18th March 2015 | Valeria Cortés | Khuza’a, Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Tilling
the land in Gaza is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The
Zionist Occupation Forces fire on the peasants and their families while
they sow or harvest their own land near the infamous Zionist fence which
surrounds Gaza. They also burn their fields and routinely ravage their
crops with bulldozers, leaving hundreds of families ruined and
preventing the Gaza Strip from developing it’s already devastated
economy or achieving a minimum of food sovereignty.
Last
Sunday a group of peasants from Khuza’a, a village located in the South
of the Gaza Strip, called us to ask for our presence as deterrent
witnesses during their journey to sow their fields. The days before they
had been harassed by Israeli soldiers, who fired their rifles
and shot tear gas grenades from where they crouched inside their tanks
and military turrets towards the peasants who were just trying to work
their land under a hail of Zionist bullets.
Azzam taking a rest after a morning of hard work.
Azzam,
a humble 40 years old farmer, spoke to us of the tragedy of his life:
“During the last attack Israel bombed my home and destroyed it
completely; now I’m living with my family in a plastic tent.” He also
explained us the shameful differences between a Palestinian farmer and
farmer from the Israeli occupation. “They kill us, they shoot the few
old tractors that we have, they burn our crops and bomb our homes, while
their farmers work escorted by a whole army, one of the most powerful
armies in the world.”
We
finish our task and have a coffee sitting on the ground whose furrows
house the seeds sown at the risk of Palestinian farmers’ lives: seeds of
wheat, watermelon, peanut, seeds that may not even have the chance to
germinate. Sitting now quietly on the scorched land, on the occupied
land, land irrigated with Palestinian blood – too much blood – Azzam
fixes his eyes beyond that disgraceful fence. He looks beyond the
military vehicles, beyond the armed towers, armed with guns that can
fire at the a push of a button from Tel Aviv; there we can see the
stolen green fields of Palestine, a land deprived of it’s real name and
owner, that place that is now known by the infamous name of Israel.
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