Volume [9]
No. [2]
December 2012
December 2012
Palestinian
Activists Block Apartheid Road 443
Interview
With a Settler
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Volume [9]
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No. [2]
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December 2012
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December 2012Palestinian
Activists Block Apartheid Road 443 |
Previous Editions
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Palestinian Activists Block Apartheid Road 443
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History About 50 Palestinians joined by a number of international activists blocked today the Apartheid Road 443 (known as Modi’in, which passes on West Bank lands, connecting Tel Aviv to Jerusalem). The road was blocked for about 30 minutes to Israeli and settler traffic. Soldiers and Border Police who arrived on the scene physically attacked protestors and journalists, and used pepper spray and sound bombs. One Palestinian protestor was detained and beaten. He was released an hour later. This direct action was organized in light of the increasing settler terrorism against Palestinians and their properties during the current olive harvest season, including the torching, uprooting or setting fire to olive trees, the theft of harvested olives, and the attacking of Palestinian families while picking olives. Mohamad Khatib, of the PSCC emphasized, “We organized this action today to stress that as long as Palestinians suffer under the daily practices of the occupation and settler terror, Israeli daily life can’t continue on as normal.” |
Khatib added, “We call on people of conscience around the
world to
support the Palestinian struggle by engaging in the Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions campaign against Israel, and to take serious actions to
boycott companies that are complicit with the Israeli apartheid, such
as Veolia, which operates transportation routes that use Road 443,
which is built on Palestinian lands.” |
Interview With a Settler
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| During my visit to Palestine this
summer, I met with an Israeli settler in an effort to learn more about
the views of settlers living in the West Bank. My ultimate goal
was to speak very little, listen a lot, and try to understand the
thinking behind the settler point of view. My purpose was to try
to understand his point of view in an effort to be able to explain it
to others and argue effectively against it, so I spoke very little and
allowed him to talk, which he was more than happy to do. I spoke to a settler living in the Efrat settlement which is part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. It is located south of Jerusalem between Bethlehem and Hebron over 4 miles from the green line separating Israel and the West Bank and is on the Palestinian side of the apartheid wall. There are about 22,000 illegal settlers in Gush Etzion and 7000 of those live in Efrat. |
All settlements within the West Bank have been deemed illegal under international law and are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibition against an occupying power’s transfer of civilians into occupied territory. The Israeli government disputes this not by saying that population transfer is not occurring, or even that the boundary is disputed, but because Palestine was under occupation already when Israel conquered the territory, it was not bound by the Geneva Convention because it was a liberating army. The International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion issued in 2004, has rejected this assertion and reaffirmed the position that all Israeli settlements within the West Bank are illegal under international law. | |
Fundraising Appeal
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| ISM-Palestine issued this appeal in
October. We wish it were exceptional but it is not. The Northern
California Chapter has already sent $200, but we used to be able to
send thousands. We are the only tax-exempt ISM chapter, and we realize
that many of you prefer to donate by check. If you wish to send your
donations in the enclosed remit envelope, therefore, we will assure
that all of your funds goes to support our work, as we have for the
last ten years. The ISM Team in Northern California |
Israeli
authorities are threatening to deport two international activists,
arrested yesterday at a non-violent action at a settlement supermarket,
despite a judge ruling that they should be released. They are currently
being held in immigration detention. Earlier today, defense lawyers were informed that a judge had ruled that they should be freed without charge, but this ruling was ignored by Israeli police, who handed the two activists to the Ministry of Interior, to begin the deportation process. They could be flown back to their home countries within hours, despite never having been charged, let alone convicted of any crime. They have also been repeatedly denied contact with their lawyer. |
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Israeli Environmental Protection
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| Uri Gnorant of the Israeli Bureau of
Land Redemption was eager to see me. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
“You reporters talk about how little we do for Palestinians. This is a
chance to set the record straight. When it comes to environmental
protection and conservation, no one could possibly do more than we do. “Take water, for example. We have reduced Palestinian water consumption to less than a third of what it was in 1967. Nowhere in the world can boast such an accomplishment. Even the Israelis themselves cannot match it. Villages like Beit Furik and Beit Dajan, with a combined population of around 15,000 get by on only 12 tanker loads of water per day during the summer, and sometimes less, supplemented by some filthy ground water for their vegetable gardens. You can’t do better than that. |
“Or
fire prevention. You remember the terrible Carmel forest fire that we
had in 2010? You never see anything like that in Palestinian areas, and
this is because we removed a lot of the trees as a preventive measure.
Some people say that the Carmel fire was due to the dead non-native
European trees that we planted to hide hundreds of Palestinian villages
that we destroyed in 1948, and that Palestinian olive and other fruit
trees don’t have the same problem. Let me assure you that olive trees
also burn, as our settlers have amply demonstrated. The solution is for
them to be removed, which is the policy that we have put in place and
are diligently pursuing. “Our protection of the Palestinian marine environment in Gaza is also unmatched. Over the last twenty years, we have progressively put larger and larger areas under protection from fishing, so that now the area available for fishing is less than a fifth of what it used to be, and most of the fish are not in that area, anyway. We can assure you that there will be no overfishing in Palestinian waters! |
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A Call For Volunteers |
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| The presence of activists reduces
the risk of violence by extremist settlers and the Israeli army, and
supports Palestinians’ right to protest the occupation, the apartheid
wall, and illegal settlements. International solidarity activists
engage in non-violent intervention and documentation, which is
support that enables villages and individual activists to maintain
their continued resistance. For this year's olive harvest we had a third of the volunteers that we had last year: no more than 20 at one time. This made it impossible to support the families in Nablus with their harvest to the extent we had promised.  |
Now that the harvest is over, our
numbers have decreased significantly
to an average of 10 total, with only 5 long term residents. It is so
difficult with these numbers to maintain a basic presence in key the
areas al-Khalil, Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, and Jiftlik in the Jordan
Valley, that it is an incredible strain to expend anyone for special
projects, such as to live with families in need of a continuous
international presence. |
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405 Vista Heights Rd. El Cerrito, CA 94530 510.236.4250 www.norcalism.org |