18th of December, 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Tulkarm team | Deir al Ghsoon, occupied Palestine
Hundreds of farmers protested on the morning of the 18th of December against the closure of an agricultural gate, which led Israeli commanders to agree to reopen the way. In 2002, 3200 dunumns of farmland got cut of from the rest of the two Palestinian villages of Deir Al Ghsoon and Al Jarosheyyah by building of the Israeli apartheid wall. Ever since, farmers have to cross one, out of two, agricultural checkpoints in order to get to their lands. The process of getting through the checkpoint takes a lot of time and not all farmers manage to get a permission to cross.
Farmer Abdullah Ghaner arrives at 6 o’clock to the checkpoint every morning in order to be among the first half of the farmers to cross the checkpoint. The soldiers are supposed to open the gate at 7 o’clock, but farmers often complain that opening hours are unreliable.
“When, and even if, we get through is depending on the mood of the soldiers”, says Abdullah.
He and his family own 16 dunnams of land on the other side of the Apartheid wall. The farm has been property of the family for three generation, and Abdullah is hoping to pass it on to his daughter. “We are born farmers. By enclosing our land they are trying to demolish her heritage !”, he says.
This part of the wall doesn’t in-circuit any settlement or military base. The only thing between the wall and the green line is Palestinian farmland. “This piece of land has not been surrounded by the wall for security reason, they surrounded it in order to steal our land”, Abdullah explains.
Yesterday, soldiers told the farmers that they would close checkpoint 623, one of the agricultural checkpoint leading to the farmland. Closing the checkpoint would be devastating for Abdullah and the 300 farmers that are dependent on this checkpoint for making a living. “What can we do ? he asks. We are farmers, we can only shout. They are soldiers, they can shoot”.
It it is not even certain that the farmers affected by the closure will get permission to enter the other checkpoint. Even if they do, the lack of roads on the other side of the apartheid wall will force them to walk for hours in order to reach their lands. It would take Abdullah 1,5 hour of walking from the other checkpoint to reach his land. That means he would only be able to work for a few hours on his land before having to return back to the checkpoint, in order to get there before the soldiers close it.
Yesterday morning farmers and Palestinian activists together with politicians gathered to protest Thursday’s announcement to close the checkpoint. After demanding the checkpoint to remain open, and threatening to take this decision to court, Israeli commanders agreed to leave the checkpoint open. For the farmers, this is a small but important victory. But the future of the checkpoint is still uncertain and farmers will not be satisfied until the apartheid wall has been removed, and the farmers guaranteed unlimited access to their land.
31th March 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al Khalil Team | Wadi Fukin, Occupied Palestine
On Monday March 30th about two hundred people commemorated Land Day in the village of Wadi Fukin. The protest, which involved planting olive trees was a response to Israeli theft of village land.
Land Day protest marching in the streets of Wadi Fukin.
After midday prayer around two hundred Palestinians and internationals gathered in the village of Wadi Fukin to commemorate Land Day and support the villagers struggle against the illegal Israeli expropriation of their lands. People from Wadi Fukin, neighbouring villages and internationals started their march towards the green line carrying Palestinian flags, digging tools, playing music and singing, to where the settlement of Beitar Illit is forcibly taking over Palestinian land in order to expand. The protest continued peacefully through the small streets of Wadi Fukin and just before going to the hill above the village every protester was given an olive tree to carry. Spirits were high as protesters climbed the village hill overshadowed by the settlement expansion site and began to take back Palestinian land by planting the trees.
A village caught between settlements and under extreme pressure
Wadi Fukin is in a valley sandwiched between the Green Line to the north-west and the fastest-growing illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Beitar Illit. With around 80.000 inhabitants (as of 2014), Beitar Illit is part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc surrounding and cornering Wadi Fukin. In order to expand these settlements and steal even more land, the apartheid wall is being built on Palestinian land far inside the Green Line around this settlement bloc. Regular Friday demonstrations are held in Wadi Fukin protesting against this continuous illegal land grab.
200 people at Land Day protest in Wadi Fukin, Beitar Illit settlement block in the background.
Military attacking unarmed Palestinians on their own land.
As Land Day protesters reached the Israeli construction site they managed to plant both olive trees and Palestinian flags directly on the site. While Palestinian flags and olive trees popped up on the ground, young Palestinian men and women also managed to take over and plant flags on the unmanned bulldozers and tractors parked there.
