Tag: Global Actions

Palestinians prepare for massive uprising

29 July 2011 | Inter Press Service, Mel Frykberg

BEIT UMMAR, Occupied West Bank – Leading members of the Palestinian Popular Committees in the West Bank plan massive civil unrest and disobedience against the Israeli occupation authorities come September when the Palestinians take their case for statehood to the UN.

“We plan to take to the streets en masse,” Musa Abu Maria, a leading member of the Popular Committee in Beit Ummar, a town 11 km north of Hebron in the southern West Bank told IPS. “We will block entire highways leading to and from Israel’s illegal settlements. We will march on settlements. But these will be non-violent and the protestors will be peaceful.

“We have worked out creative strategies to bring the occupation increasingly to the attention of the international community and the world media. We will be coordinating with our international supporters in Europe and America to increase international recognition of the Palestinian predicament as the tide turns in our favour,” added Abu Maria.

The Israeli government, intelligence agencies and security forces have been preparing for an outbreak of Palestinian protests in September as they expect the UN General Assembly to overwhelmingly endorse the Palestinian bid for independence.

The country’s security forces have been holding military drills in preparation for massive clashes. Meanwhile, the political leadership has engaged on a lightning tour of Europe trying to win the support of “quality European countries”, as the Israeli government put it, to vote against Palestinian statehood.

The Israeli government is hoping that the economically and politically stronger members of the UN will side with Israel as approximately 140 UN members from “developing and Third World” countries, amongst others, are expected to vote in favour of Palestine.

So concerned is the Israeli government that on Monday it threatened to revoke the 1993 Oslo Accords in response to the September plan of the Palestinian Authority (PA). According to government sources this is merely one of the alternatives the Israeli government is considering as a counter political move.

The Palestinians are steaming ahead with their strategy.

Last week in a politically ground-breaking move independent of the official PA and Hamas leadership, more than a thousand leading political activists and leaders from across the entire Palestinian political spectrum converged on Beit Ummar for a three-day conference to plan the Palestinian strategy for ending the Israeli occupation.

The three-day conference was held in three different villages where the strongest Friday protests against the expropriation of Palestinian land for illegal Israeli settlements have taken place.

Representatives from Hamas, Fatah, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) amongst others, agreed that they would call on their followers to begin massive civil disobedience campaigns across the West Bank in September.

“We told the various leaders that if they wanted to put their own party politics ahead of liberation, then they were not welcome at the event. However, if they were determined to work for liberation and the unification of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank politically and geographically then they would get our support,” Abu Maria told IPS.

According to Younis Arrar, a leading member of Fatah, the West Bank Popular Committee leadership and an employee of the PA, the support of the entire Palestinian leadership has been confirmed.

“They will get their supporters to take to the streets in their thousands on a massive scale. We are not talking about the current spot-fire protests in a number of West Bank villages but dozens of Palestinian cities, towns and villages across the Palestinian territories following the call,” Arrar told IPS.

“The Israelis fear non-violent mass civil unrest more than anything. They are hoping that we will turn violent because they can use their superior military force to crush us as they have always done. But we will stick to unarmed resistance,” added Arrar.

“I believe the Israelis will ensure at least some fatalities by shooting high-velocity teargas canisters directly at heads or aiming fire with live ammunition as they have done regularly in the past.”

Some of the planned protests in the West Bank will include bicycle rallies and other demonstrations with political themes. In the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh villagers have set up tents, Egyptian revolution style, to highlight the continued theft of their land for the adjacent Israeli settlement of Halamish.

Apart from mass marches and protests the Popular Committees are working with various grassroots organisations in Europe, including the Boycott, Disinvestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaigners, who are going to hold parallel protests and marches while calling for an economic boycott of Israeli goods and products.

Abu Maria believes that if the Palestinian leadership is not pro-active in guiding people in the near future, they will organise the revolution on their own. This happened during the first Palestinian Intifadah when the exiled Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) had to follow the lead of the Palestinian street when the uprising broke out in 1987.

