ISM Reports:Farmers And Internationals Pull Down Apartheid Gate

UPDATE! Tuesday, July 22, 10:15am Palestine time, farmers from Deir Ghosoon accompanied by international volunteers have broken down the gate shutting them out from their land and are marching..... the Israeli army stands in front of them.....
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ISM Press Release
21 July 2003
For Immediate Release

ISRAELI MILITARY SLAMS THE DOOR SHUT

[Deir Ghosoon, Tulkarem] Israel promised that building their 20-foot Apartheid Wall around the West Bank wouldn't disrupt the daily life of the Palestinians.

Ten days ago, Israeli military ignored that promise by closing the gate through the wall at Deir Al Ghasoon, denying 40 farmers and 500 workers the right to tend their land on the other side. When farmers, and ISM internationals arrived, they were pushed back through the gate and threatened with a five-minute deadline to leave the area. When the media arrived at the checkpoint, they were refused access.

The Latest ISM Reports

1) Communique from Tobias in jail
2) ISM Jenin report
3) Travel in an occupied land_John Petrovato
4) Racism run amok_Steve Quester
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1) Communique from Tobias in jail

Bethlehem
19 Jul 03
ISM Media Office

(the following was written on Saturday, though just received by the
ISM)

Hi all.

So we´re down to 3. Me, Tarek and Fredrik here in cell #4. We are all
in good spirits as we make an attempt to fight this injust deportation
in the supreme court. As of now, we have no idea when our hearing is
going to be. The word is anything from tomorrow (sunday), until 3 weeks.
Whatever happens, we stand firm in our conviction that we must fight
this to as far an extent as we can take it. Our chanses are slim but I
hope with all my heart that I will soon be out there working again
together with you, all my loved friends in Jenin och the ISM.

Love and Rage

Tobias


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2) ISM Jenin Report

July 21, 2003

Today ISM-Jenin volunteers in the village of Arrabony spent the day at
a
house in danger of demolition. This house is not in the path of the
Apartheid Wall, but because of the explosives used for Wall
construction, it
is in danger of being damaged by the use of heavy explosives nearby.
Today
was the second day that ISM volunteers have stayed with the home, using
their presence to protect it from destruction. They will return again
tomorrow.

Also today ISM-Jenin volunteers visited the village of Arqa which is
losing
1,000 dunams of agricultural land to the Apartheid Wall. Instead of
following a straight path, the wall goes as close to the village as
possible, confiscating the most possible land but keeping the unwanted
population outside of Israel.

At Arqa the wall makes a big loop around two settlements, a mountain
with an
important Roman archeological site, the only forest in the area, and
the
land the people of Arqa used to farm and tend their sheep. It also
takes
about 7 wells. Volunteers saw the huge clearing for the wall snaking
around
the landscape, the bulldozers and the armed guards. Over 500 olive
trees
were destroyed here. No one from the area is allowed within 100 meters
of
the wall.

Residents said that after 1997 no one in the area was allowed to dig a
well;
if they did the army would destroy it and arrest the person who made
it.
Most of the water in the Jenin area is bought from outside and stored
in
containers on the roof, and the people have built collection tanks to
use
the rainwater. And while the people here risk arrest if they dig a
well,
American Aid to Israel has dug an enormous well in the area for Israeli
use
only.

For more info:

Ann (US) 972 67 978 074
Andrew (UK) 972 67 943 926
Randa (Denmark) 972 67 965 054
Jordan (US) 972 66 312 547

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3) Travel in an occupied land

Qalqilia
22 Jul 03
John Petrovato

Traveling in the Palestinian territories is extraordinarily difficult
and exhausting. Even for foreigners, the experience is often wrecked
with frustration and danger. As the Israeli state has geographically
expanded into the West Bank, it has created a network of obstacles that
control and confine movement of Palestinians in Palestine. Along with the
creation of Israeli settlements (which now includes some 400,000 Israeli
civilians since the 1967 war), the hundreds of check-points, road
blocks, military outposts, and by-pass roads, have made simple travel even
between Palestinian villages nightmarish. As governments have
historically done with \"frontier\", or ambiguously claimed territory, the
Israeli state it appears, hopes that the mere physical presence of its
citizens and the accompanied infrastructure will increase the legitimacy of
their claims upon the land.

