ISM Reports: "We Are All Palestinians" + News Of The ISM 8.

1)
Friends,

The ISM has decided to appeal the decision of the Tel Aviv district
court and challenge the deportation of the 4 internationals arrested in
Arrabony, Jenin, in the Israeli Supreme Court.

With this, of course comes the very real danger of the Supreme Court
rubber-stamping the Ministry of Interior's order to deport the peace
activists, the same way the Tel Aviv district court did, ignoring all
evidence of the arrest being illegal and accepting the Israeli military's
"security-threat" cry. While recognizing that this challenge could set a
discouraging precedent, we nevertheless feel it necessary to expose the
military-like dictatorship that rules the Israeli State and legitimizes
the widespread abuse of civil and human rights.

The same way that the Israeli military did not have to provide any
evidence that the international peace activists were a "security threat",
the Israeli army does not provide evidence of the "security concern"
that validates the arrest of Palestinians and holding them in
administrative detention for renewable (without reason) 6-month periods; some
prisoners spending years of their lives in administrative detention, never
actually being presented with their charges, or knowing why they were
imprisoned. There are currently over 1000 Palestinian prisoners being
held in administrative detention.

Voices around the world must raise up to join Palestinian voices in
saying, ENOUGH! We will continue to organize to resist on the ground, even
with the full knowledge that Israeli repression and efforts to silence
us will increase. We need you to join us here if you can, and to
certainly mobilize in your own communities.

Of the eight ISM volunteers that were arrested and issued deportation
orders, Tobias Karlsson and Tarek Loubani remain in jail. In filing an
appeal to the Supreme Court we were granted a stay on their
deportations (Bill Capowski and Fredrick Lind had to return home). The four
arrested in Nablus have also been deported.

Unfortunately we also have to ask your financial assistance to help us
defer our increasing legal fees. So far with this case:
Appeal to the Ministry of Interior and Tel Aviv District Court,
including lawyers' fees - $2700
Appeal to the Supreme Court, including lawyers' fees - $1500
Outside doctor to visit the activists in jail - 2000NIS ($435)
For a total, not including miscellaneous fees of: $4635
Since our last appeal, we've generously received from you $1300.
Please consider donating. See our website - www.palsolidarity.org for
more information on how.
Thank you so much.

In solidarity & struggle,
Huwaida
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"We Are All Palestinians"
Avi Zer-Aviv

[Avi Zer-Aviv was one of six human rights activists
arrested by the Israeli army earlier this month for
removing roadblocks in the villages of Iraq Bureen and
Tell just outside Nablus. He was joined in jail with
four other activists arrested for similar non-violent
actions in Jenin. He writes here about his
experience, and about the situation on the ground in
The West Bank.]


Dear Friends,

I have been hiding out here in Tel Aviv the last few
days, recovering from a really turbulent few weeks and
of the bitter news that my friends are being deported
from Israel now.

Already 5 of the 8 detained internationals have been
deported, following the Tel Aviv District Court
decision upholding the Interior Ministry's decision
that these human rights activists pose a "security
threat". The judge seemed unsympathetic, ordering the
immediate deportation of the activists, dismissing a
request to allow for one more week to file an appeal.

My friends looked sickly as they arrived in court this
last Thursday. They had already been sitting in Ariel
settlement jail for one week, enduring poor treatment,
the denial of their medical rights, some physical
violence by prison guards, and a raid of their jail
cell, confiscating their valuables.

Sadly, they were treated much better than most of the
Palestinians sitting in the cells with them. In my
one night in Ariel settlement jail, I shared a cell
with two Palestinians, both being held for weeks
awaiting a court decision for minor infractions that
would at best receive a slap on the wrist had they
been Israeli Jews.

The issue is not a bunch of Western kids serving time
for trying to remove roadblocks in isolated
Palestinian villages, but rather 36 years of
occupation that has left a rotting scar on the lives
of millions of ordinary people trying to make a decent
livelihood. The issue is the family who graciously
hosted me in their home for two nights in the town of
Iraq Bureen outside Nablus, displaying Israeli bullet
holes left by recent incursions covering their front
door, bedroom closet and kitchen. Their village has
been without open roads for months, and the delivery
of basic milk, water and food hampered without good
reason. All of this in a lookout surrounded by
Israeli settlements, military outposts and
watchtowers, and daily make-shift checkpoints set-up
right in the village itself. The only justification
Israel uses to stay here is the tired and lame mantra
of security or terror, all the while ignoring the fact
that their presence is the real fuel for growing
despair and agony.

