The Dominion - Gaza

The Same Boat

Moira Peters — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 05:15:33 +0000

Israel's attack on flotilla mirrors daily reality in Gaza

GAZA—On the evening of May 30, 2010, I awoke to a text message from a Gaza-based international activist saying that the Freedom Flotilla was being instructed by the Israeli Navy to halt its course to the Gaza Strip. The vessels were more than 70 miles from Gaza’s coast.

I wasn’t surprised. In every one of the nine Free Gaza trips from Cyprus to Gaza, the Israeli Navy commanded boats in international or Palestinian waters to turn around. Five voyages succeeded in ignoring the Israeli Navy’s threats and sailing on through international waters into Palestine.

Earlier that day, Gaza had been preparing for the arrival of the flotilla. A sea demonstration had ventured a couple of kilometres out; an Israeli gunboat patrolled another kilometre or so out and had been shooting on some poor fishing trawler.

In the morning of May 31, 2010, I awoke to text messages saying the boat had been attacked by the Israeli Navy. I wasn’t surprised. In December, 2008, as Israel pounded Gaza from the air, land and sea in a 23-day assault, Israeli gunboats rammed a Free Gaza vessel.

"The gunboats gave us no warning... They rammed us three times, hitting the side of the boat hard. We began taking on water and, for a few minutes, we all feared for our lives," said Free Gaza co-ordinator Caoimhe Butterly, who was on board during the 2008 attack.

Images of the latest attack on the Freedom Flotilla showed Israeli commandos dropping from military helicopters and firing on the passengers. Scenes of shocked faces carrying the dead and the injured emerged from the chaos.

"The attack on the Mavi Marmara [vessel] came in an instant: they attacked it with 12 or 13 attack boats and also with commandos from helicopters. We heard the gunshots over our portable radio handsets, which we used to communicate with the Mavi Marmara, because our ship communication system was disrupted. There were three or four helicopters also used in the attack. We were told by [the] Mavi Marmara their crew and civilians were being shot at and windows and doors were being broken by Israelis," said Kutlu Tiryaki, captain of another vessel in the flotilla, as reported by The Guardian.

This latest brutality, in which elite Israeli commandos opened fire on peace and justice activists on at least two of vessels and according to some estimates killed 19 and injured up to 60, was criminal but not shocking. That the Israeli commandos did so in international waters, far from Israel’s coastline and jurisdiction, was also not shocking.

Utmost respect for the killed and injured aside, I am not surprised.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, said the flotilla was carefully inspected before departure: “I want to say to the world, to the heads of state and the governments, that these boats that left from Turkey and other countries were checked in a strict way under the framework of the rules of international navigation and were only loaded with humanitarian aid."

There was no-one on board "other than civilian volunteers" he said.

Given that Israeli commandos boarded the vessels in international waters, and if, as the activists on board allege, the soldiers fired first with live ammunition—not rubber-coated bullets or tear gas—Israel's self-defence spin is simply not credible.

Having borne witness to Israeli attacks on clearly-marked medics (16 emergency workers killed by Israeli soldiers) and civilians (nearly 1500 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of whom were non-combatants) during the War on Gaza in December 2008, as well as the variety of war crimes perpetrated by Israeli soldiers, little surprises me now.

Having watched an Israeli soldier target an unarmed youth in his femoral artery because the young man protested the Israeli-imposed no-go zone, I’m not surprised by any Israeli action. Ahmed Deeb, 21, bled to death when the bullet exploded in his thigh.

On a daily basis, Israeli soldiers shell and fire on unarmed Palestinian civilians. Accompanying fishermen and farmers, I have seen and experienced this first-hand. I’m no longer surprised, although at first it was unimaginable: they are firing live ammunition on visibly unarmed people, I said. There are children here, older men and women. What threat do these people pose, I wondered.

The United Nations (UN) reports that two fishermen have been killed and 12 injured since January, 2009 alone, and these are only the reported cases.

In the border regions, unarmed farmers, workers and residents face daily attacks from Israeli soldiers enforcing a brutal no-go zone well beyond the 300 metres Israeli authorities say is off-limits. Tens have been killed and injured by these Israeli attacks.

But attacks are not limited to Palestinians working on Gaza’s waters and border region lands. Under a siege imposed shortly after Hamas was elected in 2006 and tightened brutally since mid-2007, all of Gaza’s 1.5 million suffer. The health sector has been decimated: the Israeli war on Gaza destroyed or damaged more than half of Gaza’s hospitals while the Israeli-Egyptian-international siege prevents 141 vital medicines from entering, and has led to more than 360 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

Gaza’s sewage and sanitation systems are collapsing; their alarming state has been well-documented by the UN, World Health Organization (WHO) and other international organizations.

Ninety-eight per cent of industry has been shut down, contributing to unemployment levels of roughly 50 per cent and an increase in the number of tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, as well as the number of desperate Gazans willing to work in them.

Without the siege on Gaza, the more than 1,000 tunnels would have no market for the goods they bring in daily. The more than 150 workers killed in the tunnels (by Israeli bombing, tunnel collapses, electrocution, Egyptian gassing and bombing) would have had alternative employment options.