“I have been politically involved since I was 15 and first imprisoned by the Israelis. I have my ear to the ground, I have many contacts and I know the way people think here. We will not stop until we have our freedom and independence. The writing is on the wall,” Abu Maria told IPS (END)

USACBI: US groups condemn anti-boycott law and reiterate support for BDS

12 July 2011 | US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Read the Palestinian Boycott National Committees statement on the anti-boycott bill

Read the Boycott From Within statement on the anti-boycott bill

On Monday, 11 July 2011, the Israeli Knesset passed new legislation outlawing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement[i]; a non-partisan grassroots initiative that seeks to pressure Israel to comply with international law and recognize fundamental Palestinian rights.

The bill bans all advocacy and action to boycott any Israeli companies, within Israel and the occupied Palestinian West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem[ii]. Furthermore, any company can be awarded compensation without even having to prove direct damage. The law is so broad that it could potentially be used not only against citizens of Israel, but also against Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. The legislation leaves Palestinian and Israeli solidarity groups who promote the boycott of any Israeli company liable to be sued and the vagueness of the bill opens all activists to arbitrary persecution.

We, Palestine solidarity and social justice groups based in the United States, reiterate our support and endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. We stand by our friends who will be legally subject to this draconian bill, which seeks to further deligitimize the non-violent struggle against Israeli apartheid.

This latest escalation in Israeli repression tactics aims to stifle the BDS movement. The call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, endorsed by over 170 Palestinian civil society groups in 2005[iii], has been adopted by hundreds of solidarity organizations worldwide that seek to put pressure on Israel until it complies with international law.

Not only do Palestinian and Israeli groups actively organize campaigns within Israel and occupied Palestine; but projects like Who Profits?[iv] also educate the international community by researching the true dealings of Israeli companies and enable many campaigns in the justice for Palestine movement.

This bill follows upon the ‘Nakba law’, which defunded any institution that acknowledged the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Such repressive legislation particularly targets Palestinians inside Israel, who are already subject to apartheid and extensive institutionalized racism as well as political persecution.

Israel has maintained such discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, alongside its illegal siege of Gaza, its brutal military occupation of the West Bank, its de facto annexation of East Jerusalem, its ongoing denial of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees and its policies of ethnic cleansing since before 1948.

Additionally, Israel recently suppressed other non-violent initiatives; pressuring foreign governments to obstruct the Freedom Flotilla II[v], which was organized to challenge the illegal blockade and siege of the Gaza Strip and the “Flytilla” which brought to light that Palestinians cannot even receive visitors[vi].

The global BDS Movement will not be stopped, intimidated or harmed by this latest Israeli attempt to repress the legitimate struggle for Palestinian rights. We will heed the Palestinian call to escalate our BDS campaigns. We stand side by side with our sisters and brothers in this struggle for rights and justice.

Notes

  • [i] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/world/middleeast/12israel.html
  • [ii] http://www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/boycott_prohibition_bill_27june2011-ENG.doc
  • [iii] http://www.bdsmovement.net/call
  • [iv] http://www.whoprofits.org/
  • [v] http://www.freegaza.org/en/home/56-news/1321-gaza-flotilla-we-still-plan-to-breach-blockade
  • [vi] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/07/israel-gaza-protest-flytilla

On July 8th we are flying for Palestinian freedom — and for our own

3 July 2011 | Welcome to Palestine

For Immediate Release

Hundreds of internationals on their way to visit Palestinians in Gaza have been prevented from departing from the ports in Greece. However, we hope that on July 8th, 2011, hundreds of others of us from many countries will succeed in reaching Palestine by flying to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. We have been invited by some forty Palestinian organizations to “Welcome to Palestine,” a week of activities in Palestine. It should be a wonderful visit, but most of us are frankly a bit scared. This is because of one decision we’ve all made: to tell the truth that our plan is to visit Palestine. It should be so simple, shouldn’t it? But it is not, because Israel controls all access to Palestine — by air, and by land, as well as by sea.

