The Israeli Army shot at me and 3 Palestinian kids in Gaza today

Children duck to avoid Israeli Army gunfire - Click here for more images

Radhika S.
28 October 2011 | Notes from Behind the Blockade

After a lovely day of drinking excessive amounts of tea with a few families in South Gaza (Faraheen and Khuza’a, to be exact), an Italian colleague, Silvia, who used to live in Khuza’a, suggested walking down the road towards the local school.  It was late afternoon, about 4:30 p.m. and dozens of children played in the area.  We walked past  slices of a giant concrete wall placed in the middle of the road.  The slivers reminded me of Israel’s Apartheid Wall in the West Bank — 25 feet of reinforced concrete.   The local villagers had apparently retrieved these sections from a former settlement and placed them there so that children could play outside while being (somewhat) protected from Israeli army gunfire.
Silvia pointed to a school farther down the road.  “That’s where the children go to school,” she said.  The sun was beginning to set and the area was quite beautiful if one didn’t look too hard at the Israeli military towers in the distance.  I took some pictures, and even asked Silvia to take a photo of me.  Kids played nearby and a donkey cart passed us.  I photographed a house that looked like it had been bombed, but the bougainvillea had grown back in vibrant fuchsia.  Two boys playing with a piece of plastic ran towards us from farther up the road and begged me to take a photo.  I snapped a sloppy photo, and they eagerly checked their digital images on my camera.  One in a green sweater thought it was terribly funny that the  boy’s in a red hoodie’s head was missing in my photo.
They ran up ahead, and we walked for about 15 seconds when I heard a strange whiz, a whistle, eerily close to my ear. I paused, a bullet?  Red hoodie and two younger boys up ahead hit the floor as I momentarily pondered the strange sound.
The kids turned around and yelled at us to stupid foreigners to get down.  We bent down and started to walk away — fast — and they yelled at us to get completely on the ground.  The Israeli army left us no time to be scared. No gunshots over our heads.  No warnings.  A second bullet whizzed  past the three kids, and then us.  The Israelis were shooting at us from the towers 500 meters ahead. This time, we were on the ground. I continued to look at these 9-year-olds or 10-year-olds or whatever they were for cues–walking towards their school under Israeli fire was clearly routine for them and they knew what they were doing.  We waited on the ground for several minutes.  As I still had my camera in hand, I snapped a quick photo of them from the ground.
A minute or two later a father and his toddler, also further up on the road came towards us and offered a ride on the back of his motorized cart. We jumped in and he “sped” back to behind the wall.  Anyway, I got back to my apartment about an hour later, just in time for my Arabic class.  Even though I had actually studied this time, I couldn’t concentrate.  Why was the Israeli army shooting at our heads?
And I realized this is what Palestinian first, second, third, fourth graders experience daily in Gaza.

Updated on October 29, 2011

Israeli army shoots at children and two ISM activists

Silvia Todeschini
28 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Witnesses in Gaza today reported an escalation of Israeli aggression in the Khuza’a – Abasan, governate of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip.  The Israeli army also shot at two ISM activists and local children.
Israeli tanks entered Gaza this morning, from approximately 7.30 to 8.30, moving from the village of Faraheen to Khuza’a.  Residents reported hearing numerous gun shots. Suzanne, who lives in the north of Khuza’a, confirmed that in recent days, Israeli tanks have entered Gaza on a daily basis. Another women, Taragi, who lives in the south of Khuza, also confirmed that Israeli gunfire has become more frequent.
The Israeli army shot at two ISM activists and two Palestinian children just in front of them today at approximately 4.30 p.m. as they walked on the road towards the school in the village of Khuza’a, approximately 500 meters from the border. At the time, the area was populated by children and youths, some on foot and others in a cart pulled by a donkey. They were just driving along the road to go home. Without warning of any kind, the Israeli army fired two shots, close enough to the heads of those walking down the street to hear the distinct and strong hiss of the bullets that passed through the air.
Khuza’a is a small farming village and the area around it is not new to raids and attacks by the Israeli army. The school in particular is just a few hundred meters from the border and often children are forced to return home because of gunfire. One village girl lost her kneecap after she was shot by an Israeli bullet as she was walking back home from school.  The Israeli army bulldozed the fruit trees in the area ten years ago. Today, Palestinians in Khuza’a cultivate mainly wheat, which requires less attention, so as to avoid being attacked by the Israeli army.
Israeli committed horrific atrocities in Khuza’a during Operation Cast Lead. The majority of the population was forced to leave the village and suffered heavy attacks from white phosphorus. Eight civilians have been deliberately killed in a bombing in the center of the village during the casefire, between them a child. It was in Khuza’a where the Israeli army shot Roya’a Al Najar when she held a white flag while attempting to leave her house after days of siege, and Yasmeen Al Najar and Mahmmod Al Najar while trying to help her.