Let us not forget the real issue in the commotion of
our experience as seasoned or unseasoned peace
workers. Let us not forget that even as I was
arrested and put in an army jeep, a call came in on
the radio dispatch requesting permission for an ill
Palestinian woman to pass a checkpoint so she can seek
medical treatment. Let us not forget the dozens of
Palestinian men I saw each day standing out in the
blazing heat, being denied freedom of movement as
punishment for attempting to enter their villages
through the fields and around the checkpoints that
would turn many away in any case.

As an Israeli-Canadian Jew in Palestine, I have come
to witness and document countless human rights
violations in the occupied territories, and come to
the conclusion that Israel is moving closer to
becoming a totalitarian state with a warped moral
compass. 'Never Again', a famous slogan symbolizing
Jewish self-determination after the holocaust, need
not be replaced with 'At Any Price!' Yet many Jews
still see Israel as The Golden Child that can do no
harm. They send money, support Israeli policy
unconditionally, swallow the propoganda whole, not
realzing that their Golden Child has become a bully!

Israel\'s greatest threat is not the Palestinians, nor
Iraq, nor the United States, but rather biting its own
tail in the name of reactionary military policies that
serve only the army generals that make up the previous
and current governments here. We, as Jews, must
remember how much we have suffered so as to transform
that pain to compassion, generosity and understanding.
Otherwise, we are destined to fall prey to the
victim-victimizer dichotomy, asserting that we are
either prey or predator. Today, I say, "We Are All
Palestinians."



****************************************************

Controlling the Gate on the road toward Peace

Qalqilia
19 Jul 03
John Petrovato

A couple of weeks ago I embarked for Palestine. At that time, a number
of friends told me that I was going at a historical moment. The
prospects of peace and the implementation of Bush’s roadmap appeared to be
having some success. Much attention in the media around the \"road map\"
provided some optimism. Though I wish I could inform people that such
optimism is warranted, I must confess that the situation on the ground
for Palestinians has continued to deteriorate in the last few months.

Jayyous, the small village from which i write today, sits about 6 km’s
east of the Green line, in the Qalqilya district. As i mentioned in my
last report, it is a village which will lose over 75% of its land to
the construction of the \"security wall/ apartheid wall\". People in the
village are very worried that they will not be able to sustain a life
here and that they, much like the people who \"fled\" in 1948 and 1967,
will become refugees.

The \"Gate\" I mention in the title of this report is, I believe, a
useful metaphor of the particular situation in Palestine in general and
the village of Jayyous in particular: it illuminates the very dynamics of
power relations between Israel and the Palestinians. It is very
difficult to describe the massive difference in power which exists between the
two parties. Might one be able to make the comparison between the
Australian aborigines and the government of Australia? It is about one group
of people who have the ultimate power to inflict terror in everyday
life for every single person of the other group. It is also about the
power to change the physical geography of the landscape that the other’s
call home. It is about the power to dictate how a people shall live. It
is simple about complete power.

Jayyous is a simple example. The small village sits neatly on a
hillside overlooking its farmlands below. A few years ago, when one looked
down at the valley, one would be see the many different kinds of
agricultural projects, greenhouses, small dirt roads with tractors and donkey’s
and scattered families working in fields. It would have been peaceful
and quiet and would have had very much the same feel as their ancestors
had experienced. Today, however, things are radically different. The
Wall which Israel is erecting to supposedly \"separate the people and
provide security for Israeli citizens\" has changed all this. (I will not
go into the economic reasons for the wall and the fact that it does not
travel any where near the internationally recognized borders of Israel
and Palestine at this time).

I would first like to express is how the Wall has dramatically altered
the visual landscape here in Jayyous. Instead of the peaceful valley
below, the most striking thing one sees now is the massive scar across
the landscape. The scar, or path of the fence/Wall, extends and meanders
from one direction to the other, as far as the eye can see. The fence
or wall, depending on the progress and location of it, is much more than
a barrier. It includes a wide clearing of land approximately 25 feet
across. It is surrounded by tunnels of barbed wire fences about 9 feet
wide by 9 feet tall. Large yellow metal gates dot along its path.