Malnutrition is rife, particularly among children, with anaemia and growth stunting on the rise at a drastic rate.

Israeli officials claim that there is no “humanitarian crisis” as they admit more than enough food aid for each person. However, this aid is largely in the form of carbohydrates, leaving families deficient in protein and vitamins. The caloric requirements Israel authorizes per Palestinian in Gaza perpetuate the sentiment of Israeli governmental adviser Dov Weisglass who sought to “put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."

The farmers and fishermen targeted by Israeli soldiers are providers of produce and protein not permitted through Israel’s borders. Their harvest would enable Palestinians in Gaza to stave off slow starvation. Roughly one-third of Gaza’s agricultural land lies in the region Israel unilaterally deems and mortally enforces as off-limits.

When I sailed to Gaza in November 2008 with the third Free Gaza voyage, I knew there was an element of risk: either we wouldn’t reach Gaza or we would be abducted by the Israeli navy. It was a risk worth taking but above all it was a small risk compared to the dangers Palestinians are exposed to every day.

Participants of the Freedom Flotilla, comprising nine vessels and nearly 700 people from over 20 countries, knew there was a significant risk the Israeli navy would attack or halt their boats.

And while the Freedom Flotilla carried needed construction supplies as well as toys, sweets and books for children, the significance of sailing to Gaza to break through the isolation and penetrate the siege cannot be overemphasized.

The siege, as crippling and cruel as it is, is about more than an engineered humanitarian, social and economic catastrophe. It is about the right to self-determination, the right to open borders and to freedom of movement.

The world should question not only the killing of non-threatening civilians in international waters, but also the validity of Israel’s jurisdiction in the whole matter. Does Israel occupy Gaza, or not? If so, why are malnutrition and poverty levels rising in the Gaza Strip?

Huwaida Arraf, abducted from international waters, said previously that "[w]hen states and the international bodies responsible for taking action to stop such atrocities chose to be impotent, then we—the citizens of the world—must act. Our common humanity demands nothing less."

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer living in Gaza. Read more about life in Gaza on her blog, ingaza.wordpress.com.

Flotilla Fish

Khalas! The Fifth Bil'in International Conference on the Popular Struggle

david parker — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:50:04 +0000

Bil'inchildren.JPG

In the name of our prisoners: Non-Violence, Creativity, International Joint Struggle

April 21-23, 2010
Bil'in, West Bank

Closing Statement

During this fifth annual conference, we felt the absence of our friends who are prevented by the occupation's cells and bars from joining us, imprisoned for struggling non-violently for our freedom, activists and leaders of the popular committees Abdullah Abu Rahmah, Ibrahim A'amirah, Adeeb Abu Rahmah, Hassan Moussa, Zaydoun Surour, Ibrahim Burnat, Wael Faqi and all political prisoners.

The conference opened with a message from them written by the imprisoned coordinator of the popular committee of Bili'n, Abdullah Abu Rahme. The message spoke of the need to continue the popular nonviolent struggle and the need for international support.

We felt the absence our beloved Bassem Abu Rahmah, along with the martyrs of Ni'lin and those that have fallen to defend our land and human dignity. We heard from the family of the martyr Bassem Abu Rahma on behalf of the families of the martyrs who stated that the popular struggle must continue until freedom is achieved.

We felt the absence of our brothers and sisters from Gaza who can join us only via video conference due to the occupation's criminal siege of 1.5 million of our people.

All those that were not with us physically were with us every minute in spirit. It is your steadfastness and your sacrifice that fuel and inspire the struggle that will ultimately lead us to our freedom.

Frustration, Suffocation and Crisis

Moira Peters — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:03:08 +0000

Strife, siege on Gaza continue one year after Israeli bombardment

GAZA—The Gaza Strip was already spiraling under years of siege long before the F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tanks, warships, unmanned aerial vehicles and armed soldiers waged a 23-day war on the Strip in winter 2008-2009.

The agricultural sector, which used to provide 50 per cent of Gaza’s food needs, had been steadily failing as a result of the siege and Israel’s policy of aggression in border regions. The Israeli-led, internationally-complicit siege bans all but roughly 40 items from entering Gaza.

In 2008 the Agricultural Development Association (PARC) reported a desperate need for nylon used in hothouses, irrigation piping, fertilizers, seeds, seedlings and pesticides. In March 2009, the United Nations’ Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reiterated the call, adding animal feed, livestock, olive and fruit tree saplings, saying the need was "urgent" and "very urgent."

The Israeli war on Gaza destroyed between 35 and 60 per cent of agricultural sector, tearing up irrigation networks, destroying hundreds of wells, water pumps, and cisterns, farm buildings and machinery, and killing over 35,000 cattle and sheep, and over 1 million chickens and birds.

The most fertile areas of the impossibly small Strip lie in Gaza’s border regions—inhabited but largely undeveloped. Of the 175,000 dunams of cultivable land, 60-75,000 dunams have been destroyed by Israeli invasions and operations.

