On Wednesday 20th of April, at 11:30 (local time), more than 40 international and local organizations launched a human rights monitoring mission to report potential violations in Palestinian waters.
Deploying an international third-party nonviolent Civil Peace Service in Palestinian territorial water is not the initiative of a single organization, but a project done with the effort of many.
It comes as a response to the needs expressed by Palestinian fishermen and identified by local organizations such as the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, an organization with consultant status in the United Nations, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. These groups denounce the continuous attacks suffered by Palestinian fishing boats even inside the limits imposed by Israel, which are reduced to three nautical miles from the original 20 nautical miles established in the Oslo Accords (1994).
The launch of the Oliva, the boat that will carry on the mission, was part of the activities of the 6th International Conference about Palestinian Popular Struggle in Bi’lin, organized by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee. Large number of international and local media covered the event. High representatives of the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and more than twenty European consulates were present for the launch.
The Oliva will start its mission next week. It will have an international crew, trained in human rights monitoring and international law, and will be equipped with video cameras and radios to maintain permanent contact with the land team.
The initiative results from coordinated efforts between civil society organizations in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and internationally.
22 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Vik and Adie
Vik, habibo, you’re not gone, not for me at least. In life you brought the warmth every time I met you, and to everyone else. You did not see it as a duty or a service but it was just how you were, to rouse and stir the best things inside us all for the better, every day, starting with ‘yallah habibo!’
I’m sorry Vik, for a few days there was the shock and the sorrow, which still re-emerges when I think of what happened to you or read another account of how you touched or brightened someone else’s life in Gaza and beyond. Don’t worry, I’ll stay on the right track, the joyful track, the human track, for the overlying feeling left with me is of your warmth, the comforting feel that a big friendly giant is still escorting me onwards, your huge heart and boundless humanity that is the lifeblood of your actions, so strong that it wraps us all up and takes us with you.
I don’t know when or how it was exactly that your life became an indomitable, unswerving and relentless drive for the cause of others more hard done by and wronged than yourself. You joined the Palestinian struggle for justice and liberation nearly 10 years ago and since I met you it’s been routine for you to use any means at your disposal to put justice for the Palestinians first before anything else.
There have been dedicated people for the Palestinian cause but why so much love for you Vik? Why so much affection? I’ve heard Palestinians saying they cried more for you than when they lost a brother or a sister. Because, probably a long time before your decision to tirelessly and bravely dedicate your life to justice in Palestine, it also became your priority to remind everyone of their humanity for every living minute you were around them.
As you recounted for me that meant attempting to fight your own anguish in Gaza during Israel’s Cast Lead attacks as you met people in Gaza hospitals or ambulances that you aided and reported from, trying to stay strong and positive for the many men, women and children you met who had lost limbs, or loved ones. ‘Stay human’, you titled your book so eloquently describing life during this devastation. With me I saw you entertain kids everywhere we went, them hanging off your enormous arms tattooed with ‘Handala’, ‘Guevara’ and ‘resistance’. Or your time jostling and joking with the fishermen who took you in as their crew and comrade, accompanying them into the perils of fishing under fire from Israeli gunships.
And the laughter, your bellowing roar coming from the gut, bringing us to life in harder times. The story of your arrival on the first Free Gaza boat to huge Gaza crowds while you stood on top waving just a stick around for half an hour not realising the Palestinian flag had blown away a long time before. Our attempts to communicate with Taxi drivers (mumkin! mushkila! Ah mish mushkila! akid!) Our macabre jokes before facing the Israeli firing while accompanying farmers or demonstrations – Abu Tunis was happy to be your sidekick as we faced the music while you sang ‘Ounadikkum’, ‘I’m calling you’. The games we had, spoons, cheat, football with shisha, chai, shawarma, barbecues and our own variations of debka dancing.
