1-THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE AGAINST THE APARTHEID WALL PEACEFUL RALLY IN TULKAREM DISTRICT 2-Life on the edge of the Apartheid Wall 3-Missive to America 6 January 2003 4-Courage under fire 5-Partners on a suicidal course

RESCHEDULED
1-THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE AGAINST THE APARTHEID WALL
PEACEFUL RALLY IN TULKAREM DISTRICT

The January 2 rally in Tulkarem District was cancelled due to an
Israeli military operation and curfew in Tulkarem. The rally has been
rescheduled for January 9, and the location of the rally is now the
village of Atil, Sharawiya region, north of the city of Tulkarem.

WHEN & WHERE:
Thursday January 9, 2003

Activities:
A peaceful solidarity gathering on the land to support owners of
seized land.

Schedule:
• 10:30: gathering of Palestinian and international groups at
the Atil Association in the village of Atil
• 11:00: brief speeches
• 11:30: solidarity gathering at the wall construction site

CONTACTS:
For information on logistics and transportation, please contact the
individuals below. Additionally, as the situation is changeable, please
phone before leaving for updates.
• Suheil Salman (059-700-121) - Coordinator of the National
Committee Against the Apartheid Wall/Tulkarem
• Taysir Hareshi (050-285-397) - Mayor of Koffein
• Jamal Othman (09-2674-195) - Committee Member from Jarushya
• Patrick Connors (052 371 338 or 067 628 514) - International
Solidarity Movement

BACKGROUND:
The National Committee Against the Apartheid Wall/Governorate of
Tulkarem, Palestine is organizing activities against the
construction of the Apartheid Wall on Thursday January 9, 2003 in
Tulkarem. Palestinian farmers throughout the Tulkarem District are
losing access to their land as a result of the construction of the wall.
It is estimated that the construction of the Apartheid Wall will lead
to the effective annexation of 10% of the West Bank's
land.

INVITEES:
Palestinian Ministries, Members of the Palestinian Legislative
Council, Governmental and non-governmental organizations, National
Forces, Women's Organizations, Knesset members, Peace Movement
members, The International Solidarity Movements, Local and
International Press, Representatives of Human Rights and Legal
organizations.
==============================================================Press
Release January 2, 2003

2-Life on the edge of the Apartheid Wall
by Drew Penland

TULKAREM, PALESTINE - Until recently, modest prosperity described Bassem
Wakit's house at the edge of Jayyous village. Bassem's wife and three
growing young children could have been found outside. His brother had
started to build a house next door on his family's land.

On the slopes around the house the community tended and grew olive
trees, orange orchards and a variety of fruits and vegetables in
fields and greenhouses.

Now this reality and Bassem's land, his "grandfather's
grandfathers", and his whole community are facing a new grave
threat.

Outside Bassem's this threat is visible. It is a huge scar in the land
that runs for miles to the north and south of his community and the
people who work on it. It is the Israeli governments
new "security fence". According to the Israeli government the fence is
being built to provide security for Jewish Israeli's in Israeli proper.
The reality is starkly different.

The security fence, known as th Apartheid Wall by Palestinians and much
of the international community, will be tantamount to de facto
annexation of over 10% of the West Bank. This will include theft of
important water sources and much of the most important agricultural
areas of the West Bank.

Palestinian communities on the other side of this imposing structure
will be annexed into Israel proper and many communities falling on the
Palestinian side of the wall will be separated from their
agricultural land.

Desperate Palestinians have been assured the Palestinian people
whose land falls on the other side of the wall that they will have
access both during and after the wall's construction. The record to date
on allowing people to cross the wall, however, has been
abysmal.

Armed private security forces, the infamous border police and
regular soldiers are denying Palestinians access to their lands
daily. They have destroyed and blockaded roads into agricultural
areas (and whole communities), ruined irrigation systems and
detained and beaten Palestinians in the area of the wall.

