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Gaza fishermen suffer 85 percent income loss as Israeli siege, attacks continue

4th January 2014 | The Electronic Intifada, Joe Catron | Gaza City, Occupied Palestine

Small fishing boats, or hasakas, moored in the Gaza seaport. (Photo by Charlie Andreasson) — Small fishing boats, or *hasakat*, moored in the Gaza seaport. (Photo by Charlie Andreasson)

On 17 December, Palestinian fishermen and their supporters erected a tent — a traditional venue for protest, as well as celebration and mourning — inside the Gaza seaport.

“It was to highlight the situation, the crimes of the Israelis against fishermen here,” said Amjad al-Shrafi, treasurer of the General Union of Fishermen. “We wanted to send a message about the blockade against the fishermen and how we cannot fish freely.”

The protest, organized under the title Free the Holy Land Sea, ended two days later with the delivery of a letter to the nearby office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, demanding international protection for fishermen.

Over three days, hundreds of well-wishers visited a crowded tent decorated with banners and posters supporting fishermen. The organizations represented on its walls ranged from human rights centers to prisoner support groups.

Under fire

“One of our main goals was to push governments around the world to force Israel to give fishermen free lives and let us sail without any limits,” al-Shrafi said. “It’s our right to sail freely in our waters.”

“Another was to pressure the Israeli forces to release the boats and fishermen they have captured.”

Palestinian fishermen in coastal waters off the Gaza Strip frequently come under fire byIsraeli naval forces, which target their boats on both sides of a boundary imposed by Israel.

Israel deploys its gunships into Palestinian waters using an information technology infrastructure administered by Hewlett-Packard (“Technologies of control: The case of Hewlett-Packard,” Who Profits, December 2011).

Through its subsidiary, HP Israel, the US corporation won a contract to run the Israeli navy’s computer and communications network in August 2006 (“HP Israel wins navy IT outsourcing contract,” Globes, 14 August 2006).

The fishing area permitted by Israel, which doubled in size as part of the ceasefire agreement ending eight days of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and retaliatory fire by Palestinian resistance groups in November 2012, now officially reaches six nautical miles from the shore.

But fishermen say the Israeli navy often shoots at them and sometimes captures them and their boats well within the zone it ostensibly allows them.

Captured

“We were far from the prohibited zone, 500 meters away,” said Saddam Abu Warda, a 23-year-old fisherman whom the Israeli navy captured along with his 18-year-old brother Mahmoud around 9am on 10 November.

“They were shouting, ‘You must get out of here in five minutes.’ We had to cut the net to pull it out of the water. Then they started to fire bullets close to our hasaka [small boat]. As they came close to us, their boat looked like a big building with lights.”

The Abu Wardas’ small boat had no engine. “We tried to escape by paddling quickly,” Saddam Abu Warda said. “They forced us to take off our clothes and raise our hands. They were firing bullets in the air and in front of our hasaka. One soldier was shouting, ‘You have to leave your hasaka and get in the water.’ I was shocked. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know why.”

Finally, gunfire forced the brothers into the cold water. “They didn’t stop firing bullets over our heads,” Abu Warda said. “I was far from my brother. He started shouting, saying, ‘I am injured.’ He wasn’t able to keep swimming. I swam back to my brother to try and save him. His blood was [spilling] in the water. Then two small boats came close to us. They pulled my brother from the water. They didn’t take me.”

When Abu Warda reached the Israeli gunship, he lost consciousness after soldiers bound, hooded and kicked him. He awoke in a detention facility in Ashdod, a port in present-day Israel beside his brother Mahmoud, whose right abdomen was stitched by military physicians. The brothers said that Israeli bullets caused the wound.

During an interrogation after he awoke, an Israeli soldier tried to convince him otherwise. “I told him, ‘Three of your gunboats were around us. They were firing bullets. My brother’s blood was everywhere in the water. He was injured by your soldiers.’”

After a lengthy interrogation that continued both in Ashdod port and after their transfer to a detention center by the Erez crossing between Gaza and present-day Israel, Israeli forces released the Abu Wardas into the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun around 10pm — 13 hours after their capture. Their boat and its equipment remained behind.

