15th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Marco Varasio | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Children rally for Palestinian detainees in Gaza. (Photo by Joe Catron)
Like every Monday morning, people gathered at International Committee of the Red Cross’ Gaza office to demonstrate in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention facilities.
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
This week’s rally started with the chanting of slogans against the illegal detention of Palestinians and people offering sweets to pay homage to Rami Barbakh, a prisoner freed in the latest release who attended the rally.
Banners in honor of Ibrahim Bitar, a Palestinian patient prisoner from Khan Younis detained in the prison of Nafha, whose family has been recently banned from visiting him, were held by Palestinian youth movements.
(Photo by Joe Catron)
Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also distributed flyers urging all Palestinian factions to join together to pressure the Palestinian Authority to act against the illegal detention of Palestinian and against solitary confinement in Israeli jails.
Outside the IRCC, last week a rally organized by the Fatah Youth Movement saw Mahmoud Salman, Rami Barbakh and Ibrahim Abu Ali awarded pictures and scarves to celebrate their release on 30th December 2013, after more than 20 years of detention. This week, Palestinian Islamic Jihad organized a rally in solidarity with the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Siria, and with Palestinian prisoners.
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
“We have more than 5,000 prisoners in the Israeli jails,” Ahmad Abu Soud, an ex-detainee who spent 26 years in occupation jails, said from the stage. “Our priority is the sick prisoners. We want Abu Mazen to increase efforts to set them all free.”
While the Israeli detention of Palestinians continues, G4S, the company which provides Israel with surveillance equipment at its checkpoint and in its detention facilities, is under major investigation by international authorities for its activities in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
(Photo by Joe Catron)
In the last four months, G4S lost contracts in the United Kingdon, Norway, South Africa and the Netherlands due to its involvement in Israeli violations of the international law, and to the pressure generated by the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
15th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Strawberries in Beit Lahiya. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)
A recent report by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in Gaza says the Israeli authorities have closed Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) checkpoint, the Gaza Strip’s only commercial crossing, for 150 days, 41% of working days, during 2013. The reports points out that the continued closure of the commercial crossing constitutes a violation of the ceasefire agreements reached in November 2012 after the Israeli “Operation Pillar of Defense” military offensive.Normally Israel keep the commercial crossing open 22 days per month, says the report, closing it on Fridays and Saturdays. but The crossing was closed also during the Jewish holidays for “security reasons.'” According to the report, in 2013, 55,833, 1,578 fewer truckloads of goods entered Gaza than in 2012. Israel allowed the export of 187 truckloads of goods from the Gaza Strip to European markets, compared to 234 truckloads, mostly agricultural products, 2012.
The report also describes the impact of the Egyptian closure of the tunnels since July 2013. This closure caused huge economic losses over the past six months as a direct result of the interruption of economic activities and a fall in production, resulting in a decline of 60% of gross domestic product. Unemployment exceeded 39% at the end of 2013.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ report on the Gaza Strip’s crossings from 1st-30th November 2013 documents the impact of the ongoing Israeli siege imposed on Palestinians, affecting their economy and social condition. While Israel claims to have eased the blockade, the Gaza Strip has a lack of services, fuel and building materials. According to PCHR’s statistics, the materials Israel has allowed to enter don not meet the needs of Gaza Strip’s population. In November, Israel closed Karm Abu Salem crossing for ten days, 30.3% of the total period. Most imports are consumable. The entry of various raw materials continues to be prohibited, with the exception of very limited types imported under complicated procedures.
Israel has continued to impose a near-total ban on exports to markets in the West Bank, Israel and other countries, excluding limited amounts of agricultural products. Exceptionally, during the month of November, Israel allowed the exportation of 20 truckloads carrying agricultural products, including mints, garlic, basil, strawberries and flowers.
Here we come to a crucial point. Israel allows that minimum exports of Palestinian products only to European and non-European markets, not to the West Bank. Why does Israel not allow Palestinians from Gaza to market their products in the West Bank, within Palestine?
It appears that on the one hand, this practice is part of the collective punishment of the blockade which aims to not allow any economic growth in the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, Israel wants to protect its own market and sell its product in the occupied territories.
