For This I Have No Words

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read Ali Abunimah on the Gaza strikes

UN rep Expelled for saying: Israel in Gaza=criminal

Decmocracy Now- The United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay has accused Israel of “unprecedented and deeply regrettable” treatment of UN human rights investigator Richard Falk. Falk was deported from Israel Monday after being detained at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport for twenty hours. Falk’s detention and expulsion came days after he condemned Israel’s blockade of Gaza as a “flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law” and “Crime Against Humanity.”

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Egyptian Shame

AP- Egyptian police have confiscated whole herds of sheep and cattle set to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip ahead of a major Islamic holiday through the tunnels running underneath border, a security official said Saturday.

The official said that 17 sheep were confiscated on Saturday just as smugglers began to introduce them into the tunnel in an area just north of the divided border city of Rafah.

For Gazans, one abundant resource: ingenuity

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Coping with lengthy power cuts has become one of the biggest challenges for 1.4 million Gaza residents as Israel's tight blockade of the territory enters its fourth week.

The closure, imposed Nov. 5 to force Gaza's Hamas rulers to halt rocket fire on Israeli border communities, comes after 19 months of sharply restricted access to the territory. The isolation has taken its toll, causing rolling blackouts and shortages of fuel and cooking gas.

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Israel sensors the Press

Israel has continued to bar international journalists from the besieged Gaza Strip for at least a week in what media condemned on Monday as an unprecedented violation of press freedom.

Steve Gutkin, the AP bureau chief in Jerusalem and the head of the Foreign Press Association told Ma'an that he knows of no foreign journalist that has been allowed into Gaza in the last week.

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Leaked Red Cross Report: Chronic malnutrition in Gaza

"People are selling assets, slashing the quality and quantity of meals, cutting back on clothing and children's education, scavenging for discarded materials – and even grass for animal fodder – that they can sell and are depending on dwindling loans and handouts from slightly better-off relatives."

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Words of Fiction?

A young Palestinian fisherman, Mohammed Ayyash, and Sheikh Kifah, a man highly esteemed in his community- a mediator of conflicts- first met in the Friday fish market near the makeshift port of Gaza City in March of 2007. The atmosphere had been tense as the two opposing political factions Fateh and Hamas had been in conflict challenging each other’s authority to govern a small strip of land that since 1948 was labeled the “Gaza Strip.” Sheikh Kifah had been wandering among the various stalls of the market when fighting broke out and the two men- Mohammed daily sold his catch in the market- found themselves fleeing in the same direction. They took cover in a small alley, hiding behind the shell of an old bullet hole riddled home, as sounds of gunfire filled the air, the two men had exchanged some words. They met again three and a half months later when the young fisherman sought out the sheikh in Zuwaida, a village bordering Mohammed’s hometown Deer Al-Balach.

Sheikh Kifah: Ahlan wa sahlan Mohammed, please come in.

[The two men proceed by inquiring about the wellbeing of each other’s families- since their last encounter heavy internal fighting in Gaza had lead to Hamas’ complete control of the Gaza Strip and the exile of most Fateh leadership. Mohammed then takes the lead in the conversation.]

Mohammed: Sheikh Kifah I should have listened to you when we first met… between you and me I am starting to have my doubts if Hamas is really the answer in Gaza.

Sheikh Kifah: These days are difficult for us all…

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Gaza's Tunnel Industry: Creating New Divisions

Forgive me, I have been away busy working on a film. I hope this is the first of many entries to come and that you have not given up on me just yet. Here an article of mine I forgot to post from Aljazeera.net:


Fayez Shweikh, one of Gaza's up-and-coming businessmen, shakes his head as he considers his mixed fortunes.

In the past year, he had significantly increased his household income by investing in a black-market, "tunnel" economy, which relied on smuggled goods siphoned through underground passages between Egypt and Gaza.

Israel has always maintained that the tunnels were used to smuggle arms and explosives, but Shweikh says food, gasoline, and household treats – chocolate, in particular - formed the basis of his trade.

