ISM UK & ISM Ireland are offering pre-training sessions in Bristol and Belfast this month for prospective volunteers who are interested in joining the International Solidarity Movement on the ground in Palestine.
Attending the training session will give you a chance to get a first impression of ISM and the kind of work we do, receive training, connect with former volunteers and have your questions answered. You will also be filled in on how Palestinians are resisting the occupation and how we as internationals can work in solidarity with them using non-violent, direct action methods.
There is no obligation to join ISM after the training.
We ask participants to donate £5 to cover training costs.
Bristol
Date: July 24, 2022
Time: 10:30-16:00
Location: Bristol, UK
To sign up for the training, please contact training.ismlondon@riseup.net
Belfast
Date: July 24, 2022
Time: 10.30 – 4.30
Location: Belfast
To sign up for the training, click attending on Facebook here.
The International Solidarity Movement is calling all activists and supporters to take urgent action against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Masafer Yatta region in the occupied West Bank.
What is Masafer Yatta?:
Masafer Yatta is a rural region to the south of Hebron along the southern border of the occupied West Bank. It is home to 12 Palestinian villages totalling about 2,800 residents. Since 1981, the Israeli army has used the land as a military training area, ‘Firing Zone 918’ which has been used as a pretext for dispossesing, evicting and demolishing Palestinian homes, making every-day life unbearable for residents.
The current situation:
On May 4 2022, the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected appeals by residents against a series of eviction orders, giving the green light to Israeli Occupation Forces to wipe out eight villages located within the firing zone. This puts around 1,200 Palestinian residents, including 500 children, at imminent risk of eviction and arbitrary displacement, according to the UN. This process has already begun. The village of Al Mirkez has already been flattened three times and the residents are living in caves next to the rubble that was formerly their community.
From June 20, Israeli forces will begin training exercises with live ammunition in the Masafer Yatta region. Our partners on the ground view the next 3 months as a critical period, which will determine whether their communities will survive … and we need to act now!
How Masafer Yatta communities are resisting:
ISM’s friends and comrades in the region will never give up and neither should we. Masafer Yatta’s People’s Committee for Protection and Resilience, along with the Youth of Samud (whose headquarters received its own demolition order last week) have come together to use non-violent resistance to stop this ethnic cleansing. Popular resistance groups from all over Palestine and teams of activists from ‘48 [Israel] have been joining them in a united effort to save the villages. They are calling for international support and international activists to come and join the struggle on the ground.
We need volunteers to join them:
ISM is sending volunteers to Masafer Yatta this summer. We are calling on all committed supporters of Palestine to volunteer with ISM in the West Bank, in response to calls for assistance from our partners in Masafer Yatta. ISM activists would be working in solidarity with the Masafer Yatta community to provide a protective presence in villages under threat of demolition. ISM previously supported efforts to halt the demolition of Palestinian village Khan al-Ahmar in 2018. We hope to replicate the same success in Masafer Yatta. For more information about volunteering with ISM (needed this July and August), please contact: ismtraining@riseup.net.
If you can’t volunteer on the ground you can still help the cause!
Donate to ISM to help us sponsor volunteers and keep us running. Alternatively you can contact us for information about grassroots groups from Masafer Yatta, who you can support with donations or in other ways.
2 June | International Solidarity Movement | Dheisha, Bethlehem
On the morning of Thursday the 2nd of June, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) stormed Dheisha refugee camp, south of the West Bank town of Bethlehem, at dawn to arrest several residents. In the process of their operation soldiers shot 29-year-old Ayman Muhaisen with live ammunition several times, after which he succumbed to his wounds. Two other Palestinians were reportedly injured with live ammunition, according to the Red Crescent.
Poster of martyr Ayman Muhaisen
Ayman leaves behind three children, including a 7-month-old son and a daughter who had just graduated from kindergarten a day before. That afternoon, the streets of Dheisha were filled from Ayman’s home across to the cemetery by Artas as thousands came to mourn him and show their defiance in the face of yet another killing. Ayman rests in a cemetery that after the last few years is literally overflowing with martyrs since an IOF commander publicly threatened to disable every youth in the camp in 2019.
Funeral procession of Ayman Muhaisen in Dheisha, West Bank
ISM met with Naji Odeh, director of independent non-profit Laylac organisation, who spoke about the increasing frequency of such raids by the IOF, which have turned particularly deadly in the past few years: “these raids have become a normality in Dheisha, witnessing some 2-3 of these a week”. Ayman’s death exemplifies the brutality of such arrests, in which soldiers do not hesitate to use live ammunition.
