A warning from farmers association from Khuza’a and Abasan
Rural Association For Agricultural Development (RAAD) and French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP)
Stubbornness of Gazan farmers, keeping with cultivating their fields, should it be under bullets, is one of the vivid form of Palestinian resistance. French solidarity movement understands it clearly, as shown by the success of the two water-tower campaigns coordinated by UJFP, meant to allow watering Khuza’a and Abasan fields located nearby the separation fence.
During the summer 2018, the situation in Gaza has deteriorated to a disastrous level. Mainly from the devastating Palestinian authority’s decision of cutting by half the salaries for public servants. The fragile economical balance broke immediately.
With a population whose buying power collapse, agricultural products cannot be sold at reasonable prices : families can no longer afford it. The volatile system, in which farmers borrow agricultural inputs, such as seeds, to be paid back when harvest is sold, crashes.
At this very moment (October 2018), while Gazan people are paying an incredible blood price for its peaceful Great Return Marches, Gaza is facing two major additional threats : grassroots population can no longer afford appropriate food, and farmers will be crashed under debts.
These are most urgent calls, to all segments bearing a responsibility in the coming catastrophe :
– call to persons of conscience from all over the world to impose on Israeli government the end of the blockade of Gaza.
– call to Gazan authorities to protect farming activity, in particular with regards to the pressure of the banking system.
– call to Palestinian Authority to line with Gaza grassroots resistance instead of participating in collective punishment.
– call to the UN system present in the ground to inform upon the situation and propose international responses
– call to EU for immediate help to endangered productive activities in Gaza, for example through help for agricultural inputs.
Ethnocide begins and ends with grassroots communities being forced to give up from making their living. Farmers have endorsed an important part of the fight against it. They deserve immediate support.