Updated on October 29, 2011

The Olive and the F-16: Autumn in Gaza

by Radhika S.
27 October 2011 | Notes from Behind the Blockade

Today completes another week of olive picking in Gaza.  Another week of pausing, breaths held, as Israeli tanks the color of sand moved nearby along the buffer zone, another week of children frightened at the sound of roaring F-16s, another week below the watchful eye of the drone.

Gaza harvests despite F-16s - Click here for more images

Together with the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteers picked olives with families near the buffer zone in the village of Burej and in two different locations in Beit Hanoun this week.
“We’re here to harvest olives and be with the land because this is our land and we don’t want to abandon it,” said 27-year-old Randa Hilou a local student to came to pick in solidarity with the farmers in Beit Hanoun.
On Wednesday, dozens of local children joined in the picking. I asked the children why they had come. “I’m here to pick olives,” declared 9-year-old Mahmoud, taking a break from dumping olives into a blue plastic crate.  “We love olives,” added other children, who gathered around.
At one point in the day, the sound of Israeli F-16s could be heard overhead. “I went picking with my mother and father,” added Bursa, also 9-years-old. “I am not afraid.”
Later in the week, ISM volunteers picked closer the Erez crossing in an area that used to be full of olive, orange and grapefruit groves.
“Before, people came from all over Gaza to pick fruit in this area,” explained Saber Zaaneen, the 33-year-old coordinator of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative explained to me on Thursday as we sat on a plastic tarp picking plucking purple olives of supple branches.
“Why did Israel destroy the groves?” he asked.  “To destroy the economy of Gaza. Why the resistance? Because of the occupation.”
I had asked Saber on earlier occasion why the olive trees in Gaza were so skinny.  In the West Bank, they’re very big, I explained.  He informed me that these trees were new, and that Israel had bulldozed the beautiful old olive trees of Gaza in 2001 and 2002. “Israel does not have a culture of peace,” explained Saber. “They have all of this advanced technology, why do they kill children like this?”
Nine year old Yara, who wants to be a doctor when she grows up expressed a similar sentiment on Wednesday, “They [the Israelis] are always occupying us. They threaten children.”

 Radhika S. is an activist with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Updated on October 28, 2011

PCHR weekly report 20/10 - 26/10/2011: shooting against workers

extracts from PCHR weekly report 20/10 - 26/10/2011:

IOF fired at Palestinian workers collecting scraps of construction materials in the northern Gaza Strip. 

 Sunday, 23 October 2011

At approximately 17:30, Israeli soldiers stationed on observation towers at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the northern Gaza Strip opened fire at a number of Palestinian workers who were collecting scraps of construction materials from the industrial zone to the southwest of the crossing. The workers were forced to flee from the area and no casualties were reported.

Monday, 24 October 2011



At approximately 10:45, Israeli soldiers stationed on observation towers at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the northern Gaza Strip opened fire at a number of Palestinian workers who were collecting scraps of construction materials from the industrial zone to the southwest of the crossing. The workers were forced to flee from the area and no casualties were reported.
  

