February 11, 2016| International Solidarity Movement, Gaza team | Khan Younis, Gaza strip, occupied Palestine
Palestinian refugee Heesham Ahmed El Khoranin and his family have already survived 2 Israeli assaults against the Gaza Strip since he returned after fleeing from Syria in 2011.
Heesham grandparents were born in Masmiya, 42km north of Gaza, one of the many villages wiped out by the Zionist militias during the Nakba. In 1948 they were forced to flee and settled in Khan Younis, where Heesham was born. He lived there until the Israeli army occupied Gaza in 1967 and forced his parents to flee from Palestine. They then moved to the Syrian city of Daraa, where he married a Syrian woman and had 6 children.
They lived in peace until 2011, when the war started in Syria, Heesham explained. “Snipers were shooting anything that moved in our city, people, animals . . . they killed children as young as 10 years old in front of my eyes.” Several of their neighbours were kidnapped and tortured by the Syrian army, including children. Heesham spoke of how “one of the fathers refused to handle his 13 years old son to the army, so they took both of them and the father could listen how they tortured his son.”
Heesham’s neighborhood in Daraa, after the bombing
Four months after the beginning of the war Heesham and his family managed to escape to Egypt and entered Gaza through the tunnels. Once in Gaza he received the news that “our home and my small factory had been bombed . . . we had lost all we had.” A few months later, in another bombing, one of his sons who had stayed in Syria was killed.
Heesham’s son, killed in Syria
In Gaza they lived 3 years in a rented flat, until they ran out of money and were kicked out by the owner. A few months before the 2014 Israeli attack they moved to a caravan provided by an NGO and settled on land that the government ceded to them. “Now I just want to find a job and live in peace with my family… I hope we’ll be able to build a home and stay in Gaza” Heesham said. “[W]e don’t have a place where to return in Syria and at least here we are in Palestine, our homeland.”
December 8th, 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza team | Khan Younis, Gaza strip, occupied Palestine
Mohamed Abu Taima, 29, had to undergo two surgeries
A week ago Mohamed Abu Taima, 29 years-old and father of a small girl, was working his land 450m from the separation fence when an Israeli sniper shot him. At 4pm, he had arrived to his land in Al Faraheen, Khan Younees, South of the Gaza Strip. He was shot a few minutes after he started to work. The bullet passed through one of his legs and exploded inside the other one.
The bullet went through one leg and exploded in the other one
A few minutes after arriving in the hospital Mohamed underwent a first surgery, and days after a second one. Until now, the doctors don’t know if Mohamed will ever be able to walk properly again.
These kind of attacks have been frequent during the past two weeks. Several farmers were expelled from their lands by the Israeli snipers when they were working or intended to work their lands between 400 and 500m from the fence, meaning outside of the “buffer zone” imposed by the occupation.
December 4th, 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza team | Gaza strip, occupied Palestine
There were many protests this Friday again in Gaza. According to the information provided by the ministry of health, 10 people have been injured in the Khan Younees area, mainly in El Farahin. 11 people have been injured in the Central Area. At the Karni border crossing (Shijaia) were demonstrations as well were 14 people were wounded. In addition to that, 7 were injured in the north.
In total, 42 were injured in the Gaza Strip today, most of them by live ammunition shot by snipers. At least one is in serious condition.
5th January 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Civil Defense crews work to clear the rubble left by an Israeli airstrike on 31 January. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)
It was a bloody beginning of the new year for the Palestinians of Gaza who, in addition to suffer from more and more difficult socioeconomic conditions, continued to face Israeli military violence.
During the month of January, there have been many attacks in the areas along the separation barrier surrounding the Gaza Strip, several incursions of Israeli military vehicles into Palestinian territory, precision air strikes, and almost constant attacks by the Israeli navy against fishermen.
The “bloody Fridays,” attacks against the youths of the popular resistance
Recently popular resistance has grown in the Gaza Strip. Every Friday hundreds of young Palestinians gather near the al-Shuhada cemetery, east of Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip. Sometimes they throw stones at Israeli soldiers and try to place Palestinian flags on the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from the land occupied by Israel in 1948. Israeli forces open fire indiscriminately at these unarmed young people, sometimes injuring or killing them. In January, two young Palestinians, included a child, were killed during the popular demonstrations. And at least 14 young Palestinians were wounded by gunfire in the course of these events. In the majority of cases, injuries to their lower limbs were reported.
