At 9am on Saturday 7th February 2009, 10 international Human Rights Activists will be accompanying Palestinian farmers in Al Faraheen village, east of Khan Younis. Farmers and international accompaniers were fired upon by Israeli Forces in the same area on Thursday, February 5th.
International Human Rights Activists will accompany Yusef Abu Shaheen, a Palestinian farmer, in Abassan Jedida of Al Faraheen village. Shaheen’s land is approximately 500 metres from the ‘Green Line’ and 5 kilometres south of Kissufim (Al Qarara) Crossing.
“We are accompanying these farmers to harvest their crops because they have a right to their land. Palestinians who live or have land within 1 kilometre of the Green Line are being driven out by Israeli military violence. We consider this to be a form of ethnic cleansing. With international accompaniment, these farmers are able to harvest their crops with a much greater degree of safety than if they were to come to these areas alone”
Andrew Muncie (Scotland) – International Human Rights Worker
This action comes after farm worker Arwan was shot and killed by Israeli forces as he worked his land close to the ‘Green Line’.
On Tuesday 27th January 2009, in Al Faraheen, Israeli forces shot at several farmers, killing one.
27 year old Arwan was working picking parsley and spinach in the village agricultural lands, approximately 700 m from the Green Line, when Israeli jeeps opened fire with machine guns from behind the Green Line – shooting more than 30 bullets in quick succession, eyewitnesses reported. Many of the seven farmers working in the area scattered, taking shelter from the shower of bullets. Arwan, however, was shot in the neck, dying instantly.
Israeli soldiers open fire on Palestinian farmers and international Human Rights Workers twice in threedays
Israeli soldiers again opened fire on Palestinian farmers and international Human Rights Workers (HRWs) on Thursday 5th February, as they attempted to harvest parsley in agricultural land near the Green Line.
Returning to farm-land of Al Faraheen village, in the Abassan Jedida area, east of Khan Younis, where soldiers had opened fire on Tuesday 3rd February, farmers and HRWs were able to harvest the parsley crop for only half an hour, before soldiers again began to shoot. A number of shots were fired into the air, before the soldiers started to aim in the direction of the farmers and international accompaniment. Bullets were heard to whiz past, close to people’s heads.
The soldiers continued to shoot on the group, despite the fact that many members of the group had their arms in the air and were wearing
fluorescent vests to make them highly visible, and identify them as Human Rights Workers; had erected a banner indicating that the farmers
and accompaniment were civilians; contact had been made with the Israeli army to advise them that Palestinian civilians and internationals would be working in the area; the various international embassies had been advised of the planned accompaniment; and the internationals were announcing their presence via a megaphone – demanding that the soldiers stop shooting on unarmed civilians.
“We are unarmed civilians! We are farmers and international Human Rights Workers! Stop Shooting!”
With internationals acting as human shields, the farmers – after initially lying down to avoid being shot – attempted to continue harvesting. After a few moments, however, the shooting intensified and farmers decided to leave the area, rather than be killed. Internationals announced on the megaphone that the group was leaving the area – asking that the soldiers halt their fire. Instead, as the group started to leave, the shooting further intensified in rapidity and proximity. Even after the group had taken refuge in a house, approximately 1km from the Green Line, the soldiers continued to shoot at nearby houses that were demolished during the recent Israeli Operation Cast Lead.
This behaviour on the part of the Israeli soldiers was an almost exact repeat of their response to the presence of the farmers and internationals, in the same area of farm-land, two days before. On the Tuesday, however, the group was able to harvest for two hours before soldiers began to shoot. Whilst farmers had hoped to be able to wait-out the shooting, in order to continue harvesting, it quickly
became clear that the situation was too dangerous for that to be possible.
The farmers of Al Faraheen are particularly aware of the level of danger they face when entering farm lands that are within 1 km of the Green Line – after watching their friend and colleague, 27 year old Anwar Il Ibrim, from neighbouring Benesela, killed by a bullet to the neck while he was picking parsely in the same area, just one week before.
The owner of the land, Yusuf Abu Shaheen, commented after Tuesday’s gun-fire “If you [internationals] hadn’t been with us today, the soldiers would have killed us all”.
