Wednesday, 14 January 2009
By Janine Roberts
Much has been made of Hamas' reported failure to honour last year's truce. But, an extraordinary correspondence between Jewish residents of the much-rocketed town of Sderot, nearby kibbutz, and the Palestinians living within sight in the Gaza strip paints a very different picture of that truce from that repeatedly given by the Israeli government.
Barrack Obama was taken to Sderot last year to show him the effects of rocketing. He remarked on how Israeli towns looked like American from the air and offered his full support to the town's citizens, promising to invite its representatives to the White House soon after taking office. At the time in mid-July Sderot was safe to visit. There had been no casualties from rockets since the ceasefire started 4 weeks earlier.
On July 12th 2008, a Gaza resident, using the pseudonym of "Peaceman," emailed friends in Sderot to say. "The situation is calm … and this make people happy a lot, because there are no dead and wounded [but] the border is still closed… I myself have been waiting two years to go to Europe to study.' Nevertheless "we have now a golden opportunity to try to build a new world without violence.'
His friends replied to say how much better it was now the rockets had stopped. They told how they cycled along the Gaza borders and were greeted with waves by Gaza residents. They revelled in the freedom from danger. A joint children's holiday was planned and greetings cards exchanged. (See samples at end)
One such message read "I live with my family in Kibbutz Beeri, close enough to Gaza to see the houses and the sea. On weekends I ride my bike with my husband through the fields along the border … I hope the violence will come to an end and the Palestinian State will be established with peace between our peoples and peace within each of our countries between the extremists on each side. "
Sderot is built on the lands of Najd, a Palestinian village ethnically cleansed by Jewish militia in 1948. Its residents probably fled into the Gaza strip. Most of Gaza's population is descended from such refugees. However, this history was not allowed to prevent this growing friendship - nor were the deaths of people from both towns in the months preceding the ceasefire.
The ceasefire was still intact months after Obama's visit. In October 2008 an Israeli in Sderot, using the pseudonym "Hopeman," emailed his friend in Gaza to say: "We have lived for almost 5 months in a ceasefire situation. On my side of the border, things returned to normal and we once again felt safe. Kids played freely outdoors, streets filled once again with people, and the constant fear of the rocket alerts disappeared. My kids went to sleep in their room again, instead of the safe room, and I could walk out to the fields surrounding the town without the fear of being out in the open with nowhere to hide."
On October 9th an Israeli newspaper, the Star, headlined: "Israeli town celebrates end to daily rocket fire. It reported: "Besieged residents of Sderot were relieved by the quiet start to Yom Kippur, thanks to the ceasefire with Hamas …Young boys horsed around on their bicycles, families hurried to make last-minute purchases at the downtown supermarket, and food stands did a steady business in shawarma and beer."
"Everything is different," exulted Jasmine Aboukrat, 25, sales clerk at the Cochovit Dress Shop near Hagofer St, "People go out more." "Now you see all the children outdoors, playing," said David Coyne, 38, who owns a candy shop in the centre of town. "It's secure."
The paper explained: "For seven years, local residents barely went out at all. But, late last June, under Egyptian mediation, the Israeli government reached a ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Since then, with only a few violations, the rocket salvoes from Gaza have stopped."
Sderot is "a rambling community of boxy bungalows and low-rise apartment blocks. interspersed by palm, cypress and eucalyptus trees" with a library with nearly as many books in Russian as Hebrew, reflecting its recent arrivals. Its people "say they are hugely pleased with the new air of tranquillity that now permeates their town."
The newspaper also reported that there were no more "punitive Israeli military incursions into the neighbouring strip - attacks that had been a frequent and deadly feature of Palestinian existence prior to the laying down of arms in June."
But Hopeman emailed from Sderok: "During this time I have been in touch with many friends of mine in Gaza, and from them I heard a very dark and troubling reality…The siege Israel had imposed on them continues. They have many power shortages and very little fuel and cooking gas."
On the 4th November, the day when Americans were watching the results of the Presidential election, the Israeli army broke the ceasefire by raiding the strip. Six Palestinians were killed. Next day the Palestinians reacted as could be expected by sending a shower of rockets and Israel immediately slashed supplies of medicine, fuel, food, cooking gas for the 1.5 million people of Gaza. The number of truckloads fell from October's daily average of 123 trucks to less than 5 trucks. Some families were reduced to easting bread made from animal feed. Others were reduced to eating grass.
An email was sent: "Peace Man and I talk every day. We support each other and worry for each other's well being. I am in contact with others in Gaza and share my situation while hearing of theirs. Much fear and pain on both sides. Once again we should all call to end the violence, open the siege, start talking and bring back hope to us, civilians on both sides, pawns in the unbearable senseless political game."
Then Hamas told Israel that a renewed ceasefire must be accompanied by an end to the increasingly cruel siege, but Israel refused to accept this.