After about ten minutes on the site 4 military jeeps arrived with more than 40 soldiers and border police. The military attacked the protesters with tear gas and stun grenades and a police helicopter began circling the area and filming the protesters from the sky. As tear gas clouds drove the protesters from their lands and down the hill, soldiers began kicking down and destroying the newly planted olive trees and flags.
Soldiers and border police gassing protesters on their own land.
Spirits kept high in spite of tear gassing
Though several people suffered from tear gas poisoning the protest continued on the hill between Wadi Fukin village and the settlement expansion on the Green Line. Alternately running from tear gas and planting trees, protesters managed to stay on the hill for an hour continuing to plant and protest.
As everyone returned to the village spirits remained high and the succesful event was celebrated with music, speeches and freshly made bread.
Olive tree and flag planting at Land Day protes, Wadi Fukin.
Land Day – a historic day for fighting occupation and expropriation Land Day marks the day of a general stike on March 30th in 1976. The strike was a response to the Israeli Government’s expropriation of thousands of dunums of Palestinian land. There were marches in Palestinian cities within present-day Israel from the Naqab to Galilee. Six unarmed Palestinians were killed, 100 wounded and hundreds more arrested. The Land Day was a turning point in the struggle against the occupation as it was the first mass mobilization by Palestinians within the borders of 1948 Israel.
Protests have been and will be continue to be going on all through the West Bank in the weeks surrounding Land Day.
7 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On Tuesday September 6th local Palestinians from the village of Al Walajeh gathered with international activists to protest the building of the illegal separation barrier as well as the destruction of ancient olive trees. The demonstrators succeeded in halting the razing of Palestinian land for approximately one hour before soldiers violently broke up the protest arresting one Palestinian and one Israeli activist.
On September 5th bulldozers protected by dozens of soldiers arrived at 4 AM and uprooted 50 olive trees that date back at least 100 years. The bulldozers also destroyed 18 almond trees, 27 pine trees, and 8 fruit trees. The destruction took place in an area of over 1 square mile and was declared a closed military zone, prohibiting media coverage of the devastating operation.
Mohammed Al-Atrash (Abu Wajih), the elderly farmer who owned the trees, will receive no compensation for his loss.
In the aftermath residents of Al Walajeh called for a presence of media and activists to highlight this illegal destruction carried out by the Israeli government. At approximately 10am on Tuesday several residents from the village, joined by ISM and other activists, walked down to the site of the olive grove, which is now a wasteland. Upon arriving they stood in front of the construction machines and forced them to halt their work.
Soldiers declared the area a closed military zone and disbanded the protest by force within an hour. Yousif Shakawi, a local resident in his 50’s was arrested along with one Israeli activist. The remaining protesters were held at distance so that the work could resume.
The trees were destroyed in preparation for the building of the illegal Israeli apartheid wall which is planned to run several hundred metres inside the 1967 green line, effectively seizing hundreds of dunnums of land from around Al Walajeh. If the Israeli government succeeds in completing the wall along the planned route the village will be surrounded on three sides with the army controlling entrance and exit to the village.
Sheerin Alaraj, who has lived in Al Walajeh all her life, explained to us that construction of the wall was continuing in spite of an on going appeal process in the Israeli high court with a ruling expected September 27th . However Sheerin has little confidence in the process as she explained to us “the court is just an extension of the military arm of Israel.”
In 2004 the International Court of Justice declared that the apartheid wall is illegal and Israel should tear it down immediately and compensate the victims. In spite of this ruling Israel has continued construction of the wall which annexes 8.5% of the entire West Bank territory. Since 2000 Israel has destroyed approximately 330,000 olive trees in the West Bank and Gaza. There is currently a campaign to boycott Caterpillar Inc. for its role in supplying the Israeli government with equipment used to enforce the occupation.
As the time for harvesting olives nears and Israeli military and settlers continue to destroy the main agricultural pillar of Palestinian culture and livelihood, International Solidarity Movement will be actively working throughout the harvesting season to safeguard Palestinians and assist in harvesting despite this and other events that have threatened security and access to Palestinian farmland. For more information on ISMs Olive Harvest Campaign, visit our website.
On a quiet October morning, Fida Zaneen, 19, sings a traditional love song as she pulls olives from trees in Beit Hanoun’s border region during the annual olive harvest.
