Category: Features - Page 192 - International Solidarity Movement

Gaza Freedom Marchers issue the ‘Cairo Declaration’ to end Israeli Apartheid

1 January 2010

Gaza Freedom Marchers approved today a declaration aimed at accelerating the global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli Apartheid.

Roughly 1400 activists from 43 countries converged in Cairo on their way to Gaza to join with Palestinians marching to break Israel’s illegal siege. They were prevented from entering Gaza by the Egyptian authorities.

As a result, the Freedom Marchers remained in Cairo. They staged a series of nonviolent actions aimed at pressuring the international community to end the siege as one step in the larger struggle to secure justice for Palestinians throughout historic Palestine.

This declaration arose from those actions:

End Israeli Apartheid

Cairo Declaration
January 1, 2010

We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:

In view of:

Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;
the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements;
the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;
the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;
the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;
the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;
and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;
in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;
and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)

We reaffirm our commitment to:

We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.

To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.

Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:

An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;
Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;
A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;
Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;
Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;
Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen’s Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;
Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign the declaration and work with us to make it a reality.

To endorse the declaration please email cairodec@gmail.com.

New year in Gaza reopens wounds of old

Eva Bartlett | The Electronic Intifada

31 December 2009

091231-ips-gaza — New Year's in Gaza is time to honor the dead. (Eva Bartlett)

For many survivors of the last Israeli war on Gaza, time has not healed their wounds, physical or emotional.

Halil Amal Samouni, 10, still suffers vision problems in her right eye. The shrapnel remaining in her head causes her constant pain and she is unable to concentrate at school.

Her concentration is broken, also, by memories of her martyred father and younger brother, both of whom she saw shot dead at close range by Israeli soldiers during the 2008-2009 winter war on Gaza.

The name Samouni has become well known for the high number of martyrs in the extended family, and for the brutality with which many victims were killed, the Israeli army’s prevention of medical access to the injured, and the thorough and systematic destruction of homes, farms, and civilian infrastructure in the Zeitoun district in eastern Gaza, and all throughout Gaza.

In the wake of Israeli tanks, bulldozers, warplanes and Apache helicopters, the once tree-laden area was left a muddy pitch of rutted earth and tree stumps. Chicken farms were destroyed, along with plastic greenhouses, farm equipment, water piping, and the tens of homes, agricultural buildings and the local mosque.

Many of the remaining houses were taken as military positions, sniper holes bored through walls, soldiers’ excrement, clothing, spent ammunition and food provisions were routinely left among the trashed belongings of the house. Hate graffiti was found throughout homes in the Samouni neighborhood and all over Gaza.

Most horrifying was the targeted shooting of the family — including children — and the deliberate shelling of homes they had been forced into by Israeli soldiers.

Amal Samouni was among the least fortunate of survivors.

When Israeli soldiers came to her home early on 4 January, they shot her father Atiyeh dead at close range, then fired continuously into the room full of family members. Amal’s younger brother Ahmed, 4, was seriously injured by the shooting. Denied medical care, he died the following morning, roughly ten hours after Israeli soldiers prevented medical rescuers from entering the area.

“They killed my dad and my brother. They destroyed our house,” Amal says simply. She has told her story to journalists many times. “But it hasn’t done any good, nothing has changed.”

Zeinat Samouni, Amal’s widowed mother, shows the single room her family of eight are crammed into, cracked asbestos tiling covering the roof.

“The roof leaks. We put plastic jugs on the floor to catch the water,” she says. “And because we can’t buy cooking gas, we cook over a fire instead.”

Aside from their physical discomfort, it is memories of the massacre and fear of a new attack that trouble them.

“I was terrified he would choke,” she says, gesturing to a child she holds. “He was only a few weeks old at the time.”

She recounts the trauma of having another child die in her arms, seeing him shelved in an overcrowded mortuary freezer, and all the while desperately wondering whether Amal was still alive.

