The second and third shells passed through the corridor where three of his children were playing and the forth shell hit the bedroom a second time.
“It was dark, the electricity cut as soon as the attack began. I was afraid to move, even afraid to turn on the flashlight on my mobile. I was afraid that they would shell again if they would see any movement. But then I heard the cries of my children, calling out to me to get them out from under the rubble. I went into the corridor and saw Ala’ under the stones, but could only see Maisa’s hand sticking out from under the rubble”, says Nasser. “It was terrible. I didn’t know where my other children were and feared they had been killed.”
After approximately 40 minutes of utter fear, it turned out that Jaber (3),Baha (7) and Sadi (9) were outside with their grandparents and were physically ok.
“Ala’ saw how I was panicking and just answered that he was fine when I got him from under the rubble. It was only when the ambulances arrived that he told me of his injuries”, says Nasser.
Both Maisa and Ala’ had been injured by shrapnel and were taken to Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Baleh, together with Nassers’s brother, Mohammed Abu Said (43) and his wife Sana’. Mohammed has a crack in his skull, a swollen eye and his face is scratched, while Sana’ has shrapnel in her foot.
Five year old Maisa, is sitting barefoot in her pink track suit at the end of the hospital bed. She looks pale, but then I realize that she is covered in dust of the stones that fell on her when the shells crashed through the walls of her house. She puts on a courageous smile and shows me the shrapnel wound in her hand. She’s staying in the hospital overnight as she has trouble breathing. Next to her lies her eldest brother Ala’, who is suffering; his eyes flicker around nervously. His face cramps when the doctor pushes his belly softly. He tries to turn his face, but realizes there’s another wound in his neck and panics with tears in his eyes. His family members stand by in shock: “They are children! It’s outrageous!”
The Abu Said family house is situated in Johr Al-Dik’s farming land, exactly 340 meters from the border with Israel. Currently, 14 people live in the house: Nasser and his five children live on the second floor, with his parents, while his brother lives on the ground floor with his wife, two children and his sister. Other families have evacuated the area in the past decade, because of the danger, but the Abu Said family lacks resources to relocate to a safer area. Incursions with bulldozers and tanks take place every month, while gunfire is heard on an almost daily basis. These bullets pose a direct danger: in the past year, the house has been shot at on different occasions, the children have been trapped by gunfire while playing and their grandparents have been shot at while doing nothing more threatening than drinking coffee and tea by the house.
After his wife was killed, Nasser pitched a tent, a couple of hundred meters away from the house, hoping for it to be a safer haven for his traumatized children. During last month’s escalation, he moved back into the house, because how much protection can a tent offer against missiles and bombs? Once things grew calmer, he and his children spent their nights in the tents again. But they moved out again after the children had caught two big black scorpions by their beds.
Nasser has been lobbying different organizations to build him a new house, because he isafraid of a new Israeli assault. Some of his requests have been negatively answered, but most have disappeared in the NGO’s indigestible pile of bureaucracy. “Maybe they will help me now, now my house is destroyed. It’s just a shame that my wife had to be killed again; all of her belongings are destroyed in this attack. It’s very painful to lose the things she cherished.”
In another round of last minute maneuvering, attorneys for the State in Corrie vs. State of Israel requested that testimony from their highest-ranking witness be postponed. Former Brigade Commander Colonel Pinhas (Pinky) Zuaretz, who was scheduled to testify on April 27, will not testify until May 22.
The witness was originally scheduled to testify on May 22, but on April 17, just before the court recessed for Israel’s Passover holiday, the State filed an emergency request to move Zuaretz’s testimony forward by nearly a month. Haifa District Court Judge Oded Gershon granted the government motion, without hearing from the Corrie family’s lawyers, citing availability of the witness as the main factor in his ruling.
Only after the court granted this request did the State provide Corrie family lawyers with Zuaretz’s five-page witness affidavit, though the document was signed nearly three weeks earlier.
Attorney Hussein Abu Hussein, who represents the Corrie family, opposed the State’s April 17 request and filed motion for reconsideration, citing due process violations. He indicated there was inadequate time to prepare for the witness given the expanded scope of the newly acquired affidavit and the delay in receiving it. The court denied his motion and granted the State’s request for the hearing to occur Wednesday, April 27.
However, the day before he was to appear, the State again requested a change from the court, citing the witness’ lack of availability due to a new scheduling conflict; an appointment with hired home movers. Judge Gershon rescheduled Zuaretz’s appearance for the original May 22 date. Such last-minute maneuvering is not unusual in the case.
In 2003, Colonel Zuaretz was the commanding officer of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade. Troops under his command were responsible for military actions on March 16, 2003, that resulted in the killing of American peace activist Rachel Corrie in Rafah. Zuaretz is the highest ranking officer called as a government witness and is, possibly, the highest ranking Israeli military officer to face cross examination in a civil suit regarding Israeli military actions against civilians in Gaza during the second intifada. His testimony is expected to shed light on the Israeli military’s failures as an occupying power to protect civilian life and property in the region.