In this essay I hope to illustrate how the vast infrastructure laid
across the Palestinian landscape restricts and prevents travel. I will use
an example of a trip in which myself and four other internationals from
Boston made last week. It involves a roundtrip journey from Jayyous, in
the Qalqilya district (along the \"green line\") to Nablus, in the
center of West Bank. Even though the distance was short (perhaps only 25
miles or so), such a distance in an occupied land is a difficult journey.

The trip to Nablus used to take about 25 minutes by car. It is now
recommended to allow at least 4 hours. The good roads (well-paved highways)
that go directly to Nablus are now to be only used by Israeli
civilians. A few Palestinians are allowed to travel them with special permission
but only within checkpoint zones (which occur every 5 or so miles). The
checkpoints prove difficult to navigate for most Palestinians and they
avoid them as much as possible. For it is common that people
(especially men between the ages of 15 of 50) to be detained for many hours. Thus
alternative routes have been created to avoid checkpoints and the
experience of humiliation and abuse by the Israeli military.

We left Jayyous in a \"service\", a mini-van taxi cab, shortly after
noon. The driver recommended that we seek to enter Nablus through a small
village named Jet (pronounced jeet). Nablus, as we had been told the
evening before, was closed and that travel through the main check point
of Hawwara would be impossible. So we accepted the recommendation of the
driver and headed toward Jet. The first half of the distance to Nablus
went very quick (perhaps 20 minutes or so). We then came across a
temporary check point. A temporary check point is where soldiers create a
barrier at a random intersection and force all travelers (except those
who are Jewish Israeli) to show papers and be interrogated regarding the
nature of one’s travel (how, where, and why one is traveling). If the
soldiers are not convinced of one’s explanations, one will be turned
back or detained for further investigation. Being that the International
Solidarity Movement has been the target of a smear campaign attempting
to link it to terrorism and whereby the Israeli government has tried to
deport its members, such an explanation would not be advisable. This
temporary check point took us by surprise and our group had not had the
time to come up with a story. Thus, we would have to make something up
on the spot. So Michael D. and myself jumped out of the vehicle and
approached the soldiers. They were surprised to see Americans traveling on
this particular road and in a Palestinian Taxi. We explained to them
that we were tourists visiting a friend in the area. Though they were
suspicious of this explanation, Michael had mentioned that we would later
travel to the Israeli city of Haifa, the home of one of the soldiers on
guard. This loosened them up as they spoke of the city and provided us
with directions when we arrive in this non-destination of ours. They
also warned us to be careful of all the terrorists lurking about the
hills.

A couple of minutes later we arrived in the very small village of
Jet. We were directed to walk over a road block (made out of debris and
rocks) and follow the dirt road to a paved one about a half mile away. We
were accompanied by a number of Palestinian men and women who were also
traveling to and from the Nablus area. We came to the paved road and it
began to immediately climb steeply up a hill. About 100 yards later we
came across a few soldiers lounging out under an olive tree. Upon
seeing us approach, they jumped up and met us in the road. We informed them
that we were child psychologists on our way to a Nablus hospital.
Surprising they believed our ridiculous story and allowed us to continue.

At the top of the hill we found another Service taxi. The taxi
had been unloading a group of women and children who were attending a
wedding. Upon the children seeing us \"outsiders\" they sadly began to cry
and scream. Apparently the children believed that we were Israeli
settlers and feared us. When the children were out of the Taxi, we asked the
driver if he would be able to take us to Nablus. His response was that
it was unlikely - that the military has been patrolling all the roads
in the area and that it would be dangerous for him. He would, however,
be able to drive us to another village which we can then walk to Nablus
(about 4 miles over a mountain). Believing that this was likely our
best option, we agreed. A few minutes later we picked up a group
university women also traveling to Nablus. With the van packed with people
wanting to go to Nablus, the driver said that he would do his best to get us
there. So every few meters, whenever another car would pass or if he
saw someone sitting outside their house, he would inquire if they had any
information about the Israeli military patrolling the hillsides. He was
able to learn of a passage which appeared to be safe. The \"road\" we
would take was basically two barely visible tire tracks through barren
hills. Even on this road, in the middle of nowhere, the van would have
to navigate over large former road blocks. It was very difficult travel
on this road as the bumps, rocks, and potholes threw us from side to
side in the van for about 30 minutes. When we finally reached a smooth
dirt road and relief was expected, everyone in the van spontaneously
applauded. Shortly later we entered the Nablus suburbs and then later into
the city. Nablus is (or perhaps more correctly, \"was\") a beautiful
city nestled between mountains with large white buildings. Traveling
through the city now has its own hazards. Traffic lights no longer work and
destruction to the roads caused by the weight of tanks (as well as the
destruction of buildings blown up and falling into the streets) creates
a tricky driving experience. In the end we were able to reach our
destination in about 3 hours (a length of time which we considered to be
relatively fast).