The Israeli-imposed “buffer zone” in theory renders 300 metres flanking the borders off-limits. Israeli authorities say anyone within that zone risks being shot by Israeli soldiers. In reality, Israeli soldiers shoot and shell up to two kilometres from the border, rendering more than one-third of Gaza’s farmland inaccessible.

Since the end of Israel’s war on Gaza on January 18, 2009, at least 13 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 39 injured in and outside of the “buffer zone” by Israeli soldiers’ shooting and shelling. Children are among the casualites.

Despite the danger, farmers continue planting and farming. The inability to regularly access their land has meant many farmers sow low-maintenance crops instead of the diverse array of vegetables, grains and fruits that once flourished in Gaza.

Before Israeli bulldozers razed the fruit and olive trees that abounded along Gaza’s borders, bee-keepers were able to produce high-quality honey two or three times per year. Many bees have died out from Israeli bulldozing and during the last Israeli war on Gaza. In the absence of trees, most of the remaining bee-keepers substitute sugar-water for flowers.

The Palestinian fishing industry, employing more than 3,500, has been devastated by Israeli attacks on fishing boats, confiscation of boats and equipment, and the abduction of Palestinian fishermen.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinian fishermen have the right to fish 20 nautical miles off Gaza’s coast. Israeli authorities have steadily down-sized fishing zone limits. In 2008, fishermen were warned not to go beyond six miles. Currently, Israeli gunboats prevent fishermen from passing three miles.

Fishermen report being attacked by machine gun shooting, water cannons and shelling from Israeli gunboats within three miles of the coast. Israeli naval soldiers routinely force Palestinian fishermen in large vessels, or small hassakas just 2-300 metres off the coast, to motor or row out beyond the Israeli-imposed limit, whereupon the fishermen are abducted and arrested.

Abducted fishermen report being forced at gunpoint to strip, jump into the water (frigid in winter) and swim tens of metres to a retreating Israeli gunboat where they are hauled aboard, blindfolded and handcuffed, sometimes beaten, interrogated and taken to Israeli detention for one or more days.

The interrogations often include coercion, via threat and financial enticement, to work with Israeli intelligence.

Their fishing boats are frequently confiscated for months, often returned damaged or with equipment and parts missing.

Fishermen say the bounty of fish lie beyond the six mile limit. Reduced to fishing along the coast, the sparse catch comes from waters contaminated by 80 million litres of raw or partially-treated sewage pumped daily into the sea for want of proper sewage maintenance plants.

While Egypt is building a steel wall intended to cut off the hundreds of tunnels running between Gaza and Egypt, tunnelers say they will dig deeper. Palestinians in Gaza say they need the tunnels: they are a lifeline, bringing the imaginable—chocolates, cigarettes, medicines, appliances—to the unimaginable—livestock, cars, people.

Unemployment remains rife at near 50 per cent, with food aid dependence and poverty at over 80 per cent. Educated youths with university degrees languish without work, or take jobs driving taxis for a paltry salary. Students craving higher education, and with scholarships abroad, remain imprisoned by Gaza’s siege-closed borders, losing study and scholarship opportunities.

One year later, virtually nothing has changed, except the frustration, suffocation, and manufactured crises have worsened.

A complete schedule of Israeli Apartheid Week with speaker biographies is available on the website.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer living in Gaza.

Trauma

Fishing Group

Beit Hanoun

Gravel & Sand Dad & Kid

Buffer Zone

Fishing Steam

Sheep

Israel Bombs Gaza, Killing Hundreds

dru — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:24:34 +0000

Emergency demonstrations attract thousands worldwide

MONTREAL, QUEBEC–On December 27, 2008, Israeli military forces initiated "Operation Cast Lead," a bombing offensive against the Gaza Strip. F-16 jets and Apache helicopters, which are manufactured in part in Canada and largely paid for by an estimated $3 billion in annual US military aid, dropped 100 tonnes of bombs in the first day. Reported targets included municipal buildings, police stations, mosques, homes, cross-border tunnels, and a university. According to on-the-ground reports, facilities that have been hit by bombs include hospitals, medical storage facilities and fuel depots.

As of December 30, over 363 people have been killed, and over 1,700 injured. According to a UN report, at least 39 of the deaths were children. Casualties have thus far included government functionaries, children, women, traffic police in training, and bystanders. In some cases, attacks began when children were on their way home from school.

Operation Cast Lead was named in reference to a children's Channukah song written by Israel's national poet, Hayyim Nahman Bialik. The attacks began on the sixth day of the Jewish festival of lights, an official holiday in Israel.

The aim of the operation, according to Israeli officials' initial comments, was to put a stop to Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks against towns close to the Gaza strip, such as Sderot and Ashqelon. In the last seven years, an estimated 24 Israelis (16 within Israel, eight in now-vacated Gaza settlements) have been killed and 433 have been injured by Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks. The attacks have caused post-traumatic stress disorder among residents of the affected towns.

"After this operation there will not be a single Hamas building left standing in Gaza, and we plan to change the rules of the game," armed forces deputy chief of staff Brigadier General Dan Harel told journalists.

"We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas government and all its wings," he added.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said that Israeli forces "will expand to a ground attack if that is needed."