Palestinian shepherd wounded in IOF shooting

[ 27/10/2011 - 07:12 PM ]

RAFAH, (PIC)-- A Palestinian shepherd was wounded on Thursday evening when Israeli occupation forces (IOF) fired at him east of Rafah south of the Gaza Strip. Local and medical sources told the PIC that the 32-year-old shepherd was grazing his sheep when the IOF troops fired at him wounding him in his hand and foot. They said that the shepherd, Mustafa Ermaylat, was taken to hospital in Rafah where his condition was described as moderate. Medics: Palestinian injured east of Rafah Published yesterday (updated) 27/10/2011 22:27 An Israeli tank drives near the border between the northern Gaza Strip and Israel near Kibbutz Mefalsim (MaanImages/Moti Milrod, File) GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- A medical official said a Palestinian man sustained injuries Thursday east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, while Israel's army denied involvement. Medical spokesman in Gaza Adham Abu Salmiya said a 32-year-old identified only as MA suffered an injury to his left hand after Israeli forces opened fire. He was taken to Abu Yousef An-Najjar hospital and then to the European hospital. An army spokeswoman said the military was not aware of the incident. Earlier, Israeli warplanes launched four airstrikes in central and southern Gaza, witnesses and the army said. No injuries were reported. Locals told Ma'an that Israeli fighter jets shelled three open areas and a site used by Hamas' armed wing the al-Qassam Brigades in Khan Younis in the south and Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The Israeli army said its forces targeted "three terror activity sites" in central Gaza and a weapons storage facility in the southern Gaza Strip. "Direct hits were confirmed," the military said in a statement. The army said the strikes were in response to a grad rocket which landed near the city of Ashdod in southern Israel on Wednesday. A spokeswoman said Wednesday the rocket had caused no injury or damage. The airstrikes were the first aerial attack on Gaza since Oct. 1, when Israeli fighter jets struck northern Gaza seriously injuring one man and wounding two others.

IOF artillery blasts southern Gaza

[ 25/10/2011 - 09:37 AM ]

RAFAH, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation forces (IOF) opened artillery fire at southern Gaza Strip at a late hour on Monday night targeting the vicinity of the Gaza international airport to the east of Rafah city, local sources said. They said that IOF army tanks took part in the shelling and fired two projectiles at agricultural land near the airport, adding that no casualties or damages were reported. IOF soldiers routinely raid the eastern areas of the Strip and fire at random hampering farmers from tending to their agricultural land.

Israeli tanks patrol olive farmers in Gaza

23 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Olive farmers and volunteers were picking olives on 23 October 2011 when they were circled by two Apache helicopters and were faced by four tanks at certain points in the day. This video shows one of the tanks.

There is no east: Olive harvest in Gaza

15 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Gaza doesn’t have very much farmland left.  The expanding no go zone imposed by Israeli bullets and bulldozers constantly erode the amount of land left for Palestinians to farm in Gaza.  Mohamed Ashure Shimbari lives on the edge of the no-go zone.  If you look east from his land you see the no go zone, what Israel euphemistically refers to as “the buffer zone.”  Little grows there.  Israeli bulldozers regularly come to kill anything which has managed to find a life there.  You can see the destroyed well which once provided water for the orchards that used to cover the no-go zone.  Now, there is no water, and no life, only a zone of death. Israel claims that the buffer zone is “only” 300 meters wide, but Mohamed’s land is about 800 meters from the border, and still he is afraid. The Israelis often shoot into this area, especially at night. The olive harvest has begun in Gaza.  The Beit Hanoun Local Initiative and the International Solidarity Movement went to Mohamed’s land to help him harvest his olives today.  The trees are pregnant with fruit, green and black olives line the branches.  Mohamed’s family depends on these olives to live. We join Mohamed and his sons in the morning, the weather is beautiful and the trees are picturesque.  We spread plastic under the trees and begin to pick.  Thankfully, it is quiet.  The Israeli’s are not shooting today.  We work quickly, stripping the branches of olives, climbing up on ladders or into the branches of the trees to get at the higher olives.  Unreachable olives are smacked with a stick to knock them off the tree.  Any olives that fail to fall onto the plastic sheeting are carefully picked up; these olives are too precious to waste.  The olives are transferred into bushel sacks.  Tomorrow, they will be processed, either cured for eating or crushed for oil. As the sun climbs higher into the sky and the work becomes hotter we break for tea.  We decide to walk over and visit Mohamed’s neighbors, a Bedouin family.  We meet their young son Abed who has just come home from school.  He walks five kilometers to school every morning, and he walks home at night, he does this with his sister and his brother.  Abed is 10 years old.  He is a shy kid; he wants to be a dentist when he grows up.  He doesn’t seem to think that peace will ever come to his family, that they will ever live a life without worrying about the shooting from the Israeli’s at night.  He lives a life of three directions, north, south, and west. There is no east really, you can’t walk that way, you would be killed.  His family is forced to truck water from Beit Hanoun, the well that they used to depend on for water has been destroyed by the Israeli’s.  His mother comes out; she tells us that she prays for peace, for a life with water and without fear of the bullets.
We return to work the olives.  Tree by tree, up and down the rows, we move gathering olives.  Mohamed tells us about his life.  When the Israeli’s invade Gaza his home is one of the first places they came to.  Not because they are afraid that he has guns, but because they want to use his house.  He and his family are locked in one room while the soldiers use his house as a base for their attacks on Beit Hanoun.  During Cast Lead his family was locked in the room for 23 days while the IDF carried out their slaughter on Gaza. Throughout the world, the olive is a symbol of peace, but in Palestine it is also a symbol of people’s ties to the land.  The no-go zone east of Beit Hanoun is constantly expanding. Every year or two the Israeli bulldozers come and destroy even more land.  Mohamed’s house is now on the edge of the no-go zone.  Maybe next year his house will be destroyed, the olive trees which we are picking from will be uprooted. Yet maybe his house will be spared, after all, if it is destroyed where will the soldiers sleep when they invade Gaza?