Whilst it has become increasingly dangerous for farmers to enter their lands near the Green Line, especially since the recent Israeli attacks, for farmers like Yusuf, there is an economic imperative to harvest his crops. Yusuf explains that just to plant the crops and keep them watered and fertilised, costs him $2000 each month – money that has already been spent. There is the additional factor of a lack of water that increases the sense of urgency to harvest crops planted in the vicinity of the Green Line. Israeli forces broke the pipes for the area one week before their war on Gaza began. The parsley in the most dangerous areas, with water, could very well have been left for another week or two without harvesting – in the hope that the soldiers might become less aggressive over time. Without water, the plants are becoming increasingly tough, sweet and salty. If they are not harvested soon, they will become worthless.
The workers, who are employed by Yusuf to harvest the crops, also put themselves in mortal danger every time they enter the lands close to the Green Line. Like most in the Gaza Strip, they too are compelled by economic concerns to risk their lives for the meager sum of 20
shekels ($5)/day. With an unemployment rate of 40%, and almost two-thirds (900 000) of Gaza’s residents reliant on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the levels of poverty existing in Gaza mean that, for many families, money earned by sons and farmers risking their lives near the Green Line, might be the only money they have.
Anwar’s mother explains that her son hadn’t worked in the Al Faraheen area for 6 months – not since a large-scale Israeli incursion into the
area in May 2008, and the following Israeli military aggression, made agricultural work in the area extremely dangerous. Anwar, the only
son in the family, felt compelled to try to earn whatever he could to support the family – in particular to buy medicine for his ailing and paralysed father.
The ability of farmers to earn money from these lands is not only being threatened by the daily shooting from the Israeli army, however, but also by the inability to irrigate the crops. On Tuesday, Yusuf took the opportunity to remove expensive connecting valves from the irrigation pipes. On Thursday, an elderly farmer was pulling up all of the irrigation pipes themselves – now useless as it is impossible to get water to the area. This crop the farmers have spent two days trying to harvest, seems likely to be the last that will be planted there for some time.
Such actions – shooting at farmers trying to work their lands; and destroying irrigation systems – are part of the wider, systematic economic oppression of Palestinians. Along with sanctions and a siege that prevents Palestinians from importing and exporting goods; and denies freedom of movement to work in other countries, Israeli military forces also attempt to prevent Palestinians from deriving income from other methods, such as fishing and farming – through extreme levels of military force. Indeed, throughout the 23-day war on Gaza, the Israeli military, along with demolishing approximately 10,000 homes, and damaging many thousands more to the extent to which they are uninhabitable, intentionally killed hundreds of thousands of livestock, and bulldozed thousands of dunums of agricultural land.
In order to stand in solidarity with farmers in their struggle against this economic oppression, international HRWs will continue to accompany farmers to dangerous lands – challenging Israeli military imposition of “closed military zones” in areas that they claim to no longer occupy.
On the 9th October, members of ISM Gaza supported an action organised by a Palestinian youth group called The Local Initiative.
Olive farmers were accompanied onto their land, situated extremely close to the Green Line, under the shadow of several Israeli watchtowers. Palestinian and international activists worked alongside local farmers to bring in the 2008 harvest. Farmers in this area have been denied access to their land by Israeli occupation forces and vast numbers of their trees (150,000 – 200,000) have been destroyed.
However, on this day farmers were able to reach their groves and successfully harvest their olives, fulfilling their basic human right to produce food for their families and their communities.
In the last week we had two decisions by the Supreme Court of the Zionist state which reveal how racist this regime is. The first one is the citizenship law which will affect thousands of Palestinian families on both sides of the Green Line and the second is the Bil’in court case.
Citizenship Law
No one (including me) would have believed that Israel would take such a crazy step as this until the last few months. There is no country in the western world that has taken such a step, even the countries where terror attacks have occured on their civilians within their borders. Isreal is the only country that uses terror attacks as an excuse for legislating an apartheid law. There is no one in the world who can ethically say that if there is someone from a racial or religious minority who took a violent action against a country’s citizens that the entire community should be collectively punished. However, this was the reason that Isreali secret services used in court, and their game they love to play talking of the security of Isreal suceeded at convincing the judges.
It is known, though, that the real issue they are concerned with is the demographic issue. The president of Supreme Court even noted that since 1993 there was just 16,000 applications submitted from Palestinians to unite families, suggesting that there is no large demographic danger. But no one mentions the reality behind this law, which is that the Israeli state is a Jewish state. There is no place for anyone who is not Jewish!
This is the only democracy in the Middle East who builds their constitution on racist principles .
