A brief background:

During recent years Talmon B settlement has taken 14,000 denums of land (4 denums= 1 acre) from the Palestinians of Al Mazra’a. The villagers challenged a recent land confiscation in court and won, only to have the land reclaimed by the IDF then handed back to the settlers. They have demonstrated against the theft of their land, and in October 07 a group from Brighton joined them on a demonstration where they uprooted some of the grapevines illegally planted on their land. The demonstration was attended by both adults and children and was met with live ammunition from the settlers. At the time, three people from the Brighton delegation were arrested and during the following days, when the delegation had left, settlers entered the village and started to smash people’s windows and destroy their olive trees. Fifteen Palestinians, including the town’s Mayor and several underage children, were then arrested and detained for several months without charge.

Since then the villagers have only become more committed to protecting their community and livelihood, but unfortunately settler violence is on the increase. In February this year a teenager was shot dead by a settler during a peaceful demonstration against the siege of Gaza. So far the settler has gone unpunished and the Brighton Tubas group is currently working on ways in which to bring him to justice and aid any court proceedings.

During a delegation in October this year, the Brighton group witnessed further settler violence while aiding the village with the olive harvest.

What they need:

The village of Al Mazra’a have expressed a desire to find a group to twin with in Britain (or elsewhere). Since Al Mazra’a is not a part of the region we are concentrating on and the group already have substantial commitments to other communities we do not feel that we have the time to provide them with strong enough support. They really need a group dedicated exclusively to them. However, we would be able to help setting this up and would continue to keep in touch with the village and any new twinning group. During the last Brighton delegation it also became evident that the people of Al Mazra’a themselves have very clear and developed ideas of what they would want a twinning to achieve.

As mentioned earlier, the settler situation in Al Mazra’a is serious. What they need is not purely a friendship twinning, but a group who is willing to provide practical solidarity and do a lot of campaigning on their behalf.

Get in touch if your group would be interested and want to know more by emailing  brightontubas@googlemail.com