“We face many difficulties, mainly due to the closure of the crossing,” a farmer in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, said. “Generally exports take place twice a week. Sometimes we had to freeze strawberries, due to the closure. There are no exports to the West Bank. They are not allowed.” The use of the term “export” to refer to the marketing of Gaza products in the West Bank, as if speaking about two different countries, shows the division caused by the barriers of the pccupation and its practices that have separated a population. “There is no international law in Gaza,” the farmer said. The farmers have to face not only the expenses of transportation, but also the costs of labor and the packaging. According another farmer in Beit Lahiya, a 2.5 kilogram crate for strawberries costs to twelve shekels, about three euros. They receive 25 shekels, or 5.25 euros, then earn 13 in profit.
Abu Sami. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)
“In 1967, Beit Lahia has begun to grow strawberries,” Abu Sami, a farmer in Beit Lahiya, said. “Here, before the arrival of the Palestinian Authority, we marketed our products as Israeli products through the Israeli company Agrexco. As Israeli products, not Palestinian products. Subsequently, the European countries called on Israel to allow the Palestinians to market their products as Palestinian and without taxes. Here we export many kinds of agricultural products such as beans, green zucchini, strawberries and many kinds of vegetables. We focus on the cash crop and flowers. After the siege, since 2006-2007, Israel closed the crossings and we could not export anymore. The European Union has called on Israel to allow the Palestinians to export their crops as Palestinian crops, but we should sell our products through Israeli companies.” He showed the cardboard box used to export strawberries, on which was printed the brand name of the Palestinian cooperative and the logo of the Israeli company Arava Export Growers.
“The Paris Agreement has tied the Palestinian economy to the Israeli economy,” Abu Sami continued. “Most Palestinian products go to Europe, and some to Russia. We asked to sell our products in the West Bank, but the Israeli authorities have refused. They told us, ‘this is a political decision.'”
Israeli companies also receive 6% from the exports of Palestinian products. ”The farmers here have lost a lot,” Abu Sami said. “Before 2005, we were planting approximately 2500 dunums. Now it’s only 700. We started planting herbs in Khan Younis and Rafah, green pepper, cherry tomato. At this time, the cost of strawberries in Europe is too low. We stopped the exports.” There will be meetings in the coming days, and the farmers will decide what to over the next few weeks. The cost of material is high. Farmers can not earn anything from the exports allowed to Europe. The more profitable market in the West Bank is closed to them.
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
The Paris Protocol, an agreement on economic relations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, was signed on 29th April 1994 as part of Oslo Agreements. It has made the Palestinian economy a prisoner of Israel, in both the productive sector and the trade of goods. Imports and exports are under complete control of Israel, which determines quantity, documents, customs, taxes and time.
Due to the ban on exports, the economic growth of the Gaza Strip is even more difficult. The economic growth could be possible not only with the resumption of exports to foreign markets, but especially through economic and trade exchanges with the West Bank.
11th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
On Wednesday, 8th January 2014, 27-year-old Palestinian fisherman Mohammed Sultan Al Khader had was arrested by the Israeli navy in Gaza waters. He had been fishing with his two brothers, Ahmad and Hamdi, on a small fishing boat, called a hasaka. Al Khader was released in the evening.
“We went fishing at about 6:oo am,” he said at his home in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. “Around 8.40 am, two Israeli speedboats approached our boat and the Israeli soldiers started shooting into the water.” The three brothers were less than one nautical mile off the coast of Soudanya in the northern Gaza Strip.
The Israeli soldiers shouted for them stop the engine and approached the front of their boat. “Stop the engine, approach us, raise your hands,” they shouted to the fishermen.
“Then they asked us to jump into the water,” Al Khader said. “I told them that my brother was too young and could not swim. I took off my dresses and jumped into the water. Some soldiers pulled me on board the Israeli speedboat. One of them asked me about the two other fishermen. I told him that the young one could not swim and the other one was sick and would have died. ‘I will let your brothers go home and I will take you’, he told me.”
The soldiers gave Al Khader some clothes. Then they forced him to again jump into the water and swim until he reached a large Israeli gunboat about 90 meters away. On board the gunboat, the soldiers blindfolded him, dressed him and cuffed his hands and feet. “Then I did not see what else was going on,” he said. “I could not see anything.” In the Israeli port of Ashdod the soldiers uncuffed his feet and removed the blindfold from his eyes. Then he was interrogated. During the investigation, the soldiers again cuffed his hands and his feet. He said there were two persons, one speaking Arabic and the other Hebrew. Investigators asked him about his name, age and phone number, personal details about his brothers and family, and other personal information. Then they hooded him and left him alone in a room for about an hour and a half. “Then five soldiers came, including one speaking Arabic,” he said. “He said, ‘I will show you some pictures and you will tell me what you see.'” He asked me on which part of the beach I used to work. He showed me pictures of it. They had pictures of each area. ‘Select one of the pictures’, he told me. I chose a picture of the beach area in which I work. The investigators told me to show a governmental site close to the beach and asked how many people work there. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anyone one working there.’ I said. He asked me how it was possible that I did not know anyone if I need to go there to get my permit to work as fishermen. I told him I only know two persons who came on the beach outside the governmental site. Then the investigator asked me about another governmental site of the civil defense. He asked me if the police there had guns. I told him that I did not know, that some of them did and others didn’t.”
