Volunteers have planted a garden in the courtyard of the burned St. Mary's Church in Homs. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Eva Bartlett
HOMS, Syria, Jul 8 2014 (IPS)

Al-Waer, Homs’s most populated area and the city’s last insurgent holdout, might soon achieve the truce that Hom’s Old City saw in May this year when, in an exchange deal, the insurgents left their strongholds.

Today, Al-Waer’s population stands at more than 200,000, many of them internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled their homes in other parts of Syria, only to find themselves caught in the middle of the efforts of the Syrian army to eradicate the armed militants.

Homs, Syria’s third largest city and dubbed in the media as the “capital of the revolution”, suffered nearly three years of the insurgents’ presence and the Syrian army’s fight to oust them and restore calm. By May this year, many areas had been destroyed by both army bombing and insurgent rockets and car bombs.

On May 9, 2014, Homs’ Governor Talal Barazi was reported as having declared Homs “empty of guns and fighters” and under a truce agreement, the roughly 1,200 insurgents who had taken over most of the Old City in early 2012 were bussed out and residents could finally return to their neighbourhoods.Many of them [residents of Homs’ Old City] argued that what had happened in Homs was not revolution, as Dutch Jesuit priest Frans van der Lugt had argued before he was assassinated, just one month before Homs was liberated.

Some of those residents who had stayed on in the Old City of Homs during the siege talked to IPS about their ordeals and losses at the hands of armed groups, including Nusra and Farooq brigades. Many of them argued that what had happened in Homs was not revolution, as Dutch Jesuit priest Frans van der Lugt had argued before he was assassinated, just one month before Homs was liberated.

“I was baptised in this church, got married in it, and baptised my children in it,” said Abu Nabeel, a resident of Homs’ Old City. The St. George Church, with its crumbling walls, is one of 11 reported destroyed in the Old City. It no longer has its wooden ceiling and ornately-carved wooden ceiling panels and wall lattice lie in heaps outside the ancient church.

“Most of the damage is from the last days just before the insurgents left,” he said. “But we’ll rebuild.”That rebuilding has already begun, with residents scraping away rubble and re-paving small areas that had been damaged.

The arched interior of the St. Mary’s Church (Um al-Zinnar) bears the char marks of its burning by retreating insurgents. Like many others, the church was looted of objects and vandalised, with the insurgents leaving sectarian graffiti on the walls. “Symbols related to Christianity were removed. Even from inside houses. If you had a picture of the Virgin Mary, they removed it,” said Abu Nabeel.

Volunteers have now planted a garden in its courtyard, which they say is an attempt to “bring some beauty back” to Homs.

In the courtyard of the Jesuit church sat a lone plastic chair adorned with flowers and a photo of Father Frans van der Lugt, the Jesuit priest assassinated on April 7, 2014.

Nazim Kanawati, who knew and respected the Jesuit, arrived moments after the 75-year-old priest had been shot in the back of the head.”We were surrounded and under siege. This was the only place we could go to. Everyone loved it here,” he said. Like Father Frans, Kanawati refused to leave Homs while others fled. “I didn’t want to leave, I’m a Syrian, I had the right to be there.”

Although he chose to stay in the Old City, Father Frans was critical of the insurgents. In January 2012, he had written: “From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels.”

“People in Homs were already armed and prepared before the protests began,” said Kanawati. “If they hadn’t been planning for the protests from the beginning, the people wouldn’t have had the quantity of arms that they had.”

Abu Nabeel explained that in addition to the Hamidiyeh district where various old churches are to be found, Christians in other areas occupied by the armed insurgents also fled. “There were an estimated 100,000 Christians living in the Old City of Homs before it was taken over by terrorists. Most fled in February 2012. By March, only 800 had stayed, and by the end just over 100 remained,” he said.

The siege that the Syrian army enforced on the Old City in an attempt to drive out the insurgents had a drastic effect on the daily lives of those remaining. Before Homs was freed of the armed insurgents, who were also stealing from homes, life had become impossible. “There was food at the beginning, but it started to run out. At the end we had nothing, we ate whatever we could collect,” said Kanawati.

Mohammed, a Syrian from the Qussoor district of Homs, is now one of the reported 6.5 million internally-displaced Syrians.

“I’m a refugee in Latakia now. I work in Homs, two days a week, and then return to Latakia to stay at my friend’s home. I left my house at the very end of 2011, before the area was taken over by al-Nusra and al-Farooq brigades.”

He spoke of the sectarian nature of the insurgents and protests from the very beginning in 2011.

“I was renting a home in a different neighbourhood of Homs, while renovating my own house. Just beyond my balcony there were protests that did not call for ‘freedom’ or even overthrowing the ‘regime’.They chanted sectarian mottos, they said they would fill al-Zahara – an Alawi neighbourhood – with blood. And also al-Nezha – where there are many Alawis and Christians.”

The windows and door handle to the home of Aymen and Zeinat al-Akhras were missing, but the house itself was intact. Zeinat, a pharmacist, and Aymen, a chemical engineer, survived the presence of the armed men and the resulting siege on the Old City.

“I’ve gained five kilos!” Zeinat said. “I dropped to 34 kilos. Aymen told me to weigh myself. I got on the scale and said, ‘What’s 34 kilos?’. A ten-year-old weighs more than that! And Aymen was 43 kilos. For a man, 43 kilos,” she said laughing.

“Thirty-eight times they came to steal our food. The first couple of times, they knocked on the door, after that they just entered with guns. The last things they took were our dried peas, our cracked wheat, our olives, finally our avatar (wild thyme). We started to eat grass and whatever greens we could find in February, 2014, and that’s all we had till Homs was liberated,” Zeinat said.

“The last time they came all we had were some spices. I was putting the spices on the grass and weeds that we were eating at that point, to give themsome flavour. They even took the spices. They didn’t leave us anything.”

Meanwhile, despite the return of calm to Homs’ Old City, insurgents continue their campaign of car-bombing civilian areas of Homs. Tens were killed by car bombs and rocket attacks in June alone.Then, on June 26, the Nusra brigades, an al-Qaeda affiliate and one of the main factions which occupied Homs, is reported to have pledged allegiance to the Takfiri extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria(ISIS).

This allegiance to a group documented to have beheaded, mutilated, crucified and flogged Syrians and Iraqis gives more credence to Homs’ residents’opinion that the events in Syria are no revolution.

Tens of thousands of Syrians flocked to the Syrian embassy in Beirut on May 28. Voting was extended to a second day due to the large numbers. Credit Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Eva Bartlett
BEIRUT, May 30 2014 (IPS)

Roughly three kilometres north of Beirut’s Syrian embassy in Baabda, Syrians crammed in one of an endless stream of buses, exited and continued on foot. The masses opted to walk the remaining few kilometres rather than sit in a traffic jam generated by the tens of thousands flocking to vote.

Clogging the main street leading to the embassy, vehicles of all sorts – many decked out with posters of President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian flags – sat waiting to inch forward. Those on foot moved faster than the halted traffic, and the many long-haul truck drivers gave up, rigs pulled off to the side, resigned to wait until the crowds thinned out, a wait that lasted well into the night.

Syrians in Lebanon were on their way to cast votes at their embassy in Syria’s presidential elections. Although Syrians in Syria will vote on June 3, those overseas were called to vote this week. Due to the heavy flow, the embassy in Beirut had to extend voting to a second day.“We want to elect President Bashar al-Assad. There's no one like him, nor will there be. The terrorists believe everyone else is an infidel. They'll kill me, they'll you, they'll kill anyone who isn't with them” – Hassan, a Syrian from Raqqa, eastern Syria

Lebanon has over 1 million registered Syrian refugees, many more unregistered and others who have been working in Lebanon for years.

The Lebanese army was present, soldiers checking each person who neared the embassy, a helicopter circling above. “Bless the army, they are protecting us, protecting the elections,” said Hassan, a Syrian from Raqqa, eastern Syria, an area where foreign insurgents are killing Syrian civilians for not being Muslim enough, even crucifying them. Syrians of all faiths reject this external sectarianism, from Saudi sheikhs’ fatwas, and the funding of many of the armed insurgents in Syria.

“We want to elect President Bashar al-Assad. There’s no one like him, nor will there be. The terrorists believe everyone else is an infidel. They’ll kill me, they’ll you, they’ll kill anyone who isn’t with them.”

Voters of all ages and faiths were present, the majority having walked several kilometres from their halted vehicles. A veiled woman with the Syrian flag draped around her shoulders, her daughter wearing a t-shirt with Bashar encircled in a heart, posed for a photo. Young women in sunglasses wearing Bashar t-shirts and carrying ‘like’ posters and Syrian flags passed by.

The energy was of defiance and determination to vote, for Syria, though for most it entailed waiting for hours under the sun in crowded quarters.

Amassed under and beside the bridge nearest the Syrian embassy, the crowd of Syrians waited for their chance to approach the embassy, and ultimately vote.  Such a high voter turn-out meant their wait was long. “I arrived here at 9 am and didn’t get to vote till 4 pm,” said one voter.

Closer to the embassy, those waiting were jubilant, others exhausted but determined.

An older woman from Aleppo sitting on the pavement off to the side of the road said her family had told her to stay home. “I’m ill, they were worried about me. But I will vote even if I die trying to do so.”

Her son, like most in the crowd, was emphatic in his support for President Assad. “The terrorist rebels are in my city. God bless Dr. Bashar al-Assad and the army. We don’t want anyone else.”

Every so often, the Lebanese army would push the crowds back, to which chants praising the Lebanese soldiers broke out.  More dominant were the chants praising Assad and Syria.

“Syria will get back its dignity,” said an engineering student from Tartous. “The ‘revolution’ is a lie, it’s a farce engineered by the West and Saudi Arabia, Qatar,” he said.

“We don’t want anyone else, we love him,” said another man nearby.

Others vied for their chance to praise how Syria was before the manufactured crisis began. “We had free health care, safety, our bread was subsidised. We were happy. We want Syria to be like it was,” was a widely shared sentiment.

Syrian supporters of President Bashar al-Assad at Beirut’s Syrian embassy. Children and elderly alike went to lend their support and cast their votes. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

The chorus of cheers and chanting was punctuated by the thud of the helicopter circling above, tight security to ensure that the elections were not derailed.

“We love him.  I’m Sunni, not Alawi,” Walid, from Raqqa, noted. “They’re afraid our voices will be heard,” he said, regarding the many countries which will not allow Syrians to vote.

The United States – at the forefront of those nations calling for “democratic change” in Syria – did not allow Syrian expatriates a vote. Nor did Canada, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey and others.

To allow voters in countries where voting is prohibited, the Syrian government is encouraging Syrians living abroad to fly to Syria and cast their votes.

Roland Dumas, former French Foreign Minister, supported Syria’s elections, and criticised France’s refusal to allow Syrians their right to vote as “ridiculous, politicised and morally unacceptable.”  Dumas is notable for having publicly stated that the chaos is Syria was engineered long before the events of 2011.

“I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.”

Syria’s Sana News reported that over 200,000 Syrians voted at 39 Syrian embassies overseas on Wednesday and cited ambassador Ali Abdul Karim as stating that the vast number of votes was, “an expression that the Syrians are proud of their Army and its achievements as well as it is a reflection on the Syrian people’s support to their wise leadership.”

“I’m from Deir Ezzor,” said a voter. “ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is in our area. We want Bashar al-Assad. The guy walks straight,” he said, with a gesture of his hand.

Another man, from Aleppo, reiterated what many already said. “There’s no revolution, absolutely not. People from around the world have pounced on Syria. People who cut off heads … what kind of revolution is that?”

Emphatically pro-Assad, he did say that the two other candidates were respected. “Maher al-Hajjar and Hassan al-Nouri, they are good. But not like Bashar, our hero.”

Formerly a teacher in Aleppo, he now works construction in Lebanon. “In another month or two, I’m returning to Syria, to stay.”

In a Hamra mini-mart, Abu Mohammed, from Sweida, commented on Ahmad Jarba, the candidate backed by Western countries.

“We don’t know him nor where he came from. We want one of us, a Syrian in Syria. People in Syria aren’t blind, we know this has been planned for years. They want to do to Syria what they did to Libya. Today, thousands went to the embassy. Why? Because we know Bashar is the right person. Be sure, if we didn’t want him, he wouldn’t have lasted three years.”

A wall mural in Damascus "to send a message to the world that we Syrians love life," says the lead artist, Moaffak Makhoul. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
DAMASCUS, May 12 2014 (IPS)

On a weekday afternoon, the Old City of Damascus heaves with people, cars, motorcycles, bikes. Markets are crowded with locals bartering with merchants for the heaps of spices, flowery perfumes, clothing, and most things one needs, abundant in the Hamidiyah market.

At the end of the historic Roman Via Recta (Straight Street), boys play football amidst ancient columns.

Syria, in its fourth year of a devastating foreign-backed armed attempt to overthrow the government, is somehow still pulsing with life and hope.

In the narrow back lanes of the Old City, couples walk hand in hand, older men greet each other with broad smiles and a kiss on each cheek. Music wafts from open doors of ancient homes, their courtyards bursting with greenery. A milkman delivers milk from large tins strapped to his bicycle.

But the spacious old homes converted into hotels or restaurants now have no tourists. Various shop owners highlight the same issue: they have goods, but no buyers.

Bassam runs his family’s antiques and jewellery store, Giovanni, near the East Gate entrance to the Old City, in an old Damascene home with vast arches and ornate wooden décor.

“Business is not very good, because of the situation. Many people used to come here.” He picks up a framed photo of himself and a woman in his store. “That’s Catherine Deneuve, a French actress. She’s very famous,” he says, reiterating that well-known people from around the world used to frequent his store.

Inside the Umayyad Mosque, worshipers pray and relax in the cool interior, a boy twirls Sufi-style through the mosque. Outside, women sit in the courtyard shade with their children, picnicking on sandwiches.

The vast square opposite the mosque is filled with food vendors, clothing vendors, families milling about, kids selling roses. Children gather around a hoard of pigeons, buying feed to toss to them.

A popcorn vendor in his 20s says things are improving in Syria. “Life here is good, things have gotten back to normal, the government supports us. But my house is in Babbila, just outside of Damascus. I can’t go back there, the ‘rebels’ have taken over.”

Almost daily, armed groups launch mortars on civilian areas in Damascus, from villages on the outskirts like Jobar, Mliha. On Apr. 15, mortars struck Manar elementary school, killing one child and injuring 62 others. A kindergarten was also shelled that morning, in the same densely-inhabited area of Damascus, injuring three more children.

On Apr. 29, the mortars struck Bader Eddin al-Hassni Institute for religious science, killing 14 students and injuring 86 others, according to SANA news.

As I sit outside the old city walls one afternoon, roughly one hundred metres from East Gate, bullets whiz closely past, coming from the direction of Jobar, an area controlled by armed groups.

Al-Midan, a district of Damascus known for its traditional Syrian sweets, still receives local business but faces the same loss of foreign customers as most in the tourism industry. “I used to bring delegations here specifically for the sweets,” says Anas, a journalist with Syrian television. “But as you see there are no tourists here now.”

Nagham, a university student, says even many local Syrians won’t go to Midan now. “People are afraid to come here now, because it’s so close to Yarmouk. Midan is safe, but people think that the ‘terrorists’ in Yarmouk will fire mortars here.”

Due to attacks on civilians, including car bombings, checkpoints are installed throughout Damascus and the countryside, causing long lines of traffic as soldiers check vehicles for explosives. But without the checkpoints, there would be more loss of civilian life.

Homs residents know all too well the deadly effects of the car bombings. On Apr. 9, for example, two car bombs detonated one after the other on the same residential street, killing 25 civilians and injuring at least 107, according to Syrian state media. On Apr. 29, two more car bombs and a rocket attack killed another 42 civilians in Homs.

But Homs is also a place where the reconciliation movement has taken flight, with fighters nearly daily laying down their weapons and opting for a political solution for Syria.

In Latakia, a coastal city roughly 350 km northwest of Damascus, near the Turkish border, internally displaced Syrians from the Armenian populated village of Kasab take refuge in an Armenian Orthodox Church.

On Mar. 21, armed groups began firing missiles from nearby Turkey upon the village, later entering and taking it over, committing atrocities against the civilians. Eighty people are reported to have been killed, and nearly 2000 villagers fled to Latakia and other areas to escape the attacks by a reported 1500 Chechnyan and other foreign, al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents, backed by Turkish special forces.

“They can destroy our houses, but we’re going back. We believe in the Syrian Arab Army,” said Suzy, from Kasab, who described some of the atrocities committed. “They raped the older women, because they couldn’t find girls, so they raped the elderly. They destroyed everything, they robbed our houses, they broke the statue of the Virgin Mary.”

When asked her sentiments on Syria’s president, she replied without hesitation, like so many in Syria. “We have a leader, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad. We love him so much, we don’t want anything else. We want him, we want Syria back.”

Elsewhere in Latakia, a city secured by the Syrian army but attacked from a distance with missiles, children and teens play in a fountain in a large, clean park, and men and women sit smoking shisha or hookah and chatting.

Fadia, an unveiled Sunni Muslim, sitting with a group of veiled and unveiled women, says that internally Latakia does not have serious problems. “Life is good here, we’re living happily, the army have protected us here. We love our president, our army, our country, but the outside forces want to destroy the country. There is no problem between Christians, Muslims, Armenians, Alawites here. We are all one family, no one can split us apart.”