Since Israeli forces vacated settlements and pulled out of Gaza in 2005, they have maintained control over Gaza's airspace, borders, and coastal waters. Since 2007, in response to the election of Hamas, Israel has maintained a tightening siege of Gaza. Shipments of food, fuel, clothing, cooking oil and medicine have been severely restricted, and many Gazans rely on cross-border tunnels to smuggle in basic supplies. Malnutrition affects an estimated 70 per cent of Gaza's population of 1.5 million. After Israeli forces bombed Gaza's main power plant in 2006, the sole remaining plant fell into disrepair, leaving the majority of Gazans without electricity. Israel has turned away several ships carrying food and aid supplies.

Ehud Olmert's advisor, Dov Weisglass, described the siege thus: "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not make them die of hunger."

Demonstrations and Criticism

Immediately following the bombing, emergency protests were organized around the world, with tens of thousands taking to the streets in England, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, India, Australia, New Zealand, and many other countries.

In Canada, emergency protests brought out an estimated 200 in Halifax, 600 in Montreal, 200 in Ottawa, 800 in Toronto, and 300 in Vancouver. Additional demonstrations are planned in Montreal, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

The New Democratic Party called on the government of Canada to immediately call for an end to the attacks. The Liberal Party and the Conservative government both released statements supporting Israel's "right to defend itself" and condemning rocket attacks.

"The people who’ve been subjected to this don’t have the right to defend themselves, but Israel has the right to defend," Dr. Ismail Zayid said to reporters at a protest in Halifax.

Demonstrators in Montreal shouted slogans like "Israel assassin, Harper complice" (Israel assassinates, Harper is complicit) and "Québec, Gaza, solidarité."

A press release from the Toronto-based Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid condemned what it called "the single worst massacre in Gaza since it was illegally occupied in 1967," and called for an end to the "two-year siege" that "has restricted all flow of aid, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities of life into the territory."

Vancouver organizers also condemned "official US and Canadian complicity."

"Targeting Hamas targets, when any civilian employed by the Hamas government, be they traffic police, civil police or in the Ministries, counts as a target, is an immoral declaration of war against a civilian population," Canadian Gaza-based solidarity activist Eva Bartlett wrote in a blog entry.

In Israel, some observers have ascribed the attacks to positioning for Israeli elections coming in February. "Israeli leaders are competing over who is the toughest and who is ready to kill more," Michael Warschawski of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem told journalist Jonathan Cook. Writing shortly before the bombing began, Yoel Marcus observed that "the hysterical reaction by the public as a whole and politicians in particular stems mainly from the fact that the country is in an election period."

Ali Abunimah called for increased support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, initiated in 2005 by Palestinian Civil Society organizations. "Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political action," Abunimah wrote on the day the bombing began.

Media coverage was criticized for omitting the historical context of Palestinian dispossession. Writing in the Independent, Robert Fisk said, "The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear" in media coverage of the bombing.

Dru Oja Jay is an editor at the Dominion.

Gaza Protest, London

Gaza Montreal

Past Gaza Coverage

dru — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:33:58 +0000

Jon Elmer: "Israeli pilots carried out a series of air and artillery strikes throughout the Gaza Strip, targeting civilian infrastructure, assassinating militants and striking fear into the population with deafening noise as low-flying F-16 fighter jets shatter the sound barrier overhead day and night." (OCT 2005)

Jon Elmer: "Living in conditions of crushing poverty, less than 15 percent of Al-Mawasi residents were connected to the electricity grid; the rest relied on two generators that operated only in the evenings. With tight army checkpoints, residents had sporadic and unpredictable access to fuel, dictated by the apparent whims of Israeli authorities." (OCT 2005)

Ramzy Baroud: "On Tuesday, January 22, they descended on the Gaza-Egypt border and what followed was a moment of pride and shame: pride for those ever-dignified people refusing to surrender, and shame that the so-called international community allowed the humiliation of an entire people to the extent that forced hungry mothers to brave batons, tear gas and military police in order to perform such basic acts as buying food, medicine and milk." (FEB 2008)

Eva Bartlett: "The youth was struck from behind by an Israeli sniper bullet that dug into his spine, destroying three of his vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed and bleeding on the roof, where he lay for 15 minutes before his younger brother found him. The 13-year-old dragged Abed to the stairs and down into the family's home, dodging further sniper fire as he went." (JUL 2008)

Open letter to the Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québecois

Stefan Christoff — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:20:29 +0000

308438968_173c08b5a1 copy.jpg

With this letter I would like to officially withdraw as a member of the jury for the 2008 Prize of the Alex and Ruth Dworkin Foundation for the Promotion of Tolerance through Cinema (2008 Prix annuel de la Fondation Alex et Ruth Dworkin pour la promotion de la tolérance à travers le cinéma) at the Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québecois.

For those who may not be aware, this prize, which includes a grant of $5000, “goes to a producer representing the production team which has best demonstrated, in the winning work, a message of comprehension and tolerance”.