“Even now, I’m still so afraid for my children, afraid that another war will come. The UAVs (unmanned drones) are always over us, and often at night the helicopters come.”

In northern Gaza’s Ezbet Beit Hanoun, families and friends of the Abd al-Dayem and Abu Jerrad families gather on 26 December, holding a candlelight vigil in remembrance of their sons, wives and husbands killed during a series of Israeli flechette (dart-bomb) attacks a year back.

The first to be killed in that area of Gaza by the razor-sharp nails was medic Arafa Abd al-Dayem, 35, on the morning of 4 January. Along with other medics, Abd al-Dayem had been on duty in the Attatra region, in Gaza’s north, retrieving wounded and martyred. As the medics loaded the ambulance, Israeli soldiers fired a flechette shell at the clearly marked vehicle, spreading thousands of darts at high velocity. Abd al-Dayem died an agonizing death, his internal organs and lungs shredded by the darts.

Khalid Abu Saada, a medic and the driver of the ambulance, testified to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: “The shell directly hit the ambulance and 10 civilians, including the two paramedics, were injured.”

The following morning, the Abd al-Dayem family and friends gathered at a funeral tent erected for Arafa. Israeli tanks again fired flechette shells, striking the gathering multiple times, killing five at the tent, one down the road, and injuring at least 25.

“The pain is still fresh, I still can’t move on since my sons’ murders,” said Sabbah Abd al-Dayem, mother of two martyrs in their twenties.

Jamal Abd al-Dayem, father of the young men, recalls: “It was clearly a mourning house, on the road, open and visible. Immediately after the first strike, the Israelis fired again. I lost two sons. One of them was newly married, his wife eight months pregnant.”

Said Abd al-Dayem, 29, died of dart injuries to his head one day later in hospital. Nafez Abd al-Dayem, 23, died immediately from the darts to his head.

Nahez Abd al-Dayem, 25, survived but retains two darts in his abdomen, one in his chest, with only the dart in his leg removed. Islam Abd al-Dayem, 16, a cousin, died after three days in hospital from the darts to his neck. Arafat Abd al-Dayem, 15, a cousin, died instantly.

Human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and B’Tselem, among others, have criticized Israel’s use of flechette bombs in civilian areas in densely populated Gaza, where the darts have a “wide kill radius,” and indiscriminately target civilians.

Wafa Abu Jerrad, who was 21 and pregnant, lived down the street from the mourning tents. She was with her husband Muhammad, their two children, and relatives outside their house when Israeli soldiers fired the dart bombs.

Muhammad Abu Jerrad was stepping into the doorway, their two-year-old son Khalil in his arms, when the bomb hit. Wafa dropped to ground, struck by flechettes in the head, chest and back. She was killed instantly.

Sitting outside his family’s tent in the Attatra region, Saleh Abu Leila says, “Everything I worked for is gone.”

Since their two-story home was destroyed by Israeli soldiers during the war on Gaza, Abu Leila and 13 other family members have crowded into two small tents. During the summer, they sweltered in stifling heat. Now that winter is setting in, they are struggling to keep warm and dry.

Over 21,000 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged during the 23 days of Israeli attacks throughout Gaza that finally ended 18 January.

Since the end of the Israeli war on Gaza, Israeli authorities continue to block entry to cement and other necessary building materials. Glass, along with wood, piping and many other items, is considered potentially dangerous by Israeli authorities. The bomb-blasted windows of homes and buildings remain un-repaired one year later; the luckier families making due with plastic sheeting.

A small portion of Gaza’s 1.5 million people can afford to buy the overpriced, poor-quality cement smuggled in through the tunnels running between Gaza and Egypt. For those hardest hit, however, this is out of reach.

Hundreds of families, like the Attars, still remain in substandard shelters, insufficient for winter cold and rains.

Many Gazans do not welcome the New Year, they fear what it will bring.