“My grandmother taught me the folk songs. They were popular all over Palestine many decades ago.”
Saber Zaneen, 44, and Khalil Nassir, 45, alternately belt out traditional harvest songs as they, too, strip the limbs of the green and black fruit in the northern Gaza region.
Keeping Palestinian culture alive is one of the mandates of Local Initiative, a Beit Hanoun-based volunteer group comprising many youths and women, and of which Fida Zaneen is a member. At group events, participants often sport traditional robes and Palestinian kuffiyehs, and dance dabke to hand-drums and singing from the group.
Formed in September 2007, Local Initiative has a number of other mandates: promoting volunteerism; reaching out to marginalised families living in the regions along the Green Line border between Israel and Gaza; giving psycho- social support to children scarred by Israeli military attacks and shooting; financially assisting children with martyred parents; and improving the role of women and youth in society.
Saber Zaneen, one of the original seven founders and now the general coordinator, elaborates on the group’s objectives.
“The border areas are very dangerous and difficult areas for families and farmers to live and work in, due to Israeli shooting and shelling at any Palestinians in the area. We are trying to support those people who choose to remain on their land.” Farmers in the north and eastern Beit Hanoun buffer zone region have reason to feel threatened: of the eight Palestinians killed and over 33 injured in the buffer zone since the Jan. 18 ceasefire, three of the killed (all children) and 12 of the injured (including six children) were attacked in the northern and eastern border regions.
The region, dubbed the “buffer zone”, is an Israeli-imposed no-go zone which encompasses approximately 30 percent of Gaza’s most fertile agricultural land, ranging from off-limits land between 300 metres wide to up to two kilometres wide in some areas. According to Israeli authorities, anyone entering that area is subject to being shot by the Israeli army.
It is in the knowledge that farmers struggle not only to access their land but also to bring water to it, that Local Initiative volunteers accompany farmers to do the simplest of things: water their land, check on their bees, re-plant Israeli-bulldozed trees.
“During the war, Israeli soldiers destroyed almost all of the water wells and pumps in this area,” says Zaneen of the razed land east of Beit Hanoun. “We sometimes accompany farmers to bring water to their land. We’d like to see the wells and pumps repaired and farmers working their land without fear of being shot.”
Local Initiative uses direct action against what they see as Israel’s policies of collective punishment of Gaza’s Palestinians. To highlight the issues and increase solidarity among buffer zone inhabitants, the group leads non- violent demonstrations and holds events in the buffer zone region.
Some of the demonstrations have been near the Erez checkpoint, along with other NGOs and local groups, calling for an end to the siege of Gaza, imposed since shortly after Hamas was elected in early 2006, but tightening more and more severely since June 2007 when Hamas took control of Gaza.
Zaneen speaks of the impetus to set up the group. “It was after the Israeli army had on two different days shelled groups of children in Beit Hanoun in 2007. I saw tiny body parts all over the ground. It was the hardest thing I’d seen.”
The first incident Zaneen refers to occurred on Aug. 21 2007 when Abdul Khader Ashoor, 13, and Fadi Kafarna, 11, were targeted by an Israeli missile. Testimony given by a child injured in the shelling to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) notes that the boys were going to pick fruit in an area where a homemade rocket launcher stand stood when they were struck by the missile.
Eight days later, three children from the Abu Ghazala family were likewise killed by an Israeli ground to ground missile. PCHR reports that Mahmoud, 8, Sara, 9, and Yehya, 12, were herding sheep roughly two kilometres from the border fence when hit by the missile and that, while 40m from a homemade rocket launching stand, there were no resistance activists in the area at the time.
In September 2007, after recruiting concerned Beit Hanoun residents, the seven volunteers met for the first time as Local Initiative. Since then, the group has blossomed, now comprising roughly 20 female volunteers and 30 males. The ages range from teenage to parents.
Fida Zaneen studies engineering at university. She is fluent in English and often acts as translator for visiting international delegations and journalists, at the same time joining in the non-violent demonstrations.
Ibrahim Kaloub, 17, one of the younger volunteers, documents their activities. A compilation video shows psycho-social activities with clowns visiting the border region families, demonstrations in the “buffer zone”, celebrating Palestinian Land Day, harvesting olives in 2008, and Israeli tanks and military bulldozer incursions along the border regions.