The next morning we attended a non-violent protest that was organized
by Palestinian villagers east of Nablus. The goal of their protest was
to bring attention to the recent building of a large ditch which runs
from an Israeli settlement down into the Palestinian village’s farm land.
The ditch carries raw sewage from the settlement directly through the
Palestinians lands and the smell emanating from it is unbelievably foul.

In the afternoon we attempted to return to Nablus and spend the evening
there. However, this was going to be very difficult as the Israeli
military had created a \"closed military zone\" over all of Nablus and the
surrounding areas and that they were preventing all movement past check
points and road blocks for the indefinitely future. After having no
success of passing various checkpoints (even with the child psychologist
story and traveling with a real, live psychologist) we went back to the
village of Salem. At this point we were traveling with about 5 other
internationals who were attempting to get to Tulkarem, a Palestinian city
nearby the village of Jayyous. Though some in the group advocated
sneaking through the fields past the checkpoint, we decided against this
action as we learned that soldiers had been shooting at others who had
similarly attempted this strategy. We later met a couple of taxi cab
drivers who told us that they knew of a route which by-passed the check
points. The trick however was timing the trip just right as to avoid the
roaming military vehicles in the area. Our traveling group (which now
numbered 11) crammed into the two very small cars (a fiat and an old
Toyota) and began heading out of town on bumpy dirt roads. The drivers were
clearly nervous about the roaming soldiers and constantly searched the
landscape for them. The driver would constantly start and then stop,
look around, cautiously continue, then at a moments notice, floor the gas
pedal and take off at extremely high speeds trying to get a \"pass\".
All three attempts at this failed. As we approached the pass, we would
encounter other taxi’s driving just as ferociously from the opposite
direction. In what was reminiscent of an action movie, the other taxis
would literally fly over the hill toward us and scream at us out their
windows that the military was close behind. Our drivers would then make
u-turns at far too fast a speed in the loose sandy road and start hurling
back to town. The military, it seemed, was not going to allow people
escape today.

So we gave up with the plan and took our chances at yet another
checkpoint. This time, with some negotiation, we were able to convince the
soldiers to allow us to pass to a road which leads to the east. The road
wouldn’t go back to Nablus, but it might get us back to Jayyous
somehow.

On the other side of the checkpoint we came across a Service which
told us that he could take us to Tulkarem and then to Jayyous. The
journey, however, would be long in that the entire region was shut down and
the only means of getting there would be traveling north east (the
opposite direction from our destination) over large mountains on really poor
dirt roads. Being that this appeared our only option, we took it. The
views from the road were quite stunning as the large mountains and
valleys were dotted with distant small villages in the distance. The road
was very dangerous. At times we would be heading down extremely steep
mountains on the edge of cliffs. The road usually consisted of loose sand
and was filled with potholes, rocks, and the like which threw the van
from side to side. The van also had to navigate the unbelievable fact
that medium sized trucks were also traveling the route. At times we had
to all get out of the van and walk across the mounds of debris of former
roadblocks so that the van could get over without bottoming out. But
the evening was pleasant and a full moon was rising over the hills. The
speakers of the van’s radio were distorted and crackling from being
played too loud in the past, and the songs which were being played from
some distant station, such as \"America\" by Simon and Garfunkel, created
a quite surreal feel.

