[GushShalom] Saturday: Israeli-Palestinian protest against the "Seperation Wall"

Thu Oct 24 14:21:31 IST 2002

From:           	"Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)" <otherisr at actcom.co.il>
To:             	
Date sent:      	
Subject:        	[GushShalom] Saturday: Israeli-Palestinian protest                              
                against the "Separation Wall" 
Send reply to:  	info at gush-shalom.org
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GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/

[1] Israeli-Palestinian demo against the "Separation Wall"
[2] What's bad about the wall? 
[3] Report from the ground  -  the wall destroys daily life
[4] Another tragic week - an assesment of the situation

[1] Israeli-Palestinian demo against the "Separation Wall"
This Saturday, October 26, we shall demonstrate, together with  Palestinian 
inhabitants and a large group of international peace activists, against the wall of 
separation and hatred which is being erected to "separate" Israel from the West Bank –

 The Bad Wall – a Prison for Palestinians,  a Ghetto for Israelis 

Meeting places
10.45: Arlozorov St. Railway Station, Tel-Aviv
11.30: Egedd Station, Kfar Sava

Please phone as soon as possible to the Gush office, 03-5221732, to ensure seats, 
and state name, phone and number of participants. Not later than Friday noon.

Two-Flag T-shirts are appropriate. 

[2] What's bad about the wall? 

"The Separation Wall" which is being erected, far from the media spotlight, is good 
only for the building contractors who line their pockets to the tune of millions and 
billions. For everybody else, Israelis and Palestinians alike, this wall is bad - very bad.
It is locking the Palestinians in a prison - a ghetto, some would say, or a series of 
ghettos. And, in fact, it making Israel, too, into a ghetto from which the hope of ever 
achieving peace will recede further and further. 

Under the cover of "security" and "separation", the regality of Aapartheid is being 
institutionalized. An enormous robbery of Palestinians lands is taking place, by 
erecting a wall between villagers and their fields and olive groves. Thousands of 
Palestinians lose their last remaining lands. Hundreds of demolition orders for 
Palestinians homes were already issued. Whole villages will be cut off from the rest of 
the West Bank. A whole city - Kalkilia with its tens of thousands of inhabitants - will 
become an enclave completely surrounded by fences, walls and checkpoints, a virtual 
prison camp. Palestinian daily life will become hell, even more than they already are - 
and that will have a direct impact on Israeli daily life as well.
When the wall is completed, the whole West Bank will become pressure cooker in 
which masses of desperate and angry Palestinians will be imprisoned, together with 
violent and aggressive settlers and a trigger-happy army. Possibly, in the short range
the wall will prevent a few suicide bombings (even that is not certain).  In the longer 
(and not so long) range, the explosion will be enormous and terrible. 
By its very nature, this wall is a "solution" by brute force,. It is a  continuation of the 
dangerous illusion that tanks and bulldozers enable Israel to unilaterally impose 
twisted solutions upon its neighbors. There can be no alternative to negotiations, to a 
peace agreement, to to an agreed border, to a reconciliation between the two peoples. 
Only this can give a new hope to the desperate Palestinian youths, remove their 
temptation to put on explosive belts and set out for Israeli cities. 
There can be no replacement to the Green Line as the peaceful border between the 
State of Israel and the State of Palestine. In a border of peace there will be no need of  
fence. In an ongoing occupation, without peace and without a border,  a wall will do no 
good - on the contrary, it will cause untold human suffering and a grave damage to the 
chances of peace and reconciliation. 

[3] Report from the ground  -  the wall destroys daily life

 We have decided to initiate this action, though knowing that several other worthy 
peace actions are scheduled for the same day, in response to an urgent call from the 
ground. The following is taken from a press release sent out a few days ago by the 
International Solidarity Movement (ISM) whose members maintain a constant presence 
in the villages directly affected by the construction of the "Separation Wall".