In Jayyous the construction of the wall has already cut off access to
almost all the community's agricultural land. Even though the
wall is just a scar on the terrain and the foundation is not yet in
place, the people of this community have to walk several kilometers to
the nearest place the Israeli occupation forces will allow them to pass
to the other side of the wall. They then have to walk back to their land
from the crossing point, some of which sits just paces from the
community itself. Returning home at the end of the day
would mean a similar arduous trek. Now imagine moving tonnes of
produce on your journey.

Vehicles are not being permitted to cross at any local points.
Bassem's land has suffered a worse fate yet. Although sitting just
meters from his house, his land is almost completely inaccessible. In
the process of clearing the land for the Apartheid Wall, the
Occupation forces destroyed around 200 of Basem's family's olive
trees, many of them over a century old. "They are cutting
everything, killing everything" says Bassem.

No written offers of compensation have come from the Israeli regime. No
consultation on the fate of local communities has taken place, just
indiscriminate and cruel destruction of land and local peoples' lives.

The Bassem family house is at the edge of Jayyous located closest to the
wall. The occupation forces have frequently threatened to
destroy his house and threatened his wellbeing. Recalling the words of
one member of the security apparatus working at the site of the wall for
Bassem "your identification says you are from Jayyous.
Because you are from Jayyous I have no problem hitting you as I
want".

His brother has been forced to abandon his half completed
neighboring dwelling. They have repeatedly tear gassed
indiscriminately. They yell at him if he goes onto his own roof.
They routinely occupy his house. A sadness comes across his eyes as he
says "they entered my house when I was not here", when only his wife and
children were at home. "My children are very afraid".

Local people in affected communities however have been steadfast in
their courageous resistance to the Apartheid Wall. On Sunday,
December 29th a non-violent demonstration of 200 Palestinians and a
number of International Solidarity Movement activists attempted to cross
the area where the wall is being built to get to their fields. Israeli
forces met the non-violent protest with tear gas, clubs,
rubber bullets and live rounds. Frustrated local youth soon replied by
throwing rocks and were met by more gunfire. Serious injuries
were fortunately avoided.

The following day the Israeli Border Police took reprisal measures.
Three youth, one the younger brother of Bassem, were reportedly
walking to Bassem's house when they were apprehended and detained by
Border Police.

They were allegedly roughed up and one youth was released shortly
thereafter. They were being held near the home of Bassem on a road near
the Apartheid Wall. The International Solidarity Movement
happened to have a strong presence in the village when the youth
were detained. A number of people approached the Border Police to
inquire about the status of the detained youth.

The reply of the Border Police was swift. They directed "all kinds of
verbal insults" in the words of ISM negotiator Marcey, a Hebrew speaker
and 60 year old human rights activist from New York. The
verbal abuse was followed with an attack. Marcey narrowly avoided being
injured when she was hit on the head with a concussion grenade that
exploded at her feet.

It was one of two thrown at ISM activists. Two tear gas canisters were
also thrown in our direction. Border Police and private
security pointed automatic weapons and threatened to shoot the non-
violent team for wanting to discuss the situation.

Eventually the ISM negotiation team did succeed in speaking directly
with the Police and they were all joined by the frightened and sad
mothers of the two youths. Bassem and his brother succeeded in
approaching the Border Police as well and joining the negotiations.

Bassem remained remarkably composed and thoughtful throughout
despite the desperate nature of his situation. The sides reached a
tentative agreement that if the ISM activists withdrew and ended the
standoff, the two youths would be released. Bassem counseled the
ISM team to accept the proposal, and the youths were eventually
released. When released, the youths quickly disappeared into the
village, but the anxiety that the Wall's construction has brought still
exists.

Bassem, his family, his home and the village managed to escape day of
Israeli violence largely unscathed. But there are no guarantees in the
days to come.