However, almost all the gates which separate one side of the village to
the other are not opened. Indeed, there is only one gate open for
travel. Thus farmers in the village must pass through the one gate to get to
their fields, no matter how far that gate is from their land. The one
\"open\" gate sits about 6 feet higher than the roads which the farmers
are traveling and must navigate with considerable difficulty a means of
traveling up to the fence and then back down to the road without
getting stuck in the loose sand and large boulders. And as with other ways in
which the Israeli’s make life difficult for Palestinians, crossing
through an \"open\" gate is not a straight forward experience. So beyond
the suffering which forces the farmers to travel miles out of their way
on very bad roads just to pass through the single fence, there is also
the private security forces hired by the construction company building
the fence which need to be navigated. Though they are not the police or
military, they often prevent people from crossing. They will demand
Palestinians \"papers\" (identification cards) to pass saying that while
Palestinian land is on both sides of the fence, the fence and the road
along it is the property of the state of Israel. Thus while the Israeli
government has given temporary permission to the Palestinians for
accessing their land (which now falls on the Israeli side of the wall),
these private Israeli citizens see it as their duty to harass the farmers.
Over the past week in Jayyous, there have been a number of incidents
whereby young male farmers were detained for hours at the gate and beaten
up. Other incidents include Israeli civilians from nearby settlements
harassing farmers as well as the military driving around their farms.
The result is one of intimidation and fear amongst the villagers and many
farmers are afraid of going to their fields.

One might wonder why and how these Israeli civilians are able to have
such control over Palestinians. It is really simple: all Israeli’s,
including civilians, represent the brute strength of the Israeli state over
Palestine. They are also very well armed, whereas Palestinians are
unarmed. Even a lone Israeli settler may walk into the center of a
Palestinian village without much concern. This is the kind of power Israeli’s
have over Palestinians which rarely is communicated to audiences in
American.

Jayyous is also not unique in its commitment to non-violent resistance
against these policies. For instance, many farmers have set up camps in
their farms which sit on the Israeli side of the wall. Though the
Israeli’s have the military force to prevent Palestinians from building any
permanent structures on their land, farmers have set up temporary
structures --tents, the use of old school buses, make-shift shelters, etc..
Their hope is that by maintaining a presence on their land they will be
able to continuing to own it. It is only a hope though and they are
aware of this. For there have been many other similar situations which the
Palestinians have lost control over their land.

Other examples of nonviolent actions happening in this village is
regular protest marches. Completely non-violent, people in the village march
to the fence and gates and express their dismay to the security forces
(and to the military which quickly shows up to quell the \"uprising\").
On Friday there was a march organized by a woman’s group in town. They
walked to one of the closed gates along the fence and though they
merely carried signs and chanted slogans, were met by a large military
presence in response. Of course the only media at the event was that of a
South Korean newspaper.

Tomorrow, Jayyous will hold yet another protest march. Organized by the
Land Defence committee and including farmers from villages close by,
will also attract Israeli peace activists and international with the ISM.
This particular march will seek to illuminate a point in which
Condaleza Rice made a few days ago: that the wall is an impediment to the
progress of a peaceful solution. However, as often happens with Palestinians
show of commitment to nonviolent resistance, there is a strong
possibility that such will be lost. For the media and the world usually find
violence more sexy and sellable than nonviolence.

Israeli’s control the gate on the road to peace. They have literally
caged Palestinians into small areas and have even prevented them from
traveling within them. It is a terribly desperate situation and I often
believe that there will not be a Palestinian home land or state in the
near future. I think that they will continue to suffer as long as they
remain in a land which the Occupying forces see as their own. The daily
suffering from terror is not something which I am convinced Americans
could deal with for as long as the Palestinians. I am continually amazed
by the strength and beauty of the Palestinians. They are extremely wise
and have a dignity unmatched in today’s world. They exhibit a powerful
relationship to the land, homes, villages, themselves. It is in this
power which Palestinians will one day achieve justice.



****************************************************

Violence at the Gate: Israeli civilians and the terrorizing of
Palestinians farmers

Qalqilia
19 Jul 03
John Petrovato

On Tuesday, July 15th, four foreign journalists conducted an interview
with Sharif Omar, a prominent member of the Jayyous village and leader
of the local Land Defense Committee. Sharif has participated in many
nonviolent actions against the building of the “Security fence”/
Apartheid Wall and has been instrumental in keeping the issue on the table
during the current peace negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and
Israel. The interview took place in a stone and wood structure (which
is used for his agricultural work as well as recently providing shelter
for international peace activists) on his farm.