After about an hour and a half we arrived in the village of
Al-Agrabaniya.We stopped in the village for some drinks and were immediately
surrounded by curious villagers surprised to see foreigners in this
isolated area. We continued on our way and then stopped again in Al-Bedhan
for Falefel sandwiches and a short break. Again the villagers surrounded
us and offered the predictable Palestinian hospitality: we were invited
for tea, dinner, and even offered a place to stay for the night. We
graciously declined and continued on. At this point, the darkness was
settling in and we still had much distance to cover. By the time we entered
Tulkarem, 5 hours had lapsed.

The Tulkarem group was let out and we made our way to the checkpoint
separating the city to the roads leading south toward Jayyous. The
driver began to slow down and opened the curtains and turned on the inside
lights. He explained to us that Israeli soldiers were now watching us
and that it is best that they be able to see inside the van. The van
stopped in the middle of nowhere and in near blackness. The driver pointed
in the distance to show us the cab he had arranged for our last leg of
the journey. One could see a taxi on a hill a distance away with its
fog lights on. Our driver wished us good luck and warned us to walk down
the road very slowly. As we made our way down the road we began
noticing Israeli soldiers in fortified positions hidden in the brush on both
sides of the road. Then a voice screamed at us to halt and ordered us to
come, one by one, toward them. They searched our bags and allowed us to
continue on to the taxi waiting for us. 20 minutes later we arrived in
Jayyous. The journey back from Nablus, which is only some 25 miles way,
took 6 hours.

This is typical of how the military occupation restricts and slows
down movement. Beyond the restriction of movement, there is the very real
concern that one will be detained or harassed by soldiers at
checkpoints. One constantly witness and hears stories of Palestinians having to
wait many hours to cross. Sometimes they are forced to dance for the
soldiers’ amusement, sometimes their papers are thrown into the mud, and
usually they are yelled at and ordered around as they were children.

The immense transportation, consumption, and production
infrastructure that Israel has created in the West bank which connects the
settlements to each other and to Israel proper, closely resembles the apartheid
system: there are two different means of travel for two different
people. Those who are Israeli travel quickly on good roads; those who are
Palestinians travel slowly and on very bad roads. Currently there are
currently some 120 permanent Israeli checkpoints and hundreds of road
blocks in the Occupied Palestinian territories. In a place about the size
of Massachusetts, over 300 separate areas have been created. These areas
are basically islands cut off from each other making travel from one
place to another extremely difficult.

Such is the experience of travel in an occupied land


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4) Racism run amok

Jenin
Steve Quester
20 July 03

Travel journal....

On Wednesday evening in Qalqilya, we ISM folks were
invited to meet with representatives of the
organizations that comprise the PLO in Qalqilya. They
were all middle-aged men, and all had done time in
Israeli prisons (as has Marwan, our local coordinator,
as have most Palestinian men in the occupied
territories). Each of them spoke about the misery of
occupation, the falseness of Israel’s peace
negotiations, and the Palestinian determination to
resist. We threw out a few ideas about direct action
that we can participate in alongside the community,
and there will be more meetings to knock around some
ideas.

The meeting was followed immediately by a second
meeting, with representatives of the farmers’ union.
We spoke about the roadblocks on the road to orchards
within the fence, difficulty in access to their land
outside the fence, irrigation lines being cut by the
workers constructing the fence, and so on. I thought
about the day last fall when Lysander and other ISM
folks were asked by the farmers to join them in
witnessing the destruction of their fruit trees to
clear a path for the fence. She described how some of
the farmers cried and had to be led away.

We decided that we will go out into the fields and the
orchards with the farmers on Sunday to work alongside
them and to witness the difficulties they encounter.
Then we’ll sit with them that evening to decide what
needs to be done in Qalqilya.

In a third meeting on Wednesday night (oy), this time
just ISM, we decided who would replace the interim ISM
international coordinator in Qalqilya, since she’s
leaving this weekend. Lysander and I volunteered to
share the role.

Thursday morning, we returned to court in Tel Aviv for
the deportation hearing of the 8 ISM internationals
arrested in Jenin and Nablus. They had 4 of the top
human-rights lawyers in Israel, and a packed court of
international and Israeli supporters. The court
officers kept many of the supporters in the hallway
throughout the proceeding, even though there were
empty seats in the courtroom.