Around Bassem's house lies a visual testament to the Palestinian
struggle for justice in their own land. In a desperate effort to
survive Bassem has moved some ancient olive trees that were severely cut
back to the area around his house. He is nourishing them with water and
hopes they survive. Their fate, like the Palestinian
struggle for justice, remains very uncertain.

Drew Penland will be available for interviews over the phone and via
email. For information, to arrange interviews or to support ISM
efforts please contact Reem Alnuweiri, ISM-Vancouver Coordinator by
email
at: ism-vancouver@palsolidarity.org.
===========================================3-Missive to America 6 January
2003

Dear Fellow Citizens,

Imagine your city without a police force. Imagine that the police
stations are rubble, having been bombed out months ago.

Imagine that every city in our nation is in this situation.

Would you feel secure? Would you be able to band together as a
society to keep yourselves safe from within and from without?

Imagine your roads are never repaired, ever.

Imagine that when a few civic-minded broad-shouldered citizens take up
shovels to fix the road, they are arrested and tortured and
imprisoned without charge.

Imagine that when someone in your city commits a crime in this
police-less place, everyone in your city, and that means you, is put
under house arrest.

Imagine further that this extends to terrorizing people without any
pretext for doing so, with a terror action that is fatal to one of your
neighbors – a doctor in an ambulance, a teacher returning home from
school, a child writing on the blackboard.*

Think for a moment of a crime you have heard of in your city.

Is there a particular doctor you would like to have killed in
retaliation? A teacher you would like to have eliminated? A child you
would like to have snuffed out?

Yes? Then come and support the Occupation of Palestinian lands.

No? Then why are you supporting such a blood-drenched system of
societal torture?

We have the privilege of taxation WITH representation.

Every word that you fail to utter about the evil of the Israeli
Occupation supports this daily, annual, decade-crossing monstrosity of
Occupation which is swallowing up the structure of civilized
networks, and writhing from the pangs of digesting its own poison.

Imagine representing your disagreement with this use of your tax
dollars.

Start with the White House Comment Line:

202-456-1111 [9 to 5 EST].

Sincerely,
Annie Higgins, US Citizen
=============================================================4-Courage
under fire

For almost a year Caoimhe Butterly has been standing in the way of
Israeli tanks and troops in Jenin. Last Friday she was shot by a
soldier - but she still won't leave, she tells Katie Barlow

Wednesday November 27, 2002
The Guardian

On Friday, Ian Hook, a British UN volunteer, was shot and killed in
Jenin. Caoimhe Butterly, a 23-year-old Irish activist, was also
shot, but survived. In October, I spent two weeks filming Caoimhe for a
documentary I am making. I had been inspired to meet her by the footage
of her blocking Israel Defence Force tanks as they fired over her head,
and stories of her standing in the line of fire
between soldiers and Palestinian children, as the IDF threatened
to "make her a hero".

I arrived in Jenin on September 28. We met at the house of a family with
whom she was staying, but had barely exchanged greetings when we heard
three gunshots outside. Caoimhe immediately ran out of the front door to
see what was going on, and I followed into the
darkness. I found myself surrounded by at least 15 young fighters, armed
and running with us. We were told that IDF snipers were firing from an
occupied home further down the road.

While the fighters took cover, Caoimhe ran straight towards the
action. (She cuts a rather conspicuous figure in Jenin; 6ft 1in
tall with bright red hair.) A disabled Palestinian boy had been shot off
his bicycle by an IDF sniper. Caoimhe ran straight towards him, despite
the continuing fire, and covered the gaping wound in his
back. Within minutes, the Red Crescent ambulance arrived at the
scene, and amid continuing gunfire, the paramedics got the boy into the
vehicle. The snipers managed to shoot through the ambulance
window, shattering glass all over the boy and nearly killing the
local cameraman who was filming a report. At the hospital, we were told
that the boy was going to survive but would be paralysed from the waist
down. This, said Caoimhe, is everyday life in Jenin.