The journalists expressed that the goal of the interview was to better
understand the concerns of the village over the construction of the
separating wall/fence. The interviewers included the Christian Science
Monitor, as well as reporters from the Netherlands and Canada, Sharif
began by providing an historical overview of the wall: when it was begun,
how both the Israeli’s and Palestinians understand its meaning, the
legal decisions made by the Israeli high court regarding such, as well as
the effects that the wall will have on his local community of Jayyous.
What was puzzling to the journalists however was why there had been so
much protests against the fence if the gate to their fields have been
open and that Israel has given permission for them to travel to such.
They would ask “how many times have you been prevented from going” or
“how many times have the gate been locked”. The answer by Sharif would be
“none, but….”. Seeing that Sharif was having some difficulty
translating his thoughts on this matter into English, I politely interrupted and
asked if I could try to clarify. I suggested that while the gate was
indeed “open”, it does not mean that travel is safe, easy or even
advisable. Because of random beatings, the detaining and the intimidation
that farmers must suffer, passing through the gate is a very frightening
experience for the people. Many men have reportedly been detained at
gun point, forced to sit in the hot sun for many hours, beaten by fists
and rifles and kicked. Other forms of harassment I had personally
witnessed includes the forcing of the villagers to provide their
Identification cards (passports), give explanations of their destinations, reasons
for traveling, etc. Further, one must attempt to imagine the very
experience of having to travel daily through a Gate in which one would not
know the outcome. Having to interact with guards who had beaten them or
someone they personally know in the past. Never knowing when that
individual will again decide to beat them again. Further, knowing the these
individuals may beat and detain you at gun point without any fear that
they will be punished for their actions and that one has not legal
recourse to contest such violence.

Another problem that farmers have to deal with is the presence of the
Israeli military roaming on their farmlands. Even on this particular
day, an Israeli military APC drove aggressively toward the tractor that I
was traveling with and forced it to stop. The soldiers jumped out with
their machine guns ready in their hands and demanded the Palestinians
identification cards. They, like the civilian security guards, asked
them questions such as where they were going, what business did they have
here, how long did they plan to be there, etc. The farmer would humbly
reply “I am merely going out to irrigate my fields and the land which
you are driving on has been in my family for dozens of generations”.
After some 15 minutes of questioning and searching of the tractors cargo,
they “permitted” the farmer to continue.

The journalists did find it “interesting” that Israeli civilian
security guards engaged in violent activities which they had no authority to
do such (security guards are not the police nor the military, but hired
civilians to protect construction equipment, etc.). However they
dismissed it as insignificant in and of itself. Instead they continued by
asking, “what legal action had been taken” or “what has the police done to
prevent such” appearing to place blame on Palestinians who do not
attempt to work through the Israeli legal system for a just solution. They
obviously didn’t have any understanding that the Palestinians have no
legal representation to contest such. Even in cases whereby a settler
killed a Palestinian farmer, or where they took someone’s eye out by the
use of a rife butt, or chased everyone away from a village by the use
and threats of continued violence (such as in Yanoun) has consequences
been nonexistent.

As opposed to the journalists, I would make the argument that the use
and actions of civilians in terrorizing a population is extremely
significant. For it illuminates the power dynamics between Israeli civilians
and Palestinian residents in the West Bank.

Such forms of daily violence and terror are condoned by the Israeli
state. It is not essential that violence is conducted by civilian security
guards or the violent ideological settlers. The fact is that the
Israeli military considers the safety of their citizens first. Indeed, the
Israeli military’s presence in the Palestinian territories is for the
safety of Israeli Jewish civilians to settle and colonize the
“territory”. It appears that by allowing such forms of violence against
Palestinians to continue without punishment, the state of Israel seem to use
these various forms of violence to reach their objectives: the confining of
the growth (and ultimate destruction) of Palestinian society and
culture and the expansion of the state of Israel in its place.

