In a symbolic reenactment of the event that changed the world 20 years ago, demonstrators from all over the West Bank managed to topple a section of Israel’s wall, 8 meters of reinforced concrete in height, near the infamous Qalandiya Checkpoint.
Demonstrators gather near the Wall
Palestinian activists prepare to tear down the Wall
Activists take down part of the Wall
The Wall falls on a historic day
On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, hundreds of demonstrators from across the West Bank convened in Qalandiya to demand the immediate dismantling of Israel’s wall. In a dramatic turn of events, protesters managed to tip-over a a section of the wall, opening a passage in this strategic and symbolic location at the entrance to East-Jerusalem.
Exactly twenty years ago today the Berlin Wall came crumbling down in two days that changed the world forever. Today, a wall twice as high and five times as long is being built by Israel in the West Bank, in blatant contempt of international law, to separate Palestinians from their lands.
Despite the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of 2004, that pronounced Israel’s wall illegal, and called for its removal, no significant changes on the ground were made. After the demonstration ended, Mushir Ghazzal, an organizer with the popular struggle coordination committee, said that “Today’s events prove that we must not wait for Israel to end its occupation on its own – we Palestinians should do it with our own two hands. Like the Berlin Wall at the time, Israel’s wall seems to us an undefiable reality, but twice this week it has caved in to the pressure of ordinary people fighting for their rights.”
The anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has been declared an international day of action against Israel’s barrier. Last Friday, mass demonstrations were staged simultaneously in three villages along the path of the wall, including in Ni’ilin where protesters managed, for the first time ever in the West Bank, to topple the 8 meter tall concrete wall there.
Palestinian civil society has strongly and almost unanimously condemned the Palestinian Authority’s latest decision to delay adoption by the UN Human Rights Council of the report prepared by the UN Fact-Finding Mission, headed by justice Richard Goldstone, into the recent Israeli war of aggression against the Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip. A common demand in almost all Palestinian statements issued in this respect was for the UN to adopt the report and act without undue delay on its recommendations in order to bring an end to Israel’s criminal impunity and to hold it accountable before international law for its war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza and, indeed, all over the occupied Palestinian territory.
Succumbing to US pressures and unabashed Israeli blackmail, the president of the PA himself reportedly was himself responsible for the decision to defer discussion at the Council of the Goldstone report, dashing the hopes of Palestinians everywhere as well as of international human rights organizations and solidarity movements that Israel will finally face a long overdue process of legal accountability and that its victims will have a measure of justice. This decision by the PA, which in effect delays adoption of the report at least until March 2010, giving Israel a golden opportunity to bury it with US, European, Arab and now Palestinian complicity, constitutes the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.
This is not the first time, though, that the PA has acted under orders from Washington and threats from Tel Aviv against the express interests of the Palestinian people. The historic advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2004 that found Israel’s Wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory illegal had presented a rare diplomatic, political and legal opportunity that could have been used to isolate Israel as apartheid South Africa was after a similar ICJ decision in 1971 against its occupation of Namibia. Alas, the PA squandered it and systematically — quite suspiciously, actually — failed to even call on world governments to comply with their obligations stated in the advisory opinion.
The whole clause on Israel and Palestinian rights that was to be discussed at the recent UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva was dropped after the Palestinian representative gave his green light. Efforts by non-aligned nations and the former UN General Assembly president, Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, to push for a UN resolution condemning Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and establishing an international tribunal were thwarted mainly by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, causing several prominent diplomats and international law experts to wonder which side the official Palestinian representative was on.
The Mercosur-Israel Free Trade Agreement was almost ratified by Brazil this last September after the Palestinian ambassador there expressed approval, only urging Brazil to exclude Israeli settlement products from the Agreement. With prompt action by Palestinian and Brazilian civil society organizations and eventually by the PLO’s Executive Committee, this ratification was averted and the Brazilian parliamentary committee in charge of this file recommended that the government refrain from approving the FTA until Israel complies with international law.
In all these cases and many similar ones, the instructions to the Palestinian representatives came from Ramallah, where the PA government has illegally appropriated the PLO powers to lead Palestinian diplomacy and set foreign policy, conceding Palestinian rights and acting against the Palestinian national interests, without worrying about accountability to any elected representatives of the Palestinian people.
