23 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Olive farmers and volunteers were picking olives on 23 October 2011 when they were circled by two Apache helicopters and were faced by four tanks at certain points in the day. This video shows one of the tanks.
22 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Fifty Palestinian youth marched from Gaza’s International Committee of the Red Cross compound to the Commodore Gaza and Al-Quds International Hotels, celebrating the release of 477 political prisoners Tuesday and welcoming those exiled to Gaza, who are currently housed in the hotels.
The demonstration ended in the Al-Nour Cultural Center, where four exiled prisoners, as well as the son of a current prisoner from Gaza, addressed the crowd.
“We are trying to awaken youth about the situation of the prisoners through ongoing activities,” said Majed Abusalama, one of the organizers of the event.
“This is peaceful cultural resistance,” he said. “We want to pressure the international community to take action for the rights of Palestinian prisoners.”
Abusalama added that the group hoped to hold weekly events calling attention to Palestinian political prisoners detained by Israel.
On Monday, the human rights organizations ADDAMEER and Al-Haq warned that Israel’s exile of Palestinian prisoners “violate[s] Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits forcible transfers and deportations of protected persons, a proscription that is part of customary international humanitarian law.
“Unlawful deportation or transfer also constitutes a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV) and qualifies as one of the most serious war crimes,” the groups said in a joint statement.
22 October 2011 | Mondoweiss, Leila Al-Najar and Ishraq Othman
The Beach camp “Al-shate” is located to the west of Gaza City. Small houses are crowded together with an unbearable smell springing from the wastewater running through the alleys. As volunteers in Youth for the Right of Water and Sanitation project (YRWS) we occasionally visit homes there randomly for our case study on water problems. Residents suffer enormously from serious water problems caused by the Israeli occupation which for years has undertaken exploiting and withdrawing all our pure water resources; groundwater, the Jordan River, the Gaza valley and Lake Tiberius. Thus, all aquifers start to run out and the problem of salty water is increasingly appearing in most houses in Gaza.
We visited the home of Haider Saed Abu-Jazya, a 51 year old carpenter and a father of 14 children whose family has a long miserable history with water. “We have been suffering from water shortage and unfair distribution for 10 years. It’s only available for two days a week beginning at midnight only to run out again in the morning. Along with the problem of polluted insufficient supply another problem has emerged, salty water” said Haider who looks older than his age.
The tone of Haider’s voice tells us he is extremely worried about his family’s life. He is likely to pass on the misery he inherited from his refugee parents to his children. “Can you drink a cup of tea melted with three spoons of salt? Absolutely you cannot” he stresses. He describes how salty and polluted water negatively affects his family. For this, he is obliged to buy a 500-liter gallon supply of water which costs 15 NIS 4 US dollars a day. Sometimes he borrows from a neighbor or friend to pay for it, other times his friends have no money to offer.
Not only is pure water used for drinking but also for ordinary daily use. Haider has a big family, yet he earns a low income to cover the simplest and most important needs of life like water which must be affordable to all people as a matter of human rights.
“A house without water as quiet as a desert”, he concludes.
Once, he ran out of water for two weeks in a row, so his wife couldn’t do the house chores like cooking, washing and laundering. Thus, they had to throw their dirty clothes away, which were not laundered for days and could not be used again.
How can a human being survive in such conditions?! How can not one be infected by diseases of salty water?
“The low quality of water causes allergies and red pimples arising on my children’s skin” his wife whispers.
WHAT TO DO?!
“All dwellers of the neighborhood gathered and headed to the municipality to complain about the water problems we all face, there were promises made but never fulfilled” he said.
Haider speaks on behalf of the Palestinian nation, hoping this voice will be heard all over the planet.
To those who read this article, imagine that you cannot get a drop of pure water while your baby is strongly crying because his milk is his only food.
Palestine suffers from severe lack of water and Gaza’s water in particular is going to run out by 2020. As long as the world commits absolute silence, Gaza will turn into a wasteland. Gaza needs your help, don’t hesitate to help our people.
21 October 2011 | Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel, Gaza
We Palestinian students of the Gaza Strip wish to send a message to all European student groups in solidarity with the Palestinians to do all they can to increase Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel this academic year.
We also reiterate our support for the recent call by Palestinian Civil Society, of which we are a signatory, to end all collaborative research between European Universities and Israeli universities.[1] Research centers in Israeli academic institutions are actively involved in fuelling Israel’s huge weapons industry and tools of its military occupation and siege. It is this apparatus of violence that makes studying in Gaza so difficult, not to mention the daily toils and tragedy of Israeli apartheid policies. We, therefore, call for an end to this compliance on all campuses with those directly complicit in the war crimes and colonial subjugation of us the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank,‘48 Palestine and throughout the Diaspora.
These are crucial times as we youth in Gaza are seeing glimpses of the kinds of mass international movement that we are certain will one day bring us the liberation, justice and equality expected by others but denied to us for so long. Each university that boycotts, divests and sanctions from Israel’s apartheid regime is standing on the right side of history, just as students played a huge role in boycotting South Africa’s ugly and similarly racist apartheid regime until it fell in 1994.