Updated on October 16, 2011

PCHR weekly report 6/10 - 12/10/2011: attacks against farmers, 2 incursions

extracts from PCHR weekly report 6/10 - 12/10/2011:

A Palestinian civilian died of wounds he had sustained in the Gaza Strip in 2003. 

IOF have continued to fire at Palestinian fishermen and farmers in the Gaza Strip.

 In the Gaza Strip, IOF conducted a limited incursion into al-Qarara village, northeast of Khan Yunis, during which they leveled areas of Palestinian agricultural land.

Thursday, 06 October 2011 


At approximately 07:00, IOF moved nearly 300 meters into Bourat Abu Samra area in the north of the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. They leveled areas of Palestinian land which they had already razed, amidst sporadic shooting. At approximately 08:00, they moved eastwards and stationed opposite to the Bedouin Village. They also leveled areas of land there. At approximately 15:00, IOF moved back to the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Saturday, 08 October 2011


At approximately 05:30, IOF stationed on observation towers at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel to the north of Beit Lahia town opened fire at Palestinian farmers who were on their farms. The farmers were forced to flee from the area and no casualties were reported. 

At approximately 07:00, IOF positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at Palestinian farmers who were on their farms in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. The farmers were forced to flee from the area and no casualties were reported.  

At approximately 16:00, IOF positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at Palestinian farmers in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. The farmers were forced to flee from the area and no casualties were reported. 

Sunday, 09 October 2011


 

At approximately 07:00, IOF positioned on observation towers at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at Palestinian farmers who where on their farms in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. The farmers were forced to flee from the area and no casualties were reported.

At approximately 16:30, IOF positioned on observation towers at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at Palestinian farmers who where on their farms in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. The farmers were forced to flee from the area and no casualties were reported.

Monday, 03 October 2011

 
At approximately 08:35, IOF positioned on observation towers at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at Palestinian farmers who where on their farms in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. The farmers were forced to flee from the area and no casualties were reported.

At approximately 18:00, IOF moved nearly 300 meters into the east of al-Qarara village, northeast of Khan Yunis. They leveled areas of Palestinian agricultural land, which they had already razed. 

Virtual Field Visit: Israel's Enforcement of the Buffer Zone in the Gaza Strip

This video combines Al-Haq's visual documentation with satellite imagery to create virtual tours of the human rights violations commited in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Each tour is designed to recreate the experience of making a field visit, providing everyone with the opportunity to see the on-the-ground reality of the occupation.

This tour shows how Israeli occupying forces often use live ammunition to enforce the buffer zone in the Gaza Strip, both on land and at sea. Since the beginning of 2010, stone-collectors have been increasingly under attack by Israeli soldiers. In 2009, Al-Haq documented seven cases of rubble collectors injured by live ammunition in the vicinity of the buffer zone, whereas this number was 10 times higher during 2010, when 68 rubble collectors, of whom 15 children, were shot. Fishermen are also targeted on a daily basis with many incidents occurring outside the buffer zone. In some cases, the Israeli occupying forces fire rockets and shoot bullets at the Palestinian boats at sea or on the shore in order to destroy them, thus preventing the fishermen from working.