“We have three hasakas in the Ashdod port,” Abu Warda said of his family’s prior losses to the Israeli navy.

Severe damage

The Abu Wardas’ experiences echo many more documented in a new report by thePalestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). The PCHR, which supported the Free the Holy Land Sea campaign, is translating the document — already published in Arabic — into English.

Over four years, from 1 September 2009 through 31 August 2013, the Israeli navy killed two fishermen, wounded 24, and captured 147, according to the report. The navy also seized 45 boats and destroyed or damaged 113 more.

The report also records the losses incurred by about thirty bombings of four fishing ports during Israel’s November 2012 attacks on the Gaza Strip, including damages to an additional 80 boats and destruction of a health clinic and a youth center used by fishermen.

“There was severe damage to different fishing facilities during the military offensive,” said Khalil Shaheen, director of PCHR’s economic and social rights unit.” At the ports in Gaza City, Middle Area, Khan Younis and Rafah, different facilities were targeted and destroyed.”

“The report also documents the impact of the total damage to fishermen and the fishing sector,” Shaheen added. “One of the main impacts was the loss of 85 percent of income in the fishing sector, as the result of access restrictions and the naval blockade.”

Casualties have continued to mount in the four months since the period covered by the report ended. The PCHR publishes regular reports on human rights abuses in Gaza. These reports indicate that Israel has shot at fishermen at least 37 times since September, as well as seizing six boats.

“I would like to thank all the solidarity campaigns who were involved in this action and show solidarity with Palestinian fishermen,” al-Shrafi said.

“We ask that the international community continue to pressure their governments, to ask for dignity and a free life for us.”

Joe Catron is a US activist in Gaza, Palestine. He co-edited The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag, an anthology of accounts by detainees freed in the 2011 prisoner exchange. He blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com and tweets @jncatron.

Why does Israel treat Gaza farmers sowing wheat by hand as military targets?

28th December 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

December is the time for farmers in the Gaza Strip to sow. But for those with fields near the Israeli separation barrier, it is highly dangerous. Sure enough, we were met by news that an 18-year-old was shot an hour earlier when he was checking his bird nets here in Khuza’a in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. To sell small birds can earn a few bucks, but also makes the hunter the hunted. This one was lucky. For him, a day’s hospital visit was enough.

That our presence and our yellow vests are desirable cannot be mistaken. Without any directive, some of us get up on the tractors as protection for the drivers while the rest form a row between the field and the Israeli barrier. Here the open fields were once interspersed with olive and other fruit trees, trees devastated by Israeli bulldozers. Now they can only plant wheat, a crop that grows without daily care.

The fields to be plowed were not large, and after they been sowed, we came closer and closer to the fence. We saw the barbed wire rolled out in large circles before the fence, the towers with machine guns, the large mounds of dirt and tanks coming up behind them, the military Jeeps that stop for a moment before continuing. But we also saw the green fields behind all this, where irrigation is permitted. The contrast is great.

The work takes us closer and closer to the barrier. Activists with yellow vests still sit on tractors, but the rest of us are no longer in a row. We are now very close to the fence, so we walk directly beside those sowing by hand. It would look funny at any time, in any other part of the world, but here it is deadly serious. Maybe 70-80 meters from the fence, the ground is completely disturbed by bulldozers and tanks. Deep traces of crawlers are everywhere, some of them made earlier in the week, we are told. The tractors cannot plow there, and the farmers are not trying, either. And they can only hope that the Israeli soldiers will not tear up their fields and plow down the wheat before they reap. It has happened in the past and will most likely happen again.

Done for the day, we walk back. Not a a single bullet has been fired at us this time. But I find one in the ground, one that didn’t find its target, and show my Israeli souvenir for the others. But no one reacts significantly. Someone strikes out with his arm over the fields: there are plenty of different kinds of ammunition fired here.

I try to understand how the soldier who shot early that morning reasoned. What made him shoot? Did he feet that he did his duty, believe that he erased a potential threat to the state of Israel? Did he get a pat on the shoulder from his commander, or backslapping by his peers in the barracks? When he comes home, will his proud mother serve him his favorite dish, and will his father open the forbidden cabinet to invite his to taste something stronger now then he has become a man?