This is a point Lilly Martin, who is from California but has lived in Syria for the past 22 years, drives home.

“At the beginning, we had a surge of violence, protestors attacking Syrian police and security, but right away the Latakian people turned against it. The population here didn’t accept it. We have Christians, Muslims, and minorities here. There is very little support for the ‘rebels’ here, so it’s been a peaceful city,” she says.

In Homs, Latakia, Damascus, walls and shop doors are decorated with large, painted replicas of the Syrian flag and posters of President Assad. Syrian flags appeared at Easter celebrations, wedding receptions and engagement parties. And along with the flags, there are patriotic songs for Syria and President Assad, with a roomful of celebrants singing along, hooting and clapping.

On the Autostrad, the main street leading to the al-Mezze district of Damascus, a block-long mural brightens the otherwise standard wall surrounding a school. The colourful mosaic of scraps of tiles and recycled items is the project of six artists. Moaffak Makhoul, the lead artist, explains the concept.

“We did this for the children, to bring a smile to their faces. And we wanted to send a message to the world that we Syrians love life, and that we insist on living, on surviving,” he says.

His message also has an important political element to it. “To those who espouse the ideology that wants to eliminate others, the Takfiri ideology, we tell them ‘no’.”

Four youths in their late teens stop to talk. “We were living well, with security, before this happened. We were living in freedom. Now we’re not,” says Rehab, one of the girls. “Now you don’t know who is a terrorist. We just want our country to return to how it was.”

Ramez, another one of the teenagers, says things are better now, “life is improving.” Batoul, the other girl, adds “We love Bashar. He’s a good person. We know what he has done to improve the country. And before any of these things began, we were living well, safely.”

Bassam, in his lonely East Gate store, is also optimistic. “Peace is coming sooner or later – no, sooner. Damascus is a wonderful city. And the people are wonderful too.”

The call to prayer sounds, church bells ring out, in a city and country where life goes on despite it all.

Palestinian fishers are hit hard by the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

“An ark is literally a large floating vessel designed to keep its passengers and cargo safe,” say the group preparing ‘Gaza’s Ark’. But their ark, they say, is “a vessel that embodies hope that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip can soon live in peace without the threat of the Israeli blockade.”

An initiative by Palestinians in Gaza and international solidarity activists, Gaza’s Ark entails “purchasing a run-down boat from a local fishing family,” says Michael Coleman, a member of Free Gaza Australia and on the Gaza’s Ark steering committee.

“The refurbishing will be done by Palestinians in the port of Gaza, and the sailing will be with a mixed crew of Palestinians and internationals,” says David Heap, spokesperson for Gaza’s Ark in Canada and Europe. The sailing date has not been announced yet.

Pointing to a weathered fishing trawler with a ‘for sale’ sign painted on it, Mahfouz Kabariti, president of Gaza’s Fishing and Marine Sports Association, points to fishers’ poverty.

“Why sell?” he asks. “Because of years of poor incomes from Israeli restrictions on sea, many fishers have debts they cannot pay off. Fishers were optimistic when the Israelis re-extended the fishing limit six miles. We hoped that maybe it would be extended to 12 miles.”

The Ark initiative includes exporting a token amount of trade goods from Palestinian artisans, an act which Coleman admits is “symbolic” but necessary. Exports will include date goods, embroidery, and crafts from the Aftfaluna society for Deaf Children and other associations in Gaza.

The steering committee for Gaza’s Ark comprises mainly well-respected Palestinian scholars, doctors and rights activists from Gaza. International supporters include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, various UK and Canadian former and current members of parliament, two former UN assistant secretaries general, and Hedy Epstein and Suzanne Weiss, both Holocaust survivors.

Since 2008 solidarity boats have sailed, or attempted to sail, to the Gaza Strip in efforts to challenge the Israeli-led siege on Gaza and bring awareness over it. The Free Gaza boats of 2008-2009 were followed by the Freedom Flotilla of 2010, and various non-violent attempts afterwards to bring an end to the naval blockade of Gaza.

The Freedom Flotilla is most known for the Israeli naval commandos’ execution of nine and the injury of over 50 of the flotilla activists on board the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara while it was in international waters. The rest of the over 600 people on the flotilla boats were taken to Israel and deported home.

“It was a completely illegal act, Israel had no right to board the ship,” says Coleman.

“That has been the theme of how they stopped Freedom Flotilla 2, the Freedom Waves initiative and the Estelle which sailed at the end of 2012,” he says. “Israel has a long history of targeting peaceful, non-violent direct action with violence and sabotage.”

“Gaza’s Ark is the evolution of the flotilla movement. We’ve moved away from sailing into Gaza with aid,” says Coleman. “We now focus on sailing trade out, because it’s quite clear that if the Palestinians were able to trade, their dependence on aid would be diminished quite significantly.”

The Ark website emphasises the need for trade, their slogan is “trade, not aid.”

Aid, the website notes, “does not address the root cause of why the Palestinians of Gaza are in need: the Israeli blockade. We believe that aid provides a ‘cover’ for the actions of the Israeli government against the people of Gaza, alleviating the consciences of international powers while leaving the blockade in place.”

The Gaza’s Ark initiative aims to “challenge the blockade of Gaza from the inside out. By purchasing Palestinian exports from Gaza, buyers around the world can bring critically-needed public attention to the blockade while supporting Palestinian businesses in Gaza,” reads the Ark website.

The siege on Gaza, which was enforced by the Israeli occupation authorities shortly after Hamas was democratically elected in 2006, came into severe force in 2007 when virtually all exports were banned and imports severely limited.

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights notes that “it is common for the (Israeli) navy to open fire on fishermen, pursue them in Gazan waters, and destroy and confiscate their equipment, including their nets and boats. Such acts constitute flagrant violations of Israel’s legal obligations as an occupying power under international law, and violate the fishermen’s rights to life and work.”

Gaza’s fishers once numbered over 10,000, but under the Israeli siege and assaults, the vast majority have given up on a trade that was passed down to them by their fathers and grandfathers.

With the siege, Israel has also enforced no-go zones along the Green Line border separating Gaza and Israel, and in Gaza’s sea, to which Palestinians under the Oslo accords have the right to fish as far as 20 nautical miles from the coast.

Since 2008, Israel has unilaterally enforced a limit of between six and three miles. Although Israeli authorities expanded this limit back to six miles following the cessation of Israel’s November 2012 attacks on Gaza, in March 2013 Israel again unilaterally declared Palestinians can go no further than three miles.

Fishers and human rights groups report that the Israeli navy shoots on, harasses and abducts Palestinian fishers even within three miles, as close at times as less than a mile from Gaza’s coast. The Israeli navy has killed and injured numerous fishers while shooting at their boats.

Growing old in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Mar 7 2013 (IPS)

“In Gaza we don’t lead normal lives, we just cope, and adapt to our abnormal lives under siege and occupation,” says Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and a long-time human rights and women’s rights activist in the Gaza Strip. On International Women’s Day, when many of the world’s women are fighting for workplace equality and an end to domestic violence, Farra and the majority of Gaza’s women fight for the most basic of rights.

“It is difficult to live in this small piece of land, where basic needs like clean water, regular electricity, proper sanitation and means of recreation are not met. Women in Gaza are particularly traumatised by the continuous Israeli military attacks,” says Farra.

A 2009 Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report highlights the suffering of Palestinian women under the illegal Israeli-led siege imposed on Gaza for the past seven years, and under the 23 days of Israeli attacks in 2008-2009 which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, including 112 women.

The report, ‘Through Women’s Eyes’, notes Gazan women’s continued struggle “as they attempt to come to terms with their grief and their injuries; with the loss of their children, their husbands, their relatives, their homes, and their livelihoods.”

For Hiba an-Nabaheen, 24, a media studies graduate from Gaza’s Palestine University, the biggest issues facing women in Gaza are the poverty and unemployment that result from the siege.

“How can a woman whose husband has died or been imprisoned continue to take care of her children? The deadly Israeli wars we endure don’t compare to the growing poverty we face. I’m a university graduate and can’t find work, and many graduates like me face the same problem, including those with exceptionally high marks.”

From a family of ten, Nabaheen is the only child to have yet gotten a degree. “My father is disabled and cannot work, and my siblings are younger than me. Even my sister who has a 98 percent average in high school won’t find any work when she finishes university.”

Um Oday, 30, would love to work. “I have three young children to care for, but my husband is very supportive of me working, if I found work. In addition to my university education, I’ve taken different training courses in the hope that I’ll find work. But in Gaza, there is none.”

Tagreed Jummah, director of Gaza City’s Union of Palestinian Women Committees (UPWC), agrees that the siege is the main oppressor.

“The siege affects us all, but it especially affects women,” says Jummah. “In recent years, more women have been forced to become heads of the family because their husbands have been killed, are in Israeli prisons, or are unemployed as a result of the siege. But the majority of these women have no means of earning money.”

An August 2012 United Nations (UN) report, Gaza in 2020: A liveable place? cites unemployment as “higher than in the late 1990s.” The report highlights the impact on women, whose unemployment rate in early 2012 was 47 percent.

For Malaka Mohammed, 22, an English Literature graduate from Gaza’s Islamic University, and now employed at the university, higher education is both her greatest ambition and greatest obstacle.

“In Gaza, whether you are a woman or a man, you face the same consequences under the siege and the occupation. I’d like to do a Masters degree, but there is no English Masters programme here.”

For the past over ten years, Israel has banned Gazan Palestinians from studying at universities in the occupied West Bank.

“Studying abroad is very expensive, so I am searching for a scholarship, but even then I will be among thousands of people applying.”

Egypt under the Mubarak regime was complicit in preventing hundreds of Palestinian students holding places and scholarships in foreign universities from leaving the Strip.

Rana Baker, studying business administration at the Islamic University, and a freelance journalist, is active on numerous political issues facing Palestinians.

“To be honest, when it comes to the impact of Israel’s siege and colonial policies on the people of Gaza, indeed all of Palestine, I do not think that the experiences of men and women differ from each other,” says Baker.

“When Israel deliberately bombards schools, both males and females are affected. When talking about the limits Israel forces upon our aspirations, both genders share the same suffering. The Israeli government acts with indifference to the Palestinian population. The same lethal policies are applied to men, women and children in an indiscriminate manner.”

But women do have particular problems. The siege-manufactured poverty leading 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million Palestinians to be food-aid dependent has caused increasing rates of malnutrition and anaemia in women.

A June 2012 joint report by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and Save the Children notes that anaemia affects 36.8 percent of pregnant women in Gaza and that anaemia can result in “poor pregnancy outcome, reduced work productivity in adults,” and “contributes to 20 percent of all maternal deaths.”

For UPWC’s Tagreed Jummah, the Palestinian woman “represents Palestinian resilience, resistance, is strong, and is a mirror of the Palestinian struggle and steadfastness. We’ve lost families, children, and suffer under the closures and Israeli army attacks. We carry all of the suffering of our people, but we continue living and continue resisting.”

In its report on the suffering of Gazan women, PCHR highlights that prospects will not improve until the siege on Gaza is lifted and normal economic activity allowed.

“The dire economic situation means that many women and their families are sliding deeper and deeper into abject poverty. They have suffered the horrors of an illegal war, and now are struggling just to survive.”

Palestinians demonstrating outside the UN office in Gaza calling for freedom for political prisoners. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Feb 23 2013 (IPS)

A few stoic lines from Palestinian political prisoner Samer Issawi, 33, transmitted to his sister Shireen have given new strength to Palestinian resolve to fight Israeli occupation and its prison policies. As has the hunger strike of four others in Israeli prisons along with Issawi.

“The battle waged by me and by my heroic colleagues, Tariq, Ayman and Ja’affar, is everyone’s battle, the battle of the Palestinian people against the occupation and its prisons,” he told his sister last week. He added that his health has deteriorated dramatically and “I’m hung between life and death.”

The day he sent that message, Feb. 16, was the 208th day of Issawi’s hunger strike. Held under administrative detention in an Israeli prison, Issawi is one of five long-term Palestinian hunger strikers protesting indefinite detention by Israel without charge or fair trial.

On Feb. 19, three days after proclaiming his dedication to hunger striking until justice or death, an Israeli court rejected an appeal for the near-death Issawi’s bail, instead postponing a decision until mid-March. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) notes that in addition to his hunger strike, Issawi, now 46 kg, recently began refusing water and vitamins.

A Jerusalemite, Issawi was re-arrested months after being released in the October 2011 prisoner swap exchanging Israeli tank gunner Gilad Shalit for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel re-arrested Issawi, Ayman Sharawna, 37, and 12 others using article 186 of Israeli military order 1651, which the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Addameer, notes “allows for a special Israeli military committee to sentence released prisoners to serve the remainder of their previous sentence based on secret evidence provided by the military prosecution without disclosing the evidence to the prisoner or his lawyer.”

Re-arrested on Jan. 31, 2012, Sharawna has been on and off hunger strike for over 200 days collectively since Jul. 1, 2012, stopping briefly when he believed there was hope for his release. Already in November 2012, Addameer reported that Sharawna’s health had “drastically deteriorated” and that he was “unable to stand, speak easily or urinate.” A recent independent report suggests Sharawna is now in solitary confinement despite his critical condition, and his health is rapidly failing.

According to Addameer, there are currently over 4,743 Palestinians detained by Israel, including 193 children and 178 held under administrative detention.

“Administrative detention is an illegal Israeli policy where the Israelis imprison Palestinians without any trial or charges, claiming that they have secret information that certain Palestinians are dangerous to Israeli security,” says Gaza-based Osama al-Wahidi, head of the information department at the Hussam association for Palestinian prisoners and ex-prisioners.

“Two of the hunger strikers were arrested immediately after the November 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza,” notes Wahidi.

One of the two, Jafar Ezzedine, 41, is likewise nearing death on his quest to freedom.

“After nearly three months of hunger striking, he is very thin, very weak and ill. He looks like he shouldn’t still be alive,” says Tarek Ezzedine, Jafar’s brother. Also imprisoned by Israel, Tarek Ezzedine, director of Voice of Prisoners Radio, was likewise released in the prisoner swap, and immediately exiled by Israel to Gaza.

“This isn’t his first hunger strike,” says Tarek Ezzedine. “He went on a 54-day hunger strike in March 2012, part of a mass prisoners’ hunger strike.” In May, 2012, through Egyptian mediation, more than 1,000 prisoners agreed to end their strikes when Israel agreed to improve conditions for Palestinian prisoners.

“We have no direct contact with Jafar. His lawyer says that Jafar’s health is extremely poor now.”

Ezzedine and two others arrested in the early hours of Nov. 22, 2012, went on hunger strike on Nov. 28.

Tarek Qa’adan, 40, and Yousef Shaaban Yassin, 29, participated in demonstrations against the November 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza. They were among 55 Palestinians arrested on Nov. 22, in what Tarek Ezzedine says is punishment for peacefully protesting the Israeli attacks.

“On the same day that they stopped bombing Gaza, the Israeli army took Jafar from his house,” says Tarek Ezzedine. “He participated in a demonstration in Jenin, where over 1,000 people were demonstrating, why arrest him? He didn’t organise the demo, he was like anyone participating.”

As with Samer Issawi, Addameer reporrs that already as of Jan. 24, 2012, Qa’adan was at risk of a fatal heart attack due to his weakened state.

“The road of prisoners, and the road of Palestinians in general, is not paved with flowers, it’s paved with thorns,” says Mahmoud Sarsak, a Palestinian footballer from Rafah, and one of the prisoners’ movement victors.

Waging a 92-day hunger strike in protest over being held for three years by Israel in a similar form of administrative detention specific to the Gaza Strip, Sarsak was released in July 2012.

Like Sarsak, Hana Shalabi and Akram Rikhawi were likewise released back to the Gaza Strip after their extended hunger strikes.

“If any of the hunger strikers die, it will not be in vain,” says Sarsak. “Their martyrdom will be a message to re-awaken the struggle for freedom. There will surely be a third Intifada (uprising) against the Israeli prison system and the occupation.”

Although hashtags like #ReleaseIssawi, #PalHunger, and #FreeSamer have been trending on Twitter, and news of the hunger strikers is all over Facebook, little has been said or written in international media about the plight of the five Palestinian strikers nearing death.

“When Shalit was being held in Gaza, the whole world, especially America and Obama, was focused on Shalit, talking about democracy, calling on the Red Cross to be able to visit him,” says Tarek Ezzedine.

“So why is the world silent on our prisoners?”

On Feb. 13, 2013, Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur, called for the release of Palestinian prisoners held without charge, saying “Israel must end the appalling and unlawful treatment of Palestinian detainees. The international community must react with a sense of urgency and use whatever leverage it possesses to end Israel’s abusive reliance on administrative detention.”

Um Abed plants an olive tree in support of Palestinian farmers. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
ZEITOUN, Gaza, Feb 10 2013 (IPS)

Tawfiq Mandil, 45, stands amongst hundreds of Palestinian farmers, activists, and international supporters in the Gaza Strip’s eastern Zeitoun district, about half a kilometre from the border with Israel. They are renewing a call for the boycott of Israeli goods.

“The Israeli army destroyed my house and my five dunums of land (a dunum is 1,000 square metres) on the last day of the attacks in 2009, as well as 20 other homes,” he says.

