one year later, young fisherman still trying to heal

Just as his leg was healing from a gaping bullet wound in his calf, Mohammed Musleh broke it, setting his healing back. Although the re-break happened in April, now in November his leg is still in metal braces.

Musleh was initially wounded early in the morning of 5 October 2008 when Israeli soldiers shot at him from a distance of 100 metres.

“Doctors told me there was an entry wound of two square centimetres and an exit wound of 10-15 square centimetres. They said the shot fractured my shinbone and severed arteries in my leg,” Musleh testified to B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group.

At the time of his shooting, Musleh and Ahmad al-Bardawil were fishing 2 km off the coast of Rafah, 3 km from the Egyptian border, according to their GPS device.

Musleh testified to B’Tselem that after dropping their fishing hooks, he and Bardawil “saw an Israeli battleship approach us. When the ship was about 300 meters from us, the soldiers fired into the air and into the water near our boat. Ahmad and I pulled in the line and rowed north, toward the coast, to get away from the Israeli ship and go to another place to continue fishing. Next to us was another rowboat, with two fisherman, one of them Ahmad’s cousin, Ali al-Bardawil, 20.

Our boat and the other boat rowed about 500 meters north, the Israeli ship continued to close in on us, to a distance of about 100 meters from us. It was frightening: the ship was huge and very tall, and the crew was firing in the air all the time.

I sat in the middle of the boat, rowing north. The soldiers fired into the water around the boat. Suddenly I felt pain in my left leg. I looked at my leg and saw I had been hit in the left shin. There was a hole and my leg was bleeding badly.

I stopped rowing, told Ahmad I had been wounded, and lay down on my back. Ahmad rowed to get us out of there. The firing at us continued. The soldiers didn’t say anything at all to us, at any stage.”

It took thirty minutes to row ashore, with Musleh heavily bleeding all the while.

Before his re-injury in April 2009, Musleh had hoped to return to the sea, despite the still present dangers from Israeli gunboats patrolling close to Gaza’s shore.

“I learned fishing from my father, back in 2006,” he said. “Nowadays, because of the siege, we can’t earn very much. Some days we bring home 100 shekels. Some days nothing.”

“We fish regularly in this area, and this is the first time we had any problems,” he told B’Tselem.

While Musleh may not have been targeted by Israeli soldiers before his injury, on a nearly daily basis fishermen from Rafah to Gaza’s northern waters are shot at, abducted, and have their fishing boats and equipment taken by Israeli soldiers enforcing the sea blockade, completing the full siege of the Strip. The fishing industry is a frail shadow of its former self, accompanying the reported 95% of industry in Gaza which has shut down due to the combination of siege and the Israeli massacre of Gaza.

the young bird keeper

It was a lovely story, that of a boy who caught birds in order to protect them.

He lives, the boy, but his hopes died in the massacre Israeli authorities and soldiers commited in Gaza last winter.

A friend, Abed, told me the story, as we discussed one of the latest victims of Israeli soldiers’ shooting in Gaza’s border regions with Israel. This one occurred near the northern border on the morning of 15 November. Abed, filming his young bird-catcher friend, saw the bloodied Amjad Hassanain, 27, being carried away by other bird-catchers.

moving on, until the next massacre

Three years after the murder of seventeen from the Athemna family –among them fourteen women and children, including an infant –and one from the Kaferna family, the pain has little receded for the Athamnah family survivors.

When Desmond Tutu visited the region a year and a half after the attack [coming from Rafah after being prevented entry by Israeli authorities], he aptly described the 8 November 2006 Israeli shelling of the family sleeping in their homes as a ‘massacre’ (one of many, many…seemingly endless Israeli massacres of Palestine).

you mean Gaza isn’t being rebuilt?

In East Beit Hanoun yesterday, still roughly 2 km from the eastern border with Israel, we are surveying the destruction of water wells and cisterns, along with their motors  –noting that new motors or parts are not available in Gaza, and that the rubble those wells within 1km of the border to Israel cannot be cleared due to a very real fear of Israeli shooting.

lost livelihoods

East of Gaza city, on some of Gaza’s most fertile land, little to nothing is growing, and what had grown has been repeatedly mowed down over the years by Israeli military bulldozers and tanks.

I am re-visiting the region to record farmers’ words on a vital issue: water.  Their wells and cisterns have also been bulldozed, pumps and motors destroyed.  In some areas there is a complete lack of water; in another region east of Beit Hanoun there’s just one water source.

where is the buffer zone?

published

At 8:30 on November 15, a number of young men went as usual to the land near Gaza’s northern border with Israel, intending to catch birds. Amjad Hassanain, 27, was among the bird-catchers hunting near the border fence when Israeli soldiers began shooting.

defunding children

In a Rafah-based grassroots community organization serving children, women and impoverished families, the consequences of the violent siege on Gaza, imposed shortly after Hamas was elected in early 2006, can be seen in the cracked furniture, shabby toys, tattered books, near-empty rooms, and small number of children participating in after-school homework sessions.

Najwa, the centre’s director, explains how prior to the siege, the centre not only provided extra-curricular school support and development for children, but also ran summer courses and games for hundreds of Rafah’s poorest, most oppressed youths.

threads of potential

Embroidery lives on in Palestine, a tradition passed down through the generations.  While Palestine is as modern as a choking, all-encompassing 3 year siege (since soon after Hamas was elected in early 2006) and numerous Israeli wars and attacks will allow, the traditions from generations ago are not forgotten: songs, dabke (dance), food, farming and fishing techniques, clothing…and embroidery.

In recent years, the art has taken on a new role in occupied Palestine, re-affirming Palestinian identity

child sister

In Palestine it is not unordinary to take care of a stranger’s child on a taxi ride.  A smile, a gesture, and this delicate creature is handed over by the mother with arms full.

Today it was a mother busy with her newborn.  Her toddler daughter sat smiling, radiant, next to her.  But at the first of many bumps while the taxi braked for a pothole in the road, she tumbled forward.

Without need to even consider the mother’s reaction, I picked her up and sat her next to me, arm around her.

graves in Gaza: denied dignity

Long denied cement, a sparse few are able to improvise with over-expensive, tunnel-delivered Egyptian cement.  The others simply bury under the sand.  Most of these sand-graves in Jabaliya’s Faluja cemetary are from the Israeli massacre of Gaza nearly a year ago.  The same inadequate graves can be found in cemetaries across Gaza.