“Finally, the soldier told me ‘Thank you for your help,’” Al Khader said with a hint of irony. “Then I was forced to talk to someone on the phone who asked me my name again, personal information, the number of my identity card. They left me alone for two hours. Then the soldiers came back with a paper which was written in Hebrew. They made me wear nice clothes, asked me to hold the paper and took a picture of me.” He didn’t know what was written on the paper. Another fisherman said it was likely tobe a medical report about his health condition that the Israelis could use in proceedings against them in court.
“They covered my face again, they handcuffed me and made me undress,” Al Khader said. “Then a soldier asked me to get up and sit down three times. Then they again made me wear the clothes. I was handcuffed, hooded and taken by car to the Erez crossing, at about 6:10 pm.”
Al Khader is married with a two-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son. He lives in a small, two-room, house, waiting to move into a new house under construction. “Due to the siege, there is lack of building materials,” a relative said.
Fishing is the only source of livelihood for his family, like hundreds of others.
These attacks by Israeli military forces are increasingly restricting the fishing area allowed to the Palestinian fishermen preventing them from accessing waters north of Gaza Strip. The practical limit imposed by Israel on waters north of Gaza is not six nautical miles, but one to two.
Moreover, it seems clear that through these detentions, the Israeli authorities are trying to obtain information about people and places in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip affects Palestinians’ economic and social conditions. More than 75,000 people depend on the fishing industry as the main source of their livelihood.
Background
Israel has progressively imposed restrictions on Palestinian fishermen’s access to the sea. The 20 nautical miles established under the Jericho agreements, between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1994, were reduced to 12 miles in the Bertini Agreement of 2002. In 2006, the area Israel allowed for fishing was reduced to six nautical miles from the coast. After its military offensive “Operation Cast Lead” (December 2008 – January 2009) Israel imposed a limit of three nautical miles from the coast, preventing Palestinians from accessing 85% of the water to which they are entitled under the Jericho agreements of 1994.
Under the ceasefire agreement reached by Israel and the Palestinian resistance after the Israeli military offensive “Operation Pillar of Defense” (November 2012), Israel agreed that Palestinian fishermen could again sail six nautical miles from the coast. Despite these agreements, the Israeli navy has not stopped its attacks on fishermen, even within this limit. In March 2013, Israel once again imposed a limit of three nautical miles from the coast. On 22 May, Israeli military authorities announced a decision to extend the limit to six nautical miles again.
7th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
(Photo by Charlie Andreasson)
On Saturday, 4th January, the Israeli navby shot at five fishermen and their boat, a hasaka, three nautical miles from the shore of Gaza, well within the highly-restricted part of Palestine waters in which the occupation forces officially allow them to fish. Despite damage to the boat, and water that flooded it, Majed Baker, age 55, and his four relatives managed to return to port and get the boat onto shore. A total of nine bullet holes were counted, some below the waterline.
Previously, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Information in Gaza, the Israeli military had restricted waters in the north. It thereby expanded the nautical “buffer zone” by Israeli waters through military force, and without declaring its intentions in advance. Nor has it made any statement in retrospect. The restriction of the fishing waters in the north is confirmed by the affected fishermen. The same pattern can be discerned in the rest of the increasingly narrowed zone. According to Zakaria Baker, coordinator of the Union of Agricultural Workers Committees (UAWC)’s fishermen’s committee, all boats that tried to sail further than four miles from the coast have been attacked since the beginning of the year, and the “buffer zone” in the south, by Egyptian waters, has been curtailed drastically. This means boats in Rafah must sail north along the coast for some distance before they can venture into fishing grounds.