(...) The villagers have been protesting the illegal 
confiscation of the destruction of their precious farmland full of 
beautiful olive groves. The Israeli contractors have gone on working despite the 
villagers' appeal to the High Court. Villagers were accompanied by the ISM team to 
protest the illegal work activity. ISM members defied orders to make way for 
the bulldozers that were on their way to uproot the olive trees and 
farmland. ISM members and Palestinians stood their ground even when the army 
lobbed twelve tear gas canisters directly at the crowd and 3 sound bombs. The crowd 
only dispersed when soldiers started shooting live ammunition in the air and then 
aimed their guns directly at the crowd.  
One ISM member, Tom Winston from the Seatte area, was 
arrested and kept in detention for several hours, after standing in the way of the private 
security guards employed by the contractors. Later, two Palestinian brothers have 
been arrested for refusing to clear the site and let the bulldozers complete the 
destruction of olive trees on their land  - Ehab Khaled (21 years old), and Fadi Khaled 
(17).  At the time of writing [Sunday afternoon] bulldozers have now begun the 
destruction of the olive groves, belonging to the Khaled brothers. Palestinians and the 
ISM team are surrounding many other olive trees, so far untouched, to keep them from 
being uprooted.(...)

Similar reports keep coming in from village after village along the site of the intended 
"Separation Wall". 

[4] Another tragic week - an assesment of the situation

It has taken forty-eight hours to identify the charred bodies left in the wake of Monday's 
suicide bombing at Karkur Junction in northern Israel - young and old, soldiers and 
civilians, Jews and Arabs,  fourteen random victims who happened to travel on an 
Israeli bus. Just as random as the lists of victims resulting from the wild shooting 
sprees by Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships at Palestinian population centers. (The 
excuse that civilians are not deliberately targeted,  and the perfunctory apologies 
offered by  government officials, are fraying thin when such  killings of civilians have 
come to be an almost daily occurrence).
This time, the Sharon Government - under strong pressure from President Bush, 
anxious with the faltering support for his Iraqi war plans - refrained from a conspicuous 
retaliation for the bombing, such as last month's siege of Arafat headquarters. Instead, 
the army opted for further tightening the already heavy burden of occupation, curtailing 
the meager "humanitarian measures" of the past month, and for petty acts of tyranny 
not big enough to get the attention of the international media. (The house of a bomber 
dead for half a year was blown up, as well as that of one already long in Israeli custody 
on charges of terrorism, on the doubtful theory that throwing their families into the 
street would "deter future bombers".)
The cycle of occupation and oppression, hatred and bloodshed continues to roll, and 
the only possible solution - the end of the occupation - remains a distant dream. By 
now, it is obvious even to the most otiose that, however long Ariel Sharon remains 
Prime Minister of Israel, he will continue to talk in the abstract of "willingness to make 
painful concessions" while having no intention whatever of ever making these 
concessions or even specifying what they may be. 
Increasingly, the general Israeli public is becoming aware that the Sharon Government 
has driven the country into an impasse in all spheres - the never-ending war with the 
Palestinian as well s the fast-deteriorating -economic situation. The atmosphere of 
"national unity" which sustained Sharon in the past year and half seems in the 
process of breaking up. True, the highly-visible campaign to remove illegal settlement 
outposts, undertaken by Defence Minister and Labor Party  Leader Ben Eliezer, lacks 
credibility. It is generally regarded as a transparent ploy in Ben-Eliezer's struggle with 
dovish claimants to the Labor leadership. Yet that very ploy is proof to existence of a 
dovish constituency in the Israeli society, a constituency which even cynical 
politicians must recognize and attempt to mollify...

Yesterday morning,  dozens of high school pupils refusing to serve the occupation 
came to the Tel Hashomer Induction Center to accompany their fellow Haggai Matar, 
whose call-up date came due. Walking with him up to the very gate, they sang to the 
strains of a guitar which one of the youths brought along: "No, thank you, Mr. Sharon/ 
Go yourself to Hebron/ Damn your schemes all to hell/ We're off to cozy prison cell". 
Haggai got an initial term of 14 days, to be followed by further orders to enlist and 
further terms of imprisonment upon refusal. 
Later that day, family members visited Uri Ya'akobi, who had already gone four times 
through this cycle, and found him in good spirits and as determined as ever, though 
complaining of hard work at the prison kitchen. He was obviously on good terms with 
the non-political  prisoners who comprise the majority of the prison population. 

It is with fine young people like these that Israel's hope for a better future rests.     

---
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