Green Survival Strategies and the Brownfield Consequences of Military Attacks

A meeting with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, an umbrella group for grassroots farmers’ organizations, and centers for women and children, gave us some insight into the survival strategies of Palestinians under siege. Many of these involve green strategies like water conservation, community gardens, eating local. [As much as I admire the ingenuity, and appreciate the green strategies, I certainly would prefer to see them adopted voluntarily and not under the duress of a siege.]

PARC includes 15 local organizations and hundreds of volunteers. It works on the rehabilitation of agricultural land, on microfinance, on water and environmental protection, and on capacity building and advocacy.

The need to rehabilitate agricultural land is pressing. Years of occupation and armed incursion have destroyed much of Gaza’s arable land. In the most recent invasion, the Israeli army almost completely destroyed the agricultural land east of Rafah. Not only were the irrigation pipelines destroyed, as happens everywhere the Israeli army invades with land forces, but tanks and bulldozers were used to plow up substantial swaths of land – destroying the soil, animal herds were slaughtered and wells were destroyed.

In addition, the Israeli settlements, which were evacuated and destroyed in 2005, plundered the agricultural land. The acquifers were drained and became saline. The soil was exhausted by intensive farming. Of the 60,000 dunams occupied by Israeli settlements only 20,000-25,000 are now cultivatable. These are farmed with 4,000 greenhouses, and use intensive agricultural techniques. This has increased the number of greenhouses in Gaza by about 1/3.

PARC’s larger rehabilitation programs were disrupted by the invasion, but it continues to rehabilitate house gardens – helping families add drip irrigation and compost to improve the productivity of the land around their homes. It encourages the purchase of locally grown products – giving some of the 80% of Gazans who are unemployed a source of income, and distributes excess production free to displaced families. PARC microfinance projects focus in part on food processing.

Of course, the blockade has prevented the importation of seeds. Farmers are now producing their own seeds.

Israeli policies have also affected the water supply. Gaza depends on rainfall and the run off from the heights of Hebron to provide water and fill its acquifers. Israel has built reservoirs to capture the run off from the heights of Hebron before it reaches Gazan acquifers. PARC has projects to capture and reuse gray water and to increase the collection of rainwater.

The War on Gaza Isn’t Over – The Fishermen

Gaza’s fishing fleet has hundreds of boats.. The blockade has whittled it down to hundreds, but most of those boats are beached or remain at anchor in the harbor. Maritime law dictates a minimum legal boundary of 12 miles offshore for every country. The Oslo agreements, signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, gave Gazan fishermen the right to fish up to 20 miles from shore. By 2000, Israel, as part of was attacking fishermen who ventured beyond a 6 mile limit. More recently, as part of the response to Hamas' election, Israel announced a 3 mile limit. This, in itself, is enough to crush the fishing industry. Much of the fishing industry depends on migrations of fish that are at least 6 miles offshore. So, for example, between March and May, the height of the fishing season, is when huge schools of sardines pass offshore. The sardine catch within the 3 mile limit is less than 30% of what the fishing fleet would take if it could fish within Gaza’s internationally recognized 12 mile limit. In addition, the high price of diesel fuel – which must come in through the tunnels – makes fishing marginally economic. Nonetheless, the fishermen have not entirely given up their trade. They must pay for their boats and feed their families. Each day, a few fishing boats go out to try to fish. In mid May there was a demonstration of 25 boats, demanding their right to fish.

Here is what they meet. Israel has six gunboats patrolling the 25 mile Gaza coastline. According to the both the head of the fishermen’s union and to a fishing boat captain, Hassan, with whom we talked at length, fishing boats are targeted with both water cannons and live ammunition. Since 2000 15 fishermen have been killed and more than 200 wounded. Since the Israeli attack on Gaza, attacks on unarmed fishermen have been stepped up.