- View an interactive version of this Virtual Field Visit.
http://alhaq.mits.ps/index.php/virtual-field-visits/buffer-zone

- Read Al-Haq's legal analysis of the Israel Enforcement of the Buffer Zone
http://www.alhaq.org/etemplate.php?id=598

PCHR weekly report 29/9 - 5/10/2011: 1 child, 2 fighters off duty injured, house damaged, 1 incursion

extracts from PCHR weekly report 29/9 - 5/10/2011:

3 Palestinians, including a child, were wounded by IOF in the Gaza Strip.

IOF launched a number of air strikes against civilian facilities and training sites in the Gaza Strip.

Two houses and a warehouse of the Palestinian Telecommunications Company were damaged.

In the Gaza Strip, IOF conducted a limited incursion into al-Qarara village, northeast of Khan Yunis, during which they leveled areas of Palestinian agricultural land.

Saturday, 01 October 2011

 
t approximately 19:00, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a number of Palestinians who were in the garden of a house belonging to ‘Ata ‘Abdul ‘Aati al-Za’anin in al-Wadi Street in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. As a result, two Palestinians who were in a visit to the owner’s son were wounded:

1- Yousef Rafiq Shabat, 28, seriously wounded by shrapnel throughout the body; and

2- ‘Abdullah Akram Abu Harbid, 22, wounded by shrapnel throughout the body. 

Sa’diya Sa’id Nasser, 65, who was in the house, also sustained bruises to the head. Additionally, the house was damaged. It should be noted that the two wounded persons are members of the ‘Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas), but they were in an ordinary visit when they were attacked. The Israeli military claimed that it targeted a number of Palestinians who intended to launch home-made rockets into Israeli towns.

Monday, 03 October 2011


Αt approximately 08:10, IOF positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east of Gaza Valley village fired at number of Palestinian workers who were collecting iron, aluminum and plastics from a landfill in the northeast of the village. One of the workers, Mohammed Salman al-Swarka, 17, was wounded by a bullet to the left thigh. 

 Tuesday, 04 October 2011


At approximately 06:15, IOF moved nearly 300 meters into al-Qarara village, northeast of Khan Yunis. They leveled areas of Palestinian agricultural land in al-Wad area. At approximately 10:30, Israeli helicopter gunships opened fire at the area, but no casualties were reported. IOF moved back to the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel at approximately 15:00.

Gaza: Planting in something dead

5 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza 

Around Gaza is a 300 meter “buffer zone,” a no go zone, a land of death.  Gaza is not just a prison, it is a shrinking prison.  Every time that Israel expands this zone, Gaza gets a little smaller.  Every Tuesday, the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative and the International Solidarity Movement march into the buffer zone to challenge the occupation and the theft of Palestinian land.  Today, we also marched in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners who are on hunger strike in the jails of the occupation.
What could be more logical than one group of prisoners marching in support of another group of prisoners?
We gathered near the Agricultural College of Beit Hanoun at 11 a.m.  We loaded olive trees, shovels, and big jugs of water onto the van.  There was no space in the van, so all of the goods rode on top of the van.  We set off down the road toward the buffer zone, slowly so that nothing would fall off the van as we drove down the rutted road.  We reached the buffer zone, stopped the van, and began to unload the olive trees and everything necessary to plant them.  These olive trees would join the others that we planted last week.  We plan on slowly returning the lands of the buffer zone to what they were before the Israeli’s declared the area a zone of death, we plan on making olive groves flourish in the buffer zone.  Our struggle is not just to return life to the buffer zone, but to make a regular life possible in the areas close to the buffer zone.
The buffer zone is now a little greener than yesterday after planting 20 trees in the buffer zone.  The death that haunts this area is a result of the occupation and its relentless destroying bulldozers.  The same bulldozers that crushed Rachel Corrie to death in Rafah in 2003.
Sabur Zaaneen from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative spoke.  He said that we must “affirm our right to land and cultivate and strengthen the resilience of farmers and their return to work the land despite all the terrorist practices of the Israeli occupation.”
“[We] need for a mass movement to support the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.”