GAZA: Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip is anything but peaceful. And for the Salach family, living on the border between Israel and Gaza, ceasefire is a foreign concept only because it comes along in the rarest of times.
However, the current Egypt-brokered ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has brought some days of calm to the border areas in and around the Gaza Strip.
The Salach family used to live on their land, which reaches just 20 meters from the border with Israel. They had planted their 35 donum plot of land with olive and lemon trees and raised goats and pigeons. But bit by bit the Israeli army bulldozed all of the Salach’s land.
March 25, 2003 was the final time the bulldozers came. “We used to have a herd of goats, they bulldozed them, and doves, they bulldozed the doves, absolutely everything, they turned everything upside down, Om Assad Salach told Daily News Egypt. “What can we do?
After they bulldozed all of the land, the army started firing rockets at the family house. “They started firing rockets at us, in all directions with the house in the middle. They wanted to force us out and we fled. Immediately the next day they flattened the house. Now the fields and the house and everything are gone, Om Assad said.
“Wherever they see green they come and bulldoze it, this bulldozer is poison. When it sees a blossoming tree, it bulldozes it. Even if it sees a tree under the ground, it bulldozes it. They have a hatred for humankind, Om Assad’s nephew Eid explained to Daily News Egypt.
The family moved up the road to one of the son’s homes and rented a plot of land from landowners from Gaza City. This land had already been bulldozed and couldn’t really be cultivated. On it, they grow just enough to provide for the family’s daily food needs.
“The olive tree fields were everything . everything grew there, olives, lemons, all sorts of fruit . then they bulldozed it and we moved here, we are living on this rented land, it’s bulldozed land so we are working it in vain, said Eid.
Resistance of resilience
Despite the hardship the family is experiencing, the Salachs are determined to confront the violence of Israeli rockets and bulldozers with a resistance of perseverance. “Every time they bulldoze, we plant, they bulldoze, we plant, until they started shooting at us, Eid said. “Now every time we get close they shoot, so we stopped going there.
In the early stages the Israeli army used sound bombs that do not explode to scare the family off the land. The kids started collecting the empty tank shells and putting them in the house. One day Eid’s uncle Assad decided to make something beautiful out of the deadly weapons of war.
“We painted and put flowers in them; the media started coming and taking pictures. We started making decorations from rockets of death, Eid said. After they started making the vases the Israelis stopped firing on them, Assad’s wife explained. “[My uncle] wanted the world to see that we aren’t afraid, that we are remaining on our land, and neither rockets or guns matter to us, Eid added.
When the Israelis started firing live rockets, the Salach children didn’t collect those.
On March 19, 2008 disaster struck again. The Israeli army rounded up all men over 16 years old living along the border area between Beit Hanoun and Israel. Among them were Om Assad’s two sons Assad and Saeid as well as their sons Fahmi, Salach, Eid and Ghassan. The army released Eid the next day, yet his father, uncle and three cousins have been held without trial for nearly four months.
“When there is no ceasefire we don’t leave the house after dark, Eid explained to Daily News Egypt, “the Israelis could fire at anything that moves.
The ceasefire has meant that the family can easily move from their home to the center of town.
Every Monday Eid and his aunt take the donkey cart to town for a sit-in at the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Here family members of detainees from across the Gaza Strip gather once a week to protest the illegal imprisonment of their loved ones.
Eid’s dreams are simple. “To live in peace and quiet, just for the Israelis to leave us in peace; better to eat sand but remain on our land, just no shooting, no rockets, enough, we are tired. we want to raise our kids, we want to think about the future, educate our children like other people do, like this there is no hope, I am sick of it.
The ceasefire has brought some days of this longed for quiet. Sadly, the agreement’s unstable nature – both sides have broken the agreement numerous times – means its end is already in sight.