During the first ten days of October, Local Initiative volunteers assisted in the olive harvest on five border area farms. Mohammed Zaneen lives to the east of Beit Hanoun. Over the years of numerous Israeli invasions, the family has lost their ten dunams (one dunam is 1,000 square metres) of olive trees to Israeli bulldozers, leaving just 18 trees as their source of olives and oil.
Zaneen says that in eight days of harvest work, they harvested over 100 trees in border areas north and east of Beit Hanoun, but that the harvest was a meagre one. He cites natural biennial decreases in olive production as one reason for this year’s poor harvest, but says the most significant factor was the Israeli bulldozing of hundreds of olive trees in the border areas – an estimated 90 percent of the trees – during the Israeli massacre of Gaza last winter.
With the choking siege on Gaza, unemployment couples with soaring prices to render simple existence a daily challenge for the 90 percent of Gaza’s population who live in extreme poverty.
Zaneen knows the region and is acutely aware of the most impoverished families, including children orphaned by one or both parents. In dire cases, he seeks financial aid from local and international supporters.
Khalil Nassir, 45, is another of the original founders. During the Israeli winter massacre of Gaza, Nassir volunteered as a medic in the region.
Mahmoud Billih, 17, is always in the front line of any demonstration. He, too, has been a Local Initiative member since the beginning.
He recalls the day Local Initiative and international activists brought a martyr’s corpse from the buffer zone east of Beit Hanoun. “This was a very important act. His family had no idea if he was alive of not. When his father was able to lay his son to rest, he too could rest.”
Gassem Kafarni, 23, an engineer, and another of the original members remembers: “Saber (Zaneen) said, ‘we need volunteers who are willing to risk their lives while helping families live on their land.’ I was willing.”
Kafarni speaks of the families Local Initiative used to visit, before their homes were destroyed during the last Israeli massacre.
“We used to visit around 13 families who lived in very hard conditions. They all lived close to the border fence and had many problems from the Israeli soldiers. No other groups visited them; they were given the UN dry food aid but otherwise were completely ignored. We’d go, bring the children toys, and play games with them. They were always very happy for our visits. But now their houses are gone.”
Shabaan Garmut, 60, is among the families who had a home next to the border fence. “There was always Israeli soldier shooting,” says Kafarni. “Eventually Garmut told his family to go live elsewhere, for their safety. But he stayed in the house.”
Kafarni says that the Israeli soldiers would prevent Garmut from reaching his water well, thereby preventing him from watering his three dunams of olive and lemon trees.
“We organised solidarity marches to his land, brought many journalists filming live so that the Israeli soldiers would not shoot too closely. We also brought new trees and planted them to replace trees the Israelis had bulldozed.”
With the Israeli massacre of Gaza, Garmut’s house was destroyed and his land razed.
Saber Zaneen says that approximately 80 houses were demolished in the buffer zone area to the north and east of Beit Hannoun – rendering at least 400 residents homeless.
Following the attacks, the Initiative organised short-term emergency medical training courses for farmers and civilians in the border regions, to better enable them to work and live on the land, but prepared for Israeli attacks.
The volunteers also engage in activities for traumatised children. In June 2009, Local Initiative held a ‘let me play freely’ day of kite-flying in the border region, involving also children with special needs and physically challenged children. Amal Nassir, 21, is a social worker and one of the original seven founders. “I’m not afraid to go in the border areas,” she says, despite the reality of Israeli soldiers’ shooting. “The hardest thing for me is to hear the children speak of their experiences and suffering during the last war.”
For Fida Zaneen and Nassir, being female does not limit their participation. “We are equal; we can do any of the work the men are doing, nothing is off- limits,” says Nassir.
On 15 September, we join farmers and residents, including a contingent of women, youths and men, in a non-violent walk to the border region east of Beit Hanoun in the north of Gaza, singing and chanting as they march past Israeli army razed fields and destroyed water tanks and cisterns. The march is in the tradition of popular resistance in Palestine, more widely known worldwide in the villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin, but equally practised all over occupied Palestine, including Gaza, in the simplest of acts: farming and accessing land which the Israeli authorities’ policies continue to attempt to render barren and void of Palestinian life.
[In the two well-known occupied West Bank regions, Bil’in and Ni’lin, the Israeli occupation army has ramped things up to such a violent suppression of non-violent voices that the April 17th killing of Bil’in villager, Basem Abu Rahme (29, strong, gentle, slain by an Israeli-soldier-shot, high-velocity tear gas canister to the chest from a close distance) , was the 18th murder of non-violent protesters against the separation Wall (11 of these murdered were under 18 years; 7 were 15 years old or under).]
