Tag: Gaza - Page 134 - International Solidarity Movement

Israeli court resumes trial in killing of American activist Rachel Corrie

2 September 2010 | Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice

Haifa, ISRAEL

On Sunday, September 5th, the Haifa District Court will resume hearing testimonies in a civil lawsuit filed by Rachel Corrie’s family against the State of Israel for her unlawful killing in Rafah, Gaza. Rachel Corrie, an American student activist and human rights defender from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death on March 16, 2003, by a Caterpillar D9R bulldozer while nonviolently protesting Palestinian home demolitions with fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The second phase of the trial is expected to shed more light on the circumstances of her death and the Israeli government failure to conduct a thorough, credible and transparent investigation into her killing.

Thirteen affidavits have been submitted by the State, including those from both the driver and commander in the bulldozer that ran over Corrie, and from other military personnel involved.

Rachel Corrie / Courtesy Rachel Corrie Foundation

“As the trial in the killing of our daughter Rachel resumes in Haifa, we look forward to hearing from the State’s witnesses,” said Rachel’s father, Craig Corrie. “For seven years our family has asked the Government of Israel to provide a complete, credible, and truthful explanation for the killing of our daughter. We hope and demand they will take this opportunity to provide one.”

Cindy Corrie added,”If the peace process unfolding in Washington, D.C. is to have any hope of success, the pursuit of truth, accountability, and justice for all the suffering that has occurred in this land must proceed with determination. We look forward to that happening in Rachel’s case.”

The lawsuit charges that Rachel Corrie’s killing was intentional. Alternately, it charges that the Israeli government is responsible for negligence of Israeli soldiers and military commanders who acted recklessly using an armored military bulldozer without due regard and due diligence to presence of unarmed and nonviolent civilians and who failed to take appropriate and necessary measures to protect Rachel’s life, in violation of obligations under Israeli and international law.

The government of Israel argues that Rachel Corrie’s killing took place in the course of armed conflict in a closed military zone and should be considered an “Act of War,” or “War Operation,” absolving soldiers responsible from liability under Israeli law. The government argued for dismissal stating that the Israeli government is immune from such a lawsuit based on controversial legal theory that actions of the Israeli army in Rafah, Gaza, should be considered “Acts of State.” Finally, the Israeli government argues that Rachel Corrie acted in reckless disregard of her life and was responsible for her own death.

“After seven years Rachel Corrie’s family will have the chance to hear the testimonies of those who were responsible for her death,” said Attorney Hussein abu Hussein, who represents the family. “This civil trial is an important step to hold accountable not only those who failed to protect Rachel’s life but also the flawed system of military investigations which is neither impartial nor thorough.”

Court dates are currently set for September 5, 6, and 21 and October 7, 17, and 18 before Judge Oded Gershon at the Haifa, District Court, 12 Palyam St., Haifa, Israel. All trial sessions are currently scheduled from 9:00-16:00. See any changes to the schedule and register to receive further press releases at rachelcorriefoundation.org.

For press related inquiries and further information please contact:
stacy@rachelcorriefoundation.org
Phone (Israel): 972-52-952-2143

UN report: IDF barring Gazans’ access to farms, fishing zones

19 August 2010 | Haaretz

Humanitarian affairs office: Israel restricts entry to 17% of Gaza lands, 85% of beachfront zone, enforces restrictions with live fire.

Over the last ten years, the Israel Defense Forces have increasingly restricted Palestinian access to farmland on the Gazan side of the Israeli-Gaza border as well as to fishing zones along the Gaza beach, a United Nations report (link opens as pdf) revealed Thursday.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) wrote in the report, complied in cooperation with the World Food Program (WFP), that Israel’s justification for these restrictions was the prevention of attacks on Israel, including the firing of rockets.

The report was compiled in an effort to understand the extent of the restrictions as well as their effect on the Palestinians’ sense of personal security, their ability to make a living and their ability to access services. The report was based on more than 100 interviews and focus group meetings, as well as the analysis of data gathered from other sources.

According to the report, since 2008 the IDF has prevented access to land up to 1,500 meters outside the Green Line, and to naval zones up to 4.5 kilometers from the shore. All in all the IDF restricts access to 17 percent of Gaza’s territory. At sea, the fishermen are completely barred from 85 percent of the naval territory to which they are entitled under the Oslo Accords.