With signs reading ‘Boycott Israeli Agricultural Products’ and ‘Support Palestinian Farmers’, Mandil and others protesting Israeli oppression of Palestinian farmers joined together Saturday to plant olive trees on Israeli-razed farmland and to implore international supporters to join the boycott of Israeli agricultural produce.

Mandil believes that the boycott is his only hope for justice for Palestinian farmers being targeted by the Israeli army and oppressed by Israel. “We hope that it will put pressure on Israel to stop targeting us and allow us to farm our land as we used to.”

With an Israeli surveillance blimp hovering above and within sight of a remotely-controlled machine gun tower, the significance of the rally’s location near the ‘buffer zone’ was not lost. Israeli authorities prohibit Palestinians from accessing the 300 metres flanking the Gaza-Israel border. In reality, the Israeli army regularly attacks Palestinians up to two kilometres from the border in some areas, rendering more than 35 percent of Gaza’s farmland off-limits.

“By engaging in the trade of settlement produce, states are failing to comply with their obligation to actively cooperate in order to put the Israeli settlement enterprise to an end. Therefore, a ban on settlement produce must be considered amongst those actions that third party states should undertake in order to comply with their international law obligations.”

The Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq released a position paper last month condemning the Israeli settlement produce trade. The paper, ‘Feasting on the Occupation: Illegality of Settlement Produce and the Responsibility of EU Member States Under International Law’ highlights the means by which Israeli settlements benefit from the oppression of Palestinian farmers.

“While the EU has been quite outspoken in condemning settlements and their expansion, they continue to import produce from these same settlements and in doing so, help to sustain their very existence,” Al-Haq director general Shawan Jabarin notes in the Al-Haq press release.

“More than 80 Palestinians have been injured and at least four Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in the border regions since the November 2012 ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance,” says Adie Mormech, 35, a British activist living in Gaza. This is in addition to the many Palestinians killed and hundreds injured in previous years of Israeli army attacks on the border regions.

“There is simultaneous action happening in the occupied West Bank,” says Mormech. “They’re planting near Yitzhar colony, which is notorious for its violence against Palestinians. Around the world, an estimated 30 countries are holding actions in solidarity with Palestinian farmers and fishers.”

Um Abed, 65, from Zeitoun is defiant. “Today we’re planting olive trees. God willing next year we’ll plant lemon, date and palm trees. We grow, they bulldoze, we re-plant.”

The boycott action follows a growing number of initiatives emerging in recent years from the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian students in Gazan universities stepped up the Boycott call in 2012, releasing Youtube videos calling for political action, not aid, from international supporters.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has attracted international support, including the backing of numerous UK and North American universities and scholars.

Increasing numbers of cultural and religious associations, such as the Quakers’ Friends Fiduciary Corporation, are divesting from corporations that profit from or support Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. The United Church of Canada endorsed the boycott of goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in August 2012.

Dr Haidar Eid, professor at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University and PACBI member, outlines what BDS entails.

“We are calling for implementation of UN Security Council resolution 242, which calls for withdrawal of occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and east Jerusalem. The second demand is the implementation of the United Nations resolution 194, the return of all Palestinian refugees to the towns and villages from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948. The third demand is the end to Israel’s apartheid policies in Palestine 1948. We want equality.”

While civil society and students have been in the forefront of BDS actions in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas government has also taken steps calling for boycott. Joe Catron, an American activist based in the Gaza Strip, explains one recent government-led campaign.

“The Adidas campaign began in March 2012, when Adidas was sponsoring a marathon through parts of Jerusalem, including parts that are internationally recognised as occupied. The Ministry of Youth and Sports here called upon the Arab League to boycott Adidas in response to this, which a number of countries did.”

In September 2012, Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture decided to ban most Israeli fruits entering Gaza.

“Palestinian farmers can grow the fruits we consume,” said marketing director in the ministry Tahsen Al-Saqa. “We need to support and protect our own farmers. They’ve been economically devastated by the Israeli ban on exporting since 2006.”

“Boycott is the key, and it is growing,” says Adie Mormech. “The momentum is so much now that it is not going to stop. It’s going to be like South Africa.”

A main water line was severed when Israeli bombing destroyed a central Gaza bridge. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Dec 25 2012 (IPS)

On Nov. 17, four days into Israel’s eight-day assault on the Gaza Strip, deputy Israeli Prime Minister Eli Yishai publicly called for the Israeli army to “blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water”.

The following day, Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called for Israel to “flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing”, adding, “there is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip.”

Now, nearly a month after the Israel-Hamas cease-fire, the government and international bodies in Gaza are still assessing the total damage caused by Israeli bombings on infrastructure throughout the Strip.

Preliminary estimates put direct damage at 250 million dollars, with another 700 million dollars in indirect damages, according to Hamas Government Spokesperson Taher al Nanu.

In more tangible terms, the vast destruction and varying levels of damage include: bridges, thousands of homes, hundreds of U.N. shelters, tens of mosques, many government buildings, media offices, financial institutions, hospitals and health centres, two stadiums, a training centre for disabled athletes, water and sewage and electricity networks, over 100 schools,  Gaza’s “life-line” tunnels, and innumerable roads.

During the Israeli bombings, Al Jazeera reported that 400,000 people were without electricity after five different transformers were hit.

After the cease-fire, the extent of damage on the electrical network became clearer.

In addition to the five known damaged transformers, another 32 throughout the Strip were destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombings, according to the Gaza Electricity Distribution Corporation (GEDCo).

“We reconnected most of the damaged lines during the attacks. But we need to correct those temporary repairs because they were not done according to technical standards,” says Usama Dabbour, from GEDCo’s external relations department.

“There are still approximately 5,000 people without power throughout the border regions. We cannot reconnect them because it is still too dangerous to go there, despite the cease-fire,” he says.

Damages also include severed electrical wires, felled poles, GEDCo vehicles, and a tank-shelled company warehouse.

“We have 5.5 million shekels in direct damages, and 7.7 billion Israeli shekels in indirect damages,” says Dabbour.

This is not the first time the Israeli army has targeted Gaza’s electricity network.

“Every time the Israelis declare war on Gaza, they damage the electricity network,” says Dabbour.

According to the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP), the 2008-2009 Israeli bombings of Gaza inflicted 10.4 million dollars in damages to the electricity network.

Since the 2006 bombing of Gaza’s sole power plant, the entire Strip has been under scheduled and non-scheduled daily power outages, sometimes lasting longer than eighteen hours at a stretch.

The Strip’s water and sanitation networks were also hit by Israeli bombs.

Ibrahim al-Aleja, communications officer at Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), notes that damage to water and sanitation networks extends throughout the Strip.

Some of the most severe damage, from Beit Hanoun to Rafah, includes underground piping blasted apart by Israeli bombings of civilian streets, homes and in open areas. Reservoirs were targeted. “They destroyed a reservoir in Khoza’a, east of Khan Younis. It was no threat to the Israelis,” says al-Aleja.

Two waste water wells in the same village were also hit by bombs.

In Khan Younis, Israeli attacks damaged a storage facility holding 350,000 litres of water, as well as a major line in the Amal neighbourhood of Khan Younis, says al-Aleja.

Parts of central Gaza’s Nusseirat and Mughraqa towns are still without water.

“When the Israelis bombed a bridge between the two areas, they destroyed a water pipe underneath it. There are still 20,000 people without water in that area,” he says.

Bassam Abu Dahrouj (14) climbs down the steep slope of the severed bridge. The Nov. 21 Israeli bombing marked the fourth time this bridge has been destroyed, the teenager says.

“Over half of the families in Mughraqa use this bridge, and children use it to get to school,” says Abu Dahrouj. “Now, they have to use a long detour.” Some, however, don’t bother with the detour. As he speaks, two children climb up the cement wall of the valley the bridge crossed.

But “In winter, the Israelis open their dams and flood the valley. It gets very high and no one can cross the valley at that time,” he says.

Further west, the coastal road bridge linking central Gaza to the north is likewise severed. Tangles of concrete and metal rods, building materials hard to come by in Gaza under Israeli siege, lie in heaps, some of the metal being pounded out for re-sale in construction use.

On the south side of the demolished bridge, a line of shared taxis ventures onto the muddy valley floor, opting for a bumpy but shorter detour than that of Gaza’s north-south Salah el Din street many kilometres east. A temporary fix, it will be unusable during the winter months when heavy rains flood the valley.

Early estimates include 20 million dollars in agricultural damage, 136 schools and kindergartens damaged or destroyed, and 450 houses destroyed or severely damaged, leaving 3,000 people still displaced, according to the U.N.

Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai, who on Nov. 17 called for the annihilation of Gaza, said following the 2009 Israeli war on Gaza that “even if they fire at an open area or into the sea, we must damage their infrastructures and destroy 100 houses”.

The Hague Relations and the Geneva Conventions prohibit “the unnecessary destruction of the enemy’s property”, and the “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly”.

Mohammed Baker (70) has been fishing for half a century. He remembers the days when Palestinian fishers could go out to sea without fear of being attacked, arrested or killed. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Dec 17 2012 (IPS)

Shortly after Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 21, the Israeli navy abducted 30 Palestinian fishers from Gaza’s waters, destroyed and sank a Palestinian fishing vessel, and confiscated nine fishing boats in the space of four days.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that fourteen fishers from a single family, stationed just three nautical miles from the coast of the Gaza Strip, were all arrested on Dec. 1.

Some fishers were only two miles off Gaza’s coast when they were attacked with machine gun fire and arrested by the Israeli Navy. Ranging from the ages of 14 to 52, the majority in their late teens and early twenties, these fishers hail from some of Gaza’s poorest families.

According to Mifleh Abu Riyala, a representative of the General Syndicate of Marine Fishers, the ceasefire has made no difference to Palestinian fishers.

Palestinians are allowed, under the current Israel-Hamas ceasefire, “to fish six miles out”, he told IPS, “but the Israeli gunboats still attack us, whether we are six or three miles out.”

The Oslo accords granted Palestinian fishers the right to fish twenty nautical miles out at sea, a right the Israeli navy has unilaterally vetoed, downsizing the fishing “limits” since the 1990s to a mere three miles, until this past November’s ceasefire allowed a slight increase, to six nautical miles.

“But there are no fish at six miles, the sea floor is still sandy. It is only after seven miles out that the sea floor becomes rocky and the fish are plentiful,” Abu Riyala stressed.

“It is our sea, in order to live we must be able to access it.”

Mohammed Baker (70) has been fishing for half a century. He remembers the days when Gaza’s sea was open to Palestinian fishers, and when there was no fear of being attacked, arrested or killed by the Israeli navy.

Two of his sons, Amar (34) and Omar (21), were among the 14 fishers attacked by Israeli gunboats on Dec 1. The Israeli navy has still not returned their “hassaka” (a small fishing boat).

Like many of Gaza City’s fishers, the Bakers live in the Beach Camp, one of the Strip’s most overcrowded refugee camps.

Amar, married with six children, was still being held by Israeli authorities on Dec. 5 when his father, Mohammed, recounted the events of that fateful day to IPS.

“Israeli gunboats and smaller zodiacs surrounded my sons’ hassaka and made them strip naked, jump into the sea, and swim to one of the Israeli boats,” Mohammed told IPS.

“They put a bag on Amar’s head and took him to Ashdod. Amar has asthma, I’m very worried about his health.” Mohammed has still not been able to speak with his son.

Four days after Amar’s abduction, Mohammed went to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whose work includes visiting and monitoring Palestinian prisoners’ conditions in Israeli jails and detention centres.

“They told me Amar is forbidden from talking with anyone. He is under interrogation,” Mohammed said.

Amar now stands accused of “being part of the Palestinian resistance”, a charge based on his previous job of making coffee and tea for Hamas officers.

“My son was a ‘kitchen boy’. People who work for the government are still civilians,” Mohammed stressed, echoing the tenets of international humanitarian law.

Stripped of their only boat and a member of their family, the Bakers face even more dire circumstances than ever.

“There is no ceasefire for fishers. We’re ordinary people, we work to earn just 30 or 40 shekels (seven to 10 dollars) per day to feed our families,” Mohammed lamented.

Khadr Baker (20) was lucky that he was not killed during an encounter with the Israeli navy on Nov. 28, during which his boat was gunned down as punishment for fishing just over three miles from the Beach Camp coast.

His father, Jamal Baker (50), spoke to IPS about Khadr’s arrest, explaining that Israeli gunboats appeared without warning and began firing at close range on Khadr’s small motorboat.

“The Israelis ordered the four fishers on Khadr’s hassaka to strip and jump into the sea, which is extremely cold this time of year,” Jamal told IPS.

“They made Khadr tread water for half an hour, and kept machine gunning around him,” said Jamal. The hassaka eventually caught fire and exploded, sinking soon after.

“The Israelis took Khadr on their boat, handcuffed him naked, and beat and interrogated him for three hours, accusing him of working with the Palestinian resistance,” the boy’s father told IPS.

Without their boat, the family of ten has no income. “I sold my nets so that we can eat,” Jamal said simply.

PCHR reported other attacks on fishers that day: in one case, the navy attacked and abducted five fishers from the al-Hessi family, damaging – and eventually confiscating – the large fishing trawler they were on. The boat has not yet been returned.

In February 2009, Rafiq Abu Riyala, then 23, was shot in his back – by an Israeli soldier standing less than 20 metres away – with a dum-dum bullet, which explodes on impact.

The hassaka fisher was only two miles off Gaza’s coast when attacked. One of two breadwinners in his family, Rafiq Abu Riyala cannot now fish in cold weather. “The shrapnel bits in my back make it too painful when it is cold out,” he told IPS.

Mahar Abu Amia (40) has sixteen people to provide for. “My wife fishes also,” he told IPS. “But we have no chance: we reach six miles and they shoot, we go only three miles and they shoot. What is this ceasefire? It means nothing for us.”

(END)

Abu Mohammed, whose family of 15 lost their home after an Israeli bomb attack, unearths papers from the rubble of a civil government office building. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Dec 10 2012 (IPS)

When Israeli bombs struck the Abu Khadra complex for civil administration, they also gutted the sixth floor of the Abu Shabaan complex, located ten metres across the road. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), eight Israeli warplane-fired bombs levelled roughly half of the government compound in eastern Gaza City in the early hours of Nov. 21.

The bombings also took a considerable toll on the homes and businesses nearby, including the Gaza bureau of Al Jazeera.

Over 50 percent of the private medical centre in the Abu Shabaan building was destroyed, says Dr. Naim Shariff (42), owner of the Benoon In Vitro Fertilisation clinic.

Two weeks after the bombing tore apart the sixth floor and ravaged the fifth floor, Shariff has re-paned the windows, ordered new specialised machinery, and re-opened for clients.

“The problem with replacing my machines and equipment is that most of it doesn’t exist in Gaza. It takes months to arrive and costs more money than it would elsewhere,” he says.

“What else can I do but start again? There’s no insurance here for war damages.”

Three floors down, a privately-run dentist’s office has replaced broken windows and office glass, and installed a new reclining dental chair in place of the destroyed one.

“The walls were completely black before,” says Doa’a Moshaawi (32), a dentist. “Everything was damaged here, all the jars of medicine and instruments we use in our practice were destroyed.”

The blown out Abu Shabaan building, and the testimonies of its tenants, add to the mounting body of evidence that Israel’s bombing sprees in the Gaza Strip disproportionately affect civilian property, homes and lives.

The Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks that will lead to “loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof”, all of which are inevitable in the overcrowded Gaza Strip.

Civilians in the line of fire

Around the corner and down the street a few hundred metres, Hani Lulu (60) watches as a labourer reinstalls his sweets shop’s metal security door, blown off its hinges when Israeli bombs targeted the Saraya, Gaza’s main security complex, just opposite his building.

A year-old baby named Rama al-Shandi was killed in those blasts on Nov. 19, which also left four policemen and four civilians injured.

Lulu has learned from experience. During the Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2008-2009, Israel rained bombs down on the Saraya, causing extensive damage to surrounding residences and businesses.

“We left our home when the Israeli attacks on Gaza started this time,” he says, “so only our building was hurt, not us.”

“There’s no reason to bomb here,” he says. “It’s only the civilians nearby that suffer. We’ve done nothing wrong but the Israelis bomb us.”

The Interior Ministry’s buildings in Tel el Howa, Gaza City, were bombed on two separate occasions on Nov. 16, according to PCHR, causing extensive damage to the surrounding homes, schools, and to the Al Quds hospital, which stands several hundred metres away.

According to the Ma’an News Agency, the blasts caused injuries to nearby Palestinian civilians.

Abu Mohammed (58) lives opposite the destroyed ministry complex. He and neighbours say the first round of four bombings occurred in the early morning hours.

Then, around 9:30 PM, Israeli warplanes struck the ministry again with another four bombs. This time, “it was like an earthquake”, according to Abu Mohammed.

A newly-built United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school and the nearby government-run public school less than ten metres from the ministry buildings were damaged, both with numerous rooms blown out.

Five multi-storey apartment buildings across from the ministry are now mere skeletons, completely uninhabitable.

“What does this paper have to do with anything related to Israeli security?” Abu Mohammed asks, shaking a sheaf of papers he has pulled from the rubble. “They processed birth certificates, death and marriage certificates here (in the ministry). Passports, I.D. cards.”

“There were fifteen people living in my home. Where are we supposed to go?”