Violence is ubiquitous throughout the cultural, social, and political
context of everyday life in the Occupied territories. This violence runs
the gamut from the most rigidly state-organized and executed, to the
“symbolic” violence of Israeli soldiers, and the very real threat of
violence by Israeli civilians. In understanding how these methods of
violence interconnect, we may better understand the dynamics of power and
terror.
Israel formally condones structural and systematic harassment and
terror. It is exercised through the military (check points, road blocks,
curfews, harassment, “episodic” but planned attacks and assassinations,
and the general practice of military occupation, crackdowns, and
invasions in and of themselves). It also engages in what may be defined as
“illegitimate” forms of violence. This is a term that might be used to
describe that phenomenon whereby the formalized and systematic violence of
the state withers somewhat at the fringes and becomes replaced by
something even more arbitrary and unpredictable. The quintessential symbol –
and primary practitioners of this would be the individual soldier.
Wherever or however they are located, the individual soldier sometimes seem
to represent as terrifying power as the whole Israeli army itself. On a
whim, an Israeli soldier may decide to pass someone or not pass them,
throw teargas at schoolchildren (as happens in nablus) or detain someone
at whim. “Illegitimate” forms of violence would also include the
actions by settlers and other Israeli civilians (such as the guards for the
construction company who monitor the gate) who take it upon themselves
to harass, detain, intimidate, punish, or even kill innocent Palestinian
citizens. Without accountability, such civilians may actually produce
as much terror as the actions of the formalized and “legitimate” state.

Perhaps these two forms of violence intertwine and better enable the
Israeli state to achieve its aims. The wayward and individual soldier
corrupts the totalitarian and formally uniform activities of a state
military, but at the same time, and on the ground in everyday contexts, they
perform the very important function of terrorizing in a more humane and
proximate way – with more intimacy and familiarity than a faceless
army. The Israeli civilians who participate in the acts of violence and
terror similarly contribute to this sense of randomness, arbitrariness,
and the constant threat of violence.

It must be asked whether the episodic and unruly nature of sporadic
violence conducted by civilians and individual soldiers is as powerful as
the formal and controlled occupation. Is it even more powerful? Is
violence understood and accepted as exercised only through guns and tanks,
or does it also occur through daily interactions with a power such as
the individual soldier and the individual settler or civilian?


**********************************************
(the following report was written 3 weeks ago, but never circulated)

Where’s the peace?

Nablus
27 Jun 03
John Heaney

It’s 1.30am and I’m sitting in a plastic chair on the roof of the house
that
I sleep. I’m terrified, chain smoking, even though I don’t smoke,
listening & waiting and preparing myself for what might happen at any
moment. The army are in the camp where my house is, 40 foot soldiers
making their way through the narrow alleys, alleys wide enough to allow
one
person to walk between 3 and 4 storey concrete structures, some with
glass
in the windows, some without. I am sitting in darkness, wary of the
Israeli army sniper towers in the mountains overlooking the camp, and
trying
to stay as quiet as possible; listening to the random shooting from
about
50m away, the banging on doors and the explosions that break the normal
silence. I am trying to work out what’s happening and where. The
only
time I break the silence is when I go into the small room with a sink
in it
beside my bedroom to get sick...from fear.

This is Balata Refugee Camp, Nablus. And this is the life under
Israeli
occupation that all 16,000 inhabitants in the camp’s 2 square
kilometres
have to endure. As I sit here I question my reasons for being here.
I
ask myself why I feel so compelled to do this work. The reason is
brought
back to me a couple of days later and I realise it had never gone away.
It
was 11pm and I was sitting in the same plastic chairs, on the same
roof, in
the same house, the house of the Abu Saleem family. This time I was
sitting and chatting with the father of the house in what broken Arabic
I
had, drinking tiny cups of very strong coffee & listening to the army
who
had a tank parked at the entrance of the camp shooting rounds of heavy
machine gunfire every few minutes down the streets of the camp. The
father’s brother and 3-year-old nephew were sitting with us too. I
cannot
explain the look of fear on the 3-year-old’s face every time the army
would
shoot. His eyes open wide, his body stiff, as he stood between his
father’s legs, being held and reassured that everything would be OK.

On both of the above nights, like nearly all the times the army come
into
the camp, there was no evident operation carried out; no arrests made,
no
houses occupied, no houses demolished. So why do they come and do
what
they do? Why do fathers have to stay awake until 5am waiting for the
army
to leave and children have to try to sleep through shooting and
explosions
in constant fear? Why do they terrorise the community in this densely
populated civilian area?

