[Ramallah, West Bank]
Earlier this evening, 26 members of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom and the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM) entered the Muqata, President Arafat's compound in Ramallah. The groups include citizens of Australia, Canada, Iceland, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel.

ISM and Gush Shalom members came to the Muqata anticipating that Israeli authorities could use today's horrific suicide bombing of a restaurant in Haifa as a pretext to attack the Palestinian leadership, a strategy consistently employed by Sharon’s cabinet to divert attention from the daily human rights abuses occurring during Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has been widely criticized by the international community for demolition of homes, confiscation of Palestinian land, assassination of Palestinian activists, and most recently the construction of a “Separation Wall” within the borders of Palestine.

ISM is unequivocally opposed to the killing of all innocent civilians, and sees the perpetuation of violence as a direct result of the Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land. Earlier this afternoon two Palestinians, one a 9-year-old Mohammed Daraghmeh al-Nouri, were shot and killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Tulkarem.

Speaking about why she chose to come to the Muqata, Elizabeth Ooms, 62, of Oakland, California, said: “Some of my colleagues are out working with Palestinian farmers, who are being systematically denied the right to cultivate and harvest crops from their own land, denied their basic right to life. I came to the compound to send a message to my government and to Israel that the problem is not the Palestinian leadership: the problem is the brutality of the Occupation. It denies an entire people their freedom and dignity.”



For more information, contact:

Huwaida Arraf, ISM - +972 (0)67 473 308 (English and Arabic)
ISM Media Office - +972 (0)22 774 602