Gaza’s border must be opened NOW

Pam Rasmussen | The Electronic Intifada

29 December 2009

Tell Egypt you stand in solidarity with Gaza – use this online form to send a letter to the Palestine Division at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cairo, and to the Egyptian Embassy in the US

091229-pam-gaza-1 — Solidarity activists joined approximately a dozen hunger strikers in front of the journalists' syndicate in Cairo.

091229-pam-gaza-2 — Riot police barricading protesters in Cairo.

091229-pam-gaza-3 — Protesters occupying the grounds of the French embassy.

This time is clearly different.

I have traveled to Gaza twice this year, in groups ranging from 40 to 60 persons, and although there was a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved in “greasing the wheels” with the Egyptian authorities, we pretty much sailed in. CODEPINK (the group that organized both of my previous trips) developed a well-earned reputation for being able to pull just the right levers to open the doors to the isolated enclave of Gaza — even more so than George Galloway’s Viva Palestina convoy, which is typically allowed in for only 24 to 48 hours (versus our four days).

But too many months have gone by with no change in the crippling isolation of Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt, and it was time to risk our privileged access to take our efforts to break the siege up a notch. Our numbers had to be massive enough to threaten the jailers’ growing complacence and broad enough to send the message that this is a global movement that won’t stop until the Palestinian people are given the freedom and justice they deserve. Thus, this time CODEPINK allied with a number of other organizations around the world, and the number of participants quickly ballooned to more than 1,300 from 43 countries. Likewise, while we have collected or purchased thousands of dollars’ worth of school supplies, winter clothing and electronic devices (such as computers — currently only available via the tunnels and thus too expensive for the average Palestinian in Gaza), our message is also unapologetically political: the borders must be opened, to everyone, all the time. NOW.

We have obviously accomplished our objective. The jailers have taken notice and are running scared. So scared that we not only have been denied entry into Gaza, we have been threatened with arrest and deportation if we so much as carry a sign or gather in groups of more than six. Our reservation with a facility in downtown Cairo for an orientation meeting for delegates was canceled at the government’s order, and requests to hold educational workshops instead were refused. In an even more audacious move that was aided and abetted by participants’ own governments, consulate representatives were called to a meeting and apparently instructed to warn their residents not to come. In Spain, that warning was echoed in a news release. In Canada, individuals registered for the march or who had participated in past delegations received emails from their embassies. In Portugal, one marcher was called on his personal cell phone!

As word spread of Egypt’s refusal to open Gaza’s doors — announcing its decision long after thousands of internationals had purchased expensive airline tickets and mere days before they began boarding their flights — supporters around the world inundated Egypt’s embassies with calls, emails and faxes in protest. Many came from legislators and other government officials, past and present. Egypt only backed further into its corner in response, using the aggressive tone of some of the calls and emails to ignore the overall theme: the injustice of the collective punishment imposed on Gaza’s nearly 1.5 million Palestinians and Egypt’s refusal to allow supporters to help.

As I write this, we are still being refused entry to Gaza, and even permission to travel to al-Arish and Rafah on the border. Thirty-eight of our marchers tried to get to al-Arish on their own, but 30 were then put under house arrest in their hotel and eight were detained at the bus station. Every peaceful vigil or protest we staged was met with an “iron wall” — and sometimes, by violence.

When the French contingent of about 450 persons asked for help from their embassy, and occupied the grounds of the building in protest when initial promises negotiated with the Egyptian government were reneged, they were surrounded by heavily-armed and helmeted riot police and refused permission to leave — even for food or to use a toilet. At the time of this writing, their “occupation” is going on 48 hours now.

Similar “sit-ins” have been or are being waged at the US, UK and Italian embassies (with more to come). At the US embassy, 30 Americans were detained within a circle of police for eight hours (at the direction of their own countrymen, by the way) before being released. The only small victory was an (ultimately frustrating and fruitless) meeting for three of the protesters with one of the embassy’s higher-level officials.

