INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT GAIN A FOOTHOLD IN gAZA

ISM Rafah: ‘Ban the Israeli navy from Gazan territorial waters’

Gazan Territorial Fishing Waters, Gaza Strip. 17th September 2008. On Wednesday 17th September I, along with two other volunteers from ISM Rafah, went out with three different fishing boats from the Gaza City port to trawl for fish. We left the port at about 8:30am.

I was on a boat with fishermen I already knew. We went out about seven and a half miles, put out the net and began to trawl. It wasn’t long before an Israeli Naval gunboat approached, and circled around. The fishermen requested from me to speak with the Israeli Navy. I did make contact with them, telling them that “we were Palestinian fishermen fishing in Gazan waters. Palestinians have the right to fish in Gazan waters, they have the right to a livelihood and to feed their families.”

Someone on the Israeli Naval gunboat said in Hebrew that it was forbidden for the Palestinian fishermen to be out past six miles. I replied that according to International Law, the Palestinian fishermen had the right to fish beyond twelve miles in their territorial waters.

His response was to call me “bitch”. Soon after the gunboat opened fire on the fishing boat, aiming, what appeared to me to be toward the center of the boat. The fishermen quickly pulled in their net, not wanting their boat or any of the equipment to be damaged by the gunfire.

We drove back towards the Gaza coast until we reached about six miles out and began trawling again. The gunboat came by again and circled around menacingly.

The Israeli Navy contacted the boat via VHF again reiterating that it was forbidden for them to fish out beyond six miles. This is an abomination! The large quantities of fish are out beyond the six mile limit, as are the larger fish. The fishermen need to be able to fish in their territorial waters, when and where they want.

It is an outrage that Israeli Naval gunboats patrol the Territorial Gazan Waters at will. They harass, threaten, shoot, damage and terrorize the Palestinian fishermen, their boats and fishing equipment. The Israeli Navy often limits the Palestinian fishermen from fishing beyond three or four miles, and sometimes they aren’t permitted to fish at all - this would not be tolerated any place else in the world. Fishing is one of the few sources of Palestinian food left in Gaza Strip. The Israeli Occupation Forces have destroyed much of the farm land and have established an illegal buffer zone on much of the agricultural farm land within the Strip, denying Palestinian farmers their livelihood and the right to feed their families. Making 80% of the Palestinians living in Gaza Strip totally dependent on food aid from UNWRA.

ISM Rafah: Italian activist injured by Israeli navy off Gaza coast

To view video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRPSXQOjzKo

Two Gazan fishing boats with international human rights workers on board were repeatedly attacked by 2 Israeli gunboats while they were trying to exercise Palestinian people’s right to fish in the Palestinian waters.

One of the Israeli gunboats was using a water cannon to throw water with high pressure while the other one was randomly firing shots of live ammunition close to the fishing boats. The attack with the water cannon was extremely dangerous. The Israeli navy was trying to throw the Palestinian fishermen and the international human rights workers in the sea. The high pressure water was damaging the old boats and people on board had to avoid not only the water but also wooden pieces, shattered glass and others objects that were flying off the deck. The Israeli navy was deliberately targeting the wheelhouses of the fishing boats, smashing the windows, making holes and nearly demolishing the walls and destroying equipment. In the same time it was preventing the captains from steering the vessels and the fishing to take place.

An Italian activist was injured. Vittorio Arrigoni was hit by flying glass when the water canon smashed the glass surrounding the wheelhouse of the boat, with shards lacerating Vittorio’s back. He was been taken to hospital immediately upon reaching shore, requiring ten stitches.

During the water cannon attacks, Palestinian fishermen were trapped behind the machines or even inside the engine room without being able to move for a long time.

During the most severe water cannon attack, a Palestinian fishing boat was trapped between the 2 Israeli gunboats without any possibility to change course. Fact that indicates that the intention of the Israeli navy wasn’t just to push the fishing boats back to the coast but to damage them and harm the people on board.

The Israeli navy persecuted the Gazan fishing boats even inside the 6 miles zone that Israel illegally and seemingly arbitrarily has imposed as the area where Palestinian fishermen are supposed to be free to fish. This zone is far to small to supply the Gaza-strip and give work to the 40.000 Gazan people once involved in the fishing industry.

The two fishing boats suffered damages, part of their equipment was thrown in the sea along with part of their fishing catch.

. ISM Rafah: Tree planting in ‘buffer zone’

Fukharee, Gaza Strip, Palestine - On Monday, 15th September 2008, volunteers with ISM Rafah participated in an action with Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in symbolically planting trees in the buffer zone in Fukharee area, north of Rafah.

The buffer zone is the agricultural area, established by Israeli Occupation Forces, about 300 meters wide along the entire eastern side of the Gaza Strip, where farmers are prohibited from farming their land. In some areas it is wider than 300 meters. These areas have become very dangerous for the Palestinians to live and farm. The buffer zone is another form of siege and denies the Palestinians right to livelihood, feeding their families, freedom of movement and to live in Peace. This is all happening during the so-called cease fire.