But above all, I wonder what makes them think that farmers who sow by hand are really a threat forcing the soldiers to shoot them. What makes them so afraid that they take shelter in bulletproof guard towers or tanks. How the State of Israel can be protected by bulldozing Palestinians’ fields and destroying their crops. And how to get an entire nation to believe that these farmers are a threat to their existence. I do not understand it. But I understand that our presence can mean the difference between life and death.

Escalation of Israeli attacks on Gaza kills two, injures at least 14, over five days

27th December 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

An Israeli military vehicle by the separation barrier near Khuza'a. (Photo by Silvia Todeschini) — An Israeli military vehicle by the separation barrier near Khuza’a. (Photo by Silvia Todeschini)

Early on the afternoon on Friday, 20th December, Israeli occupation forces killed a 27-year-old Palestinian, Odah Jihad Hamad, and wounded his brother Raddad, age 22, north of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reports that Israeli forces fired directly at them, although it was clear that the two civilians were collecting steel and plastic from the landfill near the separation barrier. “According to the testimony given by Raddad Hamad to PCHR, at approximately 12:00 on Friday, 20 December 2013, Raddad went with his brother ‘Odah to the landfill near the border area, east of Beit Hanoun, in order to collect plastics and steels for livelihood. At approximately 15:30, when the area was very calm, Israeli forces stationed at the borderline opened fire at them without any prior warning. As a result, Odah was wounded by a bullet to the head and fell onto the ground while Raddad was hiding in a low area. Raddad tried to reach his brother to rescue him, but Israeli forces opened fire at him to wound him by a bullet to the right hand. He immediately fled and managed to call the Palestine Red Crescent Society to send him an ambulance. The ambulance was delayed by Israeli forces till at approximately 16:15 when it obtained coordination through the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ambulance staff searched for ‘Odah to find him wounded and then transferred him to the Beit Hanoun Governmental Hospital. He was entered into the Intensive Care Unit, but a few minutes later, he was pronounced dead.”

Raddad said the ambulance found the body of his brother in another place closer to barrier. Israeli soldiers probably took him, to check if he was alive, then left his body there.

“He was just trying to eke out a living,” his mother said in the morning tent. “He wanted to earn some money to buy wood for our house, because the cooking gas finished,” one of his brothers said. To find cooking gas in Gaza is almost impossible now due to restrictions on imports and the closure of the tunnels.

In addition, three Palestinians were injured by Israeli gunfire near the al-Shohada cemetery east of Jabaliya. Mohammad Ayoub Hammouda, age 23, Dya Ahmad Al Natour, age 17, and Ali Hasan Khalil, age 20, were transported to Kamal Odwan hospital.

Hammouda works in a coal shop near the cemetery. He said he finished his shift and was walking away when he saw a group of men close to his shop. As he asked them to go away, Israeli soldiers started shooting. The shop is next to the barrier. Youth go there to throw stones at the soldiers, especially on Fridays. The Israeli forces begin to shoot without hesitation. Young Palestinians are injured so every week or two in this area. Hammounda worried that the youths near the store wanted to through stones, so he asked them to leave the area.

A bullet struck Hammouda in his right leg. The youths ran away. He lay on the ground 15 minutes before someone came to help him. An ambulance could not reach him, so a young man on a motorcycle carried him to one waiting near Abu Baker mosque. The shop where Hammouda works is 600 meters from the fence. He thinks that the shots came from one of the control towers placed along the border, in which there are automated machine guns.

An Israeli control tower by the separation barrier near Khuza'a. (Photo by Silvia Todeschini) — An Israeli control tower by the separation barrier near Khuza’a. (Photo by Silvia Todeschini)

The bullet that the doctors extracted from Hammouda’s leg during surgery is a 250 mm projectile. The bullet caused a fracture. The doctors have placed an external fixator in his limb. He will keep it for six months.

Hammouda’s family, from the Jabaliya refugee camp, has eleven members. He is the only one with a stable job. His father works occasionally. He earned 30 shekels, about six Euros or eight US dollars, a day. He said he would accept any salary because of unemployment.

The other two Palestinians suffered minor injuries in their lower limbs and were released from the hospital.

