shops 10.6

For the past 34 years, since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian workers have not been able to get to work regularly because the Israeli army regularly closes the Israel/Palestine border.

The situation currently is the worst it has ever been. Since the start of the Intifada, or uprising, in September 2000 Palestinians are not even allowed to travel between towns and villages.

Travel from the Palestinian territories into Israel is completely banned. Thousands of roadblocks have been set up, all of them operated by heavily armed soldiers who regularly shoot without provocation. Yet the bosses’ still apply the rule of "no work, no pay", familiar to workers around the world.

This is a very serious problem for Palestinian workers who work inside Israel. To avoid the checkpoints, many workers try to find alternate routes to work. But this is also dangerous. If a worker is seen avoiding a checkpoint he is signing his or her death warrant. For example, 20 year old Ziyad Abu Swai, was shot dead recently inside a bus taking a back road to get the Palestinian workers to their jobs in Israel.

As one American trade unionist put it: "Workers are used to being disciplined for showing up late to work. But can you imagine being killed just for trying to get to work?"

If Palestinian workers make it through the checkpoints safely to work there is no guarantee of their safety inside their factories or on the farms. The Israeli army recently stormed the Neirukh factory in Hebron and an agricultural area in Baqa Al Sharqia, detaining dozens of workers and farmers and eventually arresting over 50.

It is equally dangerous to stay at home. Over the past two months in Gaza alone, the Israeli army and groups of armed Israeli settlers have opened fire on over five Palestinian villages, ransacking houses, poisoning wells, and imposing curfews on villagers.

Students and teachers are often prevented by military curfew from leaving the villages to go to school. When they do get to go to school, students are in danger of being shot. Last month in Hebron, Jihad Odeh Al Khatib (12) and Jamal Abdullah Misk (a teacher) were seriously injured when the Israeli army opened fire on Palestinian students.

Some international trade secretariats have visited Gaza and the West Bank after appeals from Palestinian trade unions.

The International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF) found recently that 120 000 Palestinian workers who used to work in Israel have lost their jobs since the Intifada started. The 180 000 Palestinians who work in occupied Palestine also cannot get to work because of road blocks.

"The import or export of goods," reported the IMF, "is blocked because the borders are closed. The food industry has diminished by 80 per cent, plastics and chemicals by 75 per cent, and construction by 90 per cent. Public infrastructure for services such as schools, radio and electricity has been destroyed.

"Unemployment in Gaza has risen from 18 to 70 per cent, and in the West Bank from 11 to 55 per cent".

The IMF recommended setting up a joint conference with Israeli and Palestinian trade unions. But can there be dialogue between the oppressor and the oppressed under a system that is worse than apartheid? In Gaza, Palestine, 6000 Israeli settlers live among a population of one million Palestinians yet they own 42 percent of the land.

At the height of apartheid in South Africa, black people nominally 'controlled' 13 percent of the land; in Israel the oppressed control only 2 percent. There are many more features of apartheid South Africa that are still copied in Israel today.

As South African workers who lived through apartheid, we should not be silent while another apartheid state grows more and more powerful and murders more and more people every day.

An Anti-Apartheid Movement against Israel was launched in Durban during the World Conference against Racism. All COSATU members should join the movement and put pressure on the South African government to break ties with Israel immediately. For more information on how to join the movement, please contact the Palestine Solidarity Committee:

Tembisa - 082 7476134;

Savera - 082 6538179;

Salim - 082 8025936, or

Na-eem - 083 680525 257

Why the hell is going on in Palestine?

Jehad Ibdaa Culture Centre, Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, Palestine

21/10/2001: 2:00 pm

It's the third day under occupation in Bethlehem. I woke up at 9:00am and dressed to go to the funerals. These were the funerals of four martyrs who fell yesterday. After we buried them, another two martyrs were added to the list.

The shelling and bombing does not stop. And the tanks are moving in to capture the whole of the city of Bethlehem. Already, all the strategic areas are under Israeli military control: they are on every mountain around Bethlehem, on every high hill, on every tall building...

Although Aida and Al-Azza refugee camps are still under occupation, Israeli soldiers continue firing toward these camps, causing lot of injuries. And the helicopters have started firing toward the Palestinian Authority Police Centre.

And the tanks are moving over here... slowly, slowly...

After they completely occupied Beit Jala, the two camps (Aida and Azza) and the city center of Bethlehem, they reached Al-Hussein Hospital. They then refused to allow the ambulances to reach the hospital. So the ambulances had to take the injured to another hospital, a hospital in al-Khader Village. It is a small hospital and it already has a lot of injured people to care for. There is no room for more injured.

What will happen? There is shelling everywhere. How we can do the funerals of the martyrs?

While we are thinking of that we hear that there is another martyr - he was killed just a moment ago!

"Oh my God!"

He is 26 years old, a man born into suffering. The man is from Azza camp. He can't hear or talk as other people can. He went outside his home in Azza to buy bread for his family. When the soldiers saw him they opened fire on him.

They had shouted at him to go to them and to produce his ID but... he was not able to hear them so he just went on his way... and they opened fire.

The man didn't hear the commotion behind him and the bullets which were fired towards him. Suddenly he felt a 500mm bullet strike his back. He just fell and took his last breath with his normal silence. But in his eyes there were obviously a lot of words which he wished to say; but the main word was "freedom!"

We do not wish to live under these conditions. We hope our future will be better than our fathers'.

I want to live in freedom! Freedom to be able to choose where you want to live; freedom to be able to have all your family members able to sit and enjoy meals together; freedom to live your lives normally - without checkpoints, without shelling, without shooting, without martyrs, without funerals, without demonstrations...

Freedom to live without fearing that soldiers may arrest you, or that they may shoot you just because you are a Palestinian or a "refugee", freedom to hear music rather than the sounds of bombs and shells, freedom to not lose your friends in "clashes", freedom to not feel that you are in a big jail, freedom to have nobody to control your life, freedom to know that you and your family will be safe - today and tomorrow - because you live in your own country.

We will continue our struggle until the day we have our freedom! Because freedom is the light which will end all this darkness!