Comrade Andrew with some friends
by Natalie Abou Shakra
Friday, April 3, 2009
The issue with the fishermen in Gaza not being able to cross the 3 mile limit imposed by Apartheid Israel has even restricted the diet that citizens in the Strip consume such that it consists of "50 percent less than average daily protein intake across the Arab world"... after Oslo, was 20 miles, which got down to around 12, then during the siege to 6, and now to 3...
Today a demonstration was organized starting from the Salateen roundabout in Beit Lahya to the Sudaniyya area, where the Beit Lahya port is... which is around half a kilometre's walk... around a 70 individuals were present, including local and international activists..
We never stop singing
It was around 11a.m. when we left the roundabout... we passed tents where familes whose homes were demolished were staying in... eyes look out, smiling faces, children curious...we walked with difficulty on sand for around 200 metres... and we arrived to an empty port, a deserted area... we arrived on the shore, and there were no sailors to greet us, no boats to break the inactivity, just the sound of waves... beautiful, but interrupted by the gunboats ahead...
The tents
The Sudaniyya area is also called the Wa'ha area... it is where Huda Ghalyeh's family was slaughtered during 2006, whilst Lebanon was being bombed (i wrote about her here.) I looked at the place... so forlorn, empty... deserted... occupation! the control of every aspect of your life, not by you!... ahead, i could see the Israeli factories, with smoke coming out of them... how convenient... they also intentionally place polluting factories near the Palestinians...
Moving from Salateen roundabout
We remained on the shore for around two hours... and there were three gunboats ahead passing by... moving around... i felt observed...as if their gazes bore into my body... piercing it with hatred...there were fishermen amongst us, and i passed by two who were elderly men... "look at the stories his face tells", told me a comrade... i asked the old fishermen if i could take a photo of him... he said no... i asked if it was only for me... he said yes... (so, excuse me for not placing it)... i asked him what he thought about the demonstration... he said it will not prevent them from firing at him and killing him tomorrow...he asked me what i thought about the demonstration... i said it is written in notebooks and that a "journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"... he smiled, but did not seem convinced... as i stood in front of his humble self... a young man came forward to speak to me after i had previously inquired about the drinking water, and usable water resources gaza relied on... the old man eyed Mohammad as he spoke to me... vibrant, full of hopes, dreams, full of wishes... defying occupation, "forbidden dreams"... in that moment, i saw that old man as Mohammad... striked many times by frustration and by the death that the Israeli Apartheid system has inflicted upon his years of living... i look to the right... Huda Ghalyeh's cyring face appears... I look to the sea, the gunboats sailing illegally... I look to my left, houses demolished to the sand, little fishermen chambers deserted... the sky? the sky existed... without F16s this time, or Apaches, or Surveillance planes buzzing... the sea was not blue... it was grey...
Stop Israeli Piracy
I asked a comrade, also a dear friend, once, "should we speak about the cumulative death and the humanitarian(do not confuse this with "humanitarian activist" which I am not!!) aspect?", i told him i disliked "humanitarian" as a category because it creates "pity", and blurs the just-ness and morality of the cause... again, this cause is political before anything else, with a humanitarian crisis resulting (i wrote about my position here in the last paragraph... he said, "our stories are not told to the world, let us convey them at each oppurtunity... these need to be written.."
They are being written... the suffering must be noted down, which is a result to the colonization, occupation, repression of the Zionist entity and the Apartheid system it imposes... every tear, ever drop of blood, every crush to a dream... are your pens still noting down?
Boycott APARTHEID Israel
Natalie
"Alquds Lana" ( Jerusualem is ours)
