Eva Bartlett supports Palestinians on the firing line

This article was originally published in The Hamilton Spectator February 14, 2009

In a timeless ritual, farmers handpick bunches of parsley and load them into baskets on donkeys and the carts they pull. Suddenly, blasts from high-powered rifles cut through the air, and the Palestinian farmers hit the ground, seeking cover in the slight depressions between the fields.

The incoming fire originates from an Israeli Defence Force (IDF) post on the border between Israel and Gaza. The parsley fields are located less than one kilometre from the border, an area the IDF has declared a No-Go zone, closed to armed and unarmed Palestinians, militants and farmers alike.

But for those who have farmed here, leaving the crop of parsley means abandoning hefty investments and planned income. So they take the risk.

The scene is captured in a You-Tube video called Farming Under Fire. Standing among the farmers, wearing fluorescent yellow vests, with their arms raised, are a group of international observers here to witness the Palestinian situation in the West Bank.

As the sound of gunfire blasts and farmers hit the ground, one vested observer yells on a bullhorn that they are unarmed. The others flinch at each new sound of gunfire.

Among this group is a 30-year-old Canadian woman, Eva Bartlett. She was raised in Fergus, a small town north of Guelph where her mother still lives. Today she has gained some notoriety for her dedication to supporting Palestinian self-determination by acting as a witness to their daily lives.

She writes blogs detailing her views on what she sees in Gaza, sometimes accompanied by vivid photographs. Some are disturbing.

Bartlett has been detained for her actions, and sometimes places her life at risk. Her motivation, she said, is based on human rights and the need to show where she feels rights are being violated.

"We are free people living in a free society, we have the responsibility to be informed about and act to halt/prevent the indiscriminate bombing and violence against Gaza's civilians by the Israeli authorities," Bartlett said in a recent e-mail.

But how does a small town Ontario girl with no connections to Palestine end up becoming a member of the Palestinian-based International Solidarity Movement(ISM) a group described on its website as "a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods." Why does she chose to put herself in the line of fire by living half of the past three years in the West Bank and Gaza?

According to Kathleen Bartlett, Eva's mother, a cellist who has played with symphony orchestras throughout North America, her youngest of three has "always been very independent."

On completing high school she spent four months in Ireland. She has taught English in South Korea, trekked through the Annapurna range in Nepal, visited China and Southeast Asia, and spent time in Europe. She said that, having been raised in the security and affluence of Canada, she had "a late awakening to the injustices of the world," and that her "first awareness was poverty in Asian countries."

Her introduction to the situation in Palestine came in 2007 where she spent the eight months in the West Bank. In August 2007 she was detained while protesting an IDF roadblock that lengthened a 10-kilometre trip from the hilltop village of Sara to Nablus into a one-hour plus odyssey.

Bartlett was released two days later, but only on condition that she remain out of the West Bank cities of Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah for the next 30 days.

On Christmas Day 2007 she was arrested again, this time in Jerusalem, and deported because her visa had expired.

"I don't recognize Israel's right to dictate who and how long (they) can stay in the occupied West Bank," Bartlett explained.

She returned to the region in the summer of 2008 for a few months. Then personal affairs brought her back to Canada for the fall.

In November 2008, she returned to Gaza aboard the Dignity, a ship operated by the Free Gaza Movement.

Since returning to Gaza, Bartlett has worked on a part-time basis for the ISM and volunteered with the Red Crescent Society, a humanitarian support agency.

She returned as Israeli forces in late December launched a military offensive against Hamas in Gaza "to stop the firing against our civilians in the south," according to one military official.

Foreigners were encouraged to leave, but Bartlett was one of many Canadians who chose to stay, enduring shelling and rocket attacks. She documented her experiences on her blog (ingaza.wordpress.com).

A tentative ceasefire was declared on Jan. 18. The Associated Press reported that the 22-day offensive killed 1,285 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were also killed in the fighting.

In a recent posting, Bartlett wrote on her blog about the Palestinian farmers trying to harvest just outside of Gaza, in what is now called the No-Go zone.

She is outraged by what she says is happening here.

In an e-mail for this story Bartlett wrote: "It never ceases to strike me as absolutely ridiculous that we (observers and farmers) must exert so much effort to do what anyone around the world can do in a leisurely way, and with the aid of machinery and irrigation. The farmers here must scuttle and scurry to get their crops picked, if they can, and pay heavy consequences for being on their own land."

Amir Gissin, Consul General of Israel in Toronto, said the No-Go zone is "certainly a problem," but he called the area essential to Israeli security in that it pushes mortar-launching sites back from the border to better protect towns close to the Israel-Gaza border.

He said sporadic rocket and mortar attacks that continue are only "an attempt to destabilize and irritate. And an attempt to prove they (Hamas) have the ability to continue" to launch attacks against Israel.

From Bartlett's view it was a different scene.

She blogged on the incident: "I'm amazed no one was killed today, nor that limbs were not lost, maimed."

Excerpts from Bartlett's blog:

Jan. 4

I see it, as I saw the dead man in the ambulance. And I write it, because everyone must see it, hear of it.

But I cry, too, at the disfigurement of the young corpse, and the knowledge that he is one of so many ... killed in the last week.

The medics have seen ghastly things and urge me to keep it in, keep working. They must, and so I do.

Jan. 5

The stain of blood on the ambulance stretcher pools next to my coat, the medic warning me my coat may be dirtied. What does it matter? The stain doesn't revolt me as it would have, did, one week ago.

Jan. 27

There are many stories. Each account, each murdered individual, each wounded person, each burned-out and broken house, each shattered window trashed kitchen strewn item of clothing bedroom turned upside down bullet and shelling hole in walls offensive Israeli army graffiti ... is important.