Maltese national Bianca Zammit was injured by Israeli forces yesterday when they shot her with live ammunition during a peaceful rally in Gaza in solidarity with Palestinian farmers.
The 28-year-old human rights activist was accompanying Palestinians on agricultural land in Al Maghazi at around 12pm in the 300-metre area from the buffer zone with Israel, designated by the latter as a “no-go area”.
Zammit was hit in her left thigh as she was filming the activity, between 80 and 100 metres away from Israeli soldiers. She was rushed to Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al Balah where she was found to be suffering from light injuries and no fractures.
“I was lucky because the bullet went through my skin without hitting me in the bones,” Zammit told MaltaToday from a hospital bed shortly after a medical intervention.
Two others, both Palestinian, were injured by the gun fire, including a 22-year-old woman who was in critical condition after she was hit in her stomach.
Zammit said that about 30 minutes after the demonstration started, Israeli soldiers opened fire on the protestors.
“We were walking towards the fence surrounding Gaza when Israeli soldiers opened fire at us,” Zammit said. “People sought cover but I kept filming. When the protestors stood up again to keep walking ahead, they shot again and hit three of us.
“All the Palestinians do in these demonstrations is to get as close as possible to the fence and plant the Palestinian flag. We posed no threat whatsoever.”
Zammit was released from Al Aqsa Hospital shortly after surgery, but was later taken to Al Awda Hospital in Jabalya for further observation after bleeding resumed. Doctors said they were keeping her under observation for 24 hours.
“I can still walk and will be going back to the protests soon,” she said yesterday evening, as friends crowded her room in hospital.
A spokesman for Foreign Minister Tonio Borg said the Maltese government will be presenting an official complaint to the Israeli government. No official statement was released by the ministry by the time the newspaper went to print.
The Maltese Ambassador in Israel, Abraham Borg, said he will be demanding explanations from the Israeli government and that he was monitoring the case.
The Israeli military said it fired “warning shots” at a group of Palestinians gathering “very close to the security fence” in central Gaza. A spokesman said Israeli forces had identified “hitting three of the Palestinians”.
“The area adjacent to the security fence is a combat zone used by terrorist organizations to execute attacks against Israel,” the Israeli army said, adding that it would “not allow anyone to be present in it, since it is considered a threat to the residents of Israel and to Israeli security forces”.
The Maltese embassy in Egypt and the Maltese representative to the Palestinian Authority were also alerted about the case and were following it from Cairo and Ramallah.
‘No middle road’ Zammit said the most important message to all the people who wanted justice for Palestinians was to keep lobbying for the boycott, divestments and sanctions of Israeli companies and institutions that kept turning a blind eye to the occupation.
“Boycotts can be effective in getting Israelis to realise that not all is alright, and they have to range from academic to commercial and artistic boycotts of everything Israeli, while supporting Palestinian products made in Palestine,” Zammit said.
An activist with the International Solidarity Movement – a group of volunteers working with Palestinian grassroots organisations against the Israeli occupation – Zammit has been living in Gaza since May last year, after three months living and working in the West Bank.
In the last months, she has been participating in daily protests around Gaza’s buffer zone with Israel, where farmers are banned from working their land under threat of Israeli gunfire. Many farmers have abandoned their fertile fields as daily incursions and gunfire makes their work extremely dangerous. Up to 20 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s arable land is inaccessible to Palestinian farmers because it is caught in the no-go area.
“We join farmers and form a human shield to protect them while they work their land,” Zammit explained. “All the time, we tell soldiers through our megaphones that we are peaceful people who are there in solidarity with the farmers. They know we are nonviolent, they see our hands up in the air all the time, but they still shoot at us.”
Many other Palestinians, especially children, are also shot at as they collect rubble and steel from the border regions to recycle it for construction, as the blockade imposed by Israel forbids construction material from entering the strip.
In an interview with MaltaToday last year from the West Bank before leaving for Gaza, Zammit said: “You can read a lot about what’s happening here, but you have to come to witness what the occupation means. It’s extremely difficult to understand what the everyday reality is unless you witness it firsthand. I used to think I understood the reality here, but then I realised my understanding was only intellectual, not on a human level.”
She added: “There is no middle road. You’re either against injustice or else you’re accepting it.”
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