ISM volunteers met at UAWC office in Khan Younis before joining with a few hundred UAWC activists from Khan Younis. Two buses and four cars transported all the volunteers, the trees and the shovels to Fukharee, close to the Green Line. Upon arriving some people noticed the telltale dust of an Israeli tank and then it appeared from behind some trees off in the distance.

All the volunteers got off the buses and started walking toward the dedicated field holding 3 banners and chanting “Free, Free Palestine”among others in Arabic. Various news agencies and independent video cameras were recording the event.

In the designated field the trees were put on the ground and a few volunteers from ISM and UAWC started digging holes to plant olive, guava and citrus trees. About 100 hundred trees were planted by the end of the action. Although the ISM volunteers were there to reclaim the land and demand that Israel stop destroying the crops in the area, the action was a symbolic one. UAWC plans to continue doing various similar actions throughout the Gaza Strip in and near the buffer zones.

.ISM Rafah: Israeli violence continues despite ceasefire

Tonight (17th September), members of the ISM in the Gaza strip will be staying with a family in the Al Faraheen neighborhood of Abassan Al Kabeera, between Khan Younis and Deir El Balah in Southern Gaza.

The family’s home is situated a few hundred meters from the Green Line and the area has suffered a number of Israeli military incursions, the most recent of which was on 1st May this year, resulting in widespread agricultural damage.

During this attack, Israeli tanks and bulldozers surrounded the family’s home and snipers took up positions in two houses opposite.Israeli soldiers with dogs entered their house and searched it, causing damage and terrorizing the children.

The family have stayed with neighbors ever since, but their future is uncertain. Despite the ceasefire which began in June, there is regular shooting into the neighborhood from Israeli watchtowers and tanks on the Green Line. The most recent incident was three days a go. The family’s home has been shot into multiple times and many of their personal belongings have been damaged or destroyed. The ISM activists will monitor the situation and support the family in the event of any Israeli aggression .

Israeli navy to Gazan fishermen: “When the internationals leave Gaza, you will all be made to pay”

Gazan coastal waters, Gaza, 17:00 Wednesday 10th September 2008 – At high speed an Israeli gunboat rammed a Palestinian fishing vessel. The gunboat smashed through the upper hull, careened over the top of the fishing boat, and landed on the other side.

Extensive damage was caused to the fishing boat. The hull was badly damaged, virtually the entire deck area, all the equipment on it, and the canopy above the deck were severely damaged. Unusually all of the crew happened to be in the cabin and at the fore at the time. Had they been on deck they would have had little chance of survival.

Via a megaphone, the gunboat crew then made the threat that ‘When the internationals leave Gaza, you will all be made to pay.’

Human rights observers from the International Solidarity Movement and from the Free Gaza Movement, have recently been accompanying Gazan Fishermen during their work. The fishermen are constantly harassed, threatened and attacked by the Israelis who in flagrant violation of international law and maritime law, have been attempting to impose a no – go area 6 miles off Gaza’s coast through employment of lethal force. Incidentally and not unusually, this attack happened within the so-called ‘permitted’ area.

The ISM regards the project of accompanying the fishermen as a long term commitment. Some of the human rights observers currently undertaking this work are long term volunteers who will be in Gaza for some time. More long term volunteers are expected to bolster their number within the next few weeks.

My dream is to become a bone specialist. But the Israeli government won’t let me leave to pursue my studies abroad

By Abdalaziz Okasha

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/11/middleeast.israelandthepalestinians

This was supposed to be my first year of medical school. Instead, I am stuck here in Gaza in my father’s house inside the Jabalia refugee camp, with few options and no way out. After I finished high school last year, I decided to become a doctor. Gaza cries out for bone specialists, but the training I need is available only abroad.

When I won a place at a medical college in Germany, my parents were proud. I was excited to follow my older brother, who is already studying there. In February, the German authorities granted me an entrance visa. I wasted no time in asking the Israeli authorities for permission to travel to Europe. But I was told that only patients in need of emergency medical evacuation would be allowed out – not students.

Hundreds of other young people trapped in the Gaza Strip have won admission to study abroad. For many of us, this is our only opportunity to continue our education. Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth, and one of the poorest – 1.5 million of us live on a patch of land about 41 kilometres long and 6-12 kilometres wide. The local hospitals lack the equipment needed to perform many important procedures, like radiation treatments for cancer patients and heart surgery.

Universities in Gaza are overcrowded and starved for supplies. Many subjects are not even taught, and there are few postgraduate programmes. Instructors from abroad cannot enter Gaza. Without the ability to go overseas, we cannot learn.

In June, after the United States pressured Israel to allow Fulbright scholarship winners to leave the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military announced that it would grant exit permits for a few more students with “recognised” scholarships – but not “hundreds.” So hundreds of us are still waiting, most without prestigious scholarships to draw the world’s attention. I am sure to be one of the many who will not be allowed to leave. Life in Gaza has bled away my optimism.

My father is a teacher and owns a children’s clothing shop. My mother is a housekeeper. I have six brothers and three sisters. We returned to Palestine in 1996 from Saudi Arabia, where my father had been working as a teacher. That was at the height of the peace process. My parents put their hope in the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, and decided that they could give us a better life here.