On 2 January, Adnan Jamil Shehda Abu Khater, age 17, went to the al-Shuhada cemetery with some friends after school. The youths were about 500 meters from the fence. Israeli forces opened fire and Abu Khater was wounded by a bullet in the pelvic area. He died the following day.
Thaer Mohammed Rab’a. (Photo by Rosa Schiano)
On 3 January, in the same area, Israeli forces opened fire at a group of youths about 200 meters from the fence. Khaled Ibrahim Ouda, age 21, was injured by a bullet in the right leg. The same day, Thaer Mohammed Rab’a, age 25, was injured by a bullet in his left side while he was 300 meters from the fence. “They were competing in getting closer to the fence,” one of Thaer’s relatives said.
On 11 January, in the same area, the Israeli army opened fire at a group of youths who were close to the fence. Mahmoud Atef Mohammed Lubbad, age 22, was wounded by a bullet in the left leg. On January 24th , the Israeli army opened fire at a group of youths who threw stones at the soldiers. Five young civilians were injured. Mo’aaz Munir Salman Ghabit, age 18), reported a moderate wound to his right thigh; Abdullah Mohammed ‘Abdullah ‘Awad, age 22, reported a moderate injury to his right hand and fracture; Salem Nafez Salem Abu Aser, age 21, reported a light injury to his right foot; Mohammed Naser Hasounah Abu Qamar, age 18, reported a light wound in the left arm; and Yehia Mahmoud Omer al-Jammal, age 20, reported a light wound to his back.
Belal Samir Ahmed ‘Aweidah, shortly before he was shot and killed by an Israeli military sniper. (Photo by Akram ‘Aweidah)
In the same day, a group of young Palestinians was gathering in an area north of Beit Lahia. They approached the border and throw some stones at the soldiers. Belal Samir Ahmed ‘Aweidah, age 19, from Beit Lahia, was killed instantly with a bullet to his chest. His mother described how her son was killed.
“We had lunch,” she said. “It was our last lunch. Then he dressed. I asked him: ‘Where are you going?’ ‘I will do a tour with some friends’, he said.”
Belal, along with other youths, was spending Friday afternoon taking photos near the fence and “looking at our occupied lands on the other side of the barrier,” his cousin Akram said. A sniper fired a bullet into his chest.
“I heard a bullet,” he said. “We ran away. Belal was running with me. He was running with the bullet in his chest. Then he told me, ‘Akram, Akram, I’m wounded,’ and fell on the ground.”
Akram showed us photos he had taken of Belal before he was killed.
On 31 January, the last Friday of the month, about six youths were injured close to the cemetery east of Jabalyia. Two of the wounded were hospitalized at Kamal Odwan hospital in Beit Lahia. Moaz Al Tlalqa, age 21, was wounded in the right thigh. The bullet caused a comminuted fracture.
“We want the end of the siege and we want to live like the other people in the rest of the world,” he said later. The second injured Palestinian, Mahmoud Muharram, age 24, had tried to reach the body of another wounded young man who was lying 20 meters from the fence. The soldiers told him to go away and to leave the body of the young man. Mahmoud refused. A soldier fired a bullet at his left leg.
“The soldiers took the Palestinian flag that we placed on the fence and stepped on it,” Mahoud said. Then he added: “This land was wet with blood more than water.”
In the courtyard of the hospital, several youths present Friday at the demonstration, included a young man injured the previous week, had gathered.
“Next Friday, I’m going to place the Palestinian flag over the fence,” one of them said.
“It’s dangerous,” an international activist said.
“Whatever is written in the sky, we will face it,” the young man replied.
Airstrikes and extrajudicial killings
In January, the Israeli air force carried out two attacks on agricultural and empty lands. Three attacks targeted Palestinian resistance sites. In one, a three-year-old child was injured by shards from the broken window of her house in Nuseirat. Two UNRWA schools and more than 20 houses were damaged in the same attack.
Extrajudicial assassination attempts are considered illegal under international law.
On 9 January, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a motorcycle rickshaw, or “tuk-tuk,” driven by two members of the military resistance east of Khan Younis. The two men were wounded and windows of the adjacent houses were damaged. A three-year-old child, Heba Abdullah al-Ghalban, was injured by shards of glass.
On 19 January, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a motorcycle driven by an activist of the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, in al-Saftawi street in the town of Jabaliya. The activist was seriously injured and a an eleven-year-old child was injured by shrapnel.
On 22 January, in another extrajudicial execution attempt, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a civilian car in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip. Both passengers, Ahmed Mohamed Khalil al-Za’anin, age 21, a member of the resistance, and his cousin Mohammed Yousif Ahmed al-Za’anin, age 22, were killed.
