Narratives Under Siege
(12):Eighteen
years of Work
Destroyed in Less than four Hours
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Nasser Jaber spent eighteen years building up his chicken farm
in the southern Gaza Strip. Two weeks ago the IOF
bulldozed his farm, killing 40,000 of his chickens, and
destroying his business.
“They came at
four in the morning, with two bulldozers, and they left before 8am. I
own this chicken farm with my three brothers, and we worked day and
night for eighteen years to build up our business. The Israelis
destroyed everything in less than four hours.”
Nasser Jaber’s
chicken farm was bulldozed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) ten
days ago, in the early morning hours of May 16, while he was sleeping at
home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. He still looks stunned.
Wearily he guides us round the ruins of his eighteen-year business.
“This was a lifetime project for me and my brothers” he says as we
clamber over rubble, wire, shattered sheets of metal and thousands of
putrefying chickens. “I have never belonged to any political faction,
and I have never been to jail. I don’t know why they did this.” The farm
workers who are starting to clear some of the rubble are all wearing
facemasks. Forty thousand dead chickens lie smashed amidst the rubble
and the stench is sickening.
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When his workers
raised the alarm that the chicken farm was being bulldozed, Nasser Jaber
didn’t rush out to the farm, but stayed at home, waiting until the
Israelis had finally left. “It would have been too dangerous to come to
the farm while they were destroying everything” he says. “This is not
the first time the Israelis have been here. The [Israeli] border is only
two and a half kilometers away, and they invade this area every month.
They had already destroyed one of our walls, and then the water tanks.
But nothing like this.” One section of the chicken farm, a large barn
containing 9,000 chickens, was spared the attack, though Nasser Jaber
says the poultry are traumatized, and laying few eggs.
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The farm
used to produce 45,000 eggs a day – now production is down to 2,000 eggs
per day, and Nasser Jaber is worried the Israelis may return to
finish off what’s left of his farm. He estimates that between them, he
and his brothers have already lost more than a million dollars. “I am a
peaceful farmer” he says. “But they destroy our homes, our land -
everything.”
Abdul Halim Abu
Samra, Head of Public Relations at the nearby Khan Yunis branch of the
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, says the IOF is systematically
destroying farm land in the Gaza Strip, especially in border areas. “We
have good fertile agricultural land in Gaza, but Palestinian farmers
have been driven off their land in these border areas by intimidation
and attacks like this. The land is now almost empty a kilometer before
the eastern border, because it is too dangerous for people to live and
work there.”
As we drive north east
towards Sofa Crossing (one of the five crossings between Gaza and
Israel) we see very few people, only an occasional elderly man leading a
donkey and cart. These rural eastern border areas of the Gaza Strip are
emptying, because farmers, many of whom have farmed here for
generations, are now too frightened to live and work on their own land.
The confines of the Gaza Strip, which is just forty kilometers long and
ten kilometers wide, are being shrunk even further by relentless Israeli
invasions.
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The deliberate destruction of civilian property is illegal under international
human rights law and humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention
(articles 33 and 53). Since the beginning of the second Intifada in
September 2000, PCHR has documented the deliberate destruction of more than
40,000 donumms[1]
of agricultural land in the Gaza Strip. This year alone, almost 3,000 donumms of
agricultural land around Rafah and Khan Yunis have been destroyed by the Israeli
military (including 500 donumms in the last seven days), ruining vegetable
allotments and family owned farms, and contributing to the devastating economic
destruction of the Gaza Strip.
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Mohammed Abu Daggah's cement factory
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Fifteen kilometers away from the remains of Nasser Jaber’s chicken farm,
Mohammed Hamdan Abu Daggah is standing amidst the ruins of his cement factory,
which lies four kilometers from Sofa Crossing, and was bulldozed by the IOF
three days ago, on May 24. “I started this business in January 2007” he says.
“My family invested everything in this factory. We managed to import good
equipment under license, and we had lots of work from local clients, and the
United Nations here in Gaza. But the Israelis arrived in three bulldozers, and
they tore up everything.” Abu Daggah’s factory was employing forty local men who
now have no jobs. Like Nasser Jaber, Abu Daggah says he has no idea why his
business was targeted. “I have never been in any trouble and have never been
arrested. They had absolutely no reason to do this – but now we have nothing
left, except heavy debts that we cannot afford to pay.”
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