The same treatment was received when vigils were staged at the United Nations, the journalists’ syndicate (in support of about a dozen hunger-striking marchers) and the Kasr al-Nil Bridge over the Nile.

However, there are a few, bright silver linings to this dark cloud. Groups on the left of the sociopolitical spectrum are known for being far less cooperative and cohesive than their conservative, reactionary counterparts. It truly gladdened my heart, therefore, to see the immediate mobilization in our support by groups ranging from the War Resisters League to Jewish Voice for Peace.

Meanwhile, it’s a truism that controversy attracts media coverage. Our missions to Gaza have been ignored by the mainstream media in the past, but this time, Egypt’s defensive and angry response attracted the attention of such mainstream media pillars as the BBC, the Associated Press, Newsweek and The New York Times. I am a communications professional, and Egypt has violated a tenet of Public Relations 101: The more you protest, the guiltier you look.

All images by Pam Rasmussen.

Pam Rasmussen is a peace activist and communications professional from Maryland who recently received a Community Human Rights Award for her work on behalf of Palestinians from the UN Association of the National Capitol Area. She can be contacted at peacenut57 A T yahoo D O T com.

This is not humane. We need our dignity

Sami Abdel-Shafi | The Guardian

29 December 2009

On my way to visit a friend in the Abed Rabbo district, north of the Gaza Strip, the taxi driver handed me a small pack of biscuits for change. There are nearly no copper coins left here so cab drivers barter a half Israeli shekel for biscuits brought in from the tunnels between the southern city of Rafah and Egypt’s northern Sinai. Some Gazans, who once earned a respectable living, resorted to melting coins and sold the copper for food supplies.

This was not the first time I was forced into arcane methods of barter. A few weeks ago I was told that oil filters for our British-made electricity generator could only be brought in through the tunnels. One alternative was to fit a refurbished car-engine filter to the generator.

We had wood-fired coffee next to the rubble of my friend’s family’s former homes – all levelled during Israel’s three-week war on Gaza that started one year ago. His only source of income, a taxi, was crushed by Israeli tanks during the assault. He agonises about how his children no longer respect him as their father. He is unable to provide them with the security of a house and an independent family life; they lost everything.

The family is spread around relatives’ homes. But the family’s old man just moved into a 60sq m house built from mud and brick, standing next to the rubble of his 400sq m three-story house for which he saved for a lifetime. It was one of the first the UN Relief and Works Agency built after having seemingly lost hope in any Israeli intention to allow construction materials into Gaza. My friend’s daughter earns the highest grades in her class and is eyeing a scholarship for one of the universities in Gaza when she leaves high school. But this young woman’s resilience and motivation will go nowhere as long as Gaza is blockaded.

Almost nothing has been more deceitful than casting Gaza as a humanitarian case. This is becoming exponentially more problematic a year after the war. Gaza urgently needs far more than merely those items judged by the Israeli military as adequate to satisfy Gaza’s humanitarian needs. This list of allowable items is tiny compared to people’s needs for a minimally respectable civil life.

Gaza is not treated humanely; the immediate concerns about the situation have clearly given way to long-term complacency, while failed politics has now become stagnant. The humanitarian classification conceals the urgent need to address this. Moreover, many in the international community have conveniently resorted to blaming Palestinians for their political divisions, as though they were unrelated to Israel’s policies – most notably Gaza’s closure after Israeli disengagement in 2005.

It seems evident that most officials in the US, UK and other powerful nations in Europe and the Middle East do not – or perhaps cannot – pressure Israel to reverse its policy of forcing Palestinians into eternal statelessness. How Palestinians are forced into degrading living standards in Gaza, and how they have no means to repel the ongoing demolition and confiscation of property and land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is abhorrent. How Palestinians are still divided despite the increased suffering of their people is no less abhorrent. However, no one should fool themselves into believing that their reconciliation would alter Israel’s policy.