However the Israeli Supreme Court wasn’t going to approve a law such as this, despite the support from the international mainstream community and their disgraceful silence, which made Israel feel supported even in such a racist step as this. The silence that the international community continues, especially after 58 years of occupation to the historical Palestine, encourages Israel to continue to refuse to take responsibility for the refugees and the massacres that happened at that time. They have fallen silent in forcing Israel to recognize the UN security council resolutions 194, 242 and 338. They have been turning away as Israel declared the “unification” of Jerusalem as a capital for Israel, formally annexing it, even though East Jerusalem is an occupied territory according to international law. To consolidate their occupation, Israel continues building settlements in the West Bank and finally the Wall, or what is so-called the “security fence”, with full Western support. All of these facts on the ground makes me not really surprised to see the Supreme Court in Israel approving one more racist law which is just one piece in a series of acts that aims to “evacuate” or “transfer” the local and the legal owners of the land from their lands by making their life and existence impossible.
An Israeli friend stated accurately, “We are living in the 21st century and we can’t do the same things that we did in the past to continue the transfer. There are more inelegant ways for that by making life impossible for people so they leave without terrifying them in the way the Haganah and other Jewish milita groups did during the so called ‘war of independence’ “.
Bil’in court case
After I talked about the citizenship law and its consequences it’s obvious that Israel will continue the big story of security .
Last Sunday May 14th , the Supreme Court in Jerusalem was discussing one more important issue – the wall case in Bil’in, a small village west of Ramallah in the West Bank. Fortunately there is no final decision yet, even after a discussion which continued untill 9:00 pm local time. From the discussion there was an important thing that was mentioned, which again amounted to more racism and discrimination under the name of security. The thing the judge said was that the reason for building the wall was to protect the Jewish citizens from terrorist attacks with no regards to if the wall is built on the green line or not and with no regard to the legal rights of the owners of the land. However, the wall in Bil’in like in many places is built to protect settlers, who according to international law have no right to be there since they “settle” in a land that is stolen by force from its legal owners.
Building the wall to protect Jewish citizens conceals a dangerous fact: Israel has started with its own unilateral plan. Its an introduction to building the wall around the main settlement blocks such as Ma’ale Adumim, Gush Azion, Alfe Menashe and Ariel. The plan calls for the settlement blocks to be annexed to Israel under the name of “security” and “protection”, again with no regards to their legal status. This will set a horrible precedent allowing for the building of the wall in any place in the West Bank for the same reasons. It’s obvious to all that this is one more way to force the people to leave their homes.
I don’t know how far they can go using these justifications, but I would like to point out that from the Palestinian side, I don’t think the Palestinians want any more hassles in their life. We know the meaning of being a refugee – living in another country as a foreigner. The people have decided that they aren’t going to leave Palestine again. On the other hand, the international community should wake up and take their responsibilities to guarantee human rights and the application of international law, and sanction Israel for making more racist laws that transfer Palestinians from their homes.
Residents of Bil’in village, together with international and Israeli activists, chain themselves to olive trees that are to be uprooted to make way for the Israeli apartheid wall. The wall is currently being constructed in many areas of Palestine. For Bil’in it will result in the annexation of 2,400 dunums of land (600 acres) – over 50% of the land belonging to the village. This will facilitate massive Israeli settlement expansion east of the Green Line. Bil’in has carried out a series of non-violent protests against this land theft, and demonstrations are held at least once a week, usually more. The Israeli military has used excessive force against the demonstrators, regularly firing tear gas, rubber coated metal bullets, sound bombs and live ammunition at unarmed civilians peacefully protesting. Many people have been injured and arrested. In other areas of Palestine people have been killed because they have protested against the wall, including two children who were shot dead on the same day that this video was filmed, a short distance away in Beit Liqya.
days
“We are unarmed civilians! We are farmers and international Human Rights Workers! Stop Shooting!”
Such actions – shooting at farmers trying to work their lands; and destroying irrigation systems – are part of the wider, systematic economic oppression of Palestinians. Along with sanctions and a siege that prevents Palestinians from importing and exporting goods; and denies freedom of movement to work in other countries, Israeli military forces also attempt to prevent Palestinians from deriving income from other methods, such as fishing and farming – through extreme levels of military force. Indeed, throughout the 23-day war on Gaza, the Israeli military, along with demolishing approximately 10,000 homes, and damaging many thousands more to the extent to which they are uninhabitable, intentionally killed hundreds of thousands of livestock, and bulldozed thousands of dunums of agricultural land.