On the afternoon of the same day, two men were injured east of Khuza’a in the south of the Gaza Strip. Omar Sobh Qudaih, age 21, and Abdul Halim Alnaqa, age 23, were transported to the European hospital. Qudaih said that around 2:30 pm, they had been collecting beans about 500 meters from the fence. The bullet did not enter his limb. He suffered from superficial wound and needs antibiotics and dressing.

The following day, on Saturday, 21sr December, at about 7:30 am, Israeli soldiers fired at farmers and workers near the barrier Khuza’a. Ismael al-Najjar, a 21-year-old farmer, was wounded in his leg.

Al-Najjar thinks that the bullets were fired from control towers. He said he was with two other workers at about 600 meters from the barrier, and that he had been walking toward his chicken farm. He suffered from a superficial wound. A nurse said his condition is stable.

On Tuesday, 24th December, Israeli forces carried out a series of airstrikes hitting different locations in the Gaza Strip, and shelled different areas along the barrier.

Earlier afternoon, a contractor of the Israeli occupation forces had been killed by a Palestinian resistance group east of Gaza City. Israeli authorities declared that they would respond harshly against Gaza. Shortly afterward, a Palestinian civilian was wounded by Israeli army fire in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip. Government buildings were immediately evacuated.

Western media and others claiming the escalation began with the shooting of the military contractor should be reminded of the killing by Israeli forces of a young Palestinian collecting material from a landfill on Friday.

In the afternoon of 24th December, local sources reported two Palestinians had been killed, included a three-year-old child killed in a bombing of Maghazi in the center of the Gaza Strip. The number of injuries remains imprecise.

Shortly after the shooting of the contractor, Israeli forces reported they had killed a Palestinian along the northern barrier around the Gaza Strip, as Palestinian sources also did later. It later became clear the Israeli army had opened fire at a large tortoise moving slowly along the barrier. Its large size, and its bloodshed after an Israeli missile, led some to speak of a martyr. The occupation hits anything moving along the barrier, including a rare breed of giant tortoise.

The three-year-old girl killed in Maghazi was named Hala Ahmed Abu Sbeikha. Several members of her family were injured, included two children, Mohammed Abu Sbeikha, age six, and Belal Abu Sbeikha, age four.

In the morgue of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where members of the Abu Sbeikha family were hospitalized, her face was stained with blood.

Members of her family in the hospital included Busaina Abu Sbeikha, 27 years old, and the two wounded children.

“I had gone to visit them and we were seated on the first floor of the house,” an aunt said. “Two bombs fell in few seconds. It was about 3:30 to 4:00 pm. After the second bomb, we climbed to the second floor, where there our children, about ten of them, were. Busaina, with her children, was also there, helping them to study. We found Hala dead. Then we left the house, and a third bomb struck the two-story building, almost completely destroying it. Even the houses nearby were damaged by the bombing. ”

Women from the family told us that it is the first time that their house, in which 30 people lived, had been hit. “Even during the two wars, they never struck us or asked us to evacuate,” they said. Their house is located about 700 meters from the separation barrier east of Maghazi, in an area called Beheiri in the central Gaza Strip. It is a very quiet area.

“The Israelis said they had hit a site of the Palestinian resistance, but it is not true.” No resistance activity had been present in the area, they said.

Busaina Abu Sbeikha has undergone surgery for a shrapnel injury. Her children Belal and Mohammed lay on a bed in the same hospital room. Mohammed was almost asleep because of the painkillers, while Belal’s eyes were wide. He had no reaction when his his face and hair were caressed. Both children were injured by shrapnel.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital received around nine injured civilians that evening, in addition to the dead child.

Video: Israeli troops fire on Palestinian farmers and international activists in Gaza

27th December 2013 | Resistenza Quotidiana, Silvia Todeschini | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

International activists have been accompanying Palestinian farmers to their lands near the separation barrier between the territories occupied in 1948 and the Gaza Strip. We have noticed, in recent days, an increase in the presence of the Zionist occupation forces. A few days ago, we felt more drones and F-16, then Jeeps and bulldozers began to move near the barrier more often. On Sunday, 22nd December, two Jeeps were stationed in front of the area where farmers were seeding and tractors plowing. They fired shots into the air and one the the ground. This video shows the last episode.

