Certification scheme crucial for Gaza farmers
By Amelia Thomas
Middle East Times
Published May 11, 2006
On Sunday, May 7, at around nine in the morning, Palestinian farmer
Hassan Shafii was going about his usual day's work on the outskirts of the
town of Beit Lahia on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.
The 55-year-old farmer was busy in one of his fields, close to an area
from which Qassam missiles have recently been launched by militant
Palestinian groups into Israel, tending to the irrigation of a recently
planted watermelon patch.
As he worked, he talked with a fellow Gazan farmer on his mobile phone.
"You have to remember the $250 for your certificate," his friend was in the
process of reminding him, "You have to pay it soon."
Then, disaster struck. An Israeli military shell, one of the many fired
into the region to deter terrorists from launching more attacks against
Israel, hit Shafii. On the other end of the line, his colleague feared the
worst as the line went dead, and Shafii was killed instantly by shrapnel
peppering his body.
Such occurrences are not rare in an area where daily violence from both
sides of the border is increasingly commonplace.
Indeed, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights states that in just the
last fortnight, six Palestinian civilians, including two children, have been
killed and over 60 wounded by IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) shelling, while a
further two deaths occurred last week after Palestinian national security
force members attempted to deactivate an unexploded shell.
In the past week alone, six civilians have been wounded in the Beit
Lahia area, a number of homes damaged, and, along with Shafii, a second
civilian, 65-year-old Moussa Al Sawarka, was killed.
Sawarka had been grazing camels in the Khousa area, to the north of Beit
Lahia town, when he was killed by shell shrapnel to the head on May 6, just
500 meters from the spot where, the next day, Shafii, too, would die.
Currently, the Jerusalem-based Israel/Palestinian Center for Research
and Information (IPCRI) is in the twofold process of dealing with the direct
aftermath of Shafii's death. First, says director Gershon Baskin, the center
will be petitioning both the Israeli ministry of defense and the ministry of
justice over compensation for the family of the deceased.
"There are cases," says Baskin, "when it's recognized by Israel that a
killing was a mistake".
However, he admits, such cases are tragically thin on the ground. Shafii
left behind a wife and 10 children, who are all now facing a dark future
without an income, so the center is secondly setting up a fund for donations
to aid the afflicted family.
"The family has lost everything," says Baskin, "They won't receive aid
from the Palestinian Authority, and I'm afraid that the petition to the
ministry of defense will be a lengthy process."
The reason that, of all recent deaths in Gaza, the Israel/Palestinian
Center for Research and Information is focusing on Shafii's is due to his
direct connection with the organization. The certificate to which Shafii's
friend alluded just moments before his death was the successful result of a
training scheme for Gazan farmers, involving a recent initiative known as
the 'EUREPGAP protocol'.
Shafii was part of a Gazan farmer strawberry cooperative, which had been
exporting its strawberries to Europe through Israeli distributors for the
last decade. Now, in order for farmers to continue or increase exports to
major European retail chains, they must receive certification under the
EUREPGAP scheme, which ensures a minimum standard of "Good Agricultural
Practices".
The IPCRI organized the first batch of training for some of the roughly
800 exporting farmers in Gaza, training 40 participants for certification.
Shafii was one of those farmers who had just successfully completed the
course.
This certification is particularly crucial for Gaza's farmers, who,
since the closure of the main Israel/Palestinian Karni crossing earlier this
year, have already suffered increasing isolation and problems with getting
their perishable goods to market on time.
Without certification, says Baskin, it is unlikely that Gazan farmers
will be able to export to Europe next season, a situation that would have
catastrophic effects for the already fragile Gazan agricultural economy.
"In Europe, Gazan farmers get 20 shekels [$4.50] per kilo for their
strawberries," explains Baskin, "Here, they might get just two [$0.45]".
On May 8, at the 16th International Exhibition of Agricultural Products
currently in progress at the Tel Aviv exhibition center, the IPCRI was able
to bring most of the newly certified group - which would have included
Shafii - to Tel Aviv, to visit the stands and talk to fellow farmers from
across the globe.
This in itself was no easy achievement: access to and from the Gaza
Strip stands currently at almost zero, and entry permits to Israel for those
under 35 years of age are impossible to obtain.
Nevertheless, despite the small triumph of getting almost all the
farmers safely to Tel Aviv, the mood among them was subdued.
"These people work hard all season, facing all kinds of different
problems: environmental, water, economic, political, agricultural," says
Baskin, "And then, at the end of it all, they can't always get their produce
out of Gaza."
For example, he continues, while roughly 70 percent of last year's
strawberry crop managed to get out of Gaza before the tightening of
restrictions at checkpoints, almost none of the flower crop could be
distributed.
"In the end, the farmers didn't even cut the flowers from the fields,"
relates Baskin, "They missed Valentines Day, Mothers Day; all the events
that usually provide them with an income. There's no way that Gaza can
absorb all its agricultural produce of this kind."
It is estimated that Gazan flower farmers lost roughly $650,000 last
season alone, a vast amount in an area that still constitutes one of the
most poverty-stricken on earth.
Nevertheless, the staff of the IPCRI is more optimistic than the Gazan
farmers themselves about the future of agriculture in the beleaguered Gaza
Strip. Currently, the center is seeking funding to equip the next batch of
Gaza's farmers with the appropriate certification for exporting to Europe.
Moreover, the government of the Netherlands has recently pledged $1
million in aid, to help farmers replant and prepare for the next season. The
money, in order not to fall prey to current restrictions on Palestinian
financing from the wider world, will be handed over to an NGO, the
Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, from where it will be distributed
to farmers in need, thus bypassing governmental organizations completely.
"I also hope," says Baskin, "that the new minister of defense will be
able to ease the situation, that he [Amir Peretz] will be more receptive
than his predecessor [Shaul Mofaz] to the changes that need to be made.
We're currently preparing a letter to him with all our requests and
suggestions."
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the Shafii family is coming to terms with life
without their husband and father, and looking for ways in which to go on.
While Baskin hopes that his organization's fundraising efforts will ease
their situation in the short term, the future for the family, and for the
bereaved families who join their ranks on an almost weekly basis, remains
bleak.