A Palestinian youth called Mahmoud took ISM to the location where Ayman was shot just in front of his house, showing us where several bullets made holes in the walls and all across the residential neighbourhood. Just beside the corner where traces of his dried blood could still be seen was a mural with the names and pictures of previous martyrs killed in this area – the last of which, a blank image with a question mark with simply the word مين؟ or who? Inscribed on top. “We never know who will be next. It could be any of us”, Naji said.
Mural of martyrs in Dheisha, West Bank
Naji set up Laylac with the aim of assisting, educating and providing support for young Palestinians from both Dheisha and across the West Bank who have grown up and continue to live in an environment subjected to such brutal outcomes of the Israeli apartheid regime. Reliant on completely independent funding and dozens of volunteers, Laylac has helped children from the refugee camp continue their studies as the coronavirus pandemic halted many educational systems across the West Bank. The organisation also collaborates with several local schools in organising activities from portrait classes to trips abroad to France. Mahmoud, aged 13, and who witnessed the cold-blooded killing of Ayman Muhaisen in today’s morning raid, is one of many students who will travel abroad for the first time in their lives with the help of Laylac.
Palestinian fishermen protest Israeli violence and restrictions on their livelihoods
13 July | International Solidarity Movement | Gaza
On Sunday, the Fishermen’s Syndicate in the Gaza Strip organized a protest sit-in and a press conference, demanding an end to the Israeli abuses against fishermen and the expansion of the fishing areas in the Gaza Sea.
Dozens of fishermen took part in the Gaza Port vigil under the title (a scream from Gaza fishermen). Balloons bearing photos of fishermen who were martyred by the Israeli occupation were launched into the sky during the demonstration. Protesters also raised banners in both Arabic and English calling for the re-expansion of the fishing zones and an end to the targeting of fishing boats.
Protesters attach pictures of Palestinian fishermen killed by Israeli occupation forces to balloons
The head of the Fishermen’s Syndicate, Nizar Ayyash, has stated that the Israeli occupation continues to violate the rights of fishermen in the Gaza sea, violating international regulations and laws.
At the conference, Ayyash added that these violations pose an ongoing threat to the lives of about 4,500 fishermen, whose only source of income is fishing. He urged the international community to pressure the occupation to expand the fishing area again and allow fishermen to make their living.
The head of the Fishermen’s Syndicate Nizar Ayyash
Gaza’s fishing industry has been decimated, especially in the last five years, due to increasingly punitive Israeli restrictions on where Palestinian boats can fish. Fishermen face constant harassment and violence from Israeli naval vessels. Since 2005, 14 fishermen have been killed, 32 wounded and 450 arrested, according to the Syndicate.
Ayyash called out several recent crimes committed by the occupation, including the killing of three members of the Al-Lahham family’s after an Israeli vessel crashed into their boat, and another fisherman who lost his eyesight as a result of being directly fired upon. Israeli soldiers also sank some fishermen’s boats, causing them to lose their only source of livelihood.
Protesters carry signs demanding Israel open the sea borders and cease firing on fishermen
Ayyash also pointed out that the latest Israeli bombardment of Gaza in May affected the fishermen through the loss of work equipment and nets as a result of the heavy bombing. He called for the community to stand with them.
The head of the Fishermen’s Syndicate also asked the international community and its organizations to support the fishermen of Gaza by helping put an end to the occupation’s violence against the Palestinian people in general and the fishermen in particular.
Israeli plan for the renewed confiscation of lands around Alei Zahav illegal settlement.
The Israeli Occupation Forces have recently announced a new sequence of land seizures in eleven villages in Salfeet (Salfit) District and three in the Qalqilya area of Occupied Palestine. The total amount of land being confiscated, for “military/security” reasons, is the equivalent of nearly one million square metres. 850,000 of this is for the compulsory renewal of notices of land confiscation that had already been issued, the rest is made up of new illegal acquisitions.
Plan for the renewed confiscation of lands around Ari’el illegal settlement.
Residents in the fourteen villages – which include Bruqeen, Iskaka, Deir Istiya and Zawiya – were given notice of the seizures within the last two weeks. They were allowed just seven days to register appeals with the Israeli court. Many were unable to do so within the tight deadline, which required producing notarised copies of land title deeds, and the additional expense of hiring a lawyer to represent them. Based on bitter past experience the majority of residents, however, chose not to register appeals, as the Israeli courts have proven themselves to be completely unwilling previously to overturn any order raised by the military that cite ‘security concerns’.
A view of Marda village, overwhelmed by the Ari’el illegal settlement.
Despite some appeals having been lodged with the court, the Israeli Army has nonetheless continued to occupy the confiscated land in question, and erected fences and other barriers on the disputed new land. Residents can now only gain access to tend crops or pick olives if they apply to the Israeli Army for a permit to enter their own land. This still means they have to pass through checkpoints and face humiliating delays, ID checks, bag searches and body searches.