I accepted the invitation from the Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québecois to join this year’s jury in good faith. But after examining in more detail the political and financial basis of the prize I must refuse to have my name associated with it. Behind this noble sounding “award for tolerance” hides a story of intolerance, division and discrimination.

Firstly, I quit the jury because the Prix annuel de la Fondation Alex and Ruth Dworkin is an initiative of the Congrès juif canadien, Région du Québec, an organization which I consider to be a vehicle for the Israeli propaganda machine and fundamentally intolerant of dissent and difference, particularly when it comes to Israeli government policies.

One case in point is the refusal of the national leadership of the Congrès juif canadian (CJC) to accept a recent membership application from the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians (ACJC).

ACJC members “joined together to create a cross-Canada alliance of Jewish anti-occupation forces… whose views are not represented by the government of Israel or by the uncritical positions taken by the leadership of the major Jewish organizations in Canada.”

People Power in Gaza

dru — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:21:36 +0000

Palestinians descend on border, break Israeli blockade

Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, interviewer David Barsamian asked Noam Chomsky what ordinary Americans could do to stop the war. Chomsky answered, "In some parts of the world people never ask, 'what can we do?' They simply do it."

For someone who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, Chomsky's seemingly oblique response required no further elucidation.

When Gazans recently stormed the strip's sealed border with Egypt, Chomsky's comment returned to mind, along with memories of the still relevant--and haunting--past.

In 1989, the Bureej refugee camp was experiencing a strict military curfew, as punishment for the killing of one Israeli soldier. The soldier's car had broken down in front of the camp while he was on his way home to a Jewish settlement. Bureej had previously lost hundreds of its people to the Israeli army and killing the soldier was an unsurprising act of retaliation.

In the weeks that followed, scores of Palestinians in Bureej were murdered and hundreds of homes were demolished. The killing spree generated little media coverage in Israel.

I lived with my family in an adjacent refugee camp, Nuseirat, at the time. Characterised by extreme poverty, it was a natural home for much of the Palestinian resistance movement. Our house was located a few feet away from what was known as the 'Graveyard of the Martyrs'. It was an area of high elevation that the local children often used to watch the movement of Israeli tanks as they began their daily incursion into the camp. We whistled or yelled every time we spotted the soldiers, and used sign language to communicate as we hid behind the simple graves.

Although watching, yelling and whistling were the only means of response at our disposal, they were far from safe. My friends Ala, Raed, Wael and others were all killed in these daily encounters

During Bureej's most lethal curfew, the sound of explosions coming from the doomed camp reached us at Nuseirat. The people of my camp became engulfed in endless discussions which were neither factional nor theoretical. People were being brutally murdered, injured or impoverished, while the Red Cross was blocked from accessing the camp. Something had to be done.

And all of a sudden it was. Not as a result of any polemic endorsed by intellectuals or "action calls" initiated at conferences, but as an unstructured, spur-of-the-moment act undertaken by a few women in my refugee camp. They simply started a march into Bureej, and were soon joined by other women, children and men. Within an hour, thousands of refugees made their way into the besieged neighbouring camp. "What's the worst they could do?" a neighbour asked, trying to collect his courage before joining the march. "The soldiers will not be able to kill more than a hundred before we overpower them."

Israeli soldiers stood dumbfounded before the chanting multitudes. While many marchers were wounded only one was killed. The soldiers eventually retreated to their barricades. UN vehicles and Red Cross ambulances sheltered themselves amidst the crowd and together they broke the siege.

I still remember the scene of Bureej residents first opening the shutters of their windows, then carefully cracking their doors, stepping out of their homes in a state of disbelief breaking into joy. My memory--of the chants, the tears, the dead being rushed to be buried, the wounded hauled on the many hands that came to the rescue, the strangers sharing food and good wishes--reaffirms the event as one of the greatest acts of human solidarity I have witnessed.

The scene was to be repeated time and again, during the first and Second Palestinian Uprising: ordinary people carrying out what seemed like an ordinary act in response to extraordinary injustice.

The father who lost his son to free Bureej told the crowd: "I am happy that my son died so that many more could live."

Later than day, our refugee camp fell under a most strict military curfew, to relive Bureej's recent nightmare. We were neither surprised nor regretful. We had known the right thing to do and "we simply did it."

Now Palestinian women, once more, have led Palestinian civil society in a most meaningful and rewarding way. Just when Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak was being congratulated for successfully starving Palestinians in Gaza to submission, ordinary women led a march to break the tight siege imposed on Gaza.

On Tuesday, January 22, they descended on the Gaza-Egypt border and what followed was a moment of pride and shame: pride for those ever-dignified people refusing to surrender, and shame that the so-called international community allowed the humiliation of an entire people to the extent that forced hungry mothers to brave batons, tear gas and military police in order to perform such basic acts as buying food, medicine and milk.

The next day, the courage of these women inspired the same audacity that the original batch of women in my refugee camp inspired nearly twenty years ago. Nearly half of the Gaza Strip population crossed the border in a collective push for mere survival. And when people march in unison, there is no worldly force, however deadly, that can block their way.

