Some days in Gaza, if you are in an area where you don’t hear the drones hovering, spying, menacing…nor the Israeli gunboats harassing or injuring fishermen by shelling and shooting live ammunition…nor see Israeli soldiers shooting at farmers and civilians in the region along Gaza’s borders to Israel… nor see the manufactured, grinding poverty…nor see the remnants of buildings… nor see the remnants of limbs and lives…nor see the fatigue etched deeply into the faces of those all around….some days, if you stay in a café or under the covers, or miraculously miss all of these signs… you can relax a bit.
I catch myself -with a whiff of coffee brewing or sea air or falafels cooking or a friend’s smile or a stranger’s smile -renewing my appreciation of being in Gaza, despite all of the tragedies here. It’s the persistent refusal to die out, and the stubborn quick wit and ability to render a mundane incident amusing, and it’s the graciousness that supersedes deserved bitterness, and it’s the tender and unaffected love for children, including neighbours’ and strangers’ kids, that amaze and snap me out of wallowing in despair about the avoidable tragedies here. post continues
Naama Barbakh stands in the yard beside her farmhouse in southern Gaza’s As Shoka district, east of Rafah. She gestures to the ground and the surrounding area, pointing out where the dead and dying bodies of her husband and three of her sons lay after an unmanned drone missile strike on the morning of January 4th. On January 3rd, the Israeli land invasion had begun, with tanks and troops invading Gaza and occupying areas to the east of Rafah.
Barbakh, a mother of eight children, three martyred in the attack, explains what happened that morning.
“It was around 9 am. My daughter and I were preparing bread dough inside the house. My husband Abed (43) and three of my sons, Mahdi (20), Mohammed (19), and Yusef (15), were outside collecting and cutting firewood, as we had no cooking gas.”
She points to the bread hut where she would have used the cut firewood to heat the bread oven. The missile strike came before this was possible. post continues
I visited Anwar in his Rafah home last week, 2 days after April 17th Palestinian Political Prisoners’ Day.
Prison is a theme for all Palestinians living in occupied Palestine, whether they themselves have been abducted and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces, or whether someone in their family (a brother, father, son, daughter, mother) is being held in one of Israel’s prisons.
So while the visit was to meet Anwar’s family, the prison theme was unavoidable. post continues
As we drive through Khoza’a village, east of Khan Younis, en route to the border area (“buffer zone”) farmland we will accompany farmers onto, OJ narrates what happened to this village during Israel’s bloody war on Gaza. On January 12, Israel began to seriously work on Khoza’a, ramping up the shelling, shooting and bulldozing of homes on January 13.
OJ points out a square of weedy land where Iman –one of our farmers and a Khoza’a resident fleeing the Israeli bulldozers demolishing her and neighbouring homes –and a reported 200 other village residents crammed into the space seeking safety from the Israeli forces’ shooting.
“They were repeatedly hunted,” OJ says, “from their homes being bulldozed, to the square where they huddled and Israeli bulldozers piled more and more rubble around them, trying to bury them, to the street Israeli soldiers ordered them to walk down but where more Israeli soldiers shot at them. They were waving white flags.” post continues
I mourn the death of Bassem Abu Rahme, the 18th to be murdered, along with scores injured, while protesting against Israel’s illegal annexation Wall in the occupied West Bank. The death and injury toll at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces includes minors, countless local residents, journalists, and many Israelis and internationals. The oft- militarily-besieged village of Bil’in is one of countless villages in the path of the annexation wall Israel has constructed for so-called ’security’ reasons, stealing Palestinian lands, and lives, in the process. post continues
*6 fishermen from the Beit Lahia region who were abducted while fishing just 200m off of Gaza’s coast on March 19, their boats thieved, by Israeli naval soldiers patrolling less than 1 km from Gaza’s coast.
In one of the latest acts of aggression against Palestinian fishermen fishing well-within their internationally-recognized legal limits of 20 nautical miles, on April 21st, the Israeli gunboats patrolling as close as a few kilometers off of Gaza’s coast abducted 4 more Palestinian fishermen and their 2 small ‘hassaka‘ fishing boats, bringing the known number of abducted fishermen -taken while fishing in their own territorial waters -to at least 28, and stolen fishing boats to 13, with at least 5 fishermen known to have been injured at sea. post continues
*march 3, Sejah al Helo, her re-training herself to use her right arm after she was shot by Israeli soldiers during Israel’s 3 week war on Gaza. Sejah’s grandfather, baby sister, and elder brother were all killed.
*April 8: a month later, Sejah is healthy and strongpost continues
After a PRCS (Palestinian Red Crescent Society) shift in Rafah, Anwar stops to show me a friend’s honey shop where the liquid gold flows pure, fresh from the comb, not tarnished by corn syrup mixings like jars of honey often seem to be here.
Ahmed Zohrob has learned bee-keeping and honey processing from his father, and so on through the generations. “I am an electrical engineer,” he tells me, “but I work in the family trade. Honey.”
He has apprenticed well and keenly shares his knowledge, and his honey. Cutting into a frame of bee hive and honey, Zohrob saws off a chunk and hands it to me. “It’s light, with a hint of orange. In the autumn it’s darker because the bees go to flowers not orange blossoms.” post continues
Mohammed told me of a family living in Jabaliya, on the outskirts of Beit Lahia. “They’re very poor,” he’d said. “Can you please just visit them.” post continues
“White donkeys are better,” Hamsa said. Curious as to how colour might make a difference to performance I inquired. “They’re more beautiful,” he answered, explaining the obvious.
But Hamsa did have practical information on what to look for in a donkey, or as it was, a horse.
“Females are better. They bite and kick less than males.”
We met at 6 am, made our way to the outskirts of Gaza, and trawled the Friday animal market, eying possible replacements for Hamsa’s donkey, killed by Israeli shelling during the 3 weeks of war on Gaza. post continue
Posted by opt2007 
Posted by opt2007 
Posted by opt2007 