The Beit Hanoun protesters’ message: for Israeli soldiers to stop targeting farmers, for Israeli authorities to end the (intentional) practice of driving Palestinian farmers off of their land. They call also for access to water, highlighting that in that region all but a single water source have been destroyed. This tank serves 40 dunams (1 dunam is 1,000 square metres) of farmland.
What has led these citizens to take up flags and placards? An on-going series of Israeli army targeted-shootings, tank and bulldozer invasions, destruction of farmland, and kidnapping of Palestinian civilians, rendering even the simple act of tending trees on farmland impossible or highly dangerous, risking injury or death from Israeli gunfire.
An exaggeration?
Since the end of Israel’s 23 day winter massacre of Gaza, another eight Palestinian civilians have been killed in the Strip’s border regions, including four minors (3 boys and 1 girl) and one mentally disabled adult. Another 28 Palestinians, including eight minors (7 boys, 1 girl) and 2 women, have been injured by Israeli shooting and shelling, including by the use of ‘flechette’ dart-bombs on civilian areas.
It’s an apt name and a struggle that goes back months, years, but gets almost no recognition in the international corporate media. Neither civilian deaths while farming, nor the steady non-violent resistance to Israeli land annexation seem to be sensational enough.
But while these Beit Hanoun civilians are unarmed, they are not naïve, not passive.
“Buhrrrah, wa dam, nafdiq ya Falasteen: Our soul and blood, we sacrifice for you Palestine,” they chant.
They tell us their first choice is to live and farm peacefully in their region near the border to Israel. But if it comes to it, they will die on their land, for their land, for their families, while farming.
They have little-to-no choice.
With Gaza’s borders firmly sealed shut under the internationally-complicit, Israeli-led and Egyptian-backed siege on Gaza, there is no option for emigration, no option for work in Israel or Egypt, no option to start up new businesses importing goods…
When considering these civilians and farmers, it is imperative to recognize that 95% of Gaza’s industry has been shut down by Israeli attacks and the siege. That roughly one third of Gaza’s farmland has been swallowed by a no-go, Israeli-imposed ‘buffer zone’ in which Israeli soldiers reserve the right to shoot-to-kill.
Roughly a decade ago, Israeli authorities unilaterally established an off-limits ‘buffer zone’ on the 150 metres of land extending along the Green Line border between Gaza and Israel. Since inception, the ‘buffer zone’ has swollen to over 1 km in the east and 2 km in the north (during and immediately after Israel’s 23 day massacre of Gaza in winter 2008/2009), to the present 300 metre off-limits area (heralded in May 2009 by the dropping of leaflets which stated:
“The Israeli Defence Forces repeat their alert forbidding the coming close to the border fence at a distance less than 300 metres. Who gets close will subject himself to danger whererby the IDF will take necessary procedures to drive him away which will include shooting when necessary.”
The ‘buffer zone’ swallows prime, fertile agricultural land, cutting off another means of self-sustenance in a Strip that has been under siege since after Hamas’ election in 2006.
International bodies, including the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the World Food Program (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) note that between 35% to 60% of Gaza’s agricultural industry has been destroyed and rendered useless [from the winter Israeli massacre of Gaza and from various Israeli invasions, attacks, burning of crops, and the impact of the siege].
Whereas formerly Gaza production met half the Strip’s agricultural needs, the effects of attacks and siege on Gaza has devolved the agricultural sector to what the Gaza-based Agricultural Development Association of Gaza aptly cited as a “destruction of all means of life.”
We pass farmers on a donkey cart loaded with plastic jugs filled with water. They ask how they are supposed to water, let alone reach, the paltry few trees on their land near the ‘buffer zone’.
We continue walking, getting a close look at the heaps of rubble which were water tanks and wells. The march reaches a larger well, it’s covering now at a wounded 45 degree slant, the sweet water within off-limits to farmers and their trees.
While speeches are made, pledging to continue to farm, continue to non-violently resist this flagrant Israeli bullying and land-grab policy, some of the weathered farmers in the area approach, keen to share their miseries to those who would listen.
Salem As Saed is 59, has 4.5 dunams of land which once held orange and olive trees until occupational bulldozers ground them to the earth. He has 17 children who he is unable to support; they are all dependent on food-aid handouts.