(Photo by Rosa Schiano)
On 31 January, at about 2:40 am, Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes in Rafah Safena, north of Gaza City, and on a building near Sheikh Zayed, in the north of Gaza Strip. In the latter case, many animals bred in the bombed structure were killed. During the same period, Palestinian armed resistance groups have launched several rockets toward Israeli territory, and the Israeli Defense minister threatened a new military offensive if the Palestinian government in Gaza does not prevent the launch of rockets.
Aggression against fishermen
In January, the Israeli navy carried out at least 13 attacks against Palestinian fishermen during which fishermen were forced to leave their work. All the attacks occurred within three nautical miles, except for one within six nautical miles. Most of the attacks took place in waters off the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Three fishermen were captured, included a child. During the detentions, the fishermen were interrogated, asked for their personal information and about places and people in Gaza. Their boats were confiscated.
Incursions
Israeli military vehicles carried out several incursions and “leveling” operations on Palestinian agricultural lands. In several cases the army opened fire at farmers and other civilians in Khan Younis and Beit Hanoun, forcing them to leave the area. In one incident, a civilian was wounded in Beit Hanoun 300 meters from the fence.
Wael Abu Rida. (Photo by Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network)
The abduction of a Palestinian-Egyptian from the Sinai on the eve of Egypt’s 3 July coup has highlighted the network of collaborators and agents working with Israel in the peninsula.
Wael Abu Rida crossed the Rafah border from Gaza into Egypt on 6 June with his family, including his one-year-old son, Mazen, who suffers from brain atrophy. The trip was nothing unusual, according to Wael’s wife, Amani Abdulrahman Abu Rida, who accompanied him.
She and other members of the Abu Rida family are refugees who were forced to flee Salama, east of the coastal Palestinian city of Jaffa, by advancing Zionist forces in April 1948.
The family spoke to the Electronic Intifada at their home in Khuzaa, an agricultural village outside Khan Younis in the southeastern Gaza Strip, close to the barrier wall erected by Israel.
“This was the fourth time he had gone to Egypt for treatment for his son,” Amani said. “We used to stay there fifteen or twenty days for treatment. Nothing had happened before.”
In retrospect, she said, strange things began to happen as soon as the family crossed the border.
“After we reached the Egyptian side of the crossing, a driver approached and insisted on taking us. It costs 450 Egyptian pounds [$65] to go to Cairo, but he offered to take us for 350. In the car, the driver started talking with Wael, saying he had heard of him.”
Abu Rida has fought for several Palestinian resistance groups. His past affiliations include stints in Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades.
In a 19 July indictment this year, Israeli prosecutors alleged that Abu Rida belonged to a Hamas-aligned group called the al-Aqsa Defenders (“Gaza man charged with planning terror attacks,” Ynet, 19 July 2013).
His family denies this, saying he ended his last political ties with the al-Quds Brigades after Israel’s 2008-2009 attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Target for surveillance
Whatever his affiliations, Abu Rida remained a target for aggressive Israeli surveillance.
“Sometimes if he ate something unusual, or took Mazen to the doctor in Gaza, [Israeli forces] would send him a text message telling him they knew,” Amani said. “Other times they would call him to say they would capture him, rather than killing him and making him a martyr.
“He changed his [cellphone’s] SIM card more than twenty times. But they would always call him through the new one. He couldn’t escape their surveillance.”
Because of this attention, she said, Abu Rida left his home during Israeli raids to avoid possible attempts to capture him.
“During wars and incursions, he would leave the house. But the Israelis always said they wanted him as a prisoner, rather than a casualty. I think they wanted him as a source of information.”
As Abu Rida and his family rode towards Cairo on 6 June, he and his driver “struck up a friendship,” Amani said. “The driver took Wael’s phone number and said he would call to invite him to his house in the Sinai. Then he called Wael every day while we were in Cairo.”
On 15 June, Abu Rida finally accepted the driver’s invitation to the Egyptian town of Rafah.
“The same day Wael left, he called to tell me me he was on his way back, saying he was near the al-Salam bridge [over the Suez canal, in Egypt],” Amani said. “After he had disappeared for a day, Wael again called, saying he would come the next day. I think his interrogators may have forced him to say that.
“The next day, and the day after that, he called again, each time saying he would come the following day. I felt something was wrong. I know that he was still in the Sinai, because he was calling from an Egyptian SIM card.”
By 20 June, the expected call came from a telephone number that was no longer recognizably Egyptian.