The international community must surely adopt a new approach – where it would not be seen as acquiescent to Israel’s policies. If the current policy continues then, at least, let it not be at the expense of Palestinian self-respect. Palestinians are a dignified people, as competitive and civilised as any other people in the world. It is far too humiliating for Palestinians to endure not only being occupied but to be made beggars.

For years it has been impossible not to suspect that Israel does not want peace. Of late, the US-backed state has consistently created impossible conditions for fair and equal negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and it continues to undermine moderate voices and drive people towards extremism in Gaza. The fact that Palestinians still genuinely want peace should not allow Israel to reject the simplest rules of civility. The US and the EU should come to Gaza; then they could draw their own conclusions on an Israeli policy they have backed and funded without ever witnessing its consequences on ordinary civilians’ lives. Surely then they could not fail to see that changing their policy is a moral imperative.

Desmond Tutu calling for immediate release of Bil’in activist Abdallah Abu Rahmah

24 December 2009

Elders’ chair, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has expressed his deep concern about the arrest and indictment of Abdallah Abu Rahmah of Bil’in and has called for his unconditional release.

Abu Rahmah is a school teacher and coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, which has carried out a five year campaign of non-violent protest and legal challenge against the wall that separates Israel from the West Bank.

“My fellow Elders and I met Abu Rahmah and his colleague Mohammad Khatib in August when we visited Bil’in,” said Desmond Tutu. “We were impressed by their commitment to peaceful political action, and their success in challenging the wall that unjustly separates the people of Bil’in from their land and their olive trees. I call on Israeli officials to release Abu Rahmah immediately and unconditionally.”

Abu Rahmah was arrested by Israeli soldiers at 2am on 10 December 2009 and indicted on 22 December 2009 on several counts stemming from his leadership role in the Popular Committee. On 15 September Mohammad Khatib was severely beaten during a raid attempting to arrest Abu Rahmah. Since 23 June 2009, 31 residents of Bil’in have been arrested.

“Abu Rahmah’s arrest and indictment is part of an escalation by the Israeli military to try to break the spirit of the people of Bil’in,” said Tutu. “But they must realize that they cannot break the spirit of those who fight for freedom and justice.”

Abu Rahmah met six members of The Elders on 27 August 2009. The Elders visited the site of Bil’in’s weekly demonstrations near the separation barrier and also saw the memorial site paying tribute to Abu Rahmah’s cousin Bassem Abu Rahmah who was killed when he was hit in the chest by a tear gas canister during one of the demonstrations. (see photo)

The Elders who visited Bil’in were Desmond Tutu, Ela Bhatt, Gro Brundtland, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson. For more information go to www.theElders.org/middle-east

The Elders visit the memorial to Bassem Abu Rahmah in Bil'in, 27 August 2009. L-R: Gro Brundtland, Mary Robinson, Fernando Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Mohammed Khatib, Ela Bhatt, Abdullah Abu Rahma.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Abdallah Abu Rahmah

Abdallah Abu Rahmah was indicted in an Israeli military court on Tuesday, 22 December 2009. Abu Rahmah was charged with arms possession for collecting used tear gas canisters shot at demonstrators in Bil’in by the army and showcasing them in his home. The indictment also includes incitement and stone throwing charges.

On receiving the indictment Adv. Gaby Lasky, Abu Rahmah’s lawyer said that “the army shoots at unarmed demonstrators, and when they try to show the world the violence used against them by collecting presenting the remnants – they are persecuted and prosecuted. What’s next? Charging protesters money for the bullets shot at them?”

Abdallah Abu Rahmah was arrested from his West Bank home on 10 December, the International Human Rights Day. Seven military jeeps surrounded his house, broke open the door, and after briefly allowing him to say goodbye to his family; the army blindfolded and took him into custody.