Awad, (55) has 17 in family and no means of income. His land has been razed, water sources destroyed. Of the 93 dunams of trees he once had, the vast majority have been destroyed. Awad has planted new trees, but these are scant in number and failing from want of water.
He has a further 30 dunams closer to the border, which he cannot access, has not accessed in years. Two years ago, Awad was shot by Israeli soldiers in the area of the Israeli watch tower at the border. He says that he was working with his son some 500 metres from the fence when the Israeli soldiers began shooting without warning. He was hit by a bullet to his inner thigh; his son was abducted and imprisoned for 28 days.
The speeches end and demonstrators kneel, beginning to pray on their land.
The demonstration ends without incident, though the daily dangers remain once the cameras are gone.
As we walk back towards Beit Hanoun, we discuss some those recently assassinated and injured in the buffer zones at the hands of Israeli soldiers.
On the morning of 9 September, and also in the Beit Hanoun border region, Maysara al Kafarna, a 24 year old from Beit Hanoun, was shot in the foot by Israeli soldiers at the Green Line border between Gaza and Israel. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) notes that the youth was 350 metres from the border fence when targeted.
PCHR reports that a few hours later, at 10 am, Israeli soldiers invaded as deeply as 700 metres into areas north of Beit Hanoun, firing at homes and farmland.
Five days prior, Israeli soldiers shot dead a 14 year old boy, targeting him with a bullet to the head. PCHR reports that in the afternoon of 4 September Ghazi Al Zaneen and family were walking in the northeastern Beit Hanoun region to agricultural land they owned 500 metres from the border when –with no warning messages or warning shots –Israeli soldiers opened sustained fire at the family, the last bullets hitting the boy and the family car as the father evacuated his son. Critically injured, Ghazi died the following day.
On 2 September, according to PCHR, when Israeli occupation forces invaded 150 metres into northern Beit Hanoun, Palestinian resistance confronted the invasion, defending themselves against the occupiers’ invasion. In the firing that ensued, a 17 year old, ‘Abdul ‘Aziz al-Masri, living in the region was shot in the foot. Not farming, the youth was subject to danger due to the Israeli invasion.
A week prior to that, on 23 August, PCHR reports Israeli soldiers opened fire on areas to the east of Beit Hanoun, shooting 63 year old Fawzi Ali Wassem in the thigh. The farmer was on agricultural land 1,800 metres from the border.
The morbid list of ‘buffer zone’ fatalities and injuries continues in Beit Hanoun regions (and throughout the Gaza Strip):
-Saleh Mohammed al-Zummara, 66, injured by a gunshot to the left hand and ‘Ali Mohammed al-Zummara, 65, injured by shrapnel in the back from Israeli soldiers’ firing on 3 June, according to PCHR.
– Ziad Salem abu Hadayid, 23, is shot in the legs when Israeli soldiers shoot on Palestinian farmers on 20 May, according to the Al Mezan centre for Human Rights.
-We find Ahmed Abu Hashish’s decomposed body, missing since 21 April, is found shot dead, presumably by Israeli soldiers, in the eastern Beit Hanoun border region on 14 June. As we and Local Initiative volunteers search for then remove the body, we come under close and intense fire from the Israeli soldiers at the border. We are clearly, visibly unarmed; the shooting intesifies when the soldiers see that we have located the body. It is pure spite.
And this is without mentioning the equally brutal assaults on other regions along the ‘buffer zone’. Nor Israeli soldiers’ intentional arson of Palestinian crops. Nor mentioning the abductions of civilians –the latest, 5 minors from Beit Lahiya’s bedouin village region. Abducted on 6 September as they herded their sheep and goats, they are:
1. Mohammed ‘Arafat Abu Khousa, 17;
2. Sameh ‘Abdul Qader Abu Hashish, 15;
3. Fraih Qassem Abu Hashish, 12;
4. ‘Aa’ed Hazzaa’ Abu Hashish, 16; and
5. Ibrahim Shihda Abu Jarad, 17.
Look carefully at the faces in the above photos: these are the civilians facing the world’s fourth most powerful military. These are the people eeking a living or living in a region which has been arbitrarily cut off and assaulted by the state which purports to ‘defend itself’. Look carefully, and hope that they are not among the next to be martyred by Israeli assaults.