Our lawyers pointed out that the 2 Israelis arrested
with the 8 internationals were released almost
immediately, that the arrests were illegal, that the
facts alleged were contradictory. They produced
affidavits in support of ISM from Member of Knesset
Yossi Sarid and from Terri Greenblatt of Bat Shalom.
They showed that while the Ministry of the Interior
was alleging that ISM interferes with the activities
of the army, endangering themselves, soldiers, and the
Israeli public, they offered no evidence to show that
the 8 defendants interfered with the army in any way.

The judge upheld the Ministry’s deportation order
anyway, and agreed with the Ministry’s
characterizations of ISM. He also denied a one-week
stay of deportation while an appeal is filed in the
Israeli Supreme Court.

We spent last night in Jerusalem. The pedestrian
mall in West Jerusalem was packed, because it was
Thursday night (everything’s closed Friday night for
the Jewish Sabbath), and because there is a currently
a cease fire between the Israeli army and Hamas,
Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.
Everyone entering the outdoor mall had to be
thoroughly checked by one of a legion of security
guards. I found it pretty scary. I also thought that
the Israeli peace movement ought to do an action
there, hanging banners on the barricades that point
out that it’s the Occupation that makes metal
detectors on a city street necessary.

I was with Lisa, from JAtO, who doesn’t read Hebrew,
so I was translating the graffiti and political
posters on the walls for her. They were uniformly
right wing, and said things like \"Kahane was right\",
\"Jordan is the Palestinian state\", and \"Oslo proves:
it’s forbidden to give them a state.\" There was even
graffiti on the walls of the Old City. (To be fair,
there’s lots of graffiti in Palestinian communities
throughout the West Bank, and I usually can’t read
what it says.)

The previous week when I was in West Jerusalem, I saw
a number of young men who appeared to be Arab pulled
aside by police, apparently based on looks alone, to
have their IDs scrutinized and to be questioned about
their activities.

While in Jerusalem, I got a call from the ISM people
who had returned to Qalqilya from Tel Aviv. They were
absolutely denied entry to Qalqilya via the
checkpoint; apparently, the Israeli army wants the
50,000 people of Qalqilya, entirely surrounded by the
wall/fence, to be cut off from the outside world.

Friday morning, 3 of us from the Qalqilya crew
traveled from Jerusalem to Jenin to help out with an
action. Getting from Jerusalem to Jenin was a 45
minute drive once upon a time, but now that a network
of settler roads has been built in the West Bank and
declared off limits to vehicles with Palestinian
license plates (while West Bank cities are off limits
to vehicles with Israeli license plates), the trip
involves a long detour through the Jordan Valley, many
humiliating checkpoints, and 3 hours’ travel time.
One of the passengers in our van was a young man from
Jerusalem who is a student at the Arab-American
University in Zababde, a village near Jenin. His
Jerusalem ID means he is seen as an Israeli by the
authorities, so each week when he goes to school, he
gets stopped at the last checkpoint and told that he
mustn’t go to Jenin \"for his own safety\". The delay
caused by the soldiers checking his ID led the driver
to leave without him, stranding him at the checkpoint.

We got to Birqin, near Jenin, just in time to
participate in a roadblock removal. Lots of men and
boys from the village, as well as the ISM crew from
Jenin, converged on the giant dirt mound with a front
loader, pick axes, and shovels. If you look carefully
at the attached photo, you’ll see two people hanging
off the sides of the front loader. Those are ISM
internationals there to protect the front loader from
confiscation, and the driver from arrest. My job was
to eavesdrop on the soldiers communicating with one
another, since I understand Hebrew, while another
international negotiated with them in English.
Fortunately, I had nothing to do, since the army never
showed up. The roadblock that the army built is gone,
and the drive from Birqin to Jenin is once again 5
minutes, instead of 40.

After the successful action, we spent time at the home
of Moayed, an organizer in Birqin. We were served tea
and coffee, of course, and listened to Moayed and his
family play the oud and sing songs of Palestinian
liberation. His teenage daughter recited a poem about
Palestine that made a Palestinian-American ISM member
cry. It was great chatting with Moayed; he spoke with
me about the need for coexistence of Jews and
Palestinians in this land, and about how the Torah and
the Qur’an are both used to justify exclusive rights
to the country.