At the end of the row of destroyed homes stands a solemn Abu Yusef (42), soft-spoken but equally devastated.

“It was a civilian area, the Ministry provided papers for us. The salaried people working for the government are civilians,” he says.

“The Israelis had bombed this area before, so we knew that they’d do it again. They want to hit civilian areas.”

Over forty people lived in the three-story apartment in front of which Abu Yusef stands. A sofa pokes out of a gaping hole in the wall of a third-floor room.

“Cement was flying, steel was flying. For more than a half hour after the bombing, it was pitch black, no electricity. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t move an inch.”

Gaza’s ministry of health reports that 174 Palestinians were killed, including 34 children, 11 women and 19 elderly. Roughly 1399 people were injured, including 465 children, 254 women, and 91 elderly.

The latest round of attacks on Gaza included the bombing of the Dalou family in their home, killing ten family members and two neighbours.

“Most of them arrived with their brain matter outside of their skulls,” Dr. Ayman el-Sahabani, head of Shifa hospital’s emergency department, tells IPS.

“The majority of injuries we dealt with included shrapnel throughout the body, haemorrhaging, multiple fractures, amputated lower or upper limbs, internal bleeding, damaged internal organs.”

“On the second day, I received an 11-month-old child who was 95 percent burned but still breathing. I couldn’t do anything for him, he died within twenty minutes.”

Four-year-old Reham Nabaheen didn’t survive the Nov. 21 drone attack outside her Nusseirat home. She was dead on arrival at the hospital, with shrapnel lodged in her brain.

With less than an hour to go before the Nov. 21 cease-fire was enforced, Nader Abu Mghaseeb (14) was en route to a shop to buy food for his younger siblings when he became the target of a drone strike in his eastern Deir al Balah village.

The vast majority of those killed and maimed were civilians who did not participate in resistance activities, proving that, again and again, Palestinian civilians are the primary targets of Israeli bombs.

(END)

Tramadol pills have become dangerously popular in Gaza as an antidote to the stresses of Israeli occupation. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Oct 21 2012 (IPS)

It’s being taken as an antidote to the stresses of Occupation. But the prevalence of the painkiller Tramadol in the Gaza Strip has more to do with its ease of availability than its singular effectiveness as a reality-numbing substance.

Under siege since early 2006, means of relaxation are scarce, and even some of the most resilient and educated people in the Strip have sought in Tramadol a break from the dire realities of trauma, manufactured poverty and continual stress.

A synthetic drug often prescribed for pain-related ailments, the innocuous pill comes in a second, more potent and potentially lethal variety: the illegal black market kind.

“Every week, we get three or four overdose cases, most of them young men,” says Abu Yousef, 34, a paramedic for over ten years. “Patients are sweaty, delirious, are vomiting, have abdominal pain, and may be hallucinating…it’s morphine after all, it has many side effects.”

Although never addicted, he himself took prescription Tramadol after his release from years in Israeli prisons. “I was taking tramadol for abdominal pain after I was released. But I stopped taking it, I take an analgesic now,” he says.

But the vast majority of users these days are not taking the pill on doctors’ advice. “Some people feel it makes them strong, gives them power. Even some medics take it now and then, because they work long shifts. Tunnel workers are more prone to taking it regularly. But for them it’s about maintaining stamina, not about getting numb.”

Dr. Hossam Al Khatib, 28, specialises in addictions. In his work helping addicts break their habits, he sees a variety of backgrounds and reasons for taking the drug.

“Most want to forget their problems, and Tramadol helps with this, temporarily,” he says. “There is high unemployment among youths and adults in Gaza, so in the past six years, even more people have started using Tramadol, including recent university graduates who a year or years after graduating haven’t found work.”

Although he says there was a substantial increase in drug usage after the trauma of the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza, Khatib cites the complete closure of the Gaza Strip as the primary reason for current high levels drug usage. “The siege causes all of the problems: high unemployment, hopelessness, stress, anxiety, depression. Even some youths 15 years and older, take it because their lives are so difficult.”

With the pills sold cheaply on the streets of Gaza, starting to take and becoming addicted to the pills is easier for Gaza’s youths than other more expensive, less available, hard drugs.

Khatib explians that drugs and marijuana have been present in Gaza since long before 2006 and the imposition of the Israeli-led siege on Gaza. “But people weren’t using Tramadol and drugs as an escape mechanism, not like now. It really is a product of the siege.”

The causes of usage are deeper than mere joblessness and frustration, Khatib says. “The situation in Gaza is causing a change in Palestinian society, leading to more problems in the family. For example, a son whose younger brother has work but he himself doesn’t. He feels ashamed at not being able to contribute to the family, or to provide for his own wife and children.”

Young men of marrying age who cannot afford the cost of a wedding and married life are also increasingly at risk of developing Tramadol or other addictions, as a temporary relief from their shame and misery, Dr. Khatib notes.

While he says some are merely casual users, in Khatib’s experience roughly 20 percent are chronic users. “Addicts,” he says.

Both Khatib and Abu Yousef say the majority of drugs enter via the tunnels from Egypt, the lifelines of Gaza which have brought in foods, livestock, agricultural and fishing needs, and virtually everything banned by Israel under its years-long closure of Gaza’s borders.

“Due to the widespread poverty in Egypt, many Egyptians make Tramadol at home, to sell. Some is a mix of morphine and mouse poison,” says Abu Yousef. “Poison is an excitant, it stimulates the brain to produce serotonin, as does Tramadol. The poison itself is not addictive, but in high doses or repeated usage it can kill.”

As with most addictions, the irony in Tramadol use is that it not only does not solve the root problems for which users seek it out, but actually compounds them, says Khatib.

“Normal after-effects and withdrawal symptoms are depression, anxiety, insomnia, hopelessness, and remorse at having taken the drug. With chronic addicts, there may be loss in coordination, sexual problems and even sterility.”

Recognising most Tramadol addicts as faultily seeking a solution to their psychological state, Khatib stresses the importance of counseling once users have stopped taking the pill. “We try to make them feel important and hopeful, and encourage them to socialize, not to remain withdrawn from friends and their community.”

Unemployment being one of the key initial stressors, Khatib’s clinic tries to help ex-addicts find work “and encourage them to be patient in their job search, not to give up or give in to despondence.”

The root problems do vary, he says, but as with many of Gaza’s current problems, the solution is painfully clear: “If the borders were opened, the siege lifted, work available again, people here wouldn’t feel hopeless, wouldn’t feel the need to take drugs like Tramadol,” says Dr. Khatib.

Selling yoghurt in Gaza in an attempt to make some sort of living. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Sep 30 2012 (IPS)

“The overwhelming majority of people we work with tell us, ‘We don’t want the aid, we want to have an opportunity to work and earn money’. Especially people who had a decent job but lost it in the last many years: before asking for any aid, they ask for a job.”

In his work as Gaza-based communications officer with Oxfam GB, Karl Schembri interacts on a regular basis with some of Gaza’s most impoverished Palestinians, poverty he says is avoidable.

“Gaza cannot be called a humanitarian situation, it’s all man-made. It’s a situation of de-development, where the infrastructure and knowhow was there and development was occurring,” he tells IPS, referring to the years before 2006 when, after Hamas was democratically elected, Israel imposed its suffocating closure of the Gaza Strip.

“Despite the Israeli occupation, Gaza’s economy was somehow on its feet…until they were banned from exporting. The biggest natural market for Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, is now out of bounds, as are regional markets like Jordan.”

In its August 2012 report, ‘Gaza in 2020: A Liveable Place?’ the United Nations (UN) draws the same conclusion. “One of the main reasons for the economy’s inability to recover to pre-2000 levels has been and is the blockade of the Gaza Strip,” says the report.

Banned from exporting anything, including agricultural goods, furniture, textiles, and food products, the vast majority of Gaza’s factories have shut down, affecting the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians formerly employed there.

“Gaza’s economy was utterly destroyed during the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza, including 95 percent of factories and businesses,” says Khalil Shaheen, director of economic and social rights for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).

“Under Israel’s illegal closure of Gaza, the total ban on raw materials has impaired the ability of these factories to operate again,” Shaheen tells IPS. Roughly 80 percent remain closed, or are scarcely operating.

“The fishing community has been completely affected by the daily Israeli navy attacks and by being denied access to the sea,” he says, noting that Palestinian fishers are forced by Israel’s unilateral decision to fish within three miles of Gaza’s coast.

“But fishers are attacked even within 400 metres from the shore,” Shaheen says. “The Israelis are trying to prevent all Palestinian fishers from fishing in Gazan waters.”

A September 2012 UN report cites the unemployment rate “for refugee youth in Gaza at 59 percent,” a staggering statistic foretelling that the dramatic unemployment levels will not decrease any time soon.

“Soaring unemployment is a result of systematic Israeli policies, including completely denying the Gaza labour force from the Israeli market,” says Shaheen. Palestinian labourers formerly worked in Israeli construction and labour, he says. “Palestinian workers were highly skilled in all aspects of construction.”

Jaber, father of six children, is out of farm labour, work in Israel, and any of the potential fields he is skilled at working in. “Ten years ago I worked in Israel, as a mechanic, on farms, in construction, various jobs. Since the borders closed, I haven’t had solid work, I’ve only done odd jobs but that doesn’t suffice to care for my children.”

The few jobs that remain in Gaza under siege are some of the most dangerous.

“Even though it’s dangerous work, the tunnels are a source income for unemployed workers and their families,” says PCHR’s Shaheen. “But the average daily wage has dropped from 100 or more dollars to about ten dollars.”

The risks for such a pittance are enormous. According to medics, since 2006 more than 160 Palestinians have died while working in tunnels.

“The majority were killed and injured by Israeli bombings of the tunnels, or tunnel collapse and consequent suffocation, or electrocution,” says Shaheen.

In the past two months, Egyptian authorities have been destroying and closing tunnels. Shaheen estimates that at least 150 tunnels have been totally destroyed, and another 150 shut down. “Forty thousand used to work in the tunnels. Now its 5,000 at best,” he says.

“Even children help contribute to their families’ income,” says Shaheen. “All over the Gaza Strip children are in the street trying to sell chocolates, gum, and trinkets.”

Worse, they are gathering the rubble of destroyed homes in Gaza’s border regions, risking Israeli army fire. “Tens of children have been injured when Israeli soldiers targeted them while they were trying to collect rubble in border areas for resale in construction.”

From Mar. 26, 2010 to Dec. 27, 2011 alone, Defence for Children International documented “30 cases of children shot whilst collecting building material or working near the border fence.”

Unemployment not only affects families’ purchasing power, it affects their morale, says Oxfam’s Karl Schembri.

“What we’ve seen in the last five years is the emergence of a new class of poor: people who were working in Israel or even in factories here, becoming jobless overnight. They had nice, decent houses and all of a sudden had no income. This was a huge blow to their dignity and sense of purpose.”

The self-immolation of a young man from Gaza’s Beach Camp earlier in September 2012 brought to light the less-discussed issue of suicide, formerly uncommon in the predominantly Muslim Gaza Strip.

“Suicide here is a sign that Palestinians in Gaza are living with very little hope and few opportunities to build towards a better future,” says Shaheen.

“There is only one solution to the unemployment problem: end the illegal closure of the Gaza Strip. And end the shameful international conspiracy of silence which offers impunity for Israel’s illegal actions.”

Mohammed Al-Bakri from Gaza’s Union of Agricultural Work Committees points out the "no-go" zones for Palestinian fishers and farmers. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Sep 29 2012 (IPS)

“From the coast to eight miles out, the sea is like a desert: it’s sandy and there are no fish.” Mohammed Al-Bakri traces a thick line on the wall map before him, following the lines of Gaza’s eastern and northern borders, continuing south from three miles off the coast.

General manager of Gaza’s Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Bakri is well-versed in the woes of the Strip’s fishers and farmers. He explains the insufficient fishing waters Palestinians are limited to, and the consequences of being on the sea at all.

“The Israeli navy attacks the fishermen, arrests them and takes their boats, even within three miles,” he says, referring to the three-mile limit the Israeli authorities have unilaterally imposed on Palestinian fishers.

Under the Oslo accords, Palestinian fishers are authorised to fish 20 nautical miles into Gaza’s sea. The Israeli authorities have illegally downsized Palestinian fishing waters, using lethal violence to enforce new fishing limitations. On a given day, Palestinian fishers are subject to Israeli navy machine gun fire, shelling, water cannoning, and abductions.

“When the fishers are arrested, they just have a boat and a net,” says Bakri. “No weapons, they are just trying to catch to sell at the market, to earn money for their families.

“More than 500 fishers have been arrested and at least 12 killed by the Israeli navy,” says Mohammed Al-Bakri.

With over 3,600 fishermen and 70,000 people dependent on income from the sea, Gaza’s fishing has been decimated by such Israeli tactics and policies. “When there is no income, fishers must depend on food aid from the United Nations (UN),” says Bakri. “But there are a lot of other needs, like housing, clothing, medical care, education.”

“If the situation continues like this, we won’t see any fishers on the sea in the future.”

Nor farmers.

Bakri refers back to the red line on the UN map of Gaza marked ‘Areas restricted for Palestinian access’. Imposed unilaterally by Israeli authorities, the “buffer zone” officially bans Palestinian farmers and civilians from the 300 metres of land flanking Gaza’s eastern and northern borders.

In reality, the UN, international NGOs, and Palestinian organisations have documented Israeli soldiers’ targeting of Palestinians even as far as nearly two kilometres from the border.

“Shooting at people accessing restricted areas is often carried out from remotely-controlled weapon stations…every several hundred metres along the fence, each containing machine guns protected by retractable armoured covers, whose fire can reach targets up to 1.5 km,” reads a 2010 UN report.

Via machine gun fire, shelling, flechette (dart) bombs, drone attacks, land razing and setting crops on fire, the Israeli army has rendered one-third of Gaza’s agricultural land deadly and inaccessible.

Palestinian farmers continue to face Israeli attacks as they attempt to farm their land, for the majority their sole source of income and food for their families.

“We need political support internationally, to pressure Israel into allowing farmers to work their land and fishers to access their sea,” says Bakri.

Heeding his call, and hoping to build “connections of mutual solidarity between Canada and Palestinian farmers and fishers,” a Vancouver-based group aims to broaden political support via their Sep. 30 ‘Day of Action For the Fishers and Farmers of Gaza, Palestine’.

“This particular aspect of the siege is quite compelling because when a society is deprived of the ability to fish and to farm, it is deprived of its ability to sustain itself. It’s part of the ongoing Nakba, and part of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine,” says Charlotte Kates, a lawyer and one of the Day of Action coordinators.

Kates and a delegation traveled to the Gaza Strip earlier this year, meeting with Palestinian fishers and farmers.

“We want to make it clear what is happening at the hands of the occupation, and how it is denying people’s right to live, to exist,” Kates says. “One of our translators could not attend our meetings: a cousin, in the ‘buffer zone’ had been murdered the same day by the Israeli military.”

Noting the close alliance of the Canadian government with Israel, Kates says “the government of (Canadian prime minister) Stephen Harper has nothing but praise for the Israeli state that enforces this siege on Gaza. On March 29, 2006, Canada became the first country in the world to impose a siege on the Palestinian people living in Gaza and the West Bank, declaring cancellation of aid to Palestine.”

Building cross-Canada and international alliances with Palestinian farmers, fishers and civil society is the Vancouver group’s focus with its Day of Action. No less important is changing Canadian policies regarding the siege of the Gaza Strip.

“We want to build a movement that can challenge the Canadian government on these policies, policies which predate the Harper government,” Kates says.

Canada is not alone in endorsing the illegal siege on Gaza – what Desmond Tutu and UN special rapporteurs John Dugard and Richard Falk, among many others, have called collective punishment.

“Last month, the European Union decided to increase their support with Israel,” says Mohammed Al-Bakri.

The Sep. 30 Day of Action will take place in cities across Canada, with “rallies, vigils, the launching of the book ‘Freedom Sailors’, and leafletting,” says Charlotte Kates.

The day of solidarity with Palestinian farmers and fishers has the backing of, among others, Independent Jewish Voices, the Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG), and former Vancouver city councillor Tim Louis.

“The UN is quite aware of the inhuman condition that Palestinians are subjected to and yet there is no concrete action, except allowing humanitarian aid,” says Louis, calling for “the Canadian government stop its indiscriminate support for Israel until such a time when Israel complies with international law.”

What was once Rizk Al-Madhoun's clothing factory. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
JABALIYA, Gaza, Sep 8 2012 (IPS)

“Gaza’s economy is expected to grow modestly and people will likely still be worse off in 2015 compared to the mid-1990s,” reads a press release announcing the United Nations’ August 2012 report, ‘Gaza in 2020 – A Liveable Place?’

In the no-frills office of his stalled Jabaliya clothing factory, Rizik Al-Madhoun, 41, explains how his clothing factory began shutting down six years ago.

“We started in 1993 with seven sewing machines. By 2005 we had 250 machines and as many tailors,” he says. “In 2006, after Hamas was elected and Israel sealed the borders, we had to close down half of the factory. We stopped all production in 2007, when Israel tightened the siege.”

Madhoun’s is one of the 97 percent of industrial establishments in the Gaza Strip which by 2008 had stopped production as a result of the Israeli-led, internationally-complicit closure of Gaza’s borders that limited imports and virtually halted all exports. By December 2007, the UN had already reported that only one percent of Gaza’s 960 garment factories remained open.

