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March 7, 2010
It was senseless, random, gratuitous violence against the farmers and their hopes. Bulldozer treads dug through bean and onion crops, in zigs and zags, seemingly without direction.
Swaths of land were eaten by the military bulldozers’ blades, also seemingly randomly: the wheat crop which might mature to waist high if not bulldozed was left to grow, but the calf-high beans and onions were mowed, not fully but insultingly so.
Swaths of land were eaten by the military bulldozers’ blades, also seemingly randomly: the wheat crop which might mature to waist high if not bulldozed was left to grow, but the calf-high beans and onions were mowed, not fully but insultingly so.
The 100 or so olive trees that had escaped the winter 2008-2009 Israeli massacre of Gaza and prior and later military invasions this time went with the 4 towering military bulldozers and 3 tanks.
Tracks spat out earth in unwieldy clumps, not to be worked again this year, difficult to calm and smooth next year, in an area (near, but still outside of the Israeli-imposed 300 metre no-go zone, the "buffer zone") where tractors fear to come and leave at first (IOF) gunshot.
Abu Taima was withered, beaten today. He was still dignified, dressed in his casual grey suit, still stood tall and spoke odes to the land… but he paled, he was ill, he said, when he thought of and finally saw the destruction of their land.
We start our walk of remorse, documenting the wake of the military machines on freshly-till and sowed land. More crushed and severed irrigation pipes, scarce and highly expensive in a Strip 1000 days under full-siege (from June 2007, although truly the siege began when Hamas was elected. Israeli journalist Amira Hass would say the siege began shortly after the Oslo "peace" accords).
We stumble of mounds of tread moulds, heaving the land upwards. We eye the sabre, that resilient cactus plant that grows roadside and re-emerges after each invasion, taking years to re-gain its former glory and fruit-bearing fertility. It lies flattenened, smudged between bulldozer treads. It will possibly make good fire fuel, but its more important value is roadside and thriving, a home for the small birds that flit to and fro singing of life in the most impossible places: the cactus itself and the border regions of Gaza under occupation.
We see the boiling land among would-be lentils and beans, swirls of bulldozer treads woven amidst the assaulted onion crops.
"Fifty dunams of Abu Taima land was destroyed," says our mukthar, Abu Nasser Abu Taima. PCHR corroborates.
*the destruction begins as far as 700 metres from the border
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