Workers Solidarity Movement

Marwa is a ten year old refugee from the village of Marwaheen in the south of Lebanon. Following an Israeli ultimatum Marwa’s family decided to flee. While driving away from the village the Israeli military fired on the pick up truck they were travelling in. Marwa recalls “The wind carried me far away, I woke up on the nearby rocks. Next to me, Mama and Mirna were sleeping. I went to them to wake them up but the plane saw me and came towards me so I ran away. My brother Wissam was hit in his leg and he could not reach me, he was hiding behind a rock and when the ambulance came he was waving to them to stop. Mirna was sleeping the whole time”. Marwa was sent to hospital for treatment for her burns and wounds. Her sister Mirna, 12, her brother Hadi, 5, and her mother Zahra, 51, were all killed (1)

The second intifada began in September 2000 and since then over 2,500* Palestinians have been killed and 41,000 have been wounded. These stark figures alone do not tell the full story of the subjugation and the brutal oppression of the people of Palestine. The Israeli occupation forces have engaged in the systematic destruction of the infrastructure of the Occupied Territories. They regularly carry out punitive raids using explosives and bulldozers that result in residential areas being reduced to a lunar landscape of rubble.