Today, a reported 80 percent of factories in Gaza are still closed or operating at minimum capability.

“Until 2005, our work was good,” says Madhoun. “We made shirts, pants, jeans, dresses, skirts, school clothes…we’d make whatever was in demand. Since our clothes were high quality, 80 percent were exported to Israeli markets, and some of these were then exported to European markets.

His workers were, Madhoun says, among 40,000 who worked as tailors in Gaza.

“Before our factory closed, I employed 250 high-quality tailors, as well as another 100 who worked from home. Another 50 families worked from home, doing the final touches and finishing work.”

A tour through the vast warehouse that was Madhoun’s factory reveals much now-unused space, with a few rooms devoted to storing cheap imported clothing.

“Now we just have a large storage area. There’s no way we can run our factory, so instead we sell these imports in Gaza markets.”

Focusing on Gaza’s siege-devasted economy, the UN in June 2012 noted that “the continued ban on the transfer of goods from Gaza to its traditional markets in the West Bank and Israel, along with the severe restrictions on access to agricultural land and fishing waters, prevents sustainable growth and perpetuates the high levels of unemployment, food insecurity and aid dependency.”

Israeli-rights group Gisha notes that 85 percent of Gaza’s exports traditionally went to Israeli and Palestinian markets outside of Gaza. Gisha further notes that any claims of security precautions being the reason for prohibiting exports from Gaza hold no weight: “Recently a new scanner for screening goods was installed at the crossing,” wrote Gisha in June 2012. It said that Israeli military officials “have said that the choice to prevent sale of goods from Gaza in Israel and the West Bank was made at the political echelon and needs to be decided upon there.”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reports that the amount of exports allowed to leave Gaza in March 2012 were “1.28 percent of pre-closure numbers,” with April exports at “0.85 percent of the preclosure numbers.”

Gaza’s unemployment rates continue to hover at between 35 percent to 65 percent (adults versus those in their early twenties), and food-aid dependency remains at 80 percent.

“An urban area cannot survive without being connected,” the UN’s Maxwell Gaylard stated on Aug. 27, reiterating the necessity to reopen Gaza’s closed borders to trade.

“The area has been essentially isolated since 2005,” reads the UN press release, “meaning that, in the longer term, its economy is fundamentally unviable under present circumstances. Gaza is currently kept alive through external funding and the illegal tunnel economy.”

The United Nations’ August report finishes by insisting that, among other things, the Palestinians of Gaza “must have ready access to the world beyond Gaza for religious, educational, medical, cultural, commercial and other purposes.”

Rizik Al-Madhoun simplifies the call: allow Gaza’s exports out.

“Since we have so few options for work, Gaza’s tailors have perfected their crafts,” Madhoun says. “We can make clothes as good and better quality than the Turkish imports we get, but without a market, there is no point in producing goods.”

The Rafah crossing. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
RAFAH, Gaza, Aug 30 2012 (IPS)

“I waited from 10 am till 5 pm for my wife to cross from Egypt. She was among many hundreds who were coming into Gaza. Some waited since 6 am, some since the day before.”

Jaber (who requested anonymity out of fear of future restrictions on his exiting Gaza) was relieved when, a few days before Eid holiday began on Aug. 19, his wife was able to cross from Egypt into the Gaza Strip. During the three days of Eid, the Rafah border crossing was closed in both directions.

“Of course I was happy that my wife got through, but I was also disgusted at how Palestinians are forced to wait for, or are denied, the right to exit and enter our country.”

On Aug. 25, the border opened anew, temporarily easing the worries of Palestinians in Gaza who feared the opposite outcome: indefinite closure.

Maher Abu Sabha, head of Gaza’s border crossings, explained the reason for such worries.

“On Aug. 5, unidentified gunman attacked an Egyptian military checkpoint near the Rafah crossing, killing 16 Egyptian soldiers. Immediately, many Israeli and Egyptian journalists wrote that Palestinians had committed the attack.”

Also immediately after the attacks – the perpetrators of which remain unknown – Egypt ordered the Rafah crossing closed.

“Just over a week later, near the end of Ramadan, the border reopened for three days for humanitarian cases needing to travel to or via Egypt, and for Palestinians needing to return to Gaza,” said Abu Sabha.

With no clear border procedure yet defined by Egyptian authorities, Palestinians in Gaza are wondering whether the border crossing will remain less restrictive, as it became after Mohammed Mursi was elected Egypt’s new president, or whether it will devolve to the Mubarak days of heavy restrictions and constant closures.

Abu Sabha says nothing is yet clear. “We’re still waiting for confirmation from Egyptian authorities on what exactly the procedure will be at the Rafah crossing.” Yet, he says that relations between Gaza’s Palestinian authorities and those of the Mursi government are very good.

“Prime Minister Haniyeh (Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister from the Hamas party in Gaza) has visited with Mr. Mursi. They have good relations and there is talk of positive developments for the border and of President Mursi’s promise that Rafah crossing will be open 12 hours every day,” says Abu Sabha.

After Hamas was democratically elected in 2006, and in tandem with implementation of the Israeli-led total siege of Gaza, the Rafah crossing border procedures became as trying and impossible as when Israel physically and militarily occupied the Gaza Strip.

Israeli rights group Gisha reported that from June 2007 to March 2009, Rafah crossing was closed permanently “except for random and limited openings by Egypt, which meet only 3 percent of the needs of the residents of the Gaza Strip to enter and leave.”

“During the hardest years of the ongoing siege of Gaza, Rafah was closed indefinitely. When it did sporadically open, only at most 400 could leave,” says Maher Abu Sabha. “Mubarak was one of the key reasons for Gaza’s closure by the Egyptian side. Since he has been replaced, more people have been able to cross in and out of Gaza via Rafah.

“The Rafah crossing is like no other,” says Abu Sabha. “Other borders around the world, and even other Egyptian borders, are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no holidays. But Rafah closes Fridays and holidays and is only open from 10 am to 6 pm. It also differs from other borders because it is Palestinians’ only real door to the outside world.”

In 2000, Israel closed Gaza’s sole airport; Israeli bombings in 2001 destroyed it.

Under international law, Palestinians, like any people, have the right to leave and enter their country, “a basic right, which the parties who exert control over Rafah crossing are obligated to respect and safeguard,” Gisha notes.

Mazen Aiysh, 35, en route to Jordan to visit family, reiterates Abu Sabha’s words. “Our situation is different from anyone else’s, that’s obvious. Any other nationality can come and go as they like, but we can’t. It’s my right to leave my country to see my family, to travel, to go other places.”

Also exiting, Iman Salim, 58, says her return home to Jordan was delayed. “I was supposed to leave before today but wasn’t able to because the border closed. The attack that happened in Egypt has nothing to do with us, but we were punished nonetheless.”

Still waiting for the final word from Egypt, Abu Sabha is optimistic. “I hope that the Rafah crossing is opened for 24 hours a day, like borders anywhere else in the world, and that goods which are banned under the Israeli siege may be permitted to enter and exit through Rafah.”

Although happy to be reunited with his wife, Jaber does not share the optimism. “All of this control and these political games are to make our lives difficult and to destroy our will to live. No one actually wants to solve our problem.”

“During hard times, we have survived off olive oil,” says Ahmed Sourani from the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee. “During the last war many people who couldn’t leave their homes had only bread and olive oil to sustain them for long periods.”

An olive nursery set up by in Gaza to restore decimated cultivation. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

Even during the first Intifadah (Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation), olives and olive oil were vital to survival. “They enabled many thousands of very poor Palestinian families to survive,” recalls Sourani. “When the Israeli army imposes curfews on us, it is our main food source. Most students take za’atar (wild thyme) and olive oil sandwiches to school for their lunch.”

This source of sustenance has been targeted by Israel over years. In November 2008, Oxfam reported that since 2000, 112,000 olive trees had been destroyed in the Gaza Strip.

“According to Israeli authorities, the ‘buffer zone’, an Israeli-imposed no-go zone prohibiting Palestinians from their land, is 300 metres from the Gaza-Israel Green Line border,” says Sourani. “But in reality it extends well beyond 600 metres, encompassing 30 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land.”

The UN cites areas of up to two kilometres into Gaza from the border rendered inaccessible due to Israel’s policy of shooting, shelling and intrusions into Gaza’s borderlands.

According to the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC), more than 42 percent of the 175,000 dunams (one dunam is roughly 1,000 square metres) of cultivable land in the Strip has been destroyed during Israeli invasions and operations. The World Health Organisation reports that the last Israeli war on Gaza alone destroyed up to 60 percent of the agricultural industry.

Despite the systematic campaign of destroying olive trees and rendering farmland inaccessible, Sourani says that “some areas of Gaza still have olive trees that are hundreds of years old.” These are particularly in Zaytoun, Sheyjayee and Tuffah neighbourhoods.

The comparatively insignificant number of ancient trees aside, the average age of a tree is around five years, Sourani says.

In the face of the Strip’s increasingly barren farmlands, Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture now plans non- violent resistance to Israel’s decimation of the Palestinian agricultural industry.

Ahmad Fatayar from the ministry says that over the years including and following the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, Israeli-influenced policies and economic incentives were designed to force Palestinian farmers away from growing trees on their land towards working in greenhouses or as labourers in Israel.

After Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian farmland, Palestinians found it difficult if not impossible to cultivate their olive trees.

“We have established an olive tree arboretum in order to cultivate one million olive trees throughout the Gaza Strip, particularly in the buffer zone which has been so largely destroyed,” said Fatayar.

Fatayar lists a surprisingly vast variety of benefits and uses of olives: “They can be cultivated in streets, school yards, and in front of houses and can endure severe dryness, salty water, can be stored for long periods, and are used in various industries like food, animal feed, coal, compost, and medicines.”

For an average Palestinian family of eight members, he adds, “two or three olive trees suffice to provide the oil and olives needed for yearly consumption.”

Their practical nutritional and economic aspects aside, olive trees are important for many more reasons, says Ahmed Sourani. “Palestinians also consider the olive tree a symbol of the land, of independence, of peace and dignity.

“We use olive oil for everything, even for the hair. When we are sick, we rub olive oil on our bodies. It is even a source of cosmetics: we use it to make kohl, a non-toxic version of eyeliner. Olive tree leaves are medicinal and can be used in pharmaceuticals and as a tea to treat diabetes and stomach pain.”

To meet the needs of the disproportionate number of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip (1.6 million in 365 square kilometres), much of Gaza’s olives and oil needs were previously met by farmers from the occupied West Bank.

An Oxfam 2010 report notes that “the Israeli imposed blockade on the Gaza Strip has affected the import of olives and olive oil from the West Bank considerably.” It notes an increase of imports of “oil that was reduced in price because it had reached its expiry date.”

“Now we only get a small amount from the West Bank, the rest coming from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Spain,” says Sourani. “But we still prefer the olive oil of Palestine: Surri, the favourite olive tree and oil, originally from Roman times.”

Like olive trees, date palms hold special historical, nutritional, economic, and cultural importance for Palestinians. “They are an important source of nutrition, are very productive and don’t cost much to raise,” says Sourani.

“Date palms can be cultivated in only one or two square metres,” notes Ahmad Fatayar. “A single date palm tree can produce from up to 200 kilograms of dates.”

The Ministry of Agriculture’s plan for self-sufficiency includes the nurturing of date palm trees.

“One seedling will about seven years later yield a fruit-bearing palm tree and another ten seedlings,” says Fatayar. “Ten seedlings will seven years later yield ten productive palms and 100 seedlings.”

According to the Ministry’s estimates, by 2020 there will be roughly three million seedlings, a significant number of which will be productive.

The benefits of successful date palm include food (molasses, sweets and oil), textiles (furniture and cloth), agriculture (animal feed), and paper.

Yousef walks barefoot into a children’s room with four beds and points to a snoopy-blanketed bed by the window. “That’s where I sleep,” he says. A red remote-controlled toy racecar sits atop a new mini-laptop. The closet is full of clothes, a pot of soup simmering on the gas range in the spacious kitchen, and the wooden dining table is piled with seasonal fruit.

The Amal Institute for Orphans cares for 120 of Gaza City's orphans. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

His home, one of 14 in the village hosting 111 orphans, is new, has plenty of natural light and is larger than the cramped refugee camp homes in which more than 75 percent of Gaza’s population lives.

Yousef, his brother, and his younger sister are among what Al Jazeera news cites as the Gaza Strip’s 53,000 orphans. Over 2,000 children more were orphaned during the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza. An orphan here is defined as a child who has lost his father or both parents, as men are traditionally the income-generators in Gaza.

Yousef’s father died of natural causes, and his mother lost a leg after being injured during the war on Gaza. So Yousef and his siblings were more apt to join the increasing numbers of children selling trinkets in Gaza’s streets, or scouring dumps and streets for sellable recyclables.

“The family was already very poor. Now his mother has no income and no way to provide for her children,” says Samar, an employee at the SOS Rafah village. The children would not have finished school, she says, let alone have been cared for adequately.

With donations from groups and individual sponsors, children like Yousef are able to stay at the SOS village where they attend a nearby regular school, learn life skills for their future independence, and have their university tuition paid. Their medical needs are met, and they are encouraged to mingle with non- orphan children and to visit their real families on weekends.

“At any time their mothers can visit them here at the village,” says Samar. The need for such sponsorship, whether home-based or institute-based, is immense. Some programmes, like the Dar el Yateem association, sponsor orphans who remain in their families’ homes. With headquarters in Deir al Balah, Dar el Yateem has eight branches throughout the Strip which provide child sponsorship, transportation to schools, school uniforms and study materials, and daily meals for orphan children.

During Muslim holidays, the association gives food to the orphans and other impoverished families and organises activities for the children throughout the year.

Other Islamic charities throughout Gaza fill similar roles of basic child sponsorship and emergency assistance.

The needs of Gaza’s orphans have increased so dramatically over the years that many more international charities and NGOs are taking active roles in child sponsorship, extending the scope to widowed mothers.

“One of the problems we face is that people sometimes focus only on orphans whose parents were martyred by Israeli attacks,” says Hazem Sarraj, chairman of the Amal Institute for Orphans in Gaza City.

“But we have many more orphans whose parents died of natural causes or from reasons related to the siege imposed on Gaza. Many people in Gaza suffer from depression, due to our situation here. Some die from it.”

Other siege-related deaths include patients denied exit permits for treatment outside of Gaza, accidents and fires related to misuse of generators during the daily electricity outages, and men and youths killed in tunnel collapses or electrocution by poor wiring in the narrow tunnels.

“We have 120 orphans, ages five to 18, who live at our institute,” says Sarraj. “They eat and sleep here, go to regular schools, and visit their families on weekends.”

Until many countries cut ties with the Gaza Strip after Israel imposed its siege on Gaza in early 2006, the Amal Institute, established in 1949, was functioning well and expanding its programmes.

“All development in our institute has stopped since the siege,” says Sarraj. “The buildings we currently have we built with money from the Islamic bank and foreign NGOs and donors, before the blockade.”

The institute ensures the orphans’ needs are met financially, educationally, medically and socially. But Sarraj worries about the institute’s funding.

“Our means are very limited. Do you know what it takes to care for 120 orphans, to provide them food, clothes, medicine, and everything they need? We have to pay our employees’ salaries as well. We are independent, not political, but the siege is punishing us, our orphans. We used to receive more donations before the siege, but now we get very little.”

The institute continues to run under the siege, providing quality care and offering extras like the chance for orphans to study martial arts and music, and opening day programmes to more than 500 non-orphan children in the city. Like most societies helping orphans, counseling is given to address traumas Gaza’s children, particularly orphans, endure.

“Until now we are still suffering from the last war on Gaza,” says Hazem Sarraj. “We are living as though in a bad dream.”

Excerpt:

Gaza's power plant still maimed by Israeli bombing in 2006. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Dec 8 2011 (IPS)

“Taking our water is not like taking a toy. Water is life, they cannot play with our lives like this,” says Maher Najjar, deputy general director of the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) of the recent Israeli threat to cut electricity, water and infrastructure services to the occupied Gaza Strip.

“Everything will be affected: drinking and washing water, sewage and sanitation, hospitals, schools and children,” says Ahmed al-Amrain, head of power information at the Palestinian Energy and National Resources Authority (PENRA).

The Israeli Electric Company provides 60 percent of the Strip’s needs, paid by Palestinian customs taxes collected by the Israeli authorities.

Gaza buys 5 percent from Egypt and tries to generate the remaining 35 percent at Gaza’s sole power plant, maimed by the 2006 Israeli bombing and destruction of its six transformers.

On Nov. 26, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, threatened to cut Israeli electricity, water and ties to Gaza’s infrastructure serving the 1.6 million residents of the Gaza Strip.

“This is the true meaning of collective punishment,” says Jaber Wishah, deputy director for branches affairs at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). “Children, women, elderly, patients, students, all are subject to this threat.”

Following the 2006 democratic elections which brought Hamas to power, Israel has imposed an increasingly severe siege on the Strip, depriving Palestinians of most essential and basic goods, including livestock, medicines, machinery and replacement parts, and the industrial diesel needed to run the power plant.

“Israel has been steadily cutting electricity and destroying infrastructure over the years, but this is the first time they have explicitly threatened to fully cut everything,” says Wishah. “It is absurd to blackmail the population with their lives because of political issues.”