She was brought up in a culture of liberation theology, which, she says,
"deeply inspired" her to spend her life campaigning for human rights.
Her father's work as a UN economist moved the family from Ireland to
Zimbabwe when Caoimhe was a young child. At a very young age, she says,
she developed a deep sense of duty. "I've always felt the need to almost
a painful degree of needing to stand up against injustices in whatever
contexts they lie." She left school at 18, wanting to travel, and headed
to New York, where she spent several months working in soup kitchens for
an Irish Catholic workers'
movement. She went on to Guatemala and from there to Chiapas in
Mexico, where she worked for two years among the separatist
Zapatista communities.

She returned to Cork last year and spent 10 days fasting outside the
Irish department of foreign affairs in protest at the government's
decision to allow US warplanes to refuel at Shannon airport on the way
to Afghanistan; she was later arrested while attempting to block the
runway. After September 11, she travelled to Iraq to work with an
activist group opposed to sanctions. She moved on to Palestine almost a
year ago and has remained for most of that time in Jenin.

In April, she received international attention when she smuggled her way
into Arafat's Ramallah compound, at that time under siege by
IDF soldiers. She went in to give basic medical aid to a Palestinian
friend who had been shot in the leg, and had called her for help
after the IDF denied him access to the Red Crescent ambulances. She
managed to get help to him, but couldn't get herself out again.

"The Israeli army announced officially that any international trying to
leave the compound would be immediately deported and arrested, if not
shot at," says Caoimhe. "By day three, it became glaringly
obvious that I had made a huge mistake. We were just beginning to get
the news that the tanks were on their way to Jenin. I spent the next 12
days in there as the stories of Jenin got worse and worse, and I knew I
had friends who were bleeding to death."

She escaped by luck, when the IDF forgot to shut a gate surrounding the
compound, and ran for her life past tanks and soldiers. She got back to
Jenin camp towards the end of the invasion. "It was the
smell of rotting human flesh that first hit me. There were still
soldiers in the camp, but a lot of people chose to violate the
curfew, to bury their dead and to drag in the wounded. One man had been
shot at close range, and his body was rolled over by tanks
until he was nothing but bones and a sheath of flesh. There was no
machinery to dig up the dead, so I helped to dig up the bodies by hand.
Very few intact:

burnt, broken body parts, a little girl's plait and the foot of a baby.
In clearing away the rubble I picked up what remained of a
head. There was the body of a little girl who was curled up with her
teddy bear. She had suffocated when her house was demolished."

For a while, after April, she felt a numb fearlessness that allowed her
to walk up to tanks and into the line of fire, to confront
soldiers and withstand beatings at checkpoints. She emphasises that
atrocities occur daily - and, indeed, in the two weeks I was with her,
19 civilians were shot, six fatally. Seven of the victims were children
on their way to school, shot as tanks opened fire in the middle of the
town. One market stallholder was shot in the head in an erratic spray of
bullets from an invading tank as he was setting out his vegetables.

Friday was a very close call. Caoimhe was shot in the left thigh as she
stood in between a firing IDF tank and three young boys in the street. I
spoke to her on the phone shortly after the attack as she lay in her
hospital bed. She explained that she had been trying to persuade the
IDF, after they shot dead a nine-year-old boy, to stop shooting at the
children. They had told her to get out of their way or they would shoot
her. It was while she was clearing the children off the streets that she
was shot. She is sure she was a direct
target; the tank was close by, the soldier pointed his gun at her and
fired, and continued to do so as she crawled to an alleyway for shelter.


I asked an IDF spokesman for his explanation. "We are in the middle of a
war and we cannot be responsible for the safety of anyone who has not
been coordinated by the IDF to be in the occupied
territories right now. While we do not want innocent Palestinians to
suffer, or internationals to get hurt, we are trying to ensure the
safety of the Israelis and we will not tolerate internationals
interfering with