The report estimates that some 178,000 individuals are directly affected by these access restrictions.

According to OCHA, the IDF enforces uses life fire on individuals who enter restricted zones. Though in most cases the troops fire warning shots, 22 people have been killed and 146 have been wounded in such incidents since the end of Operation Cast Lead in January 2009. The report further argues that this method of enforcement violates international humanitarian law, and that the local Palestinian population was never informed by Israel of the exact nature of the restrictions.

The research conducted by OCHA also suggested that the IDF has leveled farmland and destroyed personal property situated in restricted areas in efforts to keep Palestinians out. The farmers who own the lands have tried to make up the lost income with alternate forms of farming, the report argues, but their ability to harvest their crops is limited and the profits from the alternate methods comprise a fraction of the income generated on the original land. OCHA estimated some $308 million in losses as a direct result of the Israeli restrictions.

Most of the farmers interviewed for the report said that since the expansion of the restricted zone they have lost more than two thirds of their income. Others reported that their income has been entirely eliminated. The same was true for Gaza fishermen, who have lost an estimated $26.5 million over the last five years.

Other effects of the restrictions include the deterioration in the quality of food consumed by Gazans, gradual changes in diet (from fresh produce and meat to carbohydrate-rich cheap items), decrease in school attendance and a decrease in the age of marriage for girls, the report maintained.

The IDF policy also affects access to schools, seven of which are inside restricted areas, the students’ and teachers’ security, the quality of education and academic achievements, the report argued.

OCHA called on Israel to lift the restrictions immediately and fulfill it international humanitarian obligation. The organization especially stressed its call on Israel to refrain from opening fire at civilians and destroying their personal property.

Live ammunition used on demonstrators in Gaza who move a section of the buffer-zone fence

18 August 2010 | ISM Gaza

On Tuesday morning a demonstration in Gaza by Palestinian activists from Local Initiative Beit Hanoun, with four International Solidarity Movement volunteers and other international activists and journalists was met with live ammunition fired by the Israeli army.

Soldiers opened fire on protestors in the buffer zone in Beit Hanoun, near to the Erez crossing but the demonstration succeeded in moving a section of the barbed wire fence dividing land on the Gazan side of the border.

Saber Al Za’anin lead the chanting against the occupation, siege and attacks on Palestinian farmers in Beit Hanoun, accompanied by about thirty Palestinians, nine international activists and a press team. The crowd marched towards the wall around the Erez crossing and one of the watch towers was open, evidently monitoring as the group approached the wall at about 100 metres. The barren waste land all around was a result of forced neglect – the place has rendered out-of-bounds to Palestinian farmers due to the threat of Israeli snipers and shelling.

The buffer-zone is 300 metres wide and stretches along the entire border fence on the frontier with Israel. Violent attacks by the Israeli military on anyone in the area have recurred consistently – and frequently live ammunition has been used against peaceful demonstrators and even farmers harvesting crops. According to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) the violence of the ‘buffer zone’ enforcement means that over 30% of Gaza’s most useful arable land “cannot be worked without severe personal risk, causing the loss of livelihoods.”.

“This was the first time anyone has entered this area of Palestinian land since the beginning of the siege. Farmers had long ago given up working on it because of the dangers”, Saber told us. Ssoon after an attempt was made to remove the twisted barbed wire fence positioned by the Israel army to divide two Palestinian fields.

A sniper was stood on top of one of the checkpoint towers and once protestors started to move the fence, live bullets were fired within 5 – 10 metres of the demonstrators. Two further attempts were made to move the fence and the firing increased, dust clouds rising from the ground where bullets bounced around people’s feet. The men and women on the demonstration returned for cover, fortunately without casualties except for some minor scratches from dragging the fence.

History of Attacks

In recent years the land around the Erez border has seen frequent attacks.

Kamel Iswalim’s family and brothers’ families lived just 500 metres from the border, right next to where the demonstration began. There had always been regular incursions and every six month the families were corralled by the IDF and shut into one room for hours. In 2006, his brother’s small two-room house was demolished by bulldozers. In 2007, the whole area was shot at by tanks, and Kamel was hit in the leg. On 5^th January 2009 during the bombardment and ground assault on Gaza that left over 1400 Palestinians dead, Kamel’s house was targeted.