It is also illegal.

Wishah and Israeli rights group Gisha note that Israel continues to militarily occupy and control the Gaza Strip, despite the 2005 pullout of Israeli colonists and military bases from the Strip.

According to international law, Gisha says, Israel is responsible for the well-being of the Strip’s population, including ensuring electricity, water and a functioning infrastructure.

Under its siege, Israeli has since 2007 limited the amount of fuel and industrial diesel allowed to enter Gaza, resulting in daily power outages throughout the Strip, ranging from 8 to 12 hours, and interrupting water, sanitation, health and education services.

“Palestinian electricity technicians have asked Israeli government to repair a main line recently damaged, as has the Israeli Electric company. But the Israeli government refuses to do so,” says Ahmed al-Amrain.

“The lack of electricity, he says, “will oblige families to buy diesel for small generators indoors, which can lead to serious accidents and burns.”

More than 100 Palestinians died in 2009 and the first quarter of 2010, Oxfam reports, from generator- caused fires and carbon monoxide inhalation.

While generators allow some vital machinery to run during power outages, other services, like laundry, are not run on generators. “There is not enough electricity,” says Amrain. “They are for emergencies only and are made to run for short periods, not continuously. They are absolutely not an alternative solution for electricity in the Gaza Strip.”

“It will be a complete catastrophe if Israel cuts the electricity. Half of the population would not have access to water,” says Maher Najjar.

Currently 95 percent of the ground water is undrinkable according to WHO standards which reports that nitrates, believed to be carcinogenic, are over 330 mg/litre, far exceeding the 50 mg/l accepted levels.

“Since 2000 we have had plans to repair and expand water projects in Gaza, but until now only about seven of 100 projects have been completed,” says Najjar.

According to Najjar, just 10 percent of Gaza’s 1.6 million residents get water every day. Another 40 percent get water every two days, 40 percent get water every three days, and 10 percent get water once every four days.

“Israel has drilled over 1,000 wells around the Gaza Strip for their own use. They cut the water flow before it even reaches Gaza,” says Najjar.

While the amount of water supplied by Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, is just 5 percent, it is the threat of Israel cutting electricity and infrastructural needs that most haunts Gaza residents. “Chlorine is vital for our water treatment. Without it, we cannot pump a drop off water,” says Najjar.

Already, for want of adequate electricity and treatment facilities, up to 80 million litres of partially and non-treated sewage is pumped into Gaza’s sea daily.

In 2008, the WHO reported dangerous levels of faecal bacteria along a third of Gaza’s coast. By 2010, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency reported that acute bloody diarrhoea and viral hepatitis remained the major causes of morbidity among refugees in the Strip.

“We need continuous electricity to pump waste-water from homes to sewage treatment plants,” says Najjar. “Generators substitute during power cuts, but without the regular supply of electricity, waste will flood the streets.”

In August 2007, a sewage holding pool in Beit Lahiya overflowed, drowning five residents of the village nearby.

Hamas maintains that it would accept a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. These are borders which Israel has yet to define and continues to blur with expanding illegal Jewish settlements and occupation of Palestinian land.

“I think the Israelis are serious with their threat,” says Wishah, “because they don’t pay any attention to the international opinion, nor to international laws and conventions, like the Geneva Conventions, that they’ve signed, which forbid collective punishment. They feel they are above the law and beyond any legal pursuit.”

By Eva Bartlett
SHEIK RAJLEEN, Gaza, Aug 17 2011 (IPS)

It’s a sunny Gaza morning and although a work day, the beach along Sheik Rajleen has enough people on it to keep Gaza’s small number of lifeguards busy and alert. From a simple, raised wooden hut, a team of three monitor the sea, periodically calling out to swimmers below to move to calmer waters.

In the face of the siege, Gaza's lifeguards have created their own rescue equipment. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

“I’m a fisher, my father is a fisher, and my grandfather was a fisher. Most of the lifeguards in Gaza are from fishing families, so they know how to swim well. But we also take training courses in first aid and in sea rescue from the Civil Defence.”

In the besieged Gaza Strip, under siege since early 2006 after Hamas was democratically elected, the sea is one of few options for recreation and relaxation. It also offers a means of cooling down when the Strip endures its daily power cuts.

“Most people don’t have the chance to take swimming lessons here. If they had money, they could learn, but most don’t have enough money to feed their families, let alone spend on swimming lessons,” says Basha.

This, says Abu Assam Masharawi, another lifeguard at Basha’s station, is the main cause of swimming accidents in Gaza.

“When we see people who obviously can’t swim, we call them in close to the shore. No one has drowned this year during life guard hours.”

However there have been at least three drowning incidents in the Gaza Strip this year.

“The danger is swimming after hours. Some people prefer to swim at night, like women who come together to swim when men aren’t around, or people who swim after work,” says Masharawi.

“We tell people not to swim after lifeguard hours, but not everyone listens,” says Abu Nidal, 44, at a lifeguard station a few hundred metres south along the Sheik Rajleen beach.

“Last night, after 9 pm when lifeguards were off-duty, a man went out too far. He didn’t know how to swim and he drowned.”

Aside from public safety awareness, the greatest obstacles Gaza’s lifeguards face are siege-constructed.

“I’m trained in scuba diving,” says Masharawi. “But we don’t have oxygen tanks, they are forbidden by the Israelis for security reasons, under the Oslo accords. We didn’t have rescue equipment either. But I designed some based on one an American friend brought me. Now we have these basic rescue floats, at least.”

As with every aspect of life in the Strip, the regular power cuts affect the lifeguards’ work.

“Our megaphones don’t work when the power cuts, and we can’t shout loud enough to warn people swimming to come in if we feel they’re in danger,” he says as another lifeguard blasts on a plastic whistle and gestures with waving arms for swimmers to move southward away from higher waves.

The fact that the lifeguards even have the microphones in the first place is due to the tunnels from Egypt.

“The microphone normally costs 500 shekels (180 dollars), but because we had to bring it through the tunnels, we paid 1,300 shekels,” notes Abu Nidal.

“We don’t have jet-skis, which would allow us to reach people in trouble quickly. We are forbidden from having jet-skis under the Oslo accords,” says Masharawi.

“We have a motorboat, but only have enough fuel to run it on Fridays, when the beach is busiest,” he says. “Anyway, one boat for three kilometers isn’t enough. If we need to reach a victim two kilometeres from where the boat is, there might not be enough time.”

The latter is a problem of funding, says Masharawi, as is the insufficient number of trained lifeguards along Sheik Rajleen. Although speaking of his district, the municipality of Sheik Rajleen, Masharawi’s comments apply to the different municipalities along the coast, all facing similar constraints under the siege.

“In the Sheik Rajleen beach region, about three kilometers, there are 10 lifeguard stations, which is a good ratio,” he explains. “But we don’t have enough lifeguards at each station. We need more support: funding and training, it’s been cut under the siege on Gaza. Many of our lifeguards are volunteers,” says Masharawi, himself a volunteer.

But despite the many siege-related obstacles, Masharawi and his colleagues love their work.

“I once saved four people who had swum too far out. Then I realised there was a fifth further out who had gone under. Thanks to God, I was able to fish him out and he was fine,” says Masharawi.

As with Gaza’s medics and Civil Defence, most take pride in their work, humanitarian work which is furthered rendered difficult by the impossible situation of Gaza under siege and regular Israeli attacks.

“Lifeguarding is work for our community and work for God. I love it and feel it is my duty,” says Masharawi. “The sea is one of the only places people in Gaza can relax. It needs to be a safe place.”

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Aug 12 2011 (IPS)

It’s a weekday morning, the beach is yet to fill with crowds seeking a break from the heat, but already the odd-jobbers are at work selling toys, clothes and food along the coast.

Mohammed Daowul has found a new trade. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

“I have two young children and no other work, so I do this every day. Usually I earn around 40 shekels (13 dollars) a day, but Fridays are better because so many come to the sea.”

Before Israel imposed the siege on Gaza in mid-2006, options for work were more plentiful. But Palestinian construction workers and other labourers who worked in Israel have been looking for new work since borders closed a decade ago.

Unemployment levels in the Strip have continually risen for years and currently soar at over 45 percent.

Abu Kass, one of those former workers, sought anything to replace his lost income. “Construction work was better, but there’s no chance for that here,” he says.

Following Abu Kass along the beach, Mohammed Daowul, 28, likewise brings his horse and cart full of cheap plastic inflatable toys beachside everyday.

“I’ve done this for the last ten years. I used to work as a tailor in Gaza City, when we could still export clothes to Israel or the West Bank,” he says. “But the closed borders and siege prevent both export and import of the materials I need. I already had a horse, so I started using it for work.”

The inflatables sell for between five to 10 shekels, the slushy drink for a shekel a cup.

“Life here is difficult for everyone now. Even just some years ago parents would buy all their children toys at the beach. Now if they have many kids they just buy one toy for all them. They can’t afford more than that,” says Daowul.

“I earned more as a tailor, and the cost of living was lower. Even if I make the same 50 shekels a day now that I made years ago, everything is more expensive now. What I earn isn’t enough for my three kids, wife and myself, not to mention my horse.”

In Gaza’s municipal park, Issa Ghoul, 19, sells chips and chocolates to park-goers to support his family. “I quit school and started working when I was 14. My father died when I was young and no one else works in my family,” says Ghoul.

Many children younger than Ghoul zig-zag between cars at traffic stops selling one-shekel items like gum, cheap chocolates and fresh mint in order to add to their families’ incomes.

“I can’t find any other jobs,” says Ghoul. “My mother is ill, my three-year-old sister is ill, what can I do but hope people will buy from me?”

Most Palestinians take pride in their education, and Ghoul is no different, except that his impossible situation denied him the opportunity to study. “I would have liked to have finished school like everyone, I would have liked to have been a teacher.”

The Jundi park in downtown Gaza is at any time of day a constant buzz of tea and snack sellers seeing opportunity in the lounging crowds.

At one corner of the park, Mohammed Awaida, 15, from the Zeitoun district of Gaza City and his younger brother sell plastic cell phone cases strung from an improvised rack.

“We started this just the other day, for the month of Ramadan. We come in the mornings and our father works here in the evening,” says Awaida.

“I like this work, it helps my family. Ramadan is an expensive month, and we need to buy new clothes for school after Ramadan.”

At an entrance halfway through the park, Abu Fares, 38, sells coffee, tea and cigarettes from a barebones table, working from morning to evening. Formerly a construction worker in Israel, this is now his only source of income.

“We’ve got ten people in our family. I’ve done this for seven years and now my eldest son, Feres, helps me,” he says, nodding at his ten-year-old son.

Despite his demotion in work and salary, Abu Feres has kept his sense of humour. “Thankfully I don’t have to buy a permit to put my table here. If we were not a country under occupation I’d probably have to have a permit.”

Abu Mohammed, a Beit Hanoun man in his forties, peddles the popular slushy drink, barad, from a cooler in his bicycle basket.

On the beachside, another man in his thirties stacks his bicycle with swimming inflatables as he pushes through the sand on a daily quest to earn a living.

Children and adults alike sift through dumpsters and litter-ridden lots, collecting water bottles and other recyclable goods in large cloth sacks.

Abu Sobheh, 42, is another who formerly worked in Israel. “I am a mechanic and worked all over Israel and the West Bank. I made good money then for my skills. When the borders closed I just worked our land. But it’s been bulldozed many times by the Israeli army, so I do whatever I can now to earn money for my ten children,” he says.

Throughout the Strip, similar scenes play out: children taking on responsibilities of adults to help their families, adults reverting from skilled labour to doing nearly anything to bring in a salary.

The adults remember when times were less choking, when borders were open and an economy was allowed. The children are learning what to expect from lives under occupation.

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Aug 9 2011 (IPS)

On any given evening, Gaza’s small downtown pedestrian area, the Jundi, is crowded with adults and children. Many are fleeing the heat of their homes during the regular power cuts. The majority are there for want of something to do, even if that means merely sitting on the park’s simple concrete benches to talk and sip tea.

Short of passengers who can pay, a toy train still trundles on in Gaza. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

The owners of the carriage rides say their idea came from the old days.

“Four years ago, my father saw a horse and carriage in an old film and it reminded him of Palestine in the past when horses and carriages were common,” says Ramadan Al, 21, a blacksmith.

Al and his 13 siblings became jobless when Israel imposed its extensive siege on the Gaza Strip in 2006. The family needed a new source of income.

“We used to make doors, windows, whatever people wanted, but after the borders closed, steel stopped coming into Gaza, and we couldn’t do much with the steel we had because of the constant power cuts,” Al says.

“Since we already had horses and knew how to work with metal, we decided to design a leisure carriage.”

The project was an immediate success. “We had a lot of work right away, because it was a novelty. People started asking us to deliver couples to their wedding halls.”

But now, a few years later, work is not as steady. “The novelty has worn off a little,” Ramadan Al admits. On an average evening, ten families ride the carriages; on a weekend, half as many more.

“The problem is that people who have money are saving it for gifts and donations during the month of Ramadan, and for the new school year,” says Al.

“We charge five shekels to circle around the park, but when I see families who don’t have the money but whose children want to ride, we take them without fare, so the kids can enjoy themselves a little.”

Al says he preferred the blacksmith work, but was left with no choice under the Israeli siege but to craft a new source of income. “As difficult as the siege is and our lives in Gaza have become, we always find a means to continue living, despite the worst conditions.”

With a similar desire to create something novel for Gaza’s Palestinians, Gazan engineers created their version of a children’s train.

Made largely from scraps and spare car parts, the red and white, two-car one-“engine” train cruises from the Jundi along Gaza’s main streets churning music and giving children a ride for just two shekels. Idyllic scenes of green pastures dress the passenger cars as Gaza’s children escape the bleak reality of grey cement, bombed buildings, and bulldozed farmland.

Gaza City’s municipal park offers little other than dehydrated greenery and a different place to while away the hot afternoon hours. The fountain is waterless, the plants stunted. The children’s play area has a number of short plastic slides and a swing-less swing.

With a dearth of leisure options to choose from, families still visit the park, friends take breaks together and children hunt for a place to play.

In summer, Gaza’s coast is the most congested leisure venue, families seeking cool and change. Most families come equipped with thermoses of tea and picnic spreads. Children swim, fly kites, and play football, women wade and cool off in the low waves, and young men sit together with tea and tobacco water pipes.

Yet while the sea itself doesn’t cost anything, getting there does and not everyone can afford the excursion. Jaber Rjila, from a repeatedly bulldozed farming area in southeastern Gaza, is among those who rarely go to the beach, even though it is just a half hour ride from his home.

“To take my six kids and my wife, it’d cost nearly 200 shekels just for transportation and a simple picnic. We can’t afford that, so we just try to enjoy ourselves on our land here.

“Our kids might have a school trip once a year to the sea or a park and for half a day they get to play. But that’s not enough, it’s not like elsewhere where there is safety, where there is work, and children have places like amusement parks.”

Slightly south of the Gaza harbour, the women and children of a family from Beach Camp not far away bask in the sea’s cooling water. Children, having learned about buoyancy, stuff their shorts and t-shirts with washed up pieces of Styrofoam. Simplicity at its best, the sea is the main leisure option in a Strip devoid of movie theatres and where the few existing playgrounds are run down.

For those with the shekels to spare at the beach, Fadel Bakr’s small motorboat offers short coast- hugging jaunts on the sea.

“I started this seven years ago. But these days not as many people take rides: either they don’t have money or they are afraid of the Israeli navy’s shooting,” says Bakr.

It’s a 20 shekel per boat 10-minute ride that not all will take.

“We used to go much further out into the water, a real sea ride, but now we generally go just a few hundred metres. Even so the Israelis have shot at my boat with passengers in it.”

Some are still willing to risk it, keen for a change and some leisure activity in their lives encaged and under siege.

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Aug 1 2011 (IPS)

“My father was a boat-builder and I learned from him, worked on boats all my life. Now there’s no work at all.” Abu Fayez Bakr, 64, is one of two boat-builders in the Gaza Strip, the last of a dying trade, despite Palestinians’ penchant for the sea and its bounty.

The now useless boat built by Abu Fayez. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

In Gaza’s simple harbour, Bakr sits beside a hefty boat he built nearly a decade ago, one of his last projects.

“We received funding from Denmark to make this research boat, equipped with special oceanography equipment. I built it about nine years ago, but it isn’t much use now. You need to go out into the sea to use it properly, not just a couple of miles,” he says, referring to the Israeli lethal imposition of a three- mile boundary on Gaza’s sea, despite the Oslo agreements according Palestinian fishermen 20 miles.

“It was damaged in the last Israeli war on Gaza. We’re repairing it now,” he explains.

Bakr laments his working conditions, as well as those of fishermen in general. “The Israeli siege has made everything here difficult, and it bans the materials I need for my work.

“We don’t even have the proper nails any more. They need to be copper or another rust-proof material. Now we’re forced to use nails that will rust and need to be replaced in a year or two. The fiberglass is poor quality also, like what people use to fix leaks in their homes.”

The ban on wood and machinery hurts Bakr the most.

“I used to get good oak via Israel, from Brazil or elsewhere. Now I have to use expensive Eucalyptus that we bring in through the tunnels from Egypt. It isn’t ideal for boat building and after five years the wood will be damaged from rot.”

