Tag: Gaza - Page 22 - International Solidarity Movement

Attacks on fishermen continue in Gaza

13th June 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

During the last weeks, the Israeli military has been shooting at the fishermen of Gaza almost daily with rubber coated steel-bullets and live ammunition. They also kidnapped 15 fishermen. Three of the injured and seven of the kidnapped belong to the Baker family, who are also the family of the 4 boys who were murdered by the Israeli military while they were playing football on the beach during the last massacre in Gaza. Yesterday, in Deir el Balah, the army stole 37 fishing nets and today the shooting went on all along the Strip.

ISM met some of the recently released fishermen from Baker family.

One of members of the family is Ziad Fahed Baker, 21 years old. Three weeks ago, he left the port on his small boat along with four other fishermen. As they were fishing at less than three miles away, the Israeli navy approached and ordered them to leave without taking the nets with them. They answered that they would leave but not without the nets. Ziad knew that abandoning the nets would leave his family without any income, so they ignored the soldiers and started collecting them. At this point the soldiers shot Ziad in the leg, and the 5 fishermen decided to flee to the port. Unfortunately the Israeli gunboat followed them and when they were just a mile and a half from the shore shot the engine of Ziad’s boat. With the boat stopped they ordered Ziad and the other four fishermen, two of whom were also injured, to swim towards their ship. Once in the gunboat they were blindfolded and handcuffed to a metal bar, “What are they afraid of? That we would leave flying?”

They were then taken to Ashdod, where Israeli forces subjected them to the usual routine of insults and humiliations before sending them back to Gaza.

They also explain how the Israeli military bombs the waters where they are working in order to scare away the fish and how the blockade prevents the entrance of all the tools needed for their activity, engines, fibber glass, hooks…

From the 1500 boats that laboured in the past, just 150 are still working today. This year the income of the fishing sector has decreased an 80% regarding the past year.

Ziad’s cousin, Mohamed Zied Baker, 30 years old, was also attacked last week while labouring in Sudania, north of Gaza. They ordered him to stop, shot him with rubber-coated steel bullets, kidnapped him and once in the Israeli boat they handcuffed him and stepped on his head with their boots.

Ziad, Mohamed, Fahed, Walid and Emad – this one, just 16 years old, also got shot with live ammunition and kidnapped – have similar stories to tell.

“They are now targeting the youngest fishermen, almost children”. “They want to scare us, but they can’t, we are Palestinians”.

Story and photos by Valeria Cortés

UN spurns Palestinian children

8th June 2015 | Hemaya Center for Human Rights | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

UN spurns Palestinian children
Ban Ki-moon’s decision not to include Israel on the list of violators of children’s rights twists the knife in the heart of every Palestinian parent, making it very clear that in the eyes of the United Nations, Palestinian children’s lives don’t count.

When a military with the most sophisticated and accurate weaponry on the planet can kill more than 500 children in cold blood with complete impunity, as Israel’s absence from the list shows, it reveals more than just the complete disregard for Palestinian lives that has become so commonplace in the halls of power. It also makes it abundantly clear that the UN, the single most important international organisation charged with protecting the lives of the most vulnerable, is failing spectacularly.

Children are the lifeblood of the future. How can any world citizen look at the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Palestinian child death toll from the 2014 Israeli aggression, and this decision, and not be appalled?

At best it reflects the paucity of responsible leadership evident in the UN under Ban Ki-moon’s secretaryship, which has seen public faith in the international organisation reach an all-time low.

At worst it underlines the gross politicisation of an organisation purporting to uphold the rights of ALL humans – and failing.
The only way Ban Ki-moon’s decision – if not his entire leadership in relation to the Palestinian issue – can be called a success is if the intention is to ‘grow’ a generation of increasingly angry cynics with no respect for the abject hypocrisy emanating from Geneva and New York.

Hemaya expresses its utmost disappointment in the attitude to Palestinian children that the decision represents, and calls on human rights bodies and concerned citizens everywhere to roundly reject it by supporting and valuing those Palestinian children who survived, and who continue to suffer under illegal occupation, repression and siege.