But when I was 10, the second intifada began. The peace process was collapsing throughout my teenage years. During my third year of high school, the Israeli authorities closed off the Gaza Strip. Israeli border controls have reduced the flow of people crossing the border to a trickle, and have suffocated Gaza’s economy, choking off imports and exports and cutting fuel deliveries and electricity. There is no clothing left in my father’s shop, which was supposed to support my brother and me during our studies.

With the backing of the US, Canada, and the European Union, Israel has maintained its blockade in an attempt to defeat Hamas, which won the elections here in 2006. But the blockade only makes people more desperate. Hamas and other armed groups, I know, have launched rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip that have killed civilians in Israeli towns and villages.

But I also have witnessed how Israel has retaliated with air strikes and armed incursions into the Gaza Strip, including Jabalia. Israel’s blockade amounts to collective punishment. It is hurting all of us, whether we support Hamas or not. It is also destroying my dream to write “specialist in bone medicine” after my name.

Sometimes, I am sorry that I am from Gaza. But my hope is still to go abroad, learn skills, and return to help others here. Sometimes, when there is electricity, I watch television and see how people live in other places. I ask myself why they have the opportunity to travel, to study, to take vacations, when I cannot go abroad even to learn medicine.

We are students, not soldiers. We are not fighters in this conflict.

Why doesn’t Israel let us go study? Why do Europe and America support a blockade of young minds? Soon, my fellow classmates at the medical college will be starting classes. When they do, I will probably still be here in my father’s house, waiting for the blockade to end.

Abdalaziz Okasha graduated from high school in the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

In cooperation with Project Syndicate, 2008.

a second FREE GAZA boat is now setting out from Cyprus for Gaza

Dear friends,

you are more than likely aware that, following last month's successful mission, a second FREE GAZA boat is now setting out from Cyprus for Gaza. Somebody forwarded me the email below this morning. I thought you might like to be kept in touch. I am in Ramallah at present struggling away to improve my Arabic. 

                                            mise le meas....mary 
----------  ----------
From: Irish <iristulip@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 25, 2008 9:48 PM
Subject: There is a bomb on the boat
To: gazafriends <gazafriends@lists.riseup.net

I was sitting in the hotel lobby talking to some of the new passengers who are leaving for Gaza sometime in the next few days, when my Cyprus phone rang. "There is a bomb on the boat." The caller said. "There are two bombs on the boat, and the boat will blow up when you leave." Then he started to laugh. If I'd had the presence of mind to answer, I would have asked him how he knew which boat we were taking since WE don't know, but, like most obscene phone calls, the caller catches you off-guard, and the only answers seen to be after the fact.

We are getting ready to leave again for the second trip to Gaza. This time, we have two Palestinian parliamentarians on board and four physicians who are going to assess the state of the healthcare system in Gaza. As the first trip, there are glitches and stumbles and promises that have been broken unintentially. We are, after all, not seasoned boat buyers, boat passengers or even boat attorneys. But, we have learned much over the past few months.

We have become seasoned bargainers, looking at boats with a careful eye to how much they cost and how much the fuel will cost and how much the crew will cost. We knew none of that six months ago. One of us has become a better attorney than many attorneys,as she travels the complex maza of maritime law. Several of us now know the difference between fore and aft, between port and starboard, but many still got seasick. We have learned that we have succeeded in spite of ourselves sometimes,and because of ourselves as well.

The naysayers said it couldn't be done, but we paid little attention, because we were determined. This trip, carrying 22 people to Gaza is filled with Palestinians who want to go back to Palestine. They are doctors and lawyers and members of parliament and businessmen. And, of course, that is one of the primary objectives to breaking the back of the blockade. Palestinians should have the right to go home, to visit their relatives, to enjoy the same courtesy that is given to most of us.

The 35-mile coast of Gaza is the only piece of  the Mediterranean under occupation by a foreign military force except for the Northern coast of Cyrpus, which has been occupied by Turkey since 1974. It's why the Cypriots are so helpful for this project, and it could never have been accommplished without them. They understand military occupation. On a hillside overlooking Nicosia is a huge sign that says, "Isn't it great to be a Turk!" You can see the sign for miles, larger than the Hollywood sign.

Like the sickening sign on the checkpoint outside Bethlehem that says, "Peace be with you" in three languages, these  signs  are finger-in-your-eye jeers from an occupier. And so, like any occupier, the thugs that follow them decide to threaten the people who challenge. The phone call today will be one of many. We got them the last time, threatening to kill us, telling us that mines were planted outside of Gaza, saying that the boats would be sabotaged.

But, like the last tiem, we will still go. And we will put Israel on notice that any harm that comes to the 22 people who are on this boat, the boat itself, or the people waiting for us will be because Israel doesn't know how to confront peaceful protest with anything except intimidation.

Greta Berlin
Media Team
Free Gaza Movement
357 99 08 17 67
www.freegaza.org
www.anis-online.de/office/events/FreeGazaSong.htm
www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/