Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

A joint report submitted by Addameer, The Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Stop the Wall) and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) to Special Rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council examines the ongoing, systematic campaign of repression levied by Israel against Palestinian human rights defenders active against the Annexation Wall.

The arrest of Jamal Juma’ is the most high-profile case within an intensifying campaign of repression of grassroots mobilization against the wall and the settlements. Initially only arresting local activists from the villages affected by the wall, the Israeli authorities have recently begun to shift their attention to the detention of internationally-known human rights defenders.

On March 30th, as Palestinians in our homeland and the diaspora, we remember Land Day and strengthen our struggle for Land, Justice and Return. In 1976, 6 Palestinians were killed and a hundred injured by Israeli forces as Palestinians went on strike against a massive land confiscation scheme in the Galilee. More than 30 years later, we will be again out in the streets and in the fields confronting the Occupation in dozens of protests and demonstrations, uniting the people in villages and cities across the West Bank in a week of continuous mobilization.

On 16 May 2005, a large number of Palestinian non-governmental organizations wrote to express their full support of the decision made by AUT delegates on the 22nd of April to launch immediate boycotts of Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities. According to the signatories, the motion “marks an historic moment in the global movement to isolate Apartheid Israel as a means of forging effective solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, self-determination and sovereignty.”

Ramallah, West Bank, 14 March 2005 — While villagers were delayed, and in many instances barred entry at Occupation Checkpoints throughout the West Bank, a huge crowd of over 5,000 thronged the streets of Ramallah to protest at the gates of the Muqata’, the compound of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), where Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Annan was holding talks with Mahmoud Abbas. Deep hostility has been created by Annan’s refusal to visit any areas of the Apartheid Wall, or any of the refugee camps which had invited him.

The day declared by the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign in Palestine is gathering major momentum as cities across Europe, Canada, the US, Latin America, and Australia are joining in solidarity with the popular Palestinian mobilization that is to take place on November 9, the date of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The International Day Against the Wall is expected to be noticeable and large scale and to be a spark that further strengthens the Palestinian call to stop the Wall and the momentum in Palestine and abroad.

Marking the single largest demolition of buildings in years, the entire commercial area of Nazlat ‘Isa was today raised to the ground as some 15 bulldozers, accompanied by large numbers of military and border police, entered the community at 5:00 AM and destroyed over 100 shops and 5 homes. The market, which was previously targeted in January of this year with the destruction of 82 or close to , of its shops, has been the commercial center for the entire region. The bulldozers began the demolitions early in the morning and continued unabated until the late hours of the night.

“This is an appeal for help and an honor sent from the hearts of thousands of children, women and elders whose trees are being uprooted, whose lands are being razed, whose elders and children are being beaten daily.” The people of Qalqiliya, the Land Defense Committees and the Apartheid Wall Campaign - PENGON, the Farmers Union, and popular and local organizations in Qalqiliya ask for help.