by Nathan Stuckey
11 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Updated on January 13, 2012
11 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
The No Go Zone - Click here for more images
Every Tuesday we gather in front of the
Beit Hanoun Agricultural College, members of the Beit Hanoun Local
Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement and other activists
from all over Gaza. We gather, and we march into the no go zone.
Sometimes we are shot at, sometimes there is no response. We accept
both of these. We cannot control when the Israeli’s will shoot at us,
at unarmed civilian demonstrators on their own land. We are not
discouraged by the appearance that nothing changes, you never know when
change will happen, but you can be sure that if you do nothing, nothing
will change. So every Tuesday, we march into the no go zone, the rest
of the week, everyone struggles against the occupation in their own
way. Teachers teach, farmers farm, fisherman fish, but under occupation
all of these things can become revolutionary things, life itself can
become a revolutionary act.
The megaphone announces the start of the
demonstration; Bella Ciao is our marching song. We set off down the
road into the no go zone. There about thirty of us, men, women and
children, somehow, it feels like more this week. We do not take the
usual path into the no go zone, once inside the no zone we turn to the
left. We walk toward the road that leads to Erez, one of the few gates
into and out of the prison that is Gaza, few Gazans are permitted to use
it, it is mostly for NGO workers. We stop about twenty meters from it;
we plant a flag in the ground. This flag joins the others we have
planted in the no go zone, unlike wheat which requires months to go grow
and is inevitably destroyed by the periodic assaults of Israeli
bulldozers in the no go zone flags can be planted fully grown.
Eventually Israeli bulldozers will come and grind them beneath their
wheels and we will have to plant new flags to replace them, but until
then you can see our flags wave over the no zone. The wall that
surrounds Gaza is studded with Israeli flags, in case anyone should
forget who it is that imprisons Gaza.
We planted our flag, then, Sabur Zaaneen
from the Local Initiative spoke, he denounced “encounters with the
leaders of the occupation and negotiations with the occupation, instead
we must work toward the prosecution of the leaders of the occupation in
international forums.” He also said that “resistance to the occupation
must continue, it will continue until the end of the occupation, the
resistance must unite to confront the occupation.” As we walked back to
Beit Hanoun it was impossible not to admire our flags floating in the
wind, three of them lining the no go zone, and the wheat that we had
planted last month, growing. Israel can destroy, but things will always
grow again. Oppression inevitably breeds resistance, a resistance that
will continue to grow until the oppression is removed.