Like our brothers and sisters in Palestine who so endeared themselves to us with their generosity of spirit, you too put out there your big warm heart no matter who they were, a dedication to staying human amidst the good and tragic times. Such humble and equal treatment of everyone brought out the humanity in those around us, as did your accepting of your own strengths and weaknesses. And just as people in Gaza loved you, it was their compassion that inspired your love for them, and your unbreakable commitment to their cause.
After arriving and breaking the siege on the first Free Gaza boat to dock at Gaza’s port in 40 years, you wrote:
Our message of peace
is a call to action
for other ordinary people like ourselves
not to hand over your lives
to whatever puppeteer is in charge this time round
But to take responsibility for the revolution
First, the inner revolution
to give love, to give empathy
It is this that will change the world
You had obviously had this inner revolution Vik, and no doubt battled to constantly renew it. You won the battle, you brought more love and empathy than most of us will ever do, and it will warm my heart for years to come. Vittorio you are the dreamer who never gave up and we won’t give up. Like the love, the humanity, the laughter and the courage, your dreams live on inside all of us and through your life you taught us that this victory counts the most.
In a breaking development, an Israeli court has granted the State’s request to move the testimony of former Brigade Commander Pinhas (Pinky) Zuaretz to next week, Wednesday, April 27, nearly one month prior to his originally scheduled appearance. A 5-page affidavit for the witness was only issued by the State on Sunday. Attorney Hussein Abu Hussein who represents the Corrie family initially opposed the State request and filed motion for reconsideration citing due process violations.
Colonel Zuaretz was the commanding officer of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade in 2003, when American peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed. Troops under Zuaretz command were responsible for the military’s actions resulting in Rachel’s killing in Rafah, Gaza that day. Zuaretz is the highest ranking officer called as a government witness in the civil trial, and possibly, the highest ranking Israeli military officer ever to face cross examination in a civil suit regarding the actions of the Israeli military 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.
WHO:
Oral testimony and cross examination of former Israeli Military Southern Brigade Commander, Colonel Pinhas (Pinky) Zuaretz, by plaintiffs’ attorney Hussein abu Hussein.
WHAT:
Corrie vs. State of Israel, Ministry of Defense; a civil case charging the Israeli military with the responsibility of killing Rachel Corrie in violation of Israeli and international law.
WHEN:
Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 12:00 (noon) – 16:00
WHERE:
Courtroom of Judge Oded Gershon, 6th floor, Haifa District Court, 12 Palyam St., Haifa, Israel.
Palestinians carry the body of Vittorio Arrigoni. Photo: Independent.
On Monday, politicians, NGO workers, and activists took part in the funeral of Vittorio Arrigoni who was killed last Friday by a Salafist group in Gaza. Palestinian police officers carried Arrigoni’s coffin and marched in the funeral. Those in attendance carried his picture and, in reference to his killers, chanted, “death for terrorists!”
According to Palestinian security sources, the body of Arrigoni was transported from Gaza City to Rafah, to be handed to his parents at the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Palestinian police officers told local media that they would continue to investigate the murder of Arrigoni and that they will bring the murderers to justice.
Police officers themselves decided to participate in the funeral on Monday to honor this solidarity activist that sacrificed his life for Gaza.
Egidia Beretta Arrigoni, Mother of Vittorio Arigoni | Il Manifesto
Translated by Sebastiao Nascimento. Italiana segue.
Vittorio Arrigoni
One has to die to become a hero, to hit the headlines and to have TV crews around the house, but does one have to die to stay human? I recall Vittorio in the Christmas of 2005, detained and incarcerated in the Ben Gurion Airport, the scars left by the handcuffs that cut his wrists, the denial of any contact with the consulate, the farcical process. And I recall Easter that same year, when just across the Allenby Bridge at the Jordanian border the Israeli police blocked his entrance in the country, put him on a bus and, seven against one (one of the seven was a policewoman), they beat him up “with skill”, without leaving any external marks, like the real professionals they are, then hurling him to the ground and throwing at his face, as a last scar to add to the others, the hair they had ripped off him with their machines.
