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AFSC joins worldwide action against the separation wall

10 November 2003


The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international humanitarian service organization, joins Palestine, Israel, and organizations and coalitions around the world for the International Week of Action Against the Wall, November 9-16. During the next week groups are mobilizing their communities for a series of educational activities and actions to bring down this Wall and other walls and barriers. The American Friends Service Committee is has worked for a just U.S. policy in the Middle East for decades. 

New wall projections: Severe humanitarian consequences for more than 680,000 Palestinians in the West Bank

11 November 2003

OCHA reports that approximately 680,000 - 30 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank - will be directly harmed by the Wall. The damage caused by the destruction of land and property for the Wall’s construction is irreversible and undermines Palestinians’ ability to ever recover even if the political situation allows conditions to improve. 

"Israel still destroying occupied territories", says Second Committee delegates

9 November 2003

Israel continued to destroy Palestinian territories through deforestation and the expropriation and erosion of agricultural lands, as well as by seizing lands, harvests and livestock in the occupied Syrian Golan, the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) heard this afternoon as it concluded its debate on permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian and Syrian peoples over their natural resources in the occupied Arab territories. 

Photostory: Seattle activists bring down Wall

9 November 2003


In Seattle, street theatre was performed in protest of the wall. A wall puppet smashed homes, trampled olive trees and demolished ambulances, schools and hospitals. Hundreds chanted “bring the wall down”. Westlake Park was transformed into a Seam Zonewith a full scale model of the wall guarded by soldiers who issued everyone an Announcement of Closure, not unlike those issued in the areas between the Green Line and the Wall within the West Bank. A wall puppet smashed homes, trampled olive trees and demolished ambulances, schools and hospitals. 

An American surgeon in Nablus

Edward W. Gallagher Nablus 10 November 2003


“For the next two days I examined many horribly injured children who were shot by Israeli soldiers or were injured when their homes were bombed and destroyed by Israeli F�16 bombers. I later operated on several of the children to repair their disfigurement and deformity.” The following text is a personal account of a September 2003 humanitarian mission to Palestine sponsored by the Palestine Children Relief Fund (PCRF), where Dr. Edward W. Gallagher worked at Rafidia Hospital in Nablus. Note: images illustrating this article may be upsetting. 

New Yorkers erect a "Separation" Wall in Midtown Manhattan

10 November 2003


Approximately 150 New Yorkers converged at Bryant Park, Manhattan, carrying three sixty-yard mock “walls” depicting the 25-ft.-high wall enclosing the Palestinian peoples in the West Bank. The protesters marched down 42nd street to Grand Central Station where they carried the wall inside to display it for passer-bys, while chanting “Tear Down the Wall.” “We are sending a message to our governments to stop their support of this hideous act of ethnic cleansing veiled behind ‘security’ rhetoric,” said Omar Jamal of SUSTAIN-NYC. 

Photo of the Day

Khaled al-Kharrah 9 November 2003


Photo of the Day is a BNN feature which offers a photograph on a day. This is not to imply that this is a regular feature, nor that this photo is truly the mother of all photos for the day in question. Usual disclaimers apply. Residents of the Palestinian town of Ramallah increasingly appear to have bad teeth. One of the few orthodontists, Dr. Hytham Shit, fears that it has something to do with his name. Dr. Shit told BNN that sometimes his patients would pay someone else to go for them or they would put lots of onions and garlic in their falafal.