These restrictions affect the fishing industry severely, especially now, during the peak season. As a result of Israeli aggression, the total catch has fallen by 42% since 2000, and the number of registered fishermen has declined from about 5,000 in the 1980s to less than 3,000 today, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Attacks and shootings against Palestinian fishermen, sometimes resulting in fatal and other injuries, arrests and seizures of boats, and destruction of fishing gear, are common and documented by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Since neither the Palestinian fishing industry nor fishermen themselves endanger the State of Israel, these abuses cannot be understood as anything other than collective punishment, which violates the fourth Geneva Convention, Article 33.
Behind all the numbers and statistics lurk people. When an occupying power, in this case Israel, is allowed to continue to violate international conventions by the world community, it allows other nations to do the same. This erosion of established conventions is a threat to the people they are meant to protect, and can eventually affect relations between states. The attack on the five fishermen is therefore a concern for the entire international community, and not an internal matter between Israel and those living under its occupation.
26 political prisoners, held in Israeli prisons since the Oslo Accords, were released the night of 30th December. About 5,000 others remain in prisons located in the territories occupied in 1948, a violation of international law.
Umm Dia’a thought her son would be among the prisoners released. She had been told so by neighbors, several rumors confirmed it, she got ready to celebrate, she invited friends. But the Zionists distributed the list of those to be released only the day before, and her son was not on it. Rami was there instead, the son of a friend of hers, who was not expecting it. In all, there were three prisoners from Gaza. Umm Dia’a was so sad that she did not even show up to the weekly sit-it in solidarity with the prisoners that takes place in front of the Red Cross last week. Instead, those who had received good news were celebrating by offering pastries to all participants. Maybe Dia’a will be released with the next group. The 26 prisoners released last week are the third of four groups, which include 104 Palestinian political prisoners that Israel promised to release as a sign of goodwill to start the so-called peace talks.
(Photo by Sil)
Dia’a and Rami were seized by the Zionists when they were 16 and 15 years old. Since then, they have spent most of their lives in prison, only occasionally being able to receive visits from their families, and without being able to finish their studies. Rami now is 35 years old. 20 years have been spent in prison, accused of fighting an illegal, unjust and murderous military occupation. Two days after his release , friends and relatives were still celebrating, They had built a tent, and anyone could go to shake hands and welcome this man who had returned home at last, who was just a teenager when left. Rami is in a different world from the one he had left. The population of Gaza has increased greatly, the people, the political situation, everything has changed. Yet despite the inevitable shock, he has clear ideas about what he wants. While he can rejoin his family, another 5,000 political prisoners remain in the Zionist jails. He spoke of a special case, one of many. “Among others who remain in prison is a friend of mine. He has health problems and should receive some care that he does not receive. He’s named Ibrahim Elbitar. Make sure that he is released. It can be cured!”
(Photo by Sil)
Israel released these 104 Palestinian prisoners as a sign of goodwill for the peace agreements. But another 5000 remains in jail, against international conventions, against common sense, unjustly, and with the silent complicity of international institutions and organizations. All Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are political prisoners. According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel as occupying power has no right to deport people from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank into the 1948 territories,. The very presence of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is therefore in itself illegal, as well as horrible. The liberation of about 2% of these prisoners does not take us 2% of the way down the path towards justice for all Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
(Photo by Sil)
Addameer, a human rights organization that deals with Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, says that prisoners have been released at the starts of many phases of peace talks. But others were arrested in the meantime, so that the total number of Palestinian political prisoners remained almost constant. And Zionists did not change policies such as administrative detention, which provides for imprisonment without any reason being declared. And that’s not all: Prisoners released in these cases must follow rules. For example, one freed in Gaza cannot leave the Strip for 10 years, and cannot be involved in political activity. Also, if they are captured again, they must serve the entire sentence from which they were released through the exchange. A famous example of this is Samer Issawi, who, released an exchange for Gilad Shalid, was seized and imprisoned again by the occupation forces. He would have to finish his entire sentence if he had not risked his life through a long hunger strike, attracting international attention and ultimately winning his release in Jerusalem.
(Photo by Sil)
While these prisoners are released, Israel promises further expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. That news fades into the background, making it appear the release of these prisoners is a sign of goodwill on the part of Israel, while illegal colonial expansion is not considered an insurmountable obstacle to the ” peace process.” Maybe we should change the language, quitting the search for a peace process, and looking instead for a process of decolonization. This would lead more quickly to justice and then, finally, peace, especially since this “peace process ” has more the appearance of a “Zionist colonial expansion project.”
So despite happiness at the release of these prisoners, the political victory seems at least partial. Addameer calls for the release of all Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, as happened in South Africa, before the beginning of the so-called peace process.