“When he called from a strange number at 1am, I started screaming at him, saying I wanted to know the truth and asking where he was. He began crying. He told me he had been captured by Bedouin gunmen,” Amani said.
“He had been taken to the driver’s house, where the driver told Wael he would invite some friends he should know. Three armed men came and invited him for a walk in the desert.
“The next day [21 June], the Israelis phoned me to say they had captured Wael and were interrogating him.”
“Kidnapped”
Following a 30-day interrogation period, the Israeli Prison Service allowed Abu Rida a brief visit from his father, Hassan Fiheed Abu Rida, and son, Mazen.
“He told me the details in a very brief way,” Hassan said. “The Israelis surrounded us during the visit, and most of them know Arabic very well. He only told me he had been kidnapped.”
On 30 July, the Palestinian Authority’s ministry of prisoners’ affairs released a statement by Abu Rida.
“After spending a week in Cairo with my son, I received a phone call from a man, the taxi driver I recognized … [from] the Rafah crossing,” he stated. “The man invited me to visit his house in [the] Sinai desert and I accepted.
“I saw several people when I arrived his house. After I drank the juice, I went into deep sleep … there was a hypnotic pill in the sugar.
“When I woke up I … [found] myself in an Israeli investigation center … the driver was an Israeli spy.”
“No respect for sovereignty”
Abu Rida’s legal team at Gaza’s Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights declined to discuss the details of his capture or charges, but spoke broadly of the nature of his abduction.
“This shouldn’t be classified as a detention, but rather a kidnapping,” said Al-Mezan attorney Rami Shaqoura. “The fact that he was captured in Egypt shows that Israel has no respect for the sovereignty of other countries. This can’t even be called an arbitrary detention, since it happened in a territory outside Israeli control.”
He added that “there is a part of his case which Israel refuses to disclose.”
The Abu Rida family noted that Wael, the son of a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother, held Egyptian citizenship at the time of his abduction.
“Wael had been asked to come to Egypt to receive his Egyptian nationality card,” said his father, Hassan.
“Since he holds Egyptian nationality, can we deal with him as an Egyptian rather than a Palestinian?” Amani asked. “That might make it easier to release him.”
Scant attention
But amid the crisis engulfing Egypt, Wael’s case has received scant attention.
“From the moment we heard of Wael’s kidnapping, we started communicating with the Palestinian embassy in Cairo,” said Hatem al-Khor, Amani’s brother and Wael’s brother-in-law. “What happened in Egypt was an insult to Egyptian sovereignty and the Egyptian people.
“But this incident didn’t get any response from the Egyptian authorities. We also didn’t get any reaction from the Palestinian embassy. The media has focused on the political turmoil in Egypt. No one is paying attention to Wael.”
When Abu Rida was abducted, Amani said, he had all the family’s paperwork with him.
“The Israelis have all of Mazen’s medical reports and our passports. They are refusing to return them. This is our main problem. We need them back to continue Mazen’s treatment.
“After we lost our documents, we couldn’t return to Gaza formally. We were forced to come through the tunnels. Now Mazen’s situation in Egypt is very complicated.
“Because Egyptian records show he is still there, it will be hard for him to return for treatment. He is supposed to pursue his treatment in Israel, but I am not allowed to go with him.”
Like many spouses of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip, Amani faces a ban on travel into Israel, imposed for unspecified security reasons, preventing both prison visits and medical treatment.
Three of the couple’s eight children, two daughters and a son, are also banned from prison visits. Israel currently prohibits children in the Gaza Strip aged ten or older from visiting detained parents.
In the 31 years since completing its 1982 military withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, Israel has maintained a considerable degree of control over the area.
The 1979 Camp David accords imposed strict limitations on Egypt’s deployment of military and police forces in the region only by Israeli approval.
The abduction of Abu Rida was not Israel’s first attempt to capture Palestinians on Egyptian territory, according to many in the Gaza Strip.
“There have been numerous efforts by Israel to kidnap Palestinians in Egypt,” said Osama Wahidi, a spokesman for the Hussam Association, a Gaza-based society of current and former Palestinian detainees. “Most of them failed.”
But Abu Rida’s dual nationality, along with the brazenness of his kidnapping, could make his case particularly controversial at a time of heightened regional tension.
As well as trying to maintain hope that her husband will be released, Amani is attending to her family’s most urgent concerns.
“We want to recover our documents so our son can continue his treatment inside Israel,” she said. “We have a chance to find a cure. I don’t want to lose my son after losing my husband.”
