December 2005

Your Help is Making a Difference in Palestine

Sharon Moves to "Settle" the Jerusalem Question

International Solidarity Gives Us Hope

If it's Friday, it Must be a Demo in Bil'in

Qawawis: Settlers Threaten an Age-old Way of Life

We Await You in Palestine

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Your Help is Making a Difference in Palestine

By Paul Larudee

As I began to write this, four ISM volunteers were arrested in the Tel Rumeida district of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank. Their crime? To accompany Palestinians to school, shopping, work, or friends’ homes.

ISM volunteers document the harassment of Palestinians, their delays at checkpoints and the denial of access to their own property. They film Israeli settlers who shout insults, throw bottles and other objects, and even beat Palestinians while soldiers stand idly by. The good news is that the presence of volunteers with cameras is often enough to reduce these crimes. The bad news is that filming is itself often considered a crime.

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Sharon Moves to "Settle" the Jerusalem Question

By Henry Norr

To anyone passing through East Jerusalem or nearby sections of the West Bank in recent months, it’s been painfully obvious that big changes are under way—changes that could, if not soon reversed, all but extinguish the prospects for peace in the region.

It’s not just the Wall, growing from day to day in all its concrete ugliness, as it snakes through the Palestinian towns and villages north, east, and south of the city. It’s also the elaborate international-border-style “terminals” Israel is building to replace the once-ramshackle facilities at the major checkpoints at Qalandia, on the road north to Ramallah, and on the Hebron Road leading south to Bethlehem.

And the construction cranes you see everywhere in the hills to the east of the city, as settlements like Ma’ale Adumim and Har Homa expand and giant new developments like Nof Zion take shape. All in all, as the head of the Israeli organization Settlement Watch put it recently, the Israelis are “building like maniacs” around Jerusalem.

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International Solidarity Gives Us Hope

Interview with palestinian leader ayed
Morrar and Israeli activist Jonathan pollack

By Jeff Pekrul

Palestinian Ayed Morrar and Israeli Jonathan Pollack are major figures in the Palestinian-led nonviolent struggle against Israel’s military occupation. Ayed led his village of Budrus in a campaign of 50 non-violent protests in 2003-2004 which resulted in moving the Wall’s path off village land and back to the Green Line.

Jonathan, from Tel Aviv, has mobilized hundreds of Israeli activists to participate in nonviolent resistance alongside Palestinians in the West Bank. Both Ayed and Jonathan have been imprisoned by the Israelis for their non-violent resistance organizing.

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If it's Friday, it Must be a Demo in Bil'in

By Wynd Ahimsa

Nonviolence? In Palestine? As a matter of fact—yes! There are numerous examples of nonviolent resistance throughout the entire history of Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.

When I first went to Palestine in 2002 as a volunteer with ISM, I anticipated that my activities would be akin to confronting Israeli tanks. Instead, I found myself in a small village helping out with a truly creative form of nonviolent resistance in the form of a children’s summer camp. During a four-month siege of the Western Ramallah region, a man from the village of Deir Ibzi’a organized the camp because he saw children traumatized and depressed.

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Qawawis: Settlers Threaten an Age-Old Way of Life

By Henry Norr

Life in the tiny Palestinian hamlet of Qawawis seems straight out of the Old Testament, but that doesn’t stop the Jewish settlers in the hilltop outposts that surround the place from doing their best to destroy it. And if something isn’t done soon about the settlers’ latest threat—denying Qawawis’s shepherds access to watering holes their flocks depend on—the villagers might have no choice but to abandon their ancestral homes and lands.

Qawawis, located near the southern tip of the occupied West Bank, south of the city of Hebron, is home to just four extended families and a few hundred sheep and goats. Only one of the families has a house; the others live in caves carved—originally by nature, later by human hand—out of the region’s limestone hills.

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We Await You In Palestine

By Mansour Mansour

Every day that we have a nonviolent demonstration or action, the sweat of Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli activists proves the reality of solidarity and the possibility of coexistence between people.

Force is not the language for peace. Unlike the coalition forces who claim to create democracy and global justice through their weapons and destructive technology, in Palestine, simple human beings with empty hands and full hearts face one of the strongest armies in the world, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). We won’t react towards the IOF by using the same means of violence that they use against us.

We are not teachers or lecturers, but we have the experience of 57 years of resisting the Israeli Occupation. By our continuous resistance and the hope we have maintained, we prove that force and violence is the weapon of the loser. We need you, our friends, side by side with us, to work for that peace. We await you in Palestine.

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