Vittorio was unwanted in Israel. Too subversive, for having joined his friend Gabriele one year earlier and demonstrated along with the women and men of the village of Budrus against the Wall of Shame, teaching them the lyrics and singing together our most beautiful partisan song ‘O bella ciao, ciao…’
Back then no TV crew came by, not even when in the Fall of 2008 a commando attacked in Palestinian waters off Rafah the fishing boat he had boarded. Vittorio was incarcerated in Ramle and soon after sent back home with nothing but the clothes on his body. Nevertheless, I cannot but be thankful to the press and television that have approached us with composure, that have ‘besieged’ our home with restraint, without excesses and that have given me the chance to talk about Vittorio and about his ideals and the choices he made.
This lost child of mine is more alive than ever before, like the grain that has fallen to the ground and died to bring forth a plentiful harvest. I see it and hear it already in the words of his friends, above all the younger among them, some closer, some from afar. Through Vittorio, they have known and understood, and now even more, how one can give ‘Utopia’ a meaning, like the thirst for justice and peace, how fraternity and solidarity still stand and how, as Vittorio used to say, ‘Palestine can also be found at your doorsteps’. We were a long way from Vittorio, but now we are closer than ever, with his living presence magnified at every passing hour, like a wind from Gaza, from his beloved Mediterranean, blowing fierily to deliver the message of his hope and of his love for those without a voice, for the weak and the oppressed, passing the baton.
Stay human.
Egidia Beretta Arrigoni | Madre di Vittorio Arrigoni
Bisogna morire per diventare un eroe, per avere la prima pagina dei giornali, per avere le tv fuori di casa, bisogna morire per restare umani? Mi torna alla mente il Vittorio del Natale 2005, imprigionato nel carcere dell’aeroporto Ben Gurion, le cicatrici dei manettoni che gli hanno segato i polsi, i contatti negati con il consolato, il processo farsa. E la Pasqua dello stesso anno quando, alla frontiera giordana subito dopo il ponte di Allenbay, la polizia israeliana lo bloccò per impedirgli di entrare in Israele, lo caricò su un bus e in sette, una era una poliziotta, lo picchiarono «con arte», senza lasciare segni esteriori, da veri professionisti qual sono, scaraventandolo poi a terra e lanciandogli sul viso, come ultimo sfregio, i capelli strappatagli con i loro potenti anfibi.
Vittorio era un indesiderato in Israele. Troppo sovversivo, per aver manifestato con l’amico Gabriele l’anno prima con le donne e gli uomini nel villaggio di Budrus contro il muro della vergogna, insegnando e cantando insieme il nostro più bel canto partigiano: «O bella ciao, ciao…»
Non vidi allora televisioni, nemmeno quando, nell’autunno 2008, un commando assalì il peschereccio al largo di Rafah, in acque palestinesi e Vittorio fu rinchiuso a Ramle e poi rispedito a casa in tuta e ciabatte. Certo, ora non posso che ringraziare la stampa e la tv che ci hanno avvicinato con garbo, che hanno «presidiato» la nostra casa con riguardo, senza eccessi e mi hanno dato l’occasione per parlare di Vittorio e delle sue scelte ideali.
Questo figlio perduto, ma così vivo come forse non lo è stato mai, che come il seme che nella terra marcisce e muore, darà frutti rigogliosi. Lo vedo e lo sento già dalle parole degli amici, soprattutto dei giovani, alcuni vicini, altri lontanissimi che attraverso Vittorio hanno conosciuto e capito, tanto più ora, come si può dare un senso ad «Utopia», come la sete di giustizia e di pace, la fratellanza e la solidarietà abbiano ancora cittadinanza e che, come diceva Vittorio, «la Palestina può anche essere fuori dell’uscio di casa». Eravamo lontani con Vittorio, ma più che mai vicini. Come ora, con la sua presenza viva che ingigantisce di ora in ora, come un vento che da Gaza, dal suo amato mar Mediterraneo, soffiando impetuoso ci consegni le sue speranze e il suo amore per i senza voce, per i deboli, per gli oppressi, passandoci il testimone.