Olive, orange and lemon trees grew in these fields until the second Intifada. Then bulldozers and tanks of the occupying forces uprooted them. After “Operation Cast Lead,” the no-go zone was established at 300 meters, but aggression towards Palestinians was not limited to that area. According to UN reports, high-risk areas in some places reach two kilometers from the barrier, and included 35% of all arable land in Gaza. Following the truce concluded after the Zionist attack called “Operation Pillar of Defense,” farmers were able to reach their land up to 100 meters. Now, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the situation is very similar to that seen before the last offensive: Zionist aggression reaches up to 1,500 meters from the border. The high-risk areas comprise 35% of arable land, and in the restricted areas, 95% is cultivable. Also according to PCHR data, the last farmer killed by the occupation forces while working, Mustafa Abdul Hakim Mustafa Abu Jarad, was 1,200 meters from the barrier. He was killed by a bullet in the head 14th January 2013, one of four people killed this year in the areas near the separation barrier.

Not only are Palestinian farmers attacked during their work, but the land they farm is itself destroyed by the passage of bulldozers and tanks. They create deep grooves that make it difficult for a tractor to pass and plow. By doing so, they mix layers, making the land less fertile. In addition, the water tanks which are used for irrigation in this area are all destroyed by Zionist gunfire.

In the separation barrier are installed several instruments of repression. There are turrets with automatic weapons, others on which snipers can stand, tall iron columns with cameras installed and others with radar. There is barbed wire, gates where Zionist military vehicles can enter, balloons equipped with cameras, and more.

The violence of the Zionists towards Palestinian farmers and fishermen are an attack not only on their ability to work, but also on the food sovereignty of all the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.

The presence of foreign activists sometimes manages to lightly calm the situation, because we are inconvenient witnesses for the Zionist occupation forces. But the heroes are the farmers, who continue to reach their land. Without regular watering, they can grow only wheat, although after it has been cultivated for several years, not much grows anymore. The heroes are the farmers who, generation after generation, continue to say “adha hardy” – “this is my land,” no matter how strong the Zionist repression with all its resources, weapons, armor and surveillance equipment may be.

Palestinian child wounded by Israeli gunfire while harvesting potatoes in Gaza

17th December 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Rosa Schiano | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

On Sunday, 15th December, a young Palestinian was injured by Israeli gunfire in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.

Mohammed el-Shanbary, age 17, was harvesting potatoes. “I went to work at 9 am,” el-Shanbary said. “After about 30 minutes, the soldiers started shooting.”

He was working with the owner of the land and another person about 500 meters from the wall that separates the Gaza Strip from territory occupied by Israel in 1948.

El-Shanbary and his father Rafiq think the bullets were fired from control towers situated along the separation barrier, inside of which there are automatic machine guns.

A bullet wounded El-Shanbary in his left shinbone. After he fainted, the landowner called his father and asked him to summon an ambulance. The ambulance took him to Kamal Odwan hospital.

The bullet entered and exited, causing a fracture. El-Shanbary would have surgery 30 minutes after our visit. The doctor said they would insert a tibial fixation.

El-Shanbary started working in the area one month ago. The work depends on the harvest season.

His father does not have a stable job, leaving el-Shanbary and his 21-year-old brother to work to support a family of ten.

He can earn from 25 to 40 shekels per day, depending on how many crates of potatoes he collects. For each crate, he receives two shekels.

“Some time ago, they were shooting just to scare us, not directly at our bodies,” el-Shanbary said.

“We work just to buy bread for our family, and they hit us,” his father Rafiq added.

The ceasefire of 21st November 2012 established that Israeli occupation forces should “refrain from hitting residents in areas along the border” and “cease hostilities in the Gaza Strip by land, by sea and by air, including raids and targeted killings.”

However, Israeli military attacks by land and sea followed from the day after the ceasefire, and Israeli warplanes fly constantly over the Gaza Strip. Seven civilians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces since the end of their last major offensive, “Operation Pillar of Defense,” and more than 130 have been wounded.

These attacks on the Gaza Strip continue amid international silence.