PALESTINIAN FISHERS ARE HIT HARD BY THE ISRAELI BLOCKADE ON GAZA. CREDIT: EMAD BADWAN/IPS.
First Published at IPS – By Eva Bartlett
Tag Archives: Eva Bartlett
Israel never stopped pirating in Palestinian waters
Published time: April 24, 2013 10:12
Palestinian fishermen pass each other on their traditional fishing boats in the Mediterranean Sea during an afternoon catch outside Gaza City (Reuters)
Though you wouldn't know it from the lack of media coverage, for decades Israel has been committing acts of piracy in Palestinian waters: Attacking, kidnapping and stealing from Palestinian fishers, sometimes just a mile off the Gaza Strip's coast.
The Siege Is Rubbish
By Eva Bartlett
The United Nations steps in to save Gaza from collapsing under the weight of its rubbish. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.
- “For the past five years we’ve collected garbage by traditional means: donkey and cart,” says Abdel Rahem Abulkumboz, director of health and environment at the Municipality of Gaza. The municipality of Gaza alone produces 700 tons of waste daily, Kumboz says. More than half of this waste is collected daily by 250 donkey carts.
“It’s a means of doing the job, but not an optimal one,” says Kumboz.
Among the growing problems facing waste management throughout the Gaza Strip, even this simple solution nearly came to an end this month.
“Trade not aid” focus of new attempt to break Gaza blockade
27 March 2013
Israel continues to violate a ceasefire agreement signed in November which expanded the fishing limit off Gaza’s shores.
GAZA CITY (IPS) – “An ark is literally a large floating vessel designed to keep its passengers and cargo safe,” according to the group preparing Gaza’s Ark. But its is “a vessel that embodies hope that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip can soon live in peace without the threat of the Israeli blockade.”
Now Gaza’s Ark Prepares to Dare Israel
By Eva Bartlett
Palestinian fishers are hit hard by the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.
GAZA CITY, Mar 27 2013 (IPS) – “An ark is literally a large floating vessel designed to keep its passengers and cargo safe,” say the group preparing ‘Gaza’s Ark’. But their ark, they say, is “a vessel that embodies hope that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip can soon live in peace without the threat of the Israeli blockade.”
An initiative by Palestinians in Gaza and international solidarity activists, Gaza’s Ark entails “purchasing a run-down boat from a local fishing family,” says Michael Coleman, a member of Free Gaza Australia and on the Gaza’s Ark steering committee.
We Grow, They Bulldoze, We Re-Plant
Um Abed plants an olive tree in support of Palestinian farmers. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.
- Tawfiq Mandil, 45, stands amongst hundreds of Palestinian farmers, activists, and international supporters in the Gaza Strip’s eastern Zeitoun district, about half a kilometre from the border with Israel. They are renewing a call for the boycott of Israeli goods.
“The Israeli army destroyed my house and my five dunums of land (a dunum is 1,000 square metres) on the last day of the attacks in 2009, as well as 20 other homes,” he says.
With signs reading ‘Boycott Israeli Agricultural Products’ and ‘Support Palestinian Farmers’, Mandil and others protesting Israeli oppression of Palestinian farmers joined together Saturday to plant olive trees on Israeli-razed farmland and to implore international supporters to join the boycott of Israeli agricultural produce.
Gaza Economy Tailored to Fail
JABALIYA, Gaza, Sep 8 2012 (IPS) -By Eva Bartlett **(blog version longer than original published)
“Gaza’s economy is expected to grow modestly and people will likely still be worse off in 2015 compared to the mid-1990s,” reads a press release announcing the United Nations’ August 2012 report, ‘Gaza in 2020 – A Liveable Place?’
What was once Rizk Al-Madhoun’s clothing factory.
In the no-frills office of his stalled Jabaliya clothing factory, Rizik Al-Madhoun, 41, explains how his clothing factory began shutting down six years ago.
“We started in 1993 with seven sewing machines. By 2005 we had 250 machines and as many tailors,” he says. “In 2006, after Hamas was elected and Israel sealed the borders, we had to close down half of the factory. We stopped all production in 2007, when Israel tightened the siege.”
Madhoun’s is one of the 97 percent of industrial establishments in the Gaza Strip which by 2008 had stopped production as a result of the Israeli-led, internationally-complicit closure of Gaza’s borders that limited imports and virtually halted all exports. By December 2007, the UN had already reported that only one percent of Gaza’s 960 garment factories remained open.