Soldiers came to the front of the house at night, yelling in Hebrew that the family must leave the house within five minutes. They got shot at while coming out of their house, and they had no time to grab their belongings. Then they watched it being bulldozed, together with their five water wells and all of their trees. “Go to Gaza City and never come back again”, they were told by the soldiers. Kamel’s family lost everything they had and shortly after his father died from a heart attack from the ordeal. In total, there were ten houses destroyed in that area along with Gaza’s sole agricultural college. They are unable to farm any of the 13 dunums of land they lost – they cannot even enter it anymore, let alone rebuild their house despite it being further than 300 metres from the Israeli border.

“I have five sons and five daughters”, Kamel said. “I can’t offer them anything. I have two sons in college, and don’t know where to get the money from to enable them to finish their studies.” The whole family is now living in a hut on land which is one kilometer from the border, and it doesn’t belong to them. But farming this land gives them a salary of 50 dollars per month – 50 dollars for a family of twelve. “When we were last shot at?” Kamel laughs sadly. “We are shot at pretty much every day, even here, one kilometer from the border.” His neighbour Ab Dir Kadel Rahmed tried his luck and spent four years rebuilding his house, after it was destroyed in 2006. It lasted six months before the Israeli military demolished it again.

“I call the western governments to stand up and stop what’s going on here. It’s enough”, Kamel says. “Enough lives were destroyed, enough people were killed. It’s just enough.”

Gaza’s record-breaking children

18 August 2010 | Vittorio Arrigoni, Electronic Intifada

KITES gaza children — Palestinian children in Gaza set the record for most kites flown simultaneously. (Photo: Vittorio Arrigoni)

Gaza’s kids truly are record-breakers. They survived Israel’s 2008-09 winter invasion and every day they put up with a state of war during a so-called ceasefire. Smeared in blood, they’ve crawled through the rubble of shelled buildings, taking care of younger siblings, and tending to languishing parents, often emerging from under the remains of their own beds.

More than half of Gaza’s population are children. Though none of them has ever voted for Hamas, they’re the designated targets of Israel’s military operations and more generally, of the siege imposed upon Gaza. They’re resilient children, standing up against a multitude of ailments and obstacles. According to a recent report of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, 52 percent of Gaza’s children are anemic and suffer from serious nutritional problems due to the insufficiency of phosphorous, calcium and zinc in their food. The rate of respiratory illnesses they suffer is also cause for concern.

Gaza’s children suffer from psychological disorders, the consequence of enduring Israel’s attacks and siege. Their memories of dismembered bodies and burning buildings are indelible traumas that make them anxious and depressed, insomniac or incontinent. They live in overcrowded spaces without recreational areas. In the same streets where they now play, they remember having seen live flesh burning or rotting bodies. Missiles, destruction and death are evoked in their drawings whenever you hand them a blank piece of paper.

If the right to play is a luxury here, the right to an education is denied. Besides toys and medicine, Israel has also blocked the entry of elementary school textbooks. Unlike the majority of Israeli children, Gaza’s children suffer from hunger and poverty. I see them every day pushing ploughs in the fields, or rummaging through the garbage bins, looking for recyclable material. In the unbearable heat of this damp summer, they sit atop mule-drawn carts, overloaded with bricks and stone blocks recycled from shelled buildings. Alternatively, you can find them at street crossings selling trinkets, their gazes like those of tired old men, unable to dream of green courtyards, soccer fields and ice cream vans.

It’s not hide-and-seek they’re playing when they disappear underground in the Rafah tunnels; risking being buried alive, they’re the workforce that’s most economically and physically viable to smuggle goods that would otherwise never make it onto the shelves of Gaza shops.

Jasmine Whitbread, Director General of Save the Children explained that “Gaza’s children are hungry on account of the considerable difficulties met by the entry of food into the area. They’re dying because they cannot leave Gaza and receive the medical attention they so urgently need. Hundreds of thousands of children are growing up without an adequate education because scholastic buildings were seriously damaged. Due to the restrictions on the access of building material, those buildings can’t even be fixed. Children pay the highest price for the siege.”