This "largest jailbreak in history", as one commentator described it, will be carved in Palestinian and world memory for years to come. In some circles it will be endlessly analysed, but for Palestinians in Gaza, it is beyond rationalization: it simply had to be done.

Armies can be defeated but human spirit cannot be subdued. Gaza's act of collective courage is one of the greatest acts of civil disobedience of our time, akin to civil rights marches in America during the 1960's, South Africa's anti-Apartheid struggle, and more recently the protests in Burma.

Palestinian people have succeeded where politics and thousands of international appeals have failed. They took matters into their own hands and they prevailed. While this is hardly the end of Gaza's suffering, it is a reminder that people's power to act is just too significant to be overlooked.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Gazans cross into Egypt to buy supplies

Israeli Patrol in Gaza

Le Soutien des États-Unis au Fatah Crée un Nouveau Conflit

hillarybain — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:20:46 +0000

Le Hamas et le Fatah s'engagent dans une rivalité meurtrière.

Le son des explosions, des fusillades intenses et des sirènes d'ambulances a de nouveau retenti dans la bande de Gaza, le 1er février, seulement deux jours après la cessation des combats entre les partisans du Fatah et du Hamas durant lesquels plus de 30 Palestiniens sont morts.

À la tombée de la nuit, on dénombrait six décès et plus de 60 blessés à Gaza. Des combattants fidèles au gouvernement élu du Hamas – la force exécutive du ministre de l'Intérieur et la milice du mouvement islamiste, les Brigades Izzadin Al-Qassam – affrontaient les forces de sécurité du Fatah, fidèles au Président de l'Autorité palestinienne Mahmoud Abbas.

Dans l'après-midi, au moment des combats, le Hamas a intercepté quatre camions de chargement venant d'Israël par le passage de Kerem Shalom. Ces derniers ont voulu réquisitionner la cargaison d'armes destinée à la garde présidentielle, une force de sécurité fidèle à M. Abbas et soutenue par les États-Unis.

Le Fatah a officiellement nié toute connaissance de cette cargaison d'armes. Selon son porte-parole, Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, le convoi transportait seulement des tentes, des générateurs et du matériel médical.

En décembre dernier, un chargement de 2 000 fusils, 20 000 chargeurs et 2 millions de cartouches d’origine égyptienne était transporté à travers ce même passage de Kerem Shalom. Le convoi, officialisé par Israël, avait également rejoint la bande de Gaza.

La reprise de la violence s'est produite au moment où Washington a annoncé le débloquement de 86,4 millions de dollars supplémentaires pour soutenir le Président M. Abbas.

Les dirigeants du Hamas ont dénoncé la participation de Washington dans l’entraînement et le financement des forces de sécurité du Fatah. Son porte-parole, Ismayil Radwan, a déclaré dans une intervention publique que l'intention de Washington était de « susciter une guerre civile dans l'arène palestinienne ».

Pour Mouin Rabbani, analyste éminent à l'International Crisis Group, les États-Unis poussent la garde présidentielle de M. Abbas à devenir la principale force de sécurité palestinienne. « Elle est renforcée afin de combattre la force exécutive du Hamas » a-t-il affirmé à IPS. Selon lui, les États-Unis travaillent sur le long terme au lieu de chercher à attiser les récents affrontements à Gaza.

« Il n'y a pas d'instigation directe des Américains car ils ne sont pas encore convaincus que le Fatah est prêt à affronter le Hamas », poursuit M. Rabbani. « Mais ils commencent à fournir des quantités importantes d'armes, entraînent et financent le Fatah dans l’espoir qu’il dominera le conflit final. »

Washington a confirmé l’entraînement de la garde présidentielle de M. Abbas à la tactique des combats de rue, à Jéricho en Cisjordanie, sous la direction du lieutenant général Keith Dayton, coordinateur américain de la sécurité auprès d'Israël et de l'Autorité palestinienne.

En décembre, K. Dayton avait déclaré au quotidien israélien Yedioth Ahronoth: « Nous sommes engagés dans le renforcement de la garde présidentielle, procédant à son instruction, l'aidant à se développer elle-même et lui donnant des idées ». K. Dayton avait démenti la préparation de cette force à la confrontation avec le Hamas.

Toujours en décembre, le Congrès américain a voté la loi contre le terrorisme palestinien. Celle-ci vise explicitement la direction élue du Hamas et cherche à soutenir l'Autorité palestinienne en association avec le Fatah.

En vertu de cette loi, les États-Unis sanctionnent le Hamas jusqu'à ce que « l'Autorité palestinienne, contrôlée par le Hamas, accomplisse des progrès notoires dans la purge des individus des services de sécurité liés au terrorisme, dans le démantèlement de toutes les infrastructures terroristes, dans la coopération avec les services de sécurité israéliens, dans l'arrêt de toute motivation anti-américaine et anti-israélienne, et dans l'assurance de la démocratie et de la transparence financière. »

Le mouvement islamique Hamas a mis fin à 40 années de règne du Fatah sur la scène politique palestinienne en gagnant les élections parlementaires de janvier 2006. Un régime de sanctions sévères, initié par les États-Unis, a été imposé au Hamas lors de la formation du gouvernement au mois de mars suivant. C'est la première fois, selon les Nations Unies, que de telles sanctions sont prises contre une population sous occupation. Les sanctions ont aggravé la situation à Gaza, déjà qualifiée de crise humanitaire par des agences onusiennes comme le Programme Alimentaire Mondiale (PAM).