Abdallah has been a member of the Bil’in Popular Committee since its conception in 2004. Following the initial construction of Israel’s wall on Bil’in’s lands in March 2005, Abdallah has participated in organizing almost daily direct actions and demonstrations against the theft of their lands. Garnering the attention of the international community with their creativity and perseverance, Bil’in has become a symbol for Palestinian popular resistance. Almost five years later, Bil’in continues to have weekly Friday protests.

As its coordinator, Abdallah has represented the village around the world. In June 2009, he traveled to Montreal to attend the village’s precedent-setting legal case against two Canadian companies illegally building settlements on Bil’in’s land and participate in a speaking tour. In December of 2008, he participated in a speaking tour in France, and on 10 December 2008, exactly a year before his arrest, Abdallah traveled to Germany on behalf of Bil’in, to accept the Carl Von Ossietzky Medal for outstanding service in the realization of basic and human rights, awarded by the International League for Human Rights.

Abu Rahmah’s arrest is seen as part of an escalation in Israeli military’s attempts to break the spirit of the people of Bil’in, their popular leadership, and the popular struggle as a whole – aimed at crushing demonstrations against the Wall. Recently, Adv. Gaby Lasky, who represents many of Bil’in’s detainees, was informed by the military prosecution that the army intends to use legal measures as a means of ending the demonstrations.

An exhibition of spent tear gas grenades and projectiles in the village of Bil'in for which Abu Rahmah was indicted on. Picture credit: Oren ZivActiveStills

Bil’in

Located 12 kilometers west of Ramallah and 4 km east of the Green Line, Bil’in is an agricultural village spanning 4,000 dunams (988 acres) with approximately 1,800 residents.

While construction of the Wall and opposition to it began in 2005, the majority of land had been expropriated from Bil’in earlier.

Starting in the early 1980’s, and more significantly in 1991, approximately 56% of Bil’in’s agricultural land was declared ‘State Land’ for the construction of the settlement bloc Modi’in Illit (Modi’in Illit currently holds the largest settler population of any settlement bloc, with over 42,000 residents and plans to achieve a population of 150,000).

In addition to grassroots organizing, Bil’in has held annual conferences on popular resistance since 2006; providing a forum for villagers, activists and academics to discuss strategies for the unarmed struggle against the Occupation.

Bil’in embraced legal measures against Israel as part of its multi-lateral resistance to the theft of their livelihoods. The village first turned to the courts in the winter of 2004. Three years after they initiated legal proceedings, the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that due to illegal construction in part of Modi’in Illit, unfinished housing could not be completed and that the route of the Wall be moved several hundred meters west, returning 25% of Bil’in’s lands to the village. To date, the high court ruling has not been implemented and construction continues.

In July 2008, Bil’in commenced legal proceedings before the Superior Court of Quebec against Green Park International Inc and Green Mount International Inc for their involvement in constructing, marketing and selling residential units in the Mattityahu East section of Modi’in Illit

In an effort to stop the popular resistance in Bil’in, Israeli authorities intimidate demonstrators with physical violence and arrests.

Israeli armed forces have used sound and shock grenades, water cannons, rubber-coated steel bullets, tear-gas grenades, tear-gas canisters, high velocity tear-gas projectiles, 0.22 caliber live ammunition and live ammunition against protesters. On 17 April 2009, Bassem Abu Rahma was shot with a high-velocity tear gas projectile in the chest by Israeli forces and subsequently died from his wounds at a Ramallah hospital.

Out of the 78 residents who have been arrested in connection to demonstrations against the Wall, 31 were arrested after the beginning of a night raid campaign on 23 June 2009. Israeli armed forces have been regularly invading homes and forcefully searching for demonstration participants, targeting the leaders of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, as well as teenage boys accused of throwing stones at the Wall. 13 currently remain in detention, 4 of which are minors.

End Israeli Apartheid

Cairo Declaration January 1, 2010

Cairo Declaration
January 1, 2010