Having worked as a builder outside of the Strip, Abu Fayez is acutely aware of Gaza’s shortcomings in equipment and materials.

“In Gaza, we make do with simplicity, even repairing the boats right on the beach. But that’s wrong, they should be in a sheltered workshop,” he says, pointing to the tilted 130 ton research boat propped up with blocks.

“No one has the money to make a workshop. Most fishermen can barely feed their families,” he says.

Across the harbour a mid-sized vessel sits steadied on blocks. “We’ve been enlarging it for the owner. Since the materials are expensive it will cost ten times more than it should.”

With no orders coming in for new boats, Bakr survives by boat maintenance, including normal sea wear and paint touch-ups.

But it is the repairs from Israeli attacks that continue to send fishermen to Bakr.

“The boats are damaged with bullet holes from the Israeli machine guns. Some are damaged by Israeli shelling. The water cannons, too, they seriously damage the boats: they destroy the equipment and weaken the wood.”

Even with the constant stream of repair work, Bakr just earns enough for his family.

“If I was outside of Gaza, every day I’d make good money for this work. But here no one has money to make new boats, or to pay for their repairs. Most of the fishermen are in debt.”

In the late nineties, when investors had hope for Palestine’s economy, one Gazan Palestinian commissioned Bakr to make a large, two-level tourist cruising boat.

“It was ready in 2000 and sailed for a couple of summers just beyond the port. But people stopped going on it because of the Israeli navy’s shooting,” Bakr says.

“So the owner moved it inside the harbour to use as a floating restaurant. Even then people were frightened off by the Israeli navy shooting along the beach. Eventually the owner decided to stop wasting money on a project no one would go on,” says Bakr, standing in front of the defunct Dolphin, now weathering on the harbour sand.

Abu Said Najjar, 35, from Rafah, is the second-last boat-builder in the Strip. “I learned from my uncle, when I was young. We worked in Gaza and Egypt,” he says.

Like Bakr, the forced decrease in fishing impacts Najjar’s own work. “I haven’t worked regularly for the last five years, because the fishermen are either not working or don’t catch enough fish to save any money.”

One of Najjar’s last projects is still being curved into the shape of a hull. It now sits gleaming with a new coat of paint, almost sea-worthy.

“It still needs finishing inside but the owner doesn’t have the money for those materials,” he says. “Even if he borrows money to pay for the boat, he’ll never be able to pay off the loan. Not when he’s limited to three miles.”

With 13 children, Najjar knows the consequences of being banned from the sea. “I sold my trawler, which I’d worked off for 20 years, because I had debts,” he says, pointing to the boat undergoing renovations across the harbour, whose new owner is one of very few in Gaza with the money to buy a boat for the sport of it.

Like Bakr, one of Najjar’s sons was learning the trade but stopped with the absence of building work.

“Years ago there were more boat-builders. But the tradition is dying out because our youths look for any work that will pay now, and boat-building isn’t that work, ” Najjar says.

“We need the means to keep our boat-building tradition alive: funding, a proper place to repair and build the boats, and an economy and open seas that allow our fishermen to fish properly.”

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Jul 25 2011 (IPS)

“We could enter the Guinness book of records for the longest running weekly sit- ins in the world,” Nasser Farrah, from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Association, jokes dryly. Since 1995, Palestinian women from Beit Hanoun to Rafah have met every Monday outside the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Gaza City, holding photos and posters of their imprisoned loved ones, calling on the ICRC to ensure the human rights of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel’s 24 prisons and detention centres.

For eight years, Umm Bilal has not been able to see her son in Israeli prison. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

The sit-ins have grown, with over 200 women and men showing up weekly. On Jul. 11, ICRC and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) helped facilitate a demonstration from the ICRC office to the unknown soldier park, Jundi, to protest the ban on Palestinians from Gaza visiting their imprisoned loved ones.

“We can’t send letters, we can’t see him, we can’t talk to him,” says Umm Ahmed of her 32-year-old son. Ahmed Abu Ghazi was imprisoned four years ago and sentenced to 16 years in Israeli prison.

“Because we have no connection with him, every Monday we go to the Red Cross. But nothing changes. Last week we slept outside the Red Cross, waiting for them to help us talk to our sons and daughters,” Umm Ahmed says.

“While our sons are in prison, their parents might die without seeing them again.”

For Palestinian prisoner Bilal Adyani, from Deir al-Balah, such was the case. On Jul. 11, Adayni’s father died, after waiting for years to see his son again. The ICRC reports that over 30 relatives of Palestinian prisoners have died since the prison visits were cut.

Umm Bilal, an elderly woman in a simple white headscarf, walks among the demonstrators, holding a plastic-framed photo of her son when he was 16. The teen wears a black dress shirt, has combed and gelled hair, and smiles easily to the camera.

“Twenty years, ten months, he’s been in prison. I haven’t been allowed to visit him in eight years,” says Umm Bilal.

“The prison canteen should sell phone cards, clothes, or food, but Israel is making it difficult now. He wanted to study but in prison but he hasn’t been allowed.”

In December 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled with the Israeli government to deny families from Gaza visitation rights to prisoners in Israeli prisons. Among the stated reasons for the Court’s decision were that “family visits are not a basic humanitarian need for Gaza residents” and that there was no need for family visits since prisoners could obtain basic supplies through the prison canteen.

In June, 2011, Israeli Prison Service is reported to have taken away various rights of prisoners, including that allowing prisoners to enroll in universities, and blocked cell phone use.

“The world is calling for Shalit to be released. But he is just one man, a soldier,” says Umm Bilal. “Many Palestinian prisoners were taken from their homes. Shalit was in his tank when he was taken. Those tanks shoot on Gaza, kill our people, destroy our land. Take Shalit, but release our prisoners.”

According to Nasser Farrah, “there are over 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including nearly 40 women and over 300 children. Seven hundred prisoners are from the Gaza Strip.”

Other estimates range from 7,500 to 11,000 Palestinian prisoners. “The ‘over 7000’ does not include the thousands of Palestinians who are regularly taken by the Israelis in the occupied West Bank, and even from Gaza, as well as those held in administrative detention for varying periods,” Farrah notes.

Under administrative detention, Palestinians, including minors, are denied trial and imprisoned for renewable periods, with many imprisoned between six months to six years.

According to B’Tselem, as of February 2011, Israel is holding 214 Palestinians under administrative detention.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prevents forcible transfers of people from occupied territory. But Israel has been doing just that since 1967, and has imprisoned over 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children according to the UN.

Aside from denial of family visits, higher education, and canteen supplies, roughly 1,500 Palestinian prisoners are believed to be seriously ill, and are denied adequate healthcare.

Majed Komeh’s mother has many years of Monday demonstrations ahead of her. Her son, 34 years old, was given a 19-year sentence, of which he has served six years.

“For the last four years I haven’t heard from him,” Umm Majed says. “He has developed stomach and back problems in prison, but he’s not getting the medicine he needs.”

Nasser Farrah says this is a serious problem. “Many have cancer and critical illnesses. Many need around-the-clock hospital care, not simply headache pills.”

A 2010-2011 report from the Palestinian Prisoners Society said that 20 prisoners have been diagnosed with cancer, 88 with diabetes and 25 have had kidney failures. “Over 200 prisoners have died from lack of proper medical care in prisons,” the report says.

One of the ways ill Palestinians end up in prison is by abduction when passing through the Erez crossing for medical treatment outside of Gaza.

“The Israelis give them permits to exit Gaza for treatment in Israel or the West bank, but after they cross through the border Israel imprisons many of them,” says Farrah.

“We are a people under occupation. We have no other options to secure our prisoners’ rights but to demonstrate in front of the ICRC. It’s their job to ensure prisoners are receiving their rights under international humanitarian law.”

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Jul 18 2011 (IPS)

“When I came back to Gaza in 2006, before the siege started, people came to me for acupuncture,” says Dr. Hisham Mwtoweh, a medical doctor and acupuncture practitioner trained in China and Korea.

Modern cupping equipment based on an old tradition in Gaza. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

Since 2007, zero stock levels of essential medications in the Gaza Strip have been an increasingly problem (37 percent of the 480 essential drugs were at zero stock in June 2011). With one of the highest rates of unemployment in the world and 80 percent of Palestinians food aid dependent, few in Gaza can afford treatments like acupuncture.

“Acupuncture is not cheap,” says Dr. Mwtoweh. “The needles are single-use, and are more expensive than before. A box of needles which cost me 10 shekels (three dollars) years ago costs me 60 shekels now.”

The cost is complicated by the longevity of the sessions. “I can treat migraines, lower back pain, sinusitis, and strokes, among other things,” Mwtoweh says. “But people here are used to medicine which normally has a rapid result.

“Acupuncture needs time, more than five or six sessions before you start to feel the effects of the therapy, and many people don’t want to wait or to spend precious money on that many visits.”

Consequently, Mwtoweh’s acupuncture practice has taken a dramatic fall. “In 2006, I had an average of over 50 patients per month. Now a good month is six patients.”

Business is steady for Mahmoud Shamali, a pharmacist and practitioner of hijama, a cupping practice which treat certain ailments and invigorates the blood.

“With Gaza’s poor economy, more people started to seek out alternative healers, because many are cheaper than using pain medications or repeated visits to the doctor,” says Shamali.

“Hijama is not a foreign concept in Palestine, since Islam speaks of the importance of cupping as a therapy and for overall health. So people trust it.”

Traditionally, cupping was done by heating sterilised glasses and applying them at various points of the body, often the back and neck.

Dr. Khamis Elessi, certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation, also practices complementary medicine, including Tuina (Chinese massage), acupuncture, herbal remedies, and cupping.

“The idea of wet cupping – when incisions are made in the skin and a small amount of blood is let out – is that it stimulates the bone marrow to produce fresh red blood cells, which have a life span of 120 days.” An increase of young red blood cells increases the body’s energy, he says.

“Cupping will boost your immune system and normalise your blood pressure.”

As cupping does not routinely require new equipment and usually needs just one session, the costs per visit are low. For some with ailments not treated for want of expensive or non-existent medicine, hijama is an option.

“Many people who go for cupping can’t find the medicine they need, so they look for alternative remedies,” says Khamis.

“Backaches, headaches, toothaches, and depression – these are some of the things cupping treats,” says Mahmoud Shamali.

A World Health Organisation (WHO) survey in July 2009 found that 23 percent of children aged 5-14 developed bed-wetting problems after the last Israeli war on Gaza.

“Hijama can treat this, as can acupuncture,” says Shamali.

Following the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza, the Gaza Community Mental Health Centre (GCMHC) reported over 90 percent of Palestinian children in Gaza and 65 percent of the general population suffered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

GCMHC also notes a continual rise in depression among children and adults. For adults, with the crushing responsibility of caring for a family in an impossible situation – under siege and still reeling from the last Israeli war on Gaza – the depression can be severe.

Dr. Mwtoweh says acupuncture can treat depression and PTSD, but that many in Gaza are reluctant to admit they have a problem.

Instead, many have turned to Tramadol, a synthetic opioid painkiller sold in pharmacies. “After the war many people started using Tramadol to numb their psychological pain. They temporarily forget their problems with it,” says Mwtoweh.

“People here think it is a medicine, not a drug, so they use Tramadol too much and become addicted.”

Dr. Mwtoweh says his acupuncture therapy can stop the addiction, if people were aware they are addicted and are aware of the treatment.

Abu Ali, 43, a holistic practitioner, treats patients free of charge from his one-room house in Gaza’s Beach Camp.

His herbal remedies treat physical ailments, depression, and even extend to those with diabetes. The WHO reports some diabetes drugs are at zero-stock levels in Gaza.

“I give diabetes patients amoora, a herb similar to za’atar (wild thyme). I also give za’atar and strawberry leaves, depending on the severity of their diabetes or other health problems.”

He lists other herbs common to Palestine, like ekleel jebal, a mountain plant whose green leaves help treat 52 different kinds of ailments.

“Add the leaves to water and drink it for 10 days,” he advises. Aside from invigorating the body, the herb helps regulate high blood pressure, he says. Drugs for hypertension and cardiac conditions are on the zero-stock list.

Abu Ali believes that any illness can be treated holistically. “People must have the will to cure themselves,” he says. “They have to believe that they can be their own doctor and are stronger than their disease.”

While other complementary medicine practitioners like doctors Khamis, Mwtoweh and Shamali see a niche for their work, they say it is imperative that the essential medicines and supplies at zero stock levels be brought into Gaza.

“Not all problems can be treated by complementary or alternative means,” caution Mwtoweh and Shamali. “Like anti-cancer drugs: there are no alternatives,” says Shamali, whose own grandmother suffers for want of an anti-cancer drug unavailable in Gaza.

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Jul 16 2011 (IPS)

Waddah Bsaiso is ready to export, if the Israeli-imposed siege would allow him. He has the experience, the contacts, and the products, but is prevented by Israel’s strict ban on virtually all Gazan exports, save a token amount of flowers periodically allowed out of the Strip.

Furniture on display at the trade show in Gaza. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

“Now we are lucky if we can earn 400,000 dollars per year,” he says.

A mix of classic wooden furniture and modern, bright-fabric living room sets, his furniture factory is one of over 30 businesses participating in the 2011 National Furniture Show organised by the Palestine Federation of Industries (PFI) and Paltrade, an organisation promoting Palestinian trade, among others.

Ahmad Munir, manager of the Industrial Modernisation Centre (IMC), an arm of PFI, greets visitors at the entrance and answers their questions. “We give training in craft and furniture making, and connect recent design and other graduates with firms.”

PFI played a significant role in getting Gaza’s mangled factories back in running condition. “We helped repair factories and brought in equipment that was needed,” says Munir.

Over 700 private businesses were destroyed or damaged in Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Gaza, among them 325 factories and workshops, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). Even before the 23-day Israeli attacks, 97 percent of Gaza’s industry had shut down for want of raw materials and replacement machine parts banned under the Israeli-siege imposed in 2006 shortly after Hamas was elected.

The World Bank notes that factories in Gaza import 95 percent of their raw materials, rendering them heavily dependent on the border crossings. All but the Rafah crossing, under Egyptian control, are controlled by Israel. Kerem Abu Salem, the crossing sporadically open to imports and almost never to exports, is less functional and more congested than the former Karni crossing.

Despite Israel’s declared “easing” in June 2010 of the total siege on Gaza, in June 2011 the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that “only 5 percent of the pre-blockade export volume was reached from November 2010 to April 2011.”

The El Helou furniture company has found a way around the Israeli control of the entry of raw materials. “Many of our products are made from olive trees bulldozed in the last Israeli war on Gaza,” Mohammed el Helou explains. Near him, an irregular-shaped olive wood mirror frame and a three-piece table and chair set still in the shape of the tree trunk itself. These products, popular in North American and European markets, sell for a fraction of their market value or not at all in Gaza’s over-stocked furniture market.

“When we were able to export to European markets, our prices were higher because the standard of living there is higher. But to sell anything in Gaza we have to drastically reduce our prices,” says Waddah Bsaiso.

“Other factories that formerly exported are now forced to sell solely in Gaza, so the market is flooded, and our outside contacts have lost faith in receiving anything from Gaza,” he says.

“Our greatest problem today is that we can’t export anything. Consequently, we are using just ten percent of our production capabilities.”

The loss in revenue does not affect just Bsaiso and his family. “If we had the customers, we could employ up to 150 workers. But at present we only employ 15.”

Abed Abu Seedo imported recycled glass vases and bottles from Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, to refinish and sell abroad. Decorated with smoky finishes and fine painting, the glassware sold well in British, European and U.S. markets.

“I haven’t been able to import glass from Nablus for years now. And exporting is out of the question. There isn’t much interest in my products in Gaza. People think about the necessities, not frivolities like glass decorations.”

Down the aisle, a wall of hand-embroidered purses and pillow covers, as well as hand-woven decorative rugs, once sold in Jerusalem’s busy tourist markets.Now Mahmoud el Sawaf sells to some foreigners in Gaza, but his shop is otherwise largely unvisited. Facing export impossibilities, Waddah Bsaiso feels Israel has an ulterior motive for prohibiting exports. “Israel wants people like me who export to feel like we can’t do anything. The policies are to destroy our will to work, produce, and survive,” he says.

“Gaza these days is merely a recipient of aid, not an exporting, self-sufficient country. We don’t want this, we want to sell our own goods and live like normal people,” says Bsaiso.

A March 2011 Pal Trade study highlights that the main constraints on Gaza businesses are “the unreliable supply of electricity, the unpredictable availability of raw materials and extremely limited access to export markets.” “Everything is ready: the machinery, workers, everything,” says Waddah Bsaiso. “We just need the border to open to exports.”

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Jul 7 2011 (IPS)

“The mosque was just 100 metres from our house. We prayed there every day, five times a day. But it was more than a house of prayer,” says Mohammed, a Beit Hanoun resident, of one of the 34 mosques completely destroyed during the 23-day Israeli war on Gaza in 2008-2009.

A destroyed mosque in Gaza. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

“The blast sent rubble to our house,” Mohammed recalls. “Now we have go to one 15 minutes away, one we don’t know intimately.”

According to Dr Hassan Saifi, assistant to the Minister of Religious Affairs in Gaza, a quarter of the Strip’s 800 mosques were damaged or destroyed in the Israeli war on Gaza.

“Two hundred damaged mosques is a shocking amount,” Saifi says. “Among those, 34 throughout the Gaza Strip were completely destroyed.