Au minimum, les trois quarts du million et demi d’habitants vivent dans la pauvreté et sont menacés d'insuffisance alimentaire. En outre, plus de 220 000 personnes sont totalement dépendantes de l'assistance alimentaire du PAM.

Cependant, d'après les sondages, les sanctions ne sont pas parvenues à éroder la popularité du Hamas.

Pour les Palestiniens, ce combat interne est une crise supplémentaire à celle des 40 années d’occupation israélienne. « Ce matin, je voulais amener ma fille au jardin d'enfants, mais je n'ai pu passer à cause des barrages routiers. Toutes les boutiques sont fermées et les rues sont vides. La population de Gaza écoute seulement les nouvelles et les coups de feu », a confié Nabil Diab, chargé des relations publiques pour le Croissant Rouge palestinien à Gaza ville.

« Les gamins avaient l'habitude de jouer aux “Palestiniens contre les Israéliens“. Maintenant, ils jouent au “Fatah contre le Hamas“ », dit le père de deux enfants.

Le Centre Al-Mezan pour les Droits de l'Homme à Gaza a dénombré 63 morts et plus de 300 blessés durant les combats de décembre entre le Hamas et le Fatah.

Ces affrontements armés ont lieu dans l’une des régions les plus densément peuplées du monde et font énormément de victimes civiles : huit enfants tués et plus de 30 blessés durant le mois de janvier. Une souffrance de plus pour les habitants de Gaza qui ont vécu 60 ans de déplacements forcés et sept années de guerre longue et oppressante avec Israël.

Les Palestiniens restent lucides sur les conséquences de cette lutte politique interne. Cette phrase lâchée à IPS par une habitante de Gaza, pressée de rentrer chez elle avec ses courses, résume bien leurs inquiétudes : « Si ces combats continuent, nous allons nous anéantir nous-mêmes ».

Sources : IPS, « U.S. Backing for Fatah Stirs New Conflict »
Traduction : Campagne Civile Internationale pour la Protection du Peuple Palestinien (CCIPPP) et Vivien Jaboeuf

Un Drapeau Palestinien

Mohammed Dahlan

Un Drapeau Palestinien

hillarybain — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:12:48 +0000

Un drapeau palestinien en lambeaux flotte sur Gaza.

Peter MacKay in Israel and Palestine

dru — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:50:20 +0000

What the Foreign Minister did not see or discuss during his visit

GAZA CITY, GAZA -- Despite the impression cast by corporate news coverage, there is never anything like "calm" here in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The casualty count for 2006 released by Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reports that Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, while 17 Israeli civilians were killed, 13 of them in the West Bank [pdf]. The violence is often spectacular, as during the summer and fall siege operations in Gaza that killed more than 450 Palestinians under withering aerial bombardment, artillery barrages and two major ground invasions. But, as an unusually frank headline in the current edition of the Economist rightly stated, "It's the little things that make an occupation."

When Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay visited Israel this week, it was these "little things" that he missed--like the more than 530 fixed checkpoints and roadblocks identified in a joint UN-IDF count in the occupied West Bank. These obstacles make simple travel between neighbouring Palestinian villages often impossible, particularly when added to the more than 7,000 "flying checkpoints" that spring up at the whim of the Israeli army, anywhere and at anytime. As the Economist pointed out, "arbitrariness is one of the most crippling features of these rules."

The checkpoints and closure regime enforced by Israel is more than inconvenient; all too often, it is deadly. On Friday, as MacKay met with President Abbas in Amman, Israeli soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint outside of the West Bank city of Nablus refused the Israeli-issued permits of a patient returning from liver surgery in Palestinian East Jerusalem. The soldiers forced Tayseer Al Qaisi out of the car and ordered him to walk across the checkpoint. Al Qaisi, a father of eight, was weakened critically by the surgery and collapsed only a few hundred feet into the checkpoint. As reported by David Chater of Al Jazeera International, a Palestinian ambulance was prevented from entering the area for two hours. Mr Al Qaisi died while waiting for help.

In meetings with top Israeli cabinet ministers, Peter MacKay did not mention the more than 2,200 hours of strict curfew enforced by tanks and gunfire over the last two years, or the more than 5,400 Palestinians who were arrested or detained on Palestinian land last year [pdf]--including more than half of the elected Palestinian cabinet, the Speaker of Parliament and scores of local and municipal officials. He did not ask about the Palestinian prisoner who died in Israeli custody this week, or about the hunger strike being waged by political prisoners at Ansar III in the Negev desert in response to an attack by guards with police dogs and tear gas. While MacKay gave ample notice that he would be discussing the Israeli soldier captured on the Gaza border in June, he almost surely did not bring up the 11,000 political prisoners being held by Israel, some 400 of them children.