This latest forthright collusion of the PA in Israel’s campaign to whitewash its crimes and undermine the application of international law to punish these crimes came a few days after the far-right Israeli government publicly blackmailed the PA, demanding that it withdraw its support for adopting the Goldstone report in return for “permitting” a second mobile communications provider to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory. It therefore undermines the great efforts by human rights organizations and many activists to bring justice to the Palestinian victims of Israel’s latest massacre in Gaza: the more than 1400 killed (predominantly civilians); the thousands injured; the 1.5 million who are still suffering from the wanton destruction of infrastructure, educational and health institutions, factories, farm lands, power plants, and other critical facilities, and from the long criminal Israeli siege against them.
It is nothing short of a betrayal of Palestinian civil society’s effective Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, with all its recent, remarkable growth and achievements in mainstream western societies and among leading unions.
It is also betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast spreading BDS campaign, to end Israel’s impunity and to uphold universal human rights.
It is crucial to remember that the PA does not have any legal or democratic mandate to speak on behalf of the people of Palestine or to represent the Palestinians at the UN or any of its agencies and institutions. The current PA government has never won the necessary constitutional approval of the democratically elected Palestinian Legislative Council. Even if it had such a mandate, at best it would only represent the Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, excluding the great majority of the people of Palestine, particularly the refugees.
Only the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, can theoretically claim to represent the entirety of the Palestinian people: inside historic Palestine and in exile. For such a claim to be substantiated and universally accepted by Palestinians everywhere, though, the PLO would need to be revived from the grassroots upwards, in a transparent, democratic and inclusive process that involves Palestinians everywhere and encompasses all the political parties that are outside the PLO structures today. In parallel with this democratic reclamation or popular take-back of the PLO by the people and their representative unions and institutions, the PA must beresponsibly and gradually dismantled, with its current powers, particularly the representation seats at the UN and other regional and international institutions, returned to where they belong, to the real representative of all the people of Palestine, the revived and democratized PLO. This dissolution of the PA, however, must at all times avoid creating a legal and political vacuum, as history shows that hegemonic powers are often the most likely to fill such a vacuum to the detriment of the oppressed.
The fact is the PA has been gradually and irreversibly transformed since its establishment 15 years ago from a mere — often powerless, obsequious and coerced — sub-contractor of the Israeli occupation regime, relieving it of its most cumbersome civil duties, like the provision of services and tax collection, and, most crucially, very effectively helping it safeguard the security of its occupation army and colonial settlers, into a willingcollaborator that constitutes Israel’s most important strategic weapon in countering its growing isolation and loss of legitimacy on the world stage as a colonial and apartheid state. Israel’s hundreds of nuclear weapons and its fourth largest army in the world proved impotent or at least irrelevant before the growing BDS movement, particularly after Israel’s acts of genocide in Gaza. The almost unlimited diplomatic, political, economic and scientific support Israel receives from the US and European governments and its unparalleled impunity have also failed to protect it from the gloomy fate of apartheid South Africa.
Even before Israel’s war on Gaza, many unions around the world had joined the BDS campaign, from Canada to South Africa, and from the UK and Norway to Brazil. After Gaza, though, the four years of preparing the ground and spreading BDS, the international shock at the sight of Israel’s white phosphorus showers of death visited upon the children of Gaza cowered in UN shelters, and the universal feeling that the international order has failed to hold Israel to account or to even end its slaughter of civilians, not to mention its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in the occupied West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, BDS leaped into a new, advanced phase. It finally reached the mainstream.
In February, weeks after the end of Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) made history when it refused to offload an Israeli ship in Durban. In April, the Scottish Trade Union Congress followed the lead of the South African trade union federation, COSATU, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in adopting BDS against Israel to bring about its compliance with international law. In May, the University and College Union (UCU), representing some 120,000 British academics, reiterated its annual support for the logic of boycott against Israel, calling for organizing an inter-union BDS conference later this year to discuss effective strategies for implementing the boycott.