Gaza, June 08, 2015

Featured image by Ashraf Amra / APA Images

Surviving in Gaza’s caravan houses

27th May | Miguel Hernández | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

The family El Najjar was expelled during the Nakba from the Palestinian village of Salamah. This village was the subject of a total ethnic cleansing by the Zionist colonizers.

Nowadays just ten houses remain from the almost 2000 that formed the village. In its place today we can find the Tel Aviv suburb known as Kfar Shalem.

Refugees since 1948, many of them established themselves in Khuza’a, a peasant village in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. For the last eight months a great part of the family has been living in caravans, as more than 45 homes belonging to the El Najjar family were bombed during the 2014 massacre.

In one of those, ISM members met Ashraf El Najjar, member of the family who also lost his home during the umpteenth Zionist massacre.
Ashraf is 41 years old and has seen how the Zionist entity bombed his home two times already. The first one was in 2009, during the massacre known as “Operation Cast Lead”, in which Israel also murdered one of his brothers. After that it took him several years to rebuild his home. However, once rebuilt, he could enjoy it just for 18 months, as in 2014 the Israeli occupation once again reduced it to a pile of rubble. This time they also murdered his father, two brothers, two sisters and his cousin.

With a smile on his face, despite his terrible circumstances, he shows ISM the caravans were most of his relatives survive nowadays. “We don’t have any hope regarding the reconstruction. No one has been here to check about our situation or needs”.

The first caravan he shows ISM is the one of Youssef El Najjar, who is now in the Hospital accompanied by his wife.
In the caravan we find Youssef’s daughter Azhar, 18 years old, taking care of the rest of the family. She is responsible of her grandmother, who lies disabled in the only bed in the caravan, and her younger siblings. The youngest, four years old, can only move around by crawling on the ground, as a birth defect prevents him from walking.
Azhar explains ISM how the life is in the caravans, “In winter we suffered a lot from the cold and the caravan flooded every time it rained. One time the water reached more than one meter’s height. Another time when the water rose the floods dragged all the sewage into the caravan. Now, in summer, the heat is unbearable, as an oven. I feel like I’m living in a grave”.

The next caravan we visited is the one of Asisa El Najjar, 65 years old. She lives there along with eight more people, five of whom are children. Her husband is in the hospital as well, therefore, he cannot work.
Three of the five children belong to Wasfi El Najjar, son of Asisa who was killed by the Zionist army during the last massacre, being just 26 years old. The older one is four years old and the youngest, who is only five months old, never met his father.
Asisa tells ISM how she and her husband suffer from asthma since they live in the caravan. She also shows us how the sewage of the bathroom goes to the only room of the caravan.

A few meters from there we find Mohamed and Suher El Najjar with their five children. Mohamed is unemployed, and the five children suffer from respiratory problems since they live in the caravan.

Hasma El Najjar, 75 years old, lives alone in a caravan that like all the other has the wooden floor completely rotten by the last winter rains. Which has caused her to fall several times already.

Finally ISM visits the caravan of Khadia EL Najjar, 53 years old, who lives with her husband and her grown children. One of the daughters has cancer and due to the criminal blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt she can’t receive the treatment needed.

Ironically, these caravans have been provided by the UK government. The same country that colonized Palestine for 26 years and later on handed it over to the Zionists, opening the doors to 67 years of land theft, occupation and genocide.

Text and photos: Miguel Hernández

“…but still with a few hope in our hearts”

20th May 2015 | Inas Jam | Khuzaa, Gaza.

Editor’s note: This is the testimony of a 23 year old woman who survived the land invasion of Khuzaa, Gaza, in the summer of 2014. This is the original version of her writings and no edits have been made.

We were in Khuzaa in our grandfather’s house when the war started. We thought Khuzaa was the safest area. But the 23rd July Khuzaa was a surrounded by tanks, drones and we started hearing many bombs.

We went to the basement to hide from the shooting but my grandfather stayed in the first floor with the other men…
Four days passed by very slowly and with a lot of difficulty, in the last day someone came to tell us that we had to leave Khuzaa.