Besides advertising such neglected data, it’s worth drawing attention to the fact that the Gaza Strip’s children have just broken two Guinness book records in seven days. On Thursday, 22 July in the space occupied by the remnants of Gaza’s airport — destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 2001 — the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) organized a summer camp for more than 7,200 children who each bounced a basketball simultaneously for five minutes. A few days later, on 29 July, Gaza’s children also registered the record of the greatest number of kites flown at the same time.

On the beach of Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza near the boundary with Israel, the sky was adorned by thousands of multicolored hexagons, a vivid metaphor of the freedom craved by Gaza’s youngest citizens. More than seven thousand children flew their kites, doubling last year’s official record.

At the end of the day, John Ging, UNRWA’s chief of operations in Gaza, said that “Breaking two world records in just one week is in itself an astonishing achievement. This is a demonstration of what Gaza’s children can do, if only they’re given the chance. These kids are exactly like all others the world over; they wish to live a normal life, far removed from the adversities they’re forced to face, day in, day out.” Ging concluded: “This day of celebration is an expression of a request for freedom on the children’s part.”

Unlike the basketballs used in Rafah, the kites flown over Beit Lahiya were not industrially produced, but handmade by those same children who then released them into the sky. Some were brightly decorated, while many proudly wore the colors of the Palestinian flag. It was like a scream of resistance in visual form, flying in front of the Israeli surveillance towers only a few hundred meters away.

After the kite flying event was officially registered as a new Guinness world record, an Israeli warship appeared on the horizon, slowly advancing towards the coast of Beit Lahiya. It was a cruel reminder that recreation time was over.

——–

Vittorio Arrigoni has worked as a human rights activist for more than a decade. He lived in Gaza until September 2009. As an activist with the International Solidarity Movement and freelance journalist with the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto he has provided eyewitness accounts for the world to read and is author of the book Gaza: Stay Human.

This essay was translated from Italian by Daniela Filippin.

Israel bombs central Gaza City: seventeen injured

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Israel bombs central Gaza City; seventeen injured

Gaza City, Gaza Strip

31 July 2010

An injured man in carried to an ambulance - Photo: TILDE DE WANDEL

At around 11:30pm last night (Friday 30 July 2010), ‘The Arafat Compound’ Police College in central Gaza City was bombed by Israeli F-16s, in the area of ‘Al Montada’ injuring seventeen people, three of them seriously. Three children were also among the injured.

Those first at the scene described building debris scattered everywhere and burned out cars still parked on the street. One man had severe injuries to the eyes and head as a result of being hit by shrapnel from the bomb.

The enormous impact of the bomb was felt by ISM volunteers sitting in a nearby café.

Adie Mormech, a British volunteer in Gaza with ISM said: “The blast caused buildings far from the epicenter of the explosion to shake and windows were smashed. When we arrived at Shifa hospital the scene was chaos. Family members were not allowed inside to visit while the patients were being treated. Intermittently more of the injured arrived amidst a mass of waiting media.

A father carries his injured child to a hospital bed - Photo: TILDE DE WANDEL

“Others arrived at the hospital with psychological trauma caused by the enormous impact of the bomb – some were confused to the extent that they couldn’t describe whether they had an injury or not.”

One Gazan resident described the power of the bomb as a rocket weighing more than a ton, the likes of which had not been seen frequently since the horrific three week bombardment over the New Year of 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead.

For many in Gaza, last night’s attack was a traumatic reminder of the onslaught during Operation Cast Lead when three hundred F-16 bomb attacks took place during the first 2 minutes of the campaign. The operations terrorized the entire population of the Gaza Strip and killed over 1400 people, including over 400 children.
Israel’s attack late Friday night followed a rocket that landed in Askelon, Southern Israel. that caused no injuries, and is suspected to have been fired by a small militant faction in Gaza.

As well as reports of other bombings near the Gaza City port there were also rocket attacks on Deir el Belah and Rafah.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Adie Mormech, Gaza: 05977 176 96

ISM Media Office, Ramallah: 05461 800 56

palreports@gmail.com