The International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) is a team of international women based in Haris, a village in the Salfit governorate of the West Bank, which provides accompaniment to Palestinian civilians, documents and nonviolently intervenes in human rights abuses, supports acts of nonviolent resistance to end the military occupation of the Palestinian territories — particularly Palestinian women’s resistance — and opposes the wall. IWPS is seeking new volunteers. Read more about International Women's Peace Service seeking volunteers
A delegation of four Israeli members of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel), including three doctors and PHR-Israel’s Clinic Manager, entered Gaza this morning. At the same time, an emergency dispatch of medical supplies at a value of approximately US $40,000 was delivered by PHR-Israel into Gaza, for the purpose of distribution to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and the European Hospital in Khan Younis, both of which are suffering from severe shortages. Read more about Only pressure will lift Gaza medical siege
The morning of 7 January 2008, Dr. Ahmad Maslamani, a leading national figure in the Palestinian grassroots struggle against the occupation, passed away as a result of a heart attack. In 1985 he was a founder member of the Union of Health Work Committees, where he was director from 1992. From 2004, he was a member of the steering committee of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. He was a member of the central committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Read more about In Memoriam: Dr. Ahmad Maslamani
Dear Ms. Sarandon, We felt sorrow when we learned that you accepted Lev Leviev’s invitation to attend the opening night event for his new jewelry store in New York City on 13 November while our friends protested outside, because we respect you for your support for human rights, your courage in speaking since 2002 against the US war on Iraq, and for your many other honorable public positions. Lev Leviev is building Israeli settlements on Bil’in and Jayyous’ land. Mohammed Khatib and Sharif Omar write to the famed actress. Read more about Two Palestinian villages ask Susan Sarandon to repudiate Leviev
A major meeting of non-governmental organizations and activists fell into disarray when the Palestinian delegation announced its withdrawal just days before the event. “The Palestinian civil society delegation to the forum for a Just Peace in the Middle East, planned for 14-16 December in Madrid, has decided not to participate in the forum due to serious last-minute violations,” a December 13 statement issued by the Palestinian NGO network (PNGO) read. Read more about Palestinian NGOs pull plug on Madrid forum
Wealthy Madison Avenue holiday shoppers were greeted the afternoon of 8 December 2007 by boisterous music and dancing, as 60 New Yorkers protested in a growing campaign to boycott Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev over his settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Participants performed a joyous dabke, a traditional Palestinian dance, and chanted to music from the eight-piece Rude Mechanical Orchestra. During the protest, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz entered LEVIEV New York and emerged to jeers as he displayed a LEVIEV shopping bag to the crowd. Read more about Dershowitz jewelry purchase booed by Leviev protesters
Since 1994 Palestine has been part of the largest Dutch trade union, FNVABVAKABO’s international solidarity policy. In a letter to Palestinian unions it refers to a resolution of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions which was adopted in December 2004. The ICFTU has 241 affiliated organizations in 156 countries with a membership of 155 million. The resolution calls for the immediate ending of the occupation of 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza, including the existence of the wall and Jewish settlements. Read more about Largest Dutch trade union will increase pressure on Israel
“The clinic is modern, light, open and clean. Coming from a dark, dirty hospital with MRSA [the superbug] stalking the wards I almost felt we should send our managers to learn from the people here,” reflected Lucy Collins, a midwife from the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton. She had spent two days in the Red Crescent primary health care center in Tubas. Such positive reflections on the grinding reality of life under occupation in the West Bank are rare. But there are many stories of a resilient people who still have the energy to welcome visitors and reassure them when things become particularly heavy. Alice Cutler reports. Read more about Solidarity in Tubas
“For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them.” So begins a statement calling for a one-state solution signed by among others prominent Palestinian and Israeli scholars and activists. The statement, issued to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the UN Partition Resolution sets out principles for “a just, and thus enduring, peace in a single state.” Read more about The One State Declaration
An important milestone in building the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign was achieved in Ramallah on 22 November 2007. Some 300 activists, members of unions, associations and NGOs in towns, villages and refugee camps of the occupied West Bank, with monitors from the global solidarity movement in Britain, Canada, Norway, Spain and South Africa, convened for a day of discussion and debate about ways to promote all forms of boycott against Israel among Palestinian community organizations, unions, as well as political, academic and cultural institutions. Read more about Hundreds converge on Ramallah for boycott summit