We accepted and hurried up to the street, we were frightened, the planes were upon us, we were surprised because we thought there was nobody left in Khuzaa, but we saw many people crying, shouting, men injured by gunshot, they were walking covered in blood.
All was very sad.
While we were walking we saw the smoke from the bombs. Everyone was crying, men, women, old people and children.
The trepidation got into our hearts.
Some bombs felled in front of our eyes.
The streets were full of people running.
At some point we had to return back because we found in the street a big hole made by a rocket that prevented us to continue.

When we returned back we found many families in the ground floor.
At night Apache helicopters started hitting the homes with the families inside.
We heard the footsteps of the occupation soldiers; the children were very quiet, they were afraid that the soldiers would hear them.
We heard many people getting killed in their homes.

In the morning somebody came and told us we must leave Khuzaa because Israel was killing everyone, they were shooting at everything, moving or not…
We forced ourselves to go out, but my grandfather refused to leave “I want to die in my home, not in the street like the people from Shijaia”.

We went out thinking that we would be killed by the zionist occupiers, but still with a few hope in our hearts.
I left with my mother, my sister and some other people; we saw rubble, glass and corpses in the street.

I saw a child in the street with his stomach and bowels out. I started shouting what was that, where was the world, where were the Arab countries… and kept crying while going on.

We couldn’t do anything because we were afraid we would get killed by an helicopter or by any kind of weapon, we didn’t know where were the zionist soldiers.

We kept running and running. When we arrived to the entrance of the village we saw many tanks and many soldiers, I was crying so much, and the soldiers started laughing at me.
I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop crying!

When we arrived to Khan Younis we received the bad news, my grandfather had been killed by the occupation. My uncle, who also stayed in Khuzaa, explained me what happened: “grandfather went out from the basement to tell the soldiers that there were just men, women and children in those homes, who had no weapons to defend themselves. But the soldiers killed him putting two bullets in his heart. Everybody was crying then, we were frightened. After that they took us out and took the men to the homes that they were using as base and put them in front of the windows, as human shields. Later they started hitting the men with sticks. Then ordered Alaa Qudaih (the nephew of my grandfather)to take off the clothes of my grandfather. Alaa couldn’t stop crying while doing it. After he covered him with a red blanket. Finally the occupation ordered us to leave Khuzaa and go to Khan Younes.

After three days the occupation allowed us to finally take the corpses to the Hospital.
There were many corpses in the streets, in their homes and under the rubble.

By Inas Jam.

Marianne heads for Gaza today!

10th May 2015 | Ship to Gaza | Gothenburg, Sweden

Marianne of Gothenburg will leave her home port at 7 pm on the 10 of May. The trawler, which has been acquired by Ship to Gaza Sweden and Ship to Gaza Norway jointly, departs for a voyage of almost 5000 nautical miles to eastern Mediterranean and the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Marianne will join other ships and together they will form the “Freedom Flotilla III” in order to perform a peaceful, nonviolent action to break the illegal and inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip.

In passing Marianne will call at European ports for manifestations against the blockade. The First three ports will be Helsingborg, Malmö and Copenhagen. The subsequent ports will be announced in press releases.

Cargo
Marianne is not a cargo-ship, but she will bring a limited cargo of, among other things, solar cell panels and medical equipment.

The solar cell panels are a gift from ETC-El. In the blockaded Gaza Strip, where the infrastructure has been demolished, solar cells will thus provide an opportunity to independent local production of clean energy. The sun can not be blockaded.

Delegates
In addition to a crew of five people, Marianne will have up to eight delegates as passengers in each section of the route. The names of these individuals will be announced as time progress. In the first section are among others:

Maria Svensson, pro. tem. spokesperson, Feministiskt initiativ
Mikael M Karlsson, Chairperson, Ship to Gaza Sweden
Henry Ascher, professor of Public Health, paediatrician
Lennart Berggren, filmmaker
Dror Feiler, musician, spokesperson of Ship to Gaza