Adam

Adam Al-Ghawi, 4, after being hit with a stone thrown by a settler occupying his home

From the ISM.

slimy, smarmy and safe

I have been neglecting this topic for a while, but it is always there. There are many bloggers and people far more committed than I, and maybe, one day, their efforts will amount to something. In the meantime, there is this picture from the Australian blog, Through Australian Eyes.


and the accompanying text

Shehada Street, Hebron, once a thriving shopping destination, is now a place of fear. Because of its proximity to the ultra-orthodox Jewish settler colonies in Tel Rumeida it is a place to be avoided by the indigenous population, especially women and children. Physical violence and intimidation by Zionist thugs, with the passive encouragement of Israeli soldiers and police, is an everyday occurrence, part of a strategy to force Palestinians to abandon their homes. Read more.

That's wine being thrown in that picture. In the meantime, from the same blog (the writer is a strong Christian, I think, though also anarchist, might cancel each other out?) our slimy, smarmy prime minister has been meeting another man without a conscience:

Ehud Olmert and Kevin Rudd.
I guess the day will come when they'll both have to return their souls to the devil for whatever deal they made with him. Or, to be not so poetic, wake up with some form of compassion. Maybe some people just aren't born with it. This article from Australians for Palestine deals with Olmert's visit, in addition to the article in Through Australian Eyes. This link on the Australians for Palestine homepage, Action against Israeli War Criminals, provides you with address and media outlets where you can voice your dissent if you wish. In addition, various protests have been organised.

mud bricks mixed with straw and resilience

Photo by Eva Bartlett
Which century do we live in? Why is it that one of the most advanced nations in the world, in terms of education, health, gross national profit, military, the arts and a slew of other ways in which we measure our life is given the support to make sure that another group of people live in third world conditions? This is a deliberate policy. This poverty and lack of quality of life is not due to natural disaster or the misfortune of being born in an area devoid of fertile ground and fishing seas.

Israel is still not allowing concrete into Gaza. As Israel bombed and shelled Gaza during its war on the same, houses and infrastructure, including schools, universities, mosques, United Nations compounds, have been destroyed. The international community (people from everywhere) and the governments of countries pledged aid, delivered aid, but what is the good if the aid cannot be let in?

Well, the Palestinians are very resilient, and they are building their houses from water and mud. With our energy resources rapidly dwindling, maybe the last laugh will ultimately rest with them as they retain the skills needed to live in a world without modern conveniences. I really don't think we should be putting it to the test, though.

The story is here, from In Gaza. The picture is lifted from the blog, too, and there are many more wonderful pictures.

Jihad el-Shaar is pleased with his mud-brick house in the Moraj district of Gaza. The 80-square metre home is a basic one-storey, two-bedroom design, with a small kitchen, bathroom and sitting room, made mostly with mud and straw.

“My wife and our four daughters and I were living with family, but it was overcrowded, impossible. We knew we had to build a home of our own,” Shaar said. “We waited over two years for cement but because of the siege there is none available. What could we do, wait forever?”

So he decided to do it with mud.


Building earthen structures like bread ovens and small animal pens is a technique many Palestinians are familiar with, but extending the method to houses isn’t a notion that has taken hold in Gaza.

Jihad el-Shaar got the idea from his travels in Asia and the Middle East. “I travelled in Bangladesh, India, Yemen, Turkey…they all use some similar technique of building houses from earth. All you need is clay, sand and some straw.” These he mixed with water, and poured into brick moulds that were left in the sun to dry for three days. Good enough to build a fine house with.

While some Gaza residents speak of shame at the way life has ‘gone backwards’ with the siege – using cooking oil in cars, wood fires for cooking, and horse and donkey carts for transportation – Shaar is proud of his clay home.

“In the winter it is warm, and in the summer it will be cool. There’s no problem with leaking, and this type of house will last a lifetime,” he says. “And it was cheap to build. A house this size made of cement would cost around 16,000 dollars at least. This one, because it was made with simple, local materials cost just 3,000 dollars.”

Prior to Israel’s crippling siege on Gaza cement would have cost 20 shekels (about five dollars) a bag. Now, with cement among the many banned items, what does make it into Gaza through tunnels under the Egypt border costs ten times as much.Read more.