Out of the 7 weeks I was in Balata Refugee Camp there were 2 nights
that the
Israeli army actually did carry out a \"genuine\" operation. On one
of these
nights they entered the camp to arrest a wanted man, a 22-year-old
vegetable
lorry driver. When they finally got to the house of the wanted man at
3am
they discovered he wasn’t there, but they remained in the house for 2
hours
questioning & terrorising the family and beating the 14-year-old son
until
he had a fit. All this was done after they seemingly mistakenly
entered 3
other houses but admitted each time that they were wrong. Despite
being at
the wrong house the terror was no less. At the second house rather
than
banging on the door with their M16s they set explosives at it and blew
it
off, destroying the door and damaging the walls inside & the walls of
the
house opposite. The explosive also smashed a window of the house,
covering
the mother who was sleeping inside under it with broken glass. At the
third house, discovering again they had made a mistake they took the
father
of the house at gunpoint and used him as a human shield to the house
where
the wanted man lived. The use of human shields is a frequent tactic
of the
Israeli army and is something that is illegal by international law.

My stay in Nablus coincided with the Aqaba summit, which was part of
the
peace talks to find a path along the \"Road Map to Peace\". But as
the
Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli PM Ariel Sharon and American
president George Bush met in Jordan there was no evidence of the
agreements
and promises being made on the ground in Nablus.

On the first day of the talks the Israeli government said they would
ease
restrictions on movement around the West Bank, three days later the
Israeli
army surrounded Balata Refugee Camp with 6 roadblocks of earth,
preventing
all vehicular access to the camp, including medical vehicles. On the
last
day of the talks the Israeli army invaded the city, including Balata
Refugee
Camp, for 13 hours from 6am until 7pm. They came in and drove around
the
streets with tanks, APCs (armoured personnel carriers) & jeeps; while
Apache
helicopters flew around in the air. Again no evident operation was
carried
out, but the terror that was invoked that day led to the death of 1
civilian
and the injury of 48 by live ammunition.

That night when I went back to the Abu Saleem house to sleep, the men
of the
house were sitting on the roof, on the plastic chairs, and the mood was
like
a funeral. They were devastated. They had listened again to hopeful
peace talks taking place in far off lands, and again their hopes were
raised. They thought that their wish would finally come through, that
peace was finally on it’s way. But again the hopeful peace talks
stayed in
that far away land and on the streets of Nablus the occupation and
terror
remained as real as ever, with no changes. As I went into my room to
sleep
the father of the house asked me in Arabic \"When salaam?\", which
means
\"Where’s the peace?\", I had no answer for him. I only wish I had.



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For the latest information on ISM see  http://www.palsolidarity.org

The latest volunteer reports are available at
 http://www.palsolidarity.org/index.php?page=journals_reports_main.php

Deportations, Detention, and the ISM 8

New information necessitates a correction to the ISM update for the
19th. We have learned that the status of the ISM peace workers who
have agreed to deportation is as follows: as of Sunday morning, Bill
Capowski, Thomas Pellas, Saul Reid, and Alex Perry have returned
safely home on Saturday. Daniel Knuttson was put on a plane to
Amsterdam early Sunday morning and is expected a welcome-home at the
airport in Stockholm today. Frederick Lind, according to the Danish
consulate, is still awaiting deportation at Ariel police station,
after having been brought to the airport and then returned by Israeli
authorities. And Tobias Karlson and Tariq Loubani will be in Ariel,
where they have been for 11 days now, awaiting a hearing concerning
the ISM appeal to the Israeli High Court.

The complete lack of access to communication with the prisoners has
complicated every step of the process for the ISM and its
supporters. Those left in Ariel have had their phone cards, as well
as writing paper and pens, taken away from them as punishment after
their attempts to show solidarity with their fellow prisoners.
Conditions at Ariel, which is a police station and is not designed
for long-term incarceration, are less than ideal: flourescent lights
are never turned off, and there are no outdoor or excercise
facilities for detainees, so they are kept in their cells 24 hours a
day. Needless to say, the conditions of the activists do not compare
to the Palestinians around them or the thousands of others in the
Israeli penal system, many of whom, are not even charged with crimes,
but rather placed in administrative detention.

However, reports from those who have had contact with the activists
say that spirits are high, and the primary concern was that at least
16 packs of cigarettes be brought to Ariel for the Palestinians to
make up for what has been shared with the internationals. Donations
for this or any of the other legal costs can be made through the ISM
Legal Fund. More details are available at our website,
www.palsolidarity.org.

Reports that activist Daniel Knuttson was too tall for his prison bed
are as yet unconfirmed.