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Israeli Army Invades Tulkarem Refugee Camp

2 April 2003

In the small hours of this morning the Israeli Army and border police invaded Tulkarem refugee camp with attack helicopters, tanks, APCs, hummers (special forces vehicles) and hundreds of soldiers and border policemen. After taking control of the camp, they began to round up the camp’s entire male population between the ages of 15 and 45. At dawn the men were marched in groups to the Tulkarem refugee camp’s School for Girls where they were held until for varying periods of time before being taken away in trucks. This update offers detail about what ISM activists witnessed at the scene. 

Pro-Israeli lobby forges unholy alliance with the Christian right

Akiva Eldar 7 April 2003

“Evangelical Christians from South Carolina paid for the huge billboard on Israel’s Ayalon highway declaring ‘There’s no land for peace.’ TV evangelist Pat Robertson last week reprimanded Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, saying ‘Who do you think you are, handing Jerusalem over to Arafat?’ With Christian friends like these close to the president’s ear, the right-wing government in Israel does not need Jewish friends to rebuff political initiatives like the road map.” Haaretz’s Akiva Eldar charts the growing — and troubling — influence of Christian Evangelical Zionists in Washington, DC. 

First major ISM anti-bulldozer action since Rachel Corrie killing

Joseph Smith Rafah, Palestine 6 April 2003


“At about 5pm, we received a call from a Palestinian journalist friend of ours with information that bulldozers were working in the Tel Zorob area, the western-most refugee camp next to the Egyptian border. We were actually in the middle of a meeting, so within minutes all eleven of us were geared up and out the door. Five English, two Scottish, two Americans, and two Italians piled into a large taxi and headed to the scene.” Joseph Smith, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, based in Rafah, Gaza writes about the first major ISM action against bulldozers since his friend Rachel Corrie was killed on 16 March 2003. 

Brian Avery shooting: Annotated map from eyewitness Tobias Karlsson

Tobias Karlsson 7 April 2003


International Solidarity Movement activist Brian Avery was shot in the face with heavy machine gun fire in Jenin on 5 April 2003 by Israeli troops in an armored personnel carrier. Tobias Karlsson, International Solidarity Movement coordinator for the Jenin area, offered the following annotated map giving more information about the incident, thus highlighting the incredibility of the Israeli army’s claim that the shooting was a “crossfire”-type accident. 

What about the apartheid wall?

International Womens Peace Service Mas'ha, Palestine 7 April 2003

If you’ve ever sat in springtime in an olive grove, enjoying the shade of the trees and the scent of the fresh earth, perhaps you will understand what land can mean to people who depend on it. Go just once to Mas’ha, Bidya, Sanniria or one of the dozens of Palestinian villages that are losing most of their land to the Israeli Apartheid Wall and you will get an idea of what kind of pain Palestinians feel at this theft and destruction. 

Second Annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival to be held April 17-25

7 April 2003

Chicago will host its second annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival from April 17-25 2003. The festival will feature over 30 films including Hany Abu Assad’s Rana’s Wedding: Jerusalem, Another Day, an official selection for the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, Jeremy Hardy vs. the Israeli Army, a film by the London-based Palestinian filmmaker Leila Sansour, and Genet à Shatila from Swiss director Richard Dindo. 

Israel threatens Palestinan land and homes in Qalqiliya

Robyn Long East Jerusalem 6 April 2003

Between walking among the lands in Qalqiliya, which Israel is confiscating for the so-called ‘security barrier’, and visiting the hospital where Jihad, a fourteen year-old martyr who was shot by Israeli ‘special forces’, was prepared for his funeral, one can easily understand why the residents of this caged city state there is an internal closure on their spirits. Robyn Long writes from Occupied Jerusalem. 

The Brian Avery shooting: When will we realise that there can't be this many "accidents"?

Nigel Parry 5 April 2003


On 5 April 2003, Israeli troops in Jenin shot International Solidarity Movement activist Brian Avery. Avery, a 24-year-old American from Albuquerque, New Mexico experienced serious wounds to his face after Israeli troops shot at him with heavy machine gun fire from an armoured personnel carrier. In this coverage trend, EI co-founder Nigel Parry examines some of the misrepresentations in initial reports, and lists what we do know, uncomfortable facts which would seem to preclude the event being an ‘accident’. “For those of us who have lived as eyewitnesses in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, it is not news that Israeli troops regularly shoot at people without there being clashes or any threat to the soldier. This is one of the consequences of maintaining a military occupation for over one-third of a century, the dehumanisation of the occupied people by the occupying army. Increasingly during the Intifada, we have observed that internationals have been targeted by the Israeli army.”