“Why you go?!” the waiter asks. I was sitting in a coffee shop, using their electricity when our own home lacked it. It was geting late, I was ready to sleep.

“I have to get home,” my answer.

“Hello,” a woman approaching me says. How do I know her? She sits down, asking “What’s your name?”

So I don’t know her yet.  We exchange names.

“Why you go?” she asks as I pack up my bag.  I explain I’m heading home.

“But it’s my son’s birthday!” she protests, gesturing toward a table which waiters are busy dressing with balloons.  “Please stay.  Just a few minutes,” she insists.  The few minutes lapse into conversations with her family, with another family nearby, all curious as to why internationals have come to Gaza now when the world has forgotten Gaza. All are welcoming.

no rest

[photo: Donna Wallach]

Yesterday was deceptively calm for J. We were able to plant some potatoes, harvest more radishes, and begin laying piping to replace the irrigation pipes that were destroyed just last may when J.’s farmland was razed, his chicken barn (3,000 chickens and a couple hundred pigeons) was destroyed, and acres of olive and fruit trees razed to the ground.

Today, no such luck.  A call from J. saying that Israeli 4 tanks and 2 bulldozers have entered his area and are sitting just 100 m from his house.

no expense spared

Mazen, the taxi driver off-handedly gestured to the north as we drove through the outskirts of Beit Hanoun. “My house was over there. It was demolished in 2003. My father was crushed in the demolition,” he explained, the emotion of the time passed and the reality of frequent tragedies grounding.

It was, he explained, an eleven-story apartment building, with 65 people living in it. When the Israeli army came and ordered everyone to leave it, Mazen’s father refused, went with the building.

The large-scale invasion into northern Gaza in March of this year saw, by conservative accounts, over 120 killed, and hundreds more seriously injured, including the youth I met in Cairo, Abdul Rahman, now paralyzed waist down and most likely bedridden for life.

In the few visits to Jabliya, Beit Hanoun, Rafah, and the Israeli-imposed ‘buffer zone’ running from north to south along Gaza’s border with Israel, I’ve seen houses completely demolished, partially demolished, torn to shreds by shelling, or merely laced with the marks of Israeli soldiers’ haphazard shooting.

I visited friends in the north for the first time, meeting the extended family and seeing their march 2008 museum: their home, permeated top to bottom and on all sides, by bullet holes and shelling cavities, most noticeable from the back of the house, the side which faced a sitting tank and hundreds of the over one thousand invading Israeli soldiers. The outside walls, the balconies, the doors, the inside walls, the clothes cabinet… from the living room to the baby’s room, all testify to the assault of Israel’ “Hot Winter” operation, also known as Israel’s Holocaust on Gaza, after a comment made by Israel’s deputy Defense Minister, Matan Vilnai, that Israel would rain a holocaust upon Gaza.

bulldozer & tank parade is normal

27 November, Khosar, east of Khan Younis, occupied Gaza Strip

Heavily armoured Israeli bulldozers enter the Gaza Strip, driving across farmland in what locals say is a routine event, happening twice every fifteen days (once in each direction).

Called to Khosar by a family with farmland in Israel’s so-called ‘buffer zone’ –a band of land extending anywhere from 150 m to 1000 m from the border with Israel–we, as international human rights observers, intended to accompany the farmers as they plowed their land for planting.

Mohammed Suleiman explained the recent history of devastation his land, and animals, has faced.

On September 6, 2006, Israeli forces entered with bulldozers, destroying 5 dunums (1 dunum= 1000 square metres) of 15 year old olive trees, 2 dunums of orange and lemon trees, the kitchen and the bathroom of his home, the cow shed, with 7 cows inside, and 200 turkeys and 100 breeding pigeons in the process.

blinding truth

(strawberries, Beit Hanoun. Before the siege, strawberries and flowers were exported to European markets. Since the siege, there has been no way to export the berries, and with local markets flooded, their value is relatively worthless.)