We proceeded to the ISM apartment in Jenin. The walls
of Jenin are covered with martyr posters (anyone who
has died in the struggle is called a \"martyr\" in
Palestine), from Rachel Corrie to civilians shot by
Israeli soldiers in Jenin to fighters who died
defending Jenin from Israeli invasion to suicide
bombers. One sees these posters in every Palestinian
community in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but
they’re particularly plentiful here. I am sorry that
bombers get the same status as other people who resist
the Occupation; personally, I’m convinced that the
bombings are reprehensible as well as
counterproductive. I worry about them when I’m in Tel
Aviv, Haifa, or West Jerusalem (I never ride buses),
and my friend Shanka in Tel Aviv narrowly missed
getting killed in a bus bombing a year ago. I think
it’s important to remember, however, that there were
almost no bombings when the peace process was on track
in the ’90s, that the bloody Israeli army assault on
unarmed Palestinian resistance in September, October
and November of 2000 preceded any of this Intifada’s
bombings, and that Israeli army targeting of
Palestinian civilians has killed 3 times as many
people as the bombings have. So while I disagree (to
put it mildly) with anyone who sees the bombers as
people to be admired for sacrificing themselves for
their people, I think it’s clear that the way to end
the bombings is to end the Occupation. (The Israeli
Knesset this past week reaffirmed that the West
Bank-\"Judea and Samaria\" in their Biblical view-is not
occupied territory, that settlement expansion must
continue, and that Israel must control all the land
west of the \"security fence\", even though that land is
in the West Bank and represents vital Palestinian land
and water resources.)

The ISM folks in Jenin tell me that the Israeli army
has been going into Jenin Refugee Camp at night,
destroying the building materials that the U.N. is
using to try and rebuild the community that was
bulldozed by the army in April of 2002.

I had a good discussion tonight with folks in Jenin
about their upcoming actions in and around the city,
and how we might proceed in Qalqilya. The conditions
in walled-in Qalqilya are very difficult for people
who live and work there, and for internationals trying
to support non-violent resistance there. The people
there have welcomed internationals in solidarity with
them, but I think we all feel a little stymied by
being caged up. We’ll see what we can accomplish.

The trip Saturday morning from Jenin to Qalqilya was
another exercise in roadblocks, humiliating
checkpoints, and 5 shared taxis for what should have
been 1 short trip. The racism at the checkpoints was
blatant; at one point all the Palestinian men in the
car were forced to get out and stand in the sun while
their IDs were checked. I was allowed to sit in the
car with the women. No soldier asked spoke to me or
looked at my passport to ascertain who I was; I was
apparently judged not in need of checking by virtue of
my appearance alone.

We finally got to Qalqilya, and did manage to talk our
way in through the checkpoint. We had a few things
going for us: we were a small group (only 3), we had a
Palestinian-American with us who could claim to have
family in Qalqilya, and the District Commanding
Officer who has ordered internationals kept out of
Qalqilya wasn’t there because it was Saturday.
Nevertheless, we got in by the skin of our teeth.

While we waited and haggled at the checkpoint, I
observed the soldiers’ interactions with Palestinians
requesting permission into the city. They were spoken
to and manhandled in a way that the soldiers would
never dare with us, another manifestation of racism
run amok. The soldier with whom we were negotiating,
who was friendly to us and sympathetic, left for a
moment, transformed from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. Hyde,
and screamed at some boys on a donkey cart. Another
soldier went through a young man’s pockets without
speaking to him about it first, in order to see if he
had another form of ID. I couldn’t imagine him doing
that to me.

On Sunday morning we went out to the farmers’ gate in
the fence. The idea was to spend a day with farmers
working in their fields and orchards and observing the
ways in which the fence is disrupting their
livelihood. Agriculture has become a central source
of income since Palestinians’ travel to their jobs in
Israel was banned, and since Israeli shoppers stopped
coming to Qalqilya.