Most recently, this last September, the Norwegian government’s pension fund, the third largest in the world, divested from an Israeli military contractor supplying equipment to the illegal Wall in violation of the ICJ ruling. Shortly after that, a Spanish ministry excluded an Israeli academic team representing a college illegally built on occupied Palestinian land from participating in an academic competition. Also in September, the British Trades Union Congress, representing over 6.5 million workers, adopted the boycott, ushering in a new chapter in the spread of BDS that reminds observers of the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. According to concrete, persistent and mounting indicators, Palestinians are witnessing the arrival of their “South Africa moment.”
Amidst all this comes the Goldstone report, quite surprisingly — given the judge’s strong connections with Israel and Zionism — providing the straw that may well break the camel’s back: irrefutable evidence, meticulously researched and documented, of Israel’s deliberate commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite its clear shortcoming, this report presented Israel with the daunting and not entirely improbable prospect of standing trial at an international tribunal, a development that would effectively end Israel’s impunity and open the possibility of finally applying international justice to its crimes and persistent violations of international law. In this dire context for Israel, only one strategic weapon in its arsenal could be used to fend off the foretold crushing legal and political defeat: the PA. And it did use it indeed at the right time, in a fatal way, almost killing the Goldstone report.
Ultimately, the failure of the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the Goldstone report is another proof, if any is needed, that Palestinians cannot hope at the current historical moment to obtain justice from the US-controlled so-called “international community.” Only through intensified, sustainable and context-sensitive civil society campaigns of boycott and divestment can there be any hope that Israel will one day be compelled to end its lawlessness and criminal disregard of human rights and recognize the inalienable Palestinian right to self determination. This right, as expressed by the great majority of the Palestinian people, comprises ending the occupation, ending the legalized and institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or apartheid, and recognizing the fundamental, UN-sanctioned right of the Palestine refugees to return to their homes of origin, like all other refugees around the world, including Jewish refugees of World War II.
We simply cannot afford to give up on the UN, though. Human rights organizations and international civil society must continue to help the Palestinian struggle to pressure the UN, at least its General Assembly, to adopt and act upon the recommendations of the Goldstone report at all levels. If the UN fails to do so it will send an unambiguous message to Israel that its impunity remains intact and that the international community will stand by apathetically the next time it commits even more egregious crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine. This would gravely undermine the rule of law and promote in its stead the law of the jungle, where no one will be protected from total chaos and boundless carnage.
Omar Barghouti is a founding member of the BDS movement (www.BDSmovement.net)
Tensions are mounting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority following Ramallah’s call on the International Court at The Hague to examine claims of “war crimes” that the IDF allegedly committed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. The issue is already weighing in on the relations between the leadership of Israel’s defense and security establishment with their counterparts in the West Bank, and is part of a growing list of Israeli complaints about the behavior of PA officials.
Meanwhile, Israel has warned the Palestinian Authority that it would condition permission for a second cellular telephone provider to operate in the West Bank – an economic issue of critical importance to the PA leadership – on the Palestinians withdrawing their request at the International Court.
The issue of a second cellular provider is at the center of talks between the PA, the international Quartet, and Israel, and has been ongoing for some months. Currently the sole provider is Pal-Tel, and the PA prime minister, Salam Fayyad, considers the introduction of another carrier as an important step in improving the civilian infrastructure in the West Bank. The project is central to Watanya, the company that is set to serve as the second provider, and profits are expected to be substantial.
However, if the project is not approved by October 15, the PA will be forced to pay a penalty estimated at $300 million, the sum that has already been invested in licensing and infrastructure.
Western diplomats, including the Quartet’s envoy to the region, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, have made it clear to senior Israeli officials that time is running out, and have urged them to allow for the establishment of a second provider to go forward.
Israel’s objections begin with the issue of transmission frequencies. The frequencies that the Palestinians want the new company to use are very close to ones used by the Israel Defense Forces in some of its most sensitive activities.
“Israel is making it difficult for us on many levels,” complains Mohammed Mustafa, economic adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. “They now want us to pressure Pal-Tel to release some of its frequencies, so that they can be used by Watanya.”