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I keep posting the pictures of these non-violent protests in the West Bank. They are against the apartheid wall, and the settlements which keep encroaching on Palestinian land. They're very inventive and deserve far more attention. Even if the wider world may not know very much about this situation, I think it should pique the curiosity as to why so many Israelis and internationals join Palestinians in protest.

A group of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals build a shack on the lands of the Jabari family in protest of the illegal building of settlements, next to a shack that was put by the settlers a few weeks ago, close to the settlement of Kyriat Arba, in Hebron, on 8.05.2009. The settlers tried to destroy the shack and put it on fire but they did not manage. They also repeatedly attacked and provoked the group.The Israeli soldiers and police arrived at the scene and violently pushed the group away while the settlers were allowed to stay. 8 Israelis, 2 Palestinians were detained. Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org

A Palestinian throws away a torch that was sent by some settlers who attempted to set h[sic] [fire to] the protest Palestinian shack on fire during an action against the settlements in Hebron on 8.05.2009...The settlers tried to destroy the shack and put it on fire but they did not manage... Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org

An Israeli activist argues with an Israeli settler during an action against the settlements in Hebron on 8.05.2009... Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org

I am eight months pregnant

Being pregnant, I couldn’t run fast. After about one hundred meters, the settlers caught me. One of them hit me in my right arm and left leg with his stick. The other settler threw a stone at me, which hit me in the left leg. Then one of them pushed me, and I fell onto some thorns. My arm and leg hurt a lot. When I fell, the two settlers left me and ran toward the farmers and other shepherds. I remained there, crying. I was in terrible pain.

After a few minutes, Amneh and Khadrah ran over to me and helped me get up. They lifted me up with the help of the children and laid me on the donkey that we had brought with us, and returned me to the village. I was in such great pain that I thought my arm has been broken. I was still crying when we reached the village. An Israeli ambulance came and the medical team gave me first-aid. Then the Israeli police and two army jeeps of the Civil Administration arrived. I told them what happened. Around 11:00 A.M., a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance came and took me to ‘Aliyah Government Hospital, in Hebron.

At the hospital, they examined me and X-rayed me. They found that my arm was not broken. I was very lucky, and the fetus was not harmed. I remained in the hospital for two or three hours, and then went home. My arm swelled up and I am still in pain, a week after the incident.
A Palestinian policeman at the hospital took my complaint. I did not go to the Israeli police because I don’t feel well enough, and because I need somebody to accompany me to Kiryat Arba to do that.(Continue reading)

water tanks

Read the story here, and if you want to learn more about the restrictions Palestinians face when trying to access and store water, read here

Also, the latest from Tales to Tell. The writer was assisting medics during the war on Gaza. She is talking about the lives of some of the people she worked with and knows.

We have very much enjoyed our course and our teachers, who have found time for us in amongst their long hours and low pay (if any, many medics are volunteers) and Red Crescent job cuts (it hardly seems the time, does it.) Two out of three of our teachers have been in Israeli prison, but then what Palestinian man hasn’t. One told us of coming back via Egypt, having gone outside with his wife to get medical treatment for his small son who has cerebral palsy, and being arrested as he entered Gaza, back when the border was more directly controlled by Israel and not ostensibly by Egypt.

He then spent 3 years in prison, a lot of it sharing a small room with ten people; their sentences 25 years, 99 years. While he was in there, his father died, and his fourth child was born.

“What were you in prison for?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “I think it was because we picked up a dead fighter in the ambulance, and I locked his gun temporarily in my office because the only other option was to leave it lying where we found him, which would have been irresponsible. Somehow they turned that into the accusation that I was selling weapons.”

Another teacher, when he was a teenager, was doing very well in high school and planned to study medicine in Turkey, but then was picked up for throwing stones at soldiers (in David-and-Goliath tradition, except for stones thrown by lads other than David usually being completely ineffective, since soldiers wear body armour). He was imprisoned as punishment, and banned from leaving Gaza. So he never did become a doctor.

I went to visit the Jordanian Field Hospital yesterday, in my quest to find some help for two children C met during the war, who need kidney transplants. Everything was set up for them to travel to France, back in January, but Egypt wouldn’t let them out. Kidney transplants can’t be done in Gaza, and infuriatingly, neither can tissue typing, from what I’ve found out so far. That’s how you find out who your donors can be. Even if we get permission for the kids and their donors to go out for surgery, how do they know who to take with them to be the donors, without knowing who is medically compatible? Anyway, further communication with the Jordanian folks might allow us to make some progress. Read more.