Farming with the enemy -live bullets for Gazan farmers

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Thursday 10 June ‘10

For the third morning yesterday, Thursday the 10 June ’10, we went to Abu Ta’ima land in the Khuza’a region east of Khan Younis. We accompanied the mukhtar, the village leader, Naser Abu Ta’ima and members of his family, including 6 woman and 2 teenagers, who went to harvest the wheat.  We started just after 6 am hoping to do lots of work before 10 o’clock, when it becomes to hot.

As we were traveling on a horse drawn chart to the fields near the dangerous border, the mood was somber and tense after the exceptionally heavy shooting we experienced the day before.

I have been with my ISM friends  and Abu Ta’ima farmers to those fields many times. We have seen the wheat which is now harvested being sown and fertilized. I remember those accompaniments well because every time, without exception, Israeli soldiers would drive to the border wire, park their jeeps with their lights on and start firing.  

Life ammunition, of course. Nothing less would do for Israelis in Gaza. No ‘fancy stuff’ like the rubber coated steel bullets or tear gas for Gazans!  

This is where in my very first days in Gaza in January, I stood with my 2 ISM girlfriends Eva and Bianca, with my hearth pounding under the shower of bullets whizzing too close to our heads and raising small clouds of dust as they hit a few meters away form us. 

I will never forget the high pitched ‘metallic’ sound of a bullet passing by my ear and the shock of the realization that that was what farmers in Gaza had to endure daily just to grow their crops.

The firing on the day before, the Wednesday was even worse than the one in January.

Wheat harvesting in Gaza is done manually and mainly by women. They work on their knees pulling dry wheat from the sandy soil with their bare hands and putting the wheat blades on the piles and moving slowly on.

I was standing on Wednesday in front of the women and while we were chatting their eyes darted frequently towards the border.

They were telling me that soldiers fire at them every time and that there was a routine soldiers usually stick to. They come at 7 o’clock, fire in the air and than go away. ‘They have breakfast at 8 o’clock’, one woman said and I was not sure if she was kidding, but she did not look like she was joking. Than soldiers come again at 10 or 10.30 as the farmers are preparing to leave to fire a bit more.

On Wednesday I saw three jeeps coming form the left and the women told me not to worry ‘they would turn back without stopping’. And that is exactly what happened. It seems that jeeps patrol a particular ‘chunk’ of the border and that was where the stretch of that particular patrol ended.

What all farmers were looking at with great anxiety was the two jeeps about 200 meters inside Israel, one parked on the earth mound near the two communication towers and one close to it.

When the jeeps moved, everyone stopped in silence and waited watching intensely. If they turned left ‘mish mushkila’, no problem, because they were going away for a while and if they turned right the women would get up and start rapidly walking away, looking back all the time. Some did not walk but crawl because the land is flat and they know that they could be killed by the bullet from a very long distance.

It has happened before. A friend tells me that a boy was killed while sitting in his home in Al Maghazi area not so far away form Abu Ta’ima, by a bullet randomly fired by Israelis form 2 kilometers away.

The mukhtar Abu Ta’ima usually does not rush away. He stays. He would not be bullied by the soldiers. He said this was the only land he had and that he had to face whatever they had in stake for him.

I heard him say yesterday that his family was thrown out of Bir Sabr, nowadays known as Ber Shiba and that they came to Gaza in 1948 as refugees. ‘I am not going to be made a refugee ever again’, he says.

But the usual border routine was broken on Wednesday. After a bit of shooting at 7 at around 8.30 three jeeps drove near the border fence. One climbed the observation mound near by and one parked exactly opposite from where we were. The soldiers got out and than the whole hell broke loose.

They fired only couple of times in the air and what followed was a barrage of about 50 bullets flying at the head level, and hitting between and around us. Bianca took the loudspeaker and started asking soldiers to stop shooting as we were no threat to them and explaining that we were international peace activists accompanying Palestinian farmers on their land. The women started giggling, I did not manage to ask why.

What followed was more firing. I saw women crawling fast on their hands and knees in panic. One of them was particularly afraid and I saw her just lying on the land face down and for a moment worried that she was shot. We followed behind them and pulled about 50 meters back. After 10 minutes the jeeps left and we all returned and a large plot quite near the border was harvested.

There was lots of anxiety and tense scrutiny of the jeep movements at the other side of the border in case soldiers return at 10 am to fire their parting shots, but they failed to do that. Did they have enough thrills for that day?

Inspite of the successful end yesterday, everybody was worried going to the fields the next morning on Thursday. Abu Ta’ima’s young daughter who kept asking me on Wednesday to stand in front of her and shield her, explained that she had two children ages 1 and 2 and that was why she worried about being shot.

On the horse drawn chart she nearly cried when I asked her if she was afraid to return to the fields. ‘I could not sleep last night I kept looking at my children’, she said.

After working in tension for about two hours, all eyes fixed to the jeeps near the communication towers and fleeing in haste when they twice moved near the fence, the second time firing in the air, the farmers told the 3 of us around 8 o’clock that they were leaving.

I was puzzled because I thought that the jeeps were gone and that they could do lots of work in peace at long last, just like on Wednesday.

Abu Ta’ima’s daughter explained that the soldiers were going to return for sure and start shooting not in the air but at us.

I did not quite believe what she was saying. I thought that the fear was making her overly cautious and that she was in a hurry to be with her children.

But less than 10 minutes later, as we were just waiting there talking we saw 4 jeeps driving towards us. Women fled and made the teens follow. Abu Ta’ima stayed for a while with Bianca continuing to pull blades of wheat saying ‘half of my wheat is still in the ground. This is my land. Where is justice? Where is America and Europe to see this? Will you make sure to write about this and let everybody know.’’ 

Than Abu Ta’ima said that we should go I knew that there was no more time left to hang about.

We got back onto the charts feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. I asked Abu Ta’ima if he thought that they would leave us alone next time. No, he did not think so, but he was going to go again wheat harvesting on Saturday and wants us to join him.

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Tags: buffer zone, farming, Gaza, Israel, killing civilians, live ammunition, occupation, Palestine, shooting at civilians, siege