"I purchase goods from the chocolate company directly in Egypt; from such companies as Galaxy, from Ferrero or the Kinder Company. I buy, I transfer money and they send me the goods, by way of normal businessmen … tunnel businessmen."

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Unknown Attacks on Hamas in Gaza City

An attack on a popular Hamas hangout in Gaza City was the first of its kind since Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip in June of 2007. Generally Hamas has provided very effective security for Gazan citizens since rather violently taking over Fatah security headquarters just over one year ago. Retalliation was expected and yet no confirmation yet exists who actually was behind the attacks, Fatah?, Israel, a disgruntled Gazan clan? We cannot yet jump to conclusions. Hamas responded by closing dozens of Fatah affiliated organizations.

This report from Palestinian Center for Human Rights:

PCHR strongly condemns the heinous crime perpetrated by unknown elements yesterday in Gaza that resulted in killing 6 people, including a 4-year old girl, and injuring 27 others. The crime was perpetrated by a directed explosive device in a beach-front café crowded with Hamas members and supporters. At the same time, PCHR strongly condemns the immediate reaction of the Government in Gaza and its security forces against supporters and institutions of the rival Fatah party, as if Fatah was behind the crime. This reaction included arresting dozens of Fatah activists as well as raiding and closing tens of civil society organizations, benevolent societies, and sports clubs affiliated with Fatah.

The Center’s preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 20:25 on Friday, 25 July, an explosive device went off in El-Hilal Café on the Gaza City beach. It is a café usually frequented by Hamas activists and supporters. The explosion killed 6 people vacationing on the beach; all of them from Gaza City. One of the killed was a 4-year old child; and the other 5 were Hamas members. In addition, 27 people sustained injuries. Police sources informed PCHR that the explosive device was directed and was placed inside the café; and that it contained metallic shrapnel 10 – 12 millimeters in length.

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What is Cease-Fire?

At the end of my visit they started asking me to take pictures for their brothers, uncles, sons and fathers in Israeli prisons for over four months… a picture of a new born not yet seen by the imprisoned father, one father’s favorite girl and a picture of the detainees' pictures hanging on the wall to let the prisoners know they are missed, they are celebrated.

On March 19th Israel rounded up Assad Salach and his sons Fahmi and Salach and Assad’s brother Sa’id and his son Ghassan along with over 300 men ages 16 and above along its northern border with the Gaza Strip. It is not the first time that Israel arrests the male members of the Salach family.

These days when homemade Qassam rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip they are usually launched from within the cities, not these border areas. Thus, it makes little sense for these men to be arrested solely for security purposes. Rather, it seems to be a method of pushing the families inhabiting the border areas into the cities and deserting their only source of income, their land. Israel is successfully destroying the potential of the fruit basket of the densely populated Strip. The once luscious green land is now reduced to an arid no-man’s-land, easily overseeable by Israel’s security towers and drones overlooking it all. But more importantly the economic crisis caused by this ongoing intentional de-development of Gaza’s economy is destroying the society’s makeup.

The Salach’s main family home was destroyed in 2001. On March 25th eight Israeli bulldozers crossed the nearby border and flattened the fields. Shortly thereafter they came back and flattened the home with some family members still inside. That day the Abu Assad, the Salach family grandfather had a stroke, he and his wife, Om Assad were taken to the hospital. By the end of the day Om Assad had lost her husband, her home and the trees that had adorned the family’s fields. She moved half a kilometer down the road to her other son’s home. Today, Israel has taken him as well.

Assad and Sa’id used to collect the tank shells, things of ugliness, which Israel fired on them as they tended to their goats and fields. They would paint them and fill them with flowers and turned them into vases, things of beauty. “The day they started doing that the Israelis almost completely stopped firing at us,” Assad’s wife told me. As soon as the media spread pictures of their act- turning death into life, ugliness into beauty- the shells stopped falling. When the men were detained so were the vases, Israel did not want such a story to continue getting out.

Despite a cease-fire five of the Salach family members remain imprisoned without even a court case, their fields still lie in ruin as the Israeli army fires at them when they try and approach it, their old home remains demolished while the memories of the past continue to haunt them daily. But today, the case-fire allows them to host a guest.