Wednesday, Jul 27, 2011
Gulf News
Gaza International and Gazan activists organised a protest march yesterday against Israel’s policies implemented in the restricted areas of the northern Gaza Strip.
Despite the heat, a tenacious group of young men and children gathered near the bombed agricultural college in Beit Hanoun for the march to what is known as the “buffer zone”.
The march was held to condemn the Israeli army’s use of force in the restricted area along the northern and eastern borders of the Gaza Strip to bloc access to prime agricultural land for Palestinian farmers.
Mohammad Al Zaeem, the coordinator of the march, said: “We came to this area to make a point and to protest the Israeli policy against our people. The buffer zone is damaging our agriculture and the lives of the people in these areas.”
After the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip in the year 2009, the buffer zone was announced by the Israeli military, which forbade trespassing by locals.
Al Zaeem added: “This is a peaceful resistance and we as the youth of Palestine will keep on going to the buffer zone till our demands are met.”
Patriotic chants
The marchers sang nationalistic and patriotic songs and raised slogans all the way to the buffer zone. When they were around 200 metres from the border, they hoisted a Palestinian flag and started chanting: “The people want to end the occupation.”
Then the group of young people marched towards the Erez area, where stands one of the many concrete military towers that dot Gaza’s borders. It is from these towers that the Israeli soldiers usually begin shooting at anyone they can see in the distance.
The locals in the area tried to stop the young men in the march, asking them to return, but they refused and went all the way up to the border fence.
Mohammad Al Kafarna, a farmer in the area, said: “We can’t reach that far, for if we do, the Israeli soldiers will shoot at us.”
Thankfully, for once, the guns stayed silent as the brave young Palestinians went ahead. Farmers said they faced a daily struggle to reach their lands in areas close to the Israeli border. This is some of the most fertile of Gaza’s land, where olive, corn and palm trees once flourished along with wheat, barley, rye and other crops, providing much of Gaza’s needs.
The area is around ten per cent of the entire space-starved Gaza Strip, which already struggles to grow enough food to feed its population even without having some its most fertile fields made off-limits.
By Nasser Najjar ?Correspondent
Gulf News 2011. All rights reserved.