Even the website of the U.S. State Department warns of “prolonged questioning and thorough searches by Israeli authorities upon entry or departure,” of particularly “probing questioning” visited upon “U.S. citizens whom Israeli authorities suspect of being of Arab, Middle Eastern, or Muslim origin,” who are frequently denied entry. This is also true of visitors who are suspected to sympathize with Palestinians. The U.S. and the European countries refuse to protect their own citizens against these abuses by Israeli authorities.

The draconian and discriminating procedures at the borders of Israel have but one aim: to further isolate Palestinians and reinforce their inferior status; to trap them, away from any outside witnesses, in an increasingly constrictive maze of bantustans, separated by checkpoints and walls. By failing to insist that Israel allow travel to Palestine, our western governments support Israel’s apartheid policies. In fact, occupied territory is not sovereign territory and Israel’s authority over the occupied Palestinian territories is subject to international humanitarian law. This authority does not include the right to arbitrarily deny entry of foreign passport holders wishing to visit, reside, or work in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT — See http://www.righttoenter.ps/etemplate.php?id=146.)

We are flying to Ben Gurion on July 8th to visit friends in Palestine, and we insist that our own governments support us in doing so. Supporting our visit to Palestine will be one small step towards bringing about the freedom of movement for all the peoples of Israel/Palestine that is essential for peace and justice in the Middle East.

English articles and stories on the event:
Dissident Voice
AlterNet

Other related websites/links:


http://www.palestinejn.org
http://bienvenuepalestine.com (French and English)
http://www.kopi-online.de/8juli2011/ (German)

Release Sheikh Raed Saleh

3 July 2011 | Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Sheikh Raed Salah, one of the most prominent campaigners within Israel for Palestinian rights, has been arrested in London. The Sheikh was invited by PSC to speak at the launch of ‘Building Peace and Justice in Jerusalem’ Campaign in Parliament tonight, alongside MPs and other prominent speakers. He is the leader of a legitimate political party in Israel, representing Palestinians, and an outspoken champion of Jerusalem. The meeting will still go ahead.

The Sheikh entered the UK openly on 25 June and his schedule was known well in advance by UK authorities. This included a meeting in Parliament on 26 June and a public meeting the same night at Conway Hall, London, organised by PSC and MEMO on the subject of the Arab Spring and its impact on Palestine.

Despite this, the Sheikh was arrested in his hotel room last night under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971. The Home Secretary, Teresa May, subsequently announced in the House of Commons that he was excluded from entering the UK. The government has not made clear when the ban was issued, and the Sheikh’s legal team had not been contacted.
The Sheikh has appealed against the deportation in court. His team had already begun legal proceedings against Daily Telegraph and Jewish Chronicle journalists for printing false allegations about him last week. Deporting, and subsequently banning, Sheikh Raed from the UK will be a violation of his right to free speech, his right to speak out on behalf of Palestine, and a victory for those who have spread the baseless rumours defaming his reputation.

TAKE ACTION

Sign the petition demanding the release of Sheikh Raed Salah

Call or email the Home Secretary asking her to reconsider the decision. An Israeli court cleared Sheikh Raed of charges of making anti-Semitic comments. The Sheikh has reiterated that charges were dropped because there was no evidence against him. On what basis is he being excluded from the UK?

Email: mayt@parliament.uk T: 020 7219 5206

Demand Greece allow the Flotilla to sail!

2 July 2011 | Free Gaza Movement

Following the intense pressure from the United States and Israeli governments, Greece has announced that they will prevent the sailing of Freedom Flotilla II – Stay Human boats to Gaza.

Israel has exported the blockade of Gaza to Greece and the Greek government must be reminded that the people of the world want an end to the siege of Gaza. Join us in calling on the Greek government to allow the passage of the Flotilla to the shores of Gaza by calling your local Greek embassies and consulates. Find a local Greek representative.

In addition to calling to remind the Greek government that helping Israel maintain a naval blockade and illegal siege on the Gaza Strip is against international law and humanity, we urge you to show them by holding vigils and demonstrations. Find a demonstration in your area or organize one and register it.