The Olive Tree Movement

PRESS CONFERENCE AT YAD MORDECHAI JUNCTION

WEDNESDAY 7TH JANUARY, AT 2.15 P.M.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, in coalition with other Israeli peace activists (Gush Shalom, AIC, etc.), proposes a press conference at Yad Mordechai Junction (inside the gas station restaurant) on Wednesday 7th January at 2.15 pm to get the Israeli peace camp voice better heard, specifically to contradict assertions made by the Israeli government and military spokespersons.

We call for: immediate ceasefire and cessation of attacks on civilians (the majority of the wounded are civilians, according to Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working inside Gaza*), end to the siege on Gaza which is now a ghetto, end to the system of Occupation by Israel of Gaza (air, land, sea control, etc), and resumption of serious peace negotiations.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Update: Dr. Gassan Sharif Khaled’s second abduction and subsequent imposing of a six months administrative arrest by the IDF/Shabak

Hebrew text follows

Dr. Gassan Sharif Khaled is a professor of international commercial law at A-Najah University in Nablus, and the son of our close friend Abu Azzam. (http://www2.najah.edu/nnu_portal/index.php?page=95).

Dr. Khaled was abducted from his home in Nablus by the IDF on January 16th/08 and imprisoned for two months; the initial three weeks included interrogation by the Shabak (Israeli Secret Service) that included continuous physical torture (due to which he also suffered internal hemorrhage in one leg).

photo gallery
Click here to watch video from the convoy (sorry, Hebrew only, except for Jeff Halper’s speech, partially in the video)
The initiative for the large action that took place today (26.1.08) started when the well-know psychiatrist, Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, the human-rights activist from Gaza, met in the Gush Shalom office with a small group of Israeli peace activists, in order to tell them about the desperate situation in the strip. It was decided on the spot to organize in Israel a relief convoy for the Gaza Strip people, and to fight by all political and juridical means for the right to get it in. It was agreed that two parallel protest rallies would be held simultaneously on the two sides of the wall.

As rain session still about three month ahead, the shepherds' communities in south Mt. Hebron is suffering hard from lack of water supply – a result of the combination between the gross discrimination of the Israeli water policy, the efforts of the near-by settlers to make their life unbearable and the near-desert climate conditions.

Among the south Mt. Hebron scattered small communities of caves dwellers there is one whose water-luck situation is the worst. As other communities in the region can still bay water from their neighbor town Yatta, the people of Hirbet Tuba are denied even from this insufficient and costly solution. Recently, the road from Yatta to Hirbet Tuba was blocked by the people of Maon settlement, so the only route left open for water supply come from the east, were the people of Hirbet Tuba need bay their water from the remote Bedouin area of Um-Daraj. The cost of the water transportation water from Um-Daraj to Hirbet tuba is very high – as result of the road poor and risky conditions.

ביום שישי האחרון ה 31 לאוגוסט יצאנו ליום עבודה בחלקה של משפחת ג'עברי בחברון מתחת לגבעת האבות. הגענו כעשרים פעילים ומתנדבים.

כצפוי הגיעה גם קבוצה גדולה של מתנחלים שהקימו בשיטחו את הקייטנה שלהם,(כפי שעשו לפני שבועיים).

המשטרה רצתה להרחיק את משיגי הגבול (כחוק), אך הצבא סירב לפנותם ורק החליט להפריד בין הניצים (בקרקע הפרטית). במקום התפתחו עימותים מילוליים של המתנחלים עם המשטרה, ואיתנו גם פיסית. כלי עבודה רבים נגנבו, אבנים הושלכו, ואנשים הותקפו. עיסא אושפז בבי"ח ומצבו טוב, ושני פעילים אחרים (מבוגרים) נפגעו גם כן. מלבד עיסא, ותקיפה על ילד, אין נפגעים פלסטינים נוספים, בעיקר בעקבות עירנות וחסות טובה על הפלסטינים. כמובן שחלקם של ילדי המתנחלים בידויי האבנים והגידופים היה גדול, וכמובן שהמתנחלים הגישו גם תביעות נגדיות על תקיפות כביכול.

A method for creating new settlements in the occupied territories is to create huge municipal areas for existing settlements, and then build new "neighbourhoods" connected to the existing settlements by roads.
The Palestinian inhabitants of Qaryut, between Ramallah and Nablus, are denied by the IDF from reaching some of their agricultural land some 10 minutes from the village, because of just such a road between two "neighbourhoods" of the settlement Eli. They are forced to use a long and bad road that takes them more than an hour, and cannot go there by tractor, although the Supreme Court ordered the army to enable the Palestinians to cultivate their lands (June 2006).