However, another, more substantive issue was recently added, when the Palestinian Authority appealed to the International Criminal Court. Security sources told Haaretz that this move, which was authorized by Fayyad and Abbas, incensed senior officials of the defense establishment, especially army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
Ashkenazi has been kept busy by involvement in a holding action against the threat that Israeli officers would be brought before the court as a result of charges that the IDF committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Concern has intensified following the grave report that the Goldstone Commission released two weeks ago on behalf of the United Nations.
In Israel the argument is that the PA is being unfair, and that at the time of the operation in the Gaza Strip, last winter, its senior officials encouraged their Israeli counterparts to step up the pressure on Hamas, and even to attempt to bring its rule in the territory to the point of collapse. However, at a latter stage they joined those decrying Israel and its alleged actions in the Strip.
In light of this tension, the chief of staff conditioned his approval of a second cellular provider to the Palestinians’ withdrawing their appeal to the court.
“The PA has reached the point where it has to decide whether it is working with us or against us,” senior figures in the defense establishment have said. At the PA it is being said, in response to the Israeli demands, that Abbas and Fayyad will water down their appeal to the ICJ, though they will refuse to promise that it will rescinded entirely.
During the past year Israel defense officials have often praised the Palestinians on improving their contribution to securing the West Bank, and of the decisive character of the leadership under Fayyad. However, in recent weeks there have been increasing claims that even as the Authority is being praised by Israel and the international community, it is behaving irresponsibly by violating agreements between the two sides.
The Israeli claims focus on the growing presence of Palestinian security personnel in civilian clothing in East Jerusalem, contrary to the obligations of the PA. The security personnel participate in prayers at Al-Aqsa mosque, and at other sites in the city, and have stepped up their presence in the Jerusalem’s medical and educational facilities. Moreover, they have also been involved in the abduction of Palestinians suspected of selling property to Jews.
The “University Center of Ariel in Samaria” (AUCS) has been excluded from a prestigious university competition about sustainable architecture in Spain. With this move, Spain joins the growing number of European governments taking effective, even though preliminary, steps to uphold international law by boycotting or divesting from institutions and corporations involved in or profiting from Israel’s illegal Wall and colonial settlements built on occupied Palestinian land..
“Ariel University Centre of Samaria” was one out of 21 teams selected last April to compete for the Solar Decathlon-Madrid 2010, the most prestigious competition for sustainable architecture in the world, organized by the Spanish Ministry of Housing together with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid .[1]
Selected teams, formed by architects and engineering students are asked to design and build a real house entirely driven by solar energy. Every house should be built in one of the 20 sites in the “Solar Villa” planned in Madrid to host them. To facilitate participation of the various teams, the Spanish Ministry of Housing allocated a sum of 100,000 Euros to every project.
Last Wednesday,September 16th, Sergio Vega, General Director of Solar Decathlon Europe addressed all participant teams to inform them of the exclusion of AUCS:”The decision has been taken by the Government of Spain based upon the fact that the University is located in the [occupied] West Bank. The Government of Spain is obliged to respect the international agreements under the framework of the European Union and the United Nations regarding this geographical area.” It represents the first case of sanctions against an Israeli academic institution in Spain and one of the very first such actions in the West.
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) in Palestine has taken up the campaign against official Spanish support of the illegal Israeli university in occupied Palestinian territory following an initiative of the UK based professional association, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP). The support of many individuals and organizations in Spain for the cancellation of AUCS’s participation in the Solar Decathlon had culminated in a parliamentary question in the Spanish Parliament [2] and the eventual exclusion of the illegal settlement academic institution from the competition.
This move of the government of Spain follows the decision of the UK government not to rent offices from Israeli settlement builder Lev Leviev and the divestment of the Norwegian Pension Fund from Elbit Systems, an Israeli company providing surveillance equipment to the Wall.
The BNC congratulates the Spanish university teachers, parliamentarians and organizations for this principled stand with the Palestinian people and international law and calls for sustained support of the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions(BDS) against Israel and all its complicit institutions, including universities, until it fully complies with its obligations under international law and respects universal human rights, specifically by ending the occupation, facilitating the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin and ensuring equal rights for all Palestinian citizens of Israel.
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.