Nor did MacKay talk about the more than 30 incursions into Palestinian cities and villages by the Israeli army in the last eight days, or the 14 fisherman shot off the coast of Rafah last week as they fished in Palestinian waters. He didn't talk about the 15 Palestinians injured by Israeli forces in protests this week, or of 10-year-old schoolgirl, Abir Aramin, who died on January 20 as she left the grounds of her school in Anata. According to witnesses, Abir was pursued by Israeli forces as she tried to run awayand was shot in the head with a stun grenade or tear gas canister at close range.

It's doubtful that MacKay raised the issue of last week's bulldozing of the entire "unrecognized" Bedouin village of Twail Abu-Jarwal in the Negev Desert. The Bedouin were displaced because they were illegally "trespassing" on the land of the Jewish state, despite the fact that their presence in the desert long predates the State of Israel. They are being forcibly relocated to urban reservations, while the Negev is prepared for settlement by the Jewish National Fund. In the "only democracy in the Middle East," at least 75,000 Bedouin live in more than 40 villages that are officially "unrecognized," where, like in Palestinian areas, building permits are denied and demolition orders are routinely carried out. The unrecognized villages have no infrastructure--no sewage, no water or electricity, and often no health or education facilities.

While Arab and Bedouin homes are destroyed, Jewish ones are being built. On the same day that MacKay arrived in the region, the Olmert government announced that 44 new housing units would be built in the Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem, a settlement which effectively, if not absolutely, severs the West Bank in two. In fact, MacKay won't deal with the issue of settlements at all--not the 121 illegal settlements and 100 outposts in the West Bank, nor the scores of settlements in occupied-East Jerusalem, beyond acknowledging the massive infrastructure of permanent dispossession as a "hindrance." In fact, along with their Jewish-only roads and attendant security footprint, these settlements render a Palestinian state an impossibility. Rather than fortified colonies on illegally occupied land, the Canadian government calls the settlements "facts on the ground." Not to be outdone, Stephen Harper referred to the settlement blocs as "democratic realities" in addressing a Zionist advocacy group in early 2006 [pdf].

MacKay did not address the substance of the 700 km-long barrier of sniper towers, concrete walls and deadly electronic fences snaking deep into the West Bank (80 per cent of the wall is built on UN recognized Palestinian land) in order to annex the massive settlement blocs into Israel and isolate the Palestinians into enclaves. He did not visit the machinery of settlement and dispossession created by the wall, the checkpoints, the settlements, the settler-only roads. John Dugard, South African human rights lawyer and UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory told the UN General Assembly, "In other countries the process would be described as ethnic cleansing, but political correctness [forbids] such language where Israel was concerned."

MacKay certainly did not visit Gaza, where 1.5 million people (one million of whom are refugees) are sealed off from the rest of the world, teetering on the edge of total social and humanitarian collapse because of the cruel and comprehensive sanctions regime that he so proudly vanguards. MacKay boastfully declared "not a red cent to Hamas" when the movement won the Palestinian elections early last year, but failed to see what that means on the streets of Gaza. He did not visit the EU-funded power station that was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in June, nor did he visit the refugee camps where a million of the world's poorest people have been condemned to endless months of crippling power shortages, random blackouts and Israeli-imposed shortages of cooking and heating gas.

He didn't see the rubble left from thousands of aerial bombing raids and tens of thousands of artillery shells. He didn't see the roads shredded by tanks, or the pile of gravel in Beit Hanun that used to be an 800-year-old mosque. He didn't see the graffiti on the demolished houses that reads "we will never forget." He didn't walk in the refugee camps as winter rains and sewage run in rivers down the unpaved streets, or visit the beachside picnic site where the Ghaliya family was massacred in front of the eyes of seven-year-old Huda, whose horrified tears were broadcast around the world. He didn't visit the ambulance workers at the Red Crescent, four of whom were killed by the Israeli army since June. Where does Canada stand on the killing of medical relief workers, Mr. MacKay?

And what about the home of the Atamna family in Beit Hanun, where blood still covers the walls and pieces of shrapnel are scattered on the floor and embedded in the cinderblock walls after an artillery barrage by the Israeli army? The IDF had used the family's home as a forward operating base in the November operation during which more than one hundred Palestinians were killed; the Atamna family was cordoned into one room and guarded by soldiers. The morning after the army left their home, the shells came. Within moments, 60 members of the extended family lay in the street, either maimed or dead. When asked what they would say to the Canadian government, defending Israel's atrocities as it does time and again, Iyad Atamna said: "We don't want your money or your political support, just come here for one day before you speak about justice."

Jon Elmer is in Gaza City.

Mother Tutoring Daughter, Beit Hanun

Fishing Boats, Gaza

dru — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:49:58 +0000

GAZA CITY, GAZA -- Fishing boats in the Palestinian port in Gaza. 14 Palestinian fisherman were shot by Israeli navy vessels while fishing Palestinian waters off Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Mother Tutoring Daughter, Beit Hanun

dru — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:47:56 +0000

BEIT HANUN, GAZA -- A mother tutors her daughter in the rubble of their village in the northern Gaza Strip.