The friends "realized that the situation was about to deteriorate into total chaos" said Arik Yalin, 43, of Sderot, the spokesman for this Israeli-Arab group. They put up a website that stated: "Up until now we have cried, called, demonstrated, and asked our leaders to do something about this insane reality in which we live. The leaders have tried every possible idea that involves violence and military force - with no success at all.
"We shoot at them and they shoot at us. We retaliate and they strike back.
"This is an endless and vicious cycle.
"Today we say: ENOUGH! It is our turn to take our destiny into our own hands and to ACT to stop the cycle of bloodshed."
They sent a petition to the Israeli Government in the name of their group; "Kol Acher' (The Other Voice). Five hundred citizens of Sderot signed it as well as another 1300 Israeli and Palestinian citizens. It read:
"Kol Acher from Sderot and the communities around Gaza calls on the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister to act urgently to restore calm in the area.
"The ceasefire changed the lives of the people of Sderot, Ashkelon and the region beyond recognition, allowing all of us to experience again a life that is more normal and sane. The continuation of this calm is essential and critical to the residents of the region from every possible aspect: physical, mental, spiritual and economic.
"Another round of escalation may break our already brittle spirit, and take us all to another round of self-destruction and pointless bloodshed. It is not certain that we will survive. And you must be aware of that, if you indeed care about the residents of this area. We've been through this movie too many years-and results speak for themselves: feeling trapped, abandonment, and hopelessness for our children and us!
"On the other side of the border live a million and a half Palestinians under unbearable conditions, and most of them want, like we do, calm and the opportunity of a future for themselves and their families.
"We live in the feeling that you have wasted that period of calm, instead of using it to advance understandings and begin negotiations, as well as for fortifying the houses of residents as promised.
"We call on the Prime Minister and the Defence minister not to listen to the voices of incitement and do everything they can to avoid another round of escalation, to secure the continuation of the calm and to work...towards direct or indirect negotiations with the Palestinian leadership in Gaza in order to reach long term understandings.
"We prefer a cold war without a single rocket to a hot war with dozens of victims and innocent fatalities on both sides.
"We ask you to offer us the possibility of political arrangement and hope and not an endless cycle of blood."
Their petition had no effect. On December 27th, while politicians in the West were on holiday and the US had a lame duck President in his final weeks of office, Israel launched a savage assault.
That same day the Israeli Foreign Ministry changed its website, removing charts giving the numbers of rockets and mortars fired every month from the Gaza strip, perhaps because they revealed the near-total cessation of fire during the truce. These charts were based on statistics supplied by the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center and provide striking evidence of Hamas' good faith. Contrary to government statements made repeatedly since then, Israeli government statistics show Hamas kept the ceasefire.
Together with a similar graph for mortar fire, these reveal that the total number of rocket and mortar attacks launched from Gaza fell from over a hundred a month to just 12 in all from the start of July to the end of October. The Ministry has replaced these graphs with one that is harder to interpret. It claims "227 rockets were fired during the lull in the fighting' but notes that 203 of these were fired after November 4th, the date when Israel broke the ceasefire. This is still on the Government website.
Credit for the 12 rockets fired during the ceasefire were reportedly claimed by Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad or the "Badr Forces.' Hamas condemned them.
It is worth going back to what else Obama said in Sderot: "I will not wait until a few years into my term or my second term if I'm elected, in order to get the process moving. I think we have a window right now that needs to be taken advantage of. I think you've got a set of moderate Palestinian leaders who are interested. I think the Israeli people are interested in moving this process along. But I also think there's a population on both sides that is becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress. And where there's hopelessness and despair that can often turn in a bad direction."
Obama on January 11th said he would be ready to do all he can to bring peace from the day he takes office. But - has Obama heard these voices of Sderot? I doubt he did when he went to their town, but, if he did, then he will know that the Israeli government is wrong to claim that the only way they can stop the rockets is by physically destroying Hamas with all the slaughter this entails.
Perhaps Obama should also take advice, not already doing so, from the former UK Ambassador to Israel, Sir Jeremy Greenstock. January 9, 2009 he unhesitatingly said during a BBC interview: "Hamas is not a terrorist organisation," adding he knows from talking to them that they are focussed on ending the decades of military occupation. He also affirmed; "Israel broke the truce by its actions on 4th November."'
Perhaps Obama should also listen to the Catholic priest, Fr. Latham, who preached in Bethlehem on Sunday 4th January, saying the Palestinians are being "crucified everyday."
Note:
Find two examples of the post cards sent from Sderot to Gaza Strip. Click here.
- Janine Roberts has written for many major Australian newspapers and both the Independent and Financial Times in the UK. Her investigative films have appeared on the PBS network in the USA and on the BBC and Australian television. She was invited to testify at a US Congressional Hearing on Human rights in Africa and the blood diamond trade. Her latest investigative books are "Glitter and Greed" and the "Fear of the Invisible." She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact her at: jan@janineroberts.com, or visit her blog: www.speakingloudly.blogspot.com.