Yet apartheid against Palestinians since then has only become more entrenched. In response, our call for boycott from over 170 organisations from Palestinian civil society in 2005[2] has been a lightning rod for others who can relate to our plight. When endorsing the successful boycott and ending of ties between the University of Johannesburg and Ben Gurion University (BGU) this year, the first of its kind, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said:
“While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation. BGU is no exception. By maintaining links to both the Israeli Defence Forces and the arms industry, BGU structurally supports and facilitates the Israeli occupation.” [3]
There was no negotiating with such oppression based on race – there was only one word: BOYCOTT. Just as students around the world were banning Barclays bank from campuses for their investment in South African Apartheid in the 1980s, this year we call on you to take similar steps to end Israel’s systematic brutality. To say, “We will no longer be complicit!”, in the decades of ethnic cleansing, military occupation, medieval blockade that has lead to so much tragedy and broken dreams for our youth and students.
Our spirits have been raised by the BDS efforts so far in European Universities, exemplified by Kings College where students and academics have begun a campaign against the research collaboration between their university and Ahava, the cosmetics company based in an illegal settlement. Such long term campaigns are what is required, the cutting edge of international resistance. We ask you to do whatever it takes to isolate and hold Israel to account until it abides by international law and accepts basic premises of human rights and equality for all, including us Palestinians.
This year it is in your hands to see that the tide finally turns across the campuses in Western countries that most enable the Israeli regime’s crimes against us to continue. We hope you put BDS at the forefront of your campaigns and join together for the Israeli Apartheid Week[4],, the pinnacle of action across universities worldwide. And while the walls around us stop us from meeting in person, we have many students and youth happy to participate in skype conferences and other collaborations. We give you all our solidarity and send you our dearest wishes to do us proud this year.
[1] http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/dont-collaborate-with-apartheid-8202#.Tp-H9Vv9oY1
[2] http://www.bdsmovement.net/bdsintro#.Tp-L81v9oY0
[3] http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/articles/africa/1556-israeli-ties-a-chance-to-do-the-right-thing
by Hussein Amoody and Radhika S.
20 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
The military trial of the four men charged with the death of Italian International Solidarity Movement Activist Vittorio Arrigoni continued in Gaza City today.
The small courtroom was packed with friends and colleagues of Arrigoni, in addition to four or five members of the defendants’ families. All four defendants appeared unshackled behind a caged-off portion of the courtroom and remained standing throughout the trial.
The trial began today with the parties checking where they had left off on the September 22 session.
The prosecutor, dressed in olive-colored military pants and a khaki shirt, then stated that “each of the accused strangled him [Arrigoni] by plastic handcuffs,” and therefore all four were complicit in Arrigoni’s kidnapping and killing. Previously, only two of the defendants had been charged with murder; the other two were charged with aiding and abetting in Mr. Arrigoni’s kidnapping and killing, and the fourth in providing the house where his body was found hanging.
The attorney for Defendant Mohammed Salfiti then requested that the official responsible for making a video and report of the defendants’ confessions on behalf of the government appear in court so that he could be examined by the defense. The three judges, garbed in military uniform, denied the request after the prosecutor stated that “in the military we are all one unit,” and that the individual who made the report had already confirmed its accuracy.
The prosecutor then submitted into evidence a mobile phone and a laptop computer, which he stated were used in the commission of Arrigoni’s murder.
Judge Mansour held up the mobile phone and asked Salfiti if the phone was his. Salfiti stated that “I came after they kidnapped him [Arrigoni] and I recorded that video by my mobile.”
Defendant Tamar Hasasnah was then called forth from the metal cage and questioned by Judge Mansour about a how a laptop admitted into evidence was used in the commission of the crime. Hasasnah stated that the laptop was used to edit the video of Arrigoni and publish it on the internet.
After Hasanah’s testimony, the prosecutor added that Defendants “used the laptop to edit the video and publish it on the internet asking to release Hisham al-Saidany,” then described Arrigoni’s physical condition as depicted in the video. The government arrested al-Saidany, the leader of Tawhid al-Jihad – which denied any role in the murder – in March of this year.
Salfiti then testified that the laptop was his, and that it was used to publish the video of Arrigoni on the internet.
Approximately twenty minutes into the session, an argument broke out between counsel when the defense interrupted the prosecution and stated that they had not received copies of certain files with respect to the laptop, which the prosecution claimed had already been made available. The defense attorney then told the judge, “he is trying to call us liars.”
The prosecutor than asked the judge if the rest of the trial could be delayed so that he could “get other files” needed for the trial. The exact files were not specified. The Court agreed to adjourn the trial until Thursday, November 3, 2011.
An attorney with the Palestinian Committee for Human Rights (PCHR) and five volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), including one attorney, observed the trial. Arrigoni, a longtime member of the ISM, was kidnapped on April 14, 2011. Thousands of people throughout Palestine mourned his death.
Hussein Amoody and Radhika S. are activists with International Solidarity Movement.