26 November, 2008

It has been nearly 3 weeks now that Israel has kept all crossings with Gaza closed, including the Erez crossing used by aid workers, journalists, and the rare Palestinian who attains an exit permit (and whose exit permit is honoured by the Israeli soldiers at the crossing).

Last week, at a demonstration at Erez which jointly-called for the opening of the crossing, the lifting of the siege, and the release of the 3 Palestinian fishing boats still being held by Israel, one of Israel’s routine F-16s flew much lower than usual over the crowd, an attempt at intimidation. The F-16s have been prowling the skies, their engines scream-announcing their presence, and periodic sonic booms threatening a return of the massive sonic boom campaigns of recent years.

recognizing children’s right to exist

International Children’s Day celebration in Jabaliya camp, Gaza Strip.

The youth worker wears a huge smile. He claps, he moves with exaggerated glee, he yells instructions in a sort of ‘Simon says’ way: sit down, stand up, sit, stand, sit…The children are loving it, squealing as they are tricked into sitting when they should stand…

He is energetic, charismatic. And he is from Jabliya. There are sombre layers behind his vibrant joy.

Two clowns turn up and as their slapstick show progresses the smiles broaden, faces of 100 children breaking into lasting grins.

Israeli gunboats kidnap Gaza fisherman, peaceworkers

Israeli gunboats using high-pressure water cannon on a Palestinian fishing boat (photo: David Schermerhorn)

The Electronic Intifada, 21 November 2008

On the evening of Tuesday November 18, Khalid Alhabeel sat surrounded by his wife, family, and other concerned fishermen. Until the early hours of the following day, they had no idea what charges were being laid against fifteen fishermen, including two of Alhabeel’s sons, Adham (21) and Mohammed (20), after they were nabbed from Gaza’s territorial waters earlier that morning and taken to an Israeli interrogation centre at Ashdod port. Nor did they know when or if their boats –their livelihoods –would be returned.

Adham, married with one child, is the oldest son and often has the rotating position of captain on the boat. Mohammed, their father explained, had just the day before the arrest gotten engaged. With 2 key earners of income gone, only Khalid Alhabeel, boatless, was left to provide for the family of 13. Abu Adham (father of Adham) explained the events leading up to the fishermen’s arrest.

“Shortly after 10 am, I got a panicked call from Adham, who was captain today, saying their boat was surrounded by Israeli naval boats.”

“There are many ships around us; there’s no way to leave,” said Adham to his father. Their boat was approximately 7 miles out from Deir al Balah, in the centre of the Gaza Strip.

they would have already shot us by now…

[photo: Donna Wallach]

Sunday, November 15

The fishing boat trawls only about 1.5 miles from the coast, moving south. An hour later, the catch is small, mainly crabs and a few fish.

Nets are pulled in and the boat has gone south almost as far as Egyptian waters –as far as it dares to go. The captain steers westward, into deeper waters.

children in a crowd

Three children, large brown eyes, one with a curly mop of hair and bright pink shirt. Piled beside each other, they sit solemnly, grasping the gravity of the moment. While they are too young to understand death, at a very early age, like all Palestinian children, they are surrounded by it. From a tender age they learn the rites of mourning, see mothers sobbing, then hollow, then sobbing. Intuitively, they are not running and playing, not screaming for attention. They watch, they learn, and soon they lose and understand the pain of the mourners.

booms

Two nights ago the rain poured and the skies thundered. It was beautiful, dramatic… Through the open windows of the apartment life poured in, in fresh wafts and booms.

Yesterday, beginning around 11:30 am there were more booms. First, distant booms, unclear. Maybe it was something unloading…? But as Israeli fighter jets flitted overhead, north to south to north, and in broad circles, gradually lowering and becoming louder, so too did the planes’ noise and the booms.

Sonic booms, local press said, Israeli fighter planes deliberately breaking the sound barrier.