“Especially in Gaza’s north, which was hit the hardest, completely destroying 15 mosques, the bombing of mosques inflicted many civilian casualties,” says Saifi, noting that Gaza’s north has a higher proportion of Palestinian refugees living in densely-inhabited camps.

“Mosque walls are frequently also the walls of the many homes packed around it. So when mosques are bombed, many homes are bombed at the same time.”

With many mosques decimated and over 150 more badly damaged by Israeli bombings, many in Gaza believe the destruction was intentional.

“The Israelis used state-of-the-art warplanes and unmanned drones with precision visual equipment. They destroyed many of our mosques during the very first days of their attacks,” notes Dr Saifi. “They obviously intended to destroy our mosques, irrespective of those living next door or praying within.”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) lists a number of the mosques struck, noting that indeed many of the Israeli attacks on mosques came within the first week of Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Dec. 28, Israeli warplanes bombed Jabaliya’s Imad Aqel mosque, killing five young girls, ages 4 to 17, sleeping in their home next to the mosque. Another 17 civilians were injured in the bombing, and many of the cheaply built cement-walled, asbestos-roofed homes surrounding the mosque were destroyed or badly damaged.

The Ibrahim Maqadma mosque in Jabaliya was hit by a drone-fired missile on Jan. 3 2009, reports PCHR, injuring more than 30 and killing 15 civilians, among them four children and those praying at the time of the attack.

The targeting of mosques, along with other civilian areas, is in contravention to international law and the Geneva Conventions.

“The Zionist occupation state doesn’t respect churches and mosques, nor any international law. They bombed the UN food storage warehouse, UN schools, and attacked the Red Cross even though these are international organisations,” says Dr. Saifi.

Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians during the war on Gaza stretched beyond mosques, including targeting kindergartens, schools, hospitals, ambulances, cars and homes, and universities. The widespread destruction wreaked on Gaza impacted on all aspects of life, cultural, academic, industry, personal, and religious.

The bombings also assaulted Gaza’s historical buildings and places, among them the Nasser mosque in Beit Hanoun. Built in 736 AD, the mosque was hit by Israeli bombing on Jan. 2, 2009, completely destroying it.

“It was a historic building and should have been preserved,” Hassan Saifi says. “Like any historical site in the world, our relics also must be protected as heritage sites, for all of the world not just for Palestine.”

The Ministry of Religious Affairs states Gaza’s mosque rebuilding efforts will run over 13.5 million dollars. Under the Israeli-led siege which bans imports of construction materials and which for the past five years has caused many international donors to freeze their funding, little rebuilding has actually taken place.

“Some people and organisations have donated money and materials, via the tunnels from Egypt. After two and a half years we have begun building just ten of the mosques destroyed throughout the Gaza Strip,” says the assistant Minister of Religious Affairs.

“As poor as most Palestinians in Gaza are, people give what they can, however little, because mosques are important to their daily lives.”

Since January 2009, Palestinians in Gaza accustomed to praying in their local mosques have resorted to praying in mosques further away or in makeshift mosques of wire fencing and plastic sheeting.

As religious centres worldwide serve as meeting places for family and friends, mosques also serve roles beyond venues of prayer.

“Anyone traveling or away from their home can enter the mosque to drink water, use the bathroom, rest and pray,” says Dr. Saifi.

In Beit Hanoun, Mohammed recalls the mosque dear to his family. “My grandfather built it decades ago and neighbours contributed what they could. Some gave money, some gave materials like stones, doors, or whatever they could offer. It was a part of us and our community.”

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By Eva Bartlett
SHEIK RAJLEEN, GAZA, Jul 4 2011 (IPS)

“Farmed fish are now better than sea fish in Gaza. They shouldn’t be, but because of the sewage in Gaza’s sea and the Israeli fishing restrictions, farmed fish are cleaner and healthier than sea fish.”

Fish pools at the Ekhail farm. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

“It is almost impossible for our fishermen to fish in the sea, so fish farms provide another source of salt water fish.”

Compared to the late 1990s, before the Israeli-led siege choking Gaza since Hamas’s election in 2006, fishermen’s catches are meagre, from a former over 3,500 tons per year to the current less than 500 tons a year. Fishermen, forced by Israeli gunfire to fish within less than three miles, at the same time deplete future stocks of fish.

And, as Ekhail said, the fish caught are polluted, swimming in the sewage that is daily pumped into Gaza’s sea for want of treatment facilities.

“Anyway Gaza is already importing frozen fish from Egypt via the tunnels,” Ekhail points out. There is a growing need for edible fish.

His six pools contain hundreds of maturing fish, a process which takes around eight to 10 months. “But with the power cuts, its taking longer than 10 months,” he says.

Large, electricity powered water wheels spin over the surface of each pool, oxygenating the salt water pumped from underground, and emptied twice a day into the sea.

Among three varieties of fish, the red and silver tilapia are the most popular and his cheapest, at 25 shekels (eight dollars) per kilo. But this is a price the vast majority rendered aid-dependent in Gaza cannot afford.

“We sell mainly to restaurants,” he says, though some families with the means to do so buy from the farm.

The Ekhail fish farm has problems other than the power outages.

“Customers buy frozen fish from Egypt instead of ours, because it’s cheaper,” he says. “And the pellets we feed the fish come from Israel. They are often delayed.”

The greatest problem was the complete destruction of the Ekhail fish farm during the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza. “It was bulldozed, everything destroyed.”

Rebuilt on its rented plot of land, the fish farm is just five minutes by car outside Gaza city. Sea waves crash 50 metres beyond the tent-shaded pools, the paradox of Gaza’s off-limits sea audible and visible.

The region has a history of dependency on the rich catches of the sea, something reflected in the fish- based meals traditional to Gaza and the legacy of fishermen in trawlers, speedboats, and hand-paddled boats the size of a canoe.

The development of aquaculture reflects the continued ingenuity of Palestinians in Gaza, determined to create sources of employment and food in the face of the ruthless, internationally backed Israeli siege on Gaza.

But the rise of aquaculture also reflects the continued international apathy to the plight of Gaza’s roughly 4,000 fishermen who, on a daily basis, are shot at, shelled at, water cannoned with an excrement-scented chemical, and abducted by the Israeli navy from within Palestinian waters.

The 20 nautical miles accorded to Palestinians under Oslo are now an Israeli-reduced less than three miles fishing limit. Many fishermen have been killed or seriously injured while fishing in waters within the Israeli-decreed limits. Hundreds are abducted from Palestinian waters by the Israeli navy every year, an attempt to discourage fishermen from plying their trade.

Aside from the human toll of the Israeli fishing restrictions, there is an economic toll very real to the 65,000 people that the World Food Project (WFP) says are directly affected by the fishing limitations. And there are the 80 percent of food-aid dependent Palestinians in Gaza for whom fish were a source of nutrition sporadically afforded.

With current catches inadequate and much of the available fish farmed or imported, most families can no longer afford the luxury of the protein fish provides.

Whereas aid organisations like WFP and others encourage fish farming in Gaza to provide an alternative source of nutrition to the 1.6 million residents of the Strip, aquaculture is an inadequate temporary fix, not a solution.

It is a fix that, intentionally or not, works in tandem with the Israeli-led siege on Gaza: to deprive Palestinians of their self-sufficiency and their fishing skills passed on through the generations. And it is a fix that does not address the roots of the problem: the siege and the Israeli navy’s lethal games in Palestinian waters, both combined to render Palestinians in Gaza dependent on hand-outs.

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Jun 19 2011 (IPS)

“During the first years of the siege, we could still manage, but nowadays we have no alternatives,” says Dr. Hassan Khalaf, Deputy Health Minister in Gaza. “It is a major crisis: many health services have stopped, and I’m afraid this will spiral out of control, because Gaza doesn’t have the essential medicines and supplies needed.”

Too many medicines are too expensive for Gazans, or simply unavailable. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

Following the democratic elections in 2006 that brought Hamas to power in Gaza, the population has been constrained under a siege which bans food items, construction materials, and school supplies among thousands of items. Medical supplies and equipment do not escape the blacklist, for years now depriving Palestinians in Gaza of basics like baby formulas, antibiotics, and MRI and X-Ray machines, which Israel reasons could be used for “terror” purposes.

While alarming zero-stock levels of drugs were already being reported in 2007 – when 80-90 drugs of the 480 deemed essential were at zero – Palestinian physicians could still find ways around the shortages. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in November 2008 reported that “medical staff try to cope by using the next best solution which is not always a good one – for example, if they need tubes for a medical procedure, they will use a tube size smaller or bigger than the appropriate one.” While the alternatives were not optimal and could result in inadequate and painful treatments, there were at least alternatives. But with each year of the total siege on Gaza, particularly after the 23 days of Israeli war on Gaza in 2008-2009, the already dilapidated medical system in Gaza has been rendered more sickly. During the Israeli war on Gaza, Israeli warplanes bombed over half of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as 44 clinics and the medical storage facility of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

In February 2011, an Israeli bombing destroyed a medical warehouse in Jabliya. “We lost a large amount of stocks we had finally received from Ramallah just a few days prior to the bombing,” says Dr. Khalaf.

In June 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a call for “unimpeded access into the Gaza Strip of life-saving medical supplies, including equipment and medicines, as well as more effective movement of people in and out of the territory for medical training and the repair of devices needed to deliver appropriate healthcare and respond to the population’s humanitarian health needs.”

But prolonged shortages of medical supplies have set-off new alarm bells.

“During 2008, Gaza received less than half of the needed medicines and supplies,” says Dr. Khalaf. The WHO reported that in 2010 Gaza received even less, only 40 percent of the Strip’s needs transferred to Gaza. “As of now, in 2011 we’ve received only third of what is needed,” says Khalaf.

With years of delays by both the Israeli-led siege and the Ramallah Health Ministry, Gaza’s zero-stock items list – now at 180 items – has grown as has the number of items temporarily re-stocked in hospitals and clinics.

“We’re missing painkillers and anesthetics, cancer and epilepsy drugs, antibiotics, infant formulas, medicines for dialysis, even rubber gloves,” says Khalaf.

The ministry’s warning is echoed by the WHO, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which noted on Jun. 13 that Gaza has not received medical supplies since February 2011. PCHR reports that the medical shortages affect “ICUs, nurseries of premature infants; operation rooms; anesthesia and recovery; emergency; cardiac catheterisation; hematology and oncology; nephritic diseases; and pediatrics.”

According to Dr. Khalaf, hundreds of patients await “eye surgeries, endoscopic, vascular and pediatric surgeries, and neurosurgery” among others.

A group of Norwegian doctors surveyed Gaza’s hospitals and clinics in February this year. Their study, reported in the Lancet, highlighted the difficulties for cancer patients in Gaza who receive only part of their chemotherapy treatments. Many have died as a result.

“Oncologists said 100 of 260 cancer patients at Gaza’s largest hospital were unable to receive effective treatment because the required combination of several drugs was not obtainable,” reported the Lancet.

To alleviate the current medical crisis, the ICRC on Jun. 14 gave its stocks of medical supply to hospitals in Gaza. The Ramallah-based Ministry of Health announced it would send medical supplies from its warehouses and that Egypt would soon send essential medicines.

Having dealt with the issue of delayed and banned medical supplies for years, the Ministry of Health in Gaza sees this as a temporary and insufficient fix.

“Israel and the Ramallah government hold mutual responsibility for Gaza’s medical crisis,” says Dr. Khalaf, citing Israeli obstacles and delays on permissions and shipments via the Israeli-controlled crossings as well as what he says is the Ramallah Ministry’s intentional negligence.

“When international donors first cut aid to Gaza, it was resumed via the Ramallah government, with the understanding that Gaza receives 40 percent of the total donations, according to our population needs,” he says.

This system worked until the ministry in Ramallah stopped coordinating with the ministry in Gaza, relying instead on its own contacts in Gaza.

Dr. Khalaf believes neither the Israeli siege nor the Ramallah government’s reluctance to send medical supplies to Gaza could occur without international compliance. “It is intentional, it’s part of the siege on Gaza’s government,” he says. “The international donor countries and Ramallah Health Ministry give us temporary, interrupted solutions.”

Whether or not it is intentional, the severe lack of medical supplies harms Gaza’s 1.5 million residents, not the Hamas government.

Excerpt:

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Jun 12 2011 (IPS)

In Gaza’s main port, beyond the newly-built memorial to the Freedom Flotilla martyrs, Gaza’s fishermen prepare to go out trawling at shallow depths in Palestinian waters. Other fishers stay on land to mend nets and fix boats damaged or destroyed by Israeli navy gunfire, shelling, water cannoning and even ramming. Such moves as the opening of Rafah have done nothing for Gaza’s fishermen.

Gaza harbour, as seen from a destroyed boat. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

Tracings in the sand reveal where a damaged hassaka (a small speedboat or smaller hand-paddled boat) sat for repairs from an Israeli navy machine gun assault on Jun. 1 this year. “There were 25 bullets in both sides of the boat, as well as one in the engine,” Kabarati says. “Two fishermen work from it, Ramadan Zidan, 51, and his son Mohammed, 20. They weren’t even out at sea, they were just beyond the harbour.”

Down the sandy road to the dock for larger fishing boats, Farej, 23, stands aboard a larger, roofless fishing trawler, the detached roof splayed across a port wall opposite the boat.

“Our nets were in the water when the Israeli gun boat came at us,” says Farej, one of the fishermen on board the trawler less than three miles off Gaza’s coast when assaulted by the Israeli navy on May 26.

“The Israeli soldiers shot at our nets which we tried to pull in,” he says, noting that the severed nets disappeared into the sea. “Then they rammed our boat, knocking the roof off.”

With ample deck space for pulling in catches and sorting the fish for storage, most Palestinian fishing trawlers are between 15 to 20 metres, with a steel “umbrella” over the work area. “The roof fell down on my brother Raed, but we couldn’t reach him to help him. The Israelis kept firing on us and on the area of the fallen roof,” Farej says.

“They kept threatening to take us to Ashdod,” he says. “They kept cursing at us and taunting us.”

While Raed, 28, survived the attack with a broken leg and injured back, Farej worries how his brother will feed his five children while incapacitated.

“I was studying business management at university,” Farej says. “I had to quit because I couldn’t afford the fees and we need my income to feed our families.”

Sufyan, 43, works on the same trawler. “Just the day before that we were water cannoned by the Israelis,” he says. “They doused us with high-powered water for about 30 minutes, broke our GPS system and ruined anything electrical on board. We were only three miles off the coast.”

Under the Oslo accords, Palestinian fishermen have the right to fish 20 nautical miles off the Gazan coast. This limit has been unilaterally micro-sized by the Israeli navy by lethal imposition via gunfire, shelling and water-cannoning. A year ago fishermen scarcely caught any fish when just six miles out. The prospects for catching fish are all the more dire at the new insufficient three-mile limit.

On the evening of May 30, Ragab Hissy’s 15.5 metre trawler was again attacked by Israeli water cannoning, gunfire and ramming. “They water cannoned us so strongly and for so long that we hid inside, under the deck,” says a 32-year-old fisherman who gives his name as M. “While we were hiding, the Israeli gunboat rammed us.” He points out a newly-replaced slot of wood in the boat’s hull and a dent in the steel framing the hull where the Israeli gunboat rammed his trawler. “The Israeli soldiers were shouting at us, swearing at us and cursing Islam,” he says. “We were less than three miles out from this port. The Israelis accused us of waiting to go out further at night. They told us, ‘you have to go back to 2.5 miles from the coast so that you don’t cross three miles’,” M says.

“Since 2005 we have had serious problems from the Israelis while fishing,” says Sufyan Koolah, from the same trawler. “This trawler was badly damaged in 2007 by Israeli gunfire. It cost roughly 20,000 dollars to repair it. During 2008 we lost much of our fishing equipment and nets to Israeli attacks.”

A father of ten, with three children in university, Koolah will be out of work for the next two months, the amount of time he says it will take to repair the trawler. “Seventeen people work on this boat and will be out of an income, not just me and my family.”

Families like Koolah’s, Abu Ouda’s, Hissy’s and the countless other nameless of Gaza’s roughly 4,000 fishermen face unprovoked Israeli navy assaults on a daily basis but continue to trawl the waters for food and income for their families.

“Three miles is too shallow. People swim at three miles. We need to be able to fish like we did in the past, beyond ten miles and up to 20 miles,” says M, the fisherman on Hissy’s boat.

Catches these days are neutered versions of Palestinian fishermen’s former hauls. Unable to breech three miles, Gaza’s fishermen are left to harvest undersized fish seeped in the pollution of Gaza’s sewage run-off. The greater numbers and quality of fish lie at least six miles out.

“Between March and June, large schools of sardines migrate through Palestinian waters over ten miles out,” says Nizar Ayash, director of Gaza’s Fishing Syndicate. “They are abundant in number, all fishermen can benefit, and they were traditionally Gaza’s cheapest source of quality protein.”

In a May 2011 report, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) cites poverty among Gaza’s fishermen at 90 percent, the poorest earning less than 100 dollars per month, an increase of 40 percent from 2008.

“In the last five years, at least seven fishermen have been killed by the Israeli navy,” Nizar Ayash says, estimating tens more have been injured and over 300 arrested while fishing in Palestinian waters. “But they will keep fishing, they have no choice.”

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