Even more common is piracy. The Israelis abduct the fishermen and steal their boats. The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled these boat thefts illegal. In November, the court ordered the release of two impounded boats, and the release of imprisoned fishermen and internationals. Despite this, in March, 16 fishermen were abducted and boats were impounded. In one case, fishermen were abducted leaving a child alone in a boat at sea. In another, two children were abducted. Typically, the Israelis attack the boat, force the fishermen to strip and to jump into the sea to swim to the gunboat. Then they are handcuffed and blindfolded. If the boats are returned after being impounded, typically they are heavily damaged, with the engines removed. If the fishermen refuse to follow the orders of the Israeli Navy pirates, their boat may be rammed. In one case, the side of a trawler was ripped off. In the case of the Free Gaza movement boat Dignity, the boat was rammed and damaged so badly it had to be evacuated. Since 2005, six fishermen have been killed, 30 injured, and over 300 abducted.

The Israeli Navy is not attacking to enforce its arbitrarily declared 3 mile limit. All the actions described above have taken place inside the 3 mile limit. In one case, a fishermen was kidnapped only 50 meters from the beach. The Israelis also fire on the beach and at swimmers. We heard that someone was killed on the beach not long after we left.

For a good look at what life is like for fishermen in Gaza, see Fishing under Fire at www.vivagaza.org. It is almost incomprehensible to me that any nation’s army can be given orders to fire at unarmed civilians pursuing their normal occupations. It is even more incomprehensible that this is not news. I cannot find any mention in searches of the press of the pirate acts of the Israeli Navy.

What the UN people on the ground say about Gaza

A meeting with John Ging, who is the chief of operations for UNRWA in Gaza, was illuminating. He simply stepped outside the propaganda spawned by the history of failed diplomacy, and spoke directly from his own experience. His starting point: Palestinians have the same international right to protection as anyone else. The standard for Israelis and Palestinians should be the same. That’s a simple idea, and one that is hard to argue with. The only way to get around it is to argue that the entire population is engaged in hostilities towards Israel. This we know is not true. As Ging put it, “The people are not hostile, the conditions are. Hostile conditions are creating hostility.”

Neither, he said, can you argue that the Palestinians are defeated and can therefore be treated as a conquered people. People are not defeated until they give up. Palestinians have not given up, they have not abjured their international rights, nor have international bodies said they should. (UN resolutions all refer to the 1967 borders and preserve the right of return.).

Ging talked about how counterproductive many US and EU policy measures have been – separated from reality. (He calls this “the deficit of truth.) The blockade is forcing Palestinian society into dependency, causing Hamas to gain power while the rest of civil society atrophies, cut off from its ability to provide for itself. The Palestinian Authority, which instructed its officials in Gaza to refuse to work after the Hamas takeover, has also contributed to civil society’s collapse. Hamas was forced to replace government workers – bureaucrats, teachers, planners, engineers, etc. – with its own, inexperienced people. They have worked hard, but their competency is more religion than government. The result is a drift into conservatism, (and I might add, bitterness and depression among the more highly educated population).

U.S. Congressional visitors, Ging said, who are focused on humanitarian issues, have largely missed the point. In fact, focusing on humanitarian aid simply prolongs the situation. [It fails to acknowledge the fundamental issue -- Israel has no legal right to besiege, bomb, and blockade Gaza.]It is about justice, human dignity, and people’s right to protection from military force. Those are the issues which must be addressed to make any progress.

To do so, national reconciliation is an imperative, but it is not possible to insist Hamas agree to a series of political preconditions to achieve unity. Hamas’ logic is simple: Why repeat the mistake of Fatah, which recognized Israel and got nothing in return? In my opinion, there are several other flaws with the demand to "recognize" Israel. Israel has not "recognized" Hamas, or even the right to a sovereign Palestinian state at all. Israel also has not defined its own borders, so what exactly is being recognized. Finally, Israel demands it be recognized as a Jewish state, a demand which leaves out about 25% of its population.