ISM UK is offering a two-part online pre-training for prospective volunteers who are interested in joining the International Solidarity Movement on the ground in Palestine.
Attending the two sessions together 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.
Where: Online Date: August 22 and 23, 2022 Time: 18:00-20:30 (UK time/ BST)
To sign up for the training, please contact training.ismlondon@riseup.net (the training is also open to prospective volunteers outside the UK)
This is a two-part training with two sessions covering different content spread over two evenings on following days.
Amjad Nashat Abu Alya, 16, was killed by Israelis on Friday 29 during a demonstration in the village
of al-Mughayyer. Amjad died in a hospital in Ramallah after being shot in the chest. Eyewitnesses
said he was running to safety after throwing stones when a settler shot him in the back. He is the 7 th
killed in the village.
On Friday, Palestinians gathered in al-Mughayyer and walked towards the edges of the village, to the
main road used also by settlers. The situation heated up when armed settlers arrived and started
clashes with Palestinians. Soldiers of the Israeli Occupation Forces, who were watching, intervened
and started throwing gas bombs, to which Palestinians responded by throwing stones. The settlers
sided with the soldiers and were throwing stones and shooting on the crowd. There was heavy fire
by soldiers too, with stun grenades, rubber bullets and live ammunition.
Rayan, 25, a second-degree cousin of Amjad, told the ISM that Amjad was a “normal” guy, but he got
“very emotional” and more involved in the fight when his cousin and friend, Ali Abu Alia (15), was
killed while observing a protest in 2020. “He was always the first to attend protests.”
The day before the protest, Amjad had met with one of his friends who had just been released from
an Israeli prison and they decided to attend the protest.
Friday protests are held in many villages in the West Bank as resistance to the occupation. The
peaceful protests are violently met by soldiers and police, to which Palestinians, especially the young
ones, respond by throwing stones. The al-Mughayyer protest was attended by 300- 400 people
according to Al-Jazeera. Ten people were injured by gas, and other two by rubber bullets and live
ammunitions, according to Palestinian media.
Al-Mughayyer is surrounded by a military base and two illegal Israeli settlements: Adei Ad,
established in 1998, and the more recent Malachei Hashalom, from 2015. Villagers have been
protesting the expansion of this settlement. Things have recently exacerbated as settlers regularly
block the main road, a major artery needed for villagers’ livelihoods. Settlers also broke in the village
on several occasions, set two mosques on fire, burned cars and did a major raid in 2019 with several
injured and a Palestinian killed.
According to Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), part of an international NGO for
children’s right, there have been 16 child fatalities in 2022.
“When the settler shot him, he did it with the intention to kill,” Rayan said.
“We lost a young guy for nothing. The situation is terrible, and we have no hope. It is a common
thing for us to lose people to the occupation or have them in prison,” Rayan said.
Amjed funeral was held on Saturday 30. Thousands attended the procession along the nearby
villages and gave farewell to the body.
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.