One can no longer bring a car, truck or tractor into
the Qalqilya fields and orchards outside of the fence.
The army blocked the way to the gate with boulders
and a mound of dirt, so that one can only travel on
foot or, with difficulty, by donkey. The impact of
this demechanization on Qalqilya farmers’ ability to
extract income from their fields is obvious.

We walked through the gate with Shukri, an AP
photographer who is a Qalqilya resident and some
farmers. We were stopped by the private armed
security (from a company called Ari) who work for the
companies contracted to build the fence for the
Israeli government. They were very aggressive and
caused all the farmers except one to turn back and try
again later. We ignored them and walked into the
lands beyond the fence with a farmer named Khaled.

Khaled pointed out how many of the plots were
neglected since September 2002 when this part of the
fence went up. Under the Ottoman land laws, which
Israel uses to confiscate Palestinian land, property
belongs to the state if it is uncultivated for 3 years
in a row. The state’s role in preventing cultivation
is not a mitigating factor in the eyes of the Israeli
legal system. The Israeli government then turns the
land over to the Jewish National Fund, whose charter
says that the land is held in perpetuity for the
Jewish people, making it technically illegal for
non-Jews, even non-Jewish Israelis, to rent or live on
that land. (The heavily fortified Border Police post
at the Qalqilya checkpoint has a sign denoting that
it’s on JNF land. Not what I had in mind when I put
my allowance in those little blue boxes as a kid.)

Israeli soldiers in a Hummer followed us up the path
among the fields, and forced us to leave. We tried to
negotiate to let us stay and work with the farmers for
the day, but they said they were calling the Border
Police to come and arrest us. Again: apartheid. They
said that the farmer could proceed to his fields (his
wife and children already had), but they were intent
on keeping us apart from them.

One of the soldiers freaked when we walked back
through the gate into Qalqilya. I guess they thought
we’d walk alongside the gate on their jeep road until
we got to a checkpoint, or until the Border Police
came along and arrested us. They REALLY don’t want us
in Qalqilya. They didn’t follow us in, however. I
think they need fairly high level orders to come
inside the cage. They did stop Shukri, and took his
ID and press pass (Palestinians can be arrested for
not carrying ID). Shukri went to the District
Commanding Officer later, who returned his ID, but
said he’d need the name of the soldier in order to
file a complaint aimed at getting back his press pass.

This morning we tried again to go out with the farmers
(they hadn’t expected that we’d come back). We
arrived at the gate at 6:15 on the assumption that the
workers constructing the fence wouldn’t be at work
yet, and therefore security wouldn’t have arrived.
What we found was a tank, a jeep, and some soldiers,
waiting apparently for us. Some farmers got there at
the same time, and were allowed through by the
soldiers. We of course did not attempt to cross, and
I’m really disappointed that the army has so far been
successful at separating us from the farmers.

Israeli army jeeps came into Qalqilya today and
arrested someone-I don’t know the details.
International activists and local residents in the
nearby village of Jayyous had an action today at which
they went to the fence and threw food and supplies
over to a Bedouin family trapped by the fence and
unable to reach Jayyous themselves.

We’re working hard on our upcoming wall actions-July
28 in Jenin, July 29 in Tulkarm, July 30 here, and
July 31 in Mas’ha. We have to find a way to bring the
world’s attention to the fence and what it’s doing to
Palestinians.

That’s all for now. Peace.

Steve

Soldiers are now saying that farmers must have a permit to farm the land they already own. The Apartheid Wall callously cuts farmers from their lands, with only a small door at the base to let them through. Last night, the National and Islamic parties met with the farmers and told them they do not have to ask for permits to farm the land that belongs to them.

One farmers shook his head and said,
- Some of my fields are behind the wall ond some are in front. I can't reach the ones behind, so my brother and his family have been cut off from me. And the dust has ruined our crops.

At 9 am on Tuesday, July 22, the farmers and internationals are going to the wall again. They intend to assure that the Israeli government keeps at least one promise made; the right of farmers to go to work and feed their families. Please join us in protesting yet another illegal action from the Isreali military.


For more information in Tulkarem, contact:
(for English) +972-64-309-753
(for Arabic) +972-59-836-783

Or Huwaida: +972-67-473-308

For more information on The ISM Campaign Freedom Summer Palestine, contact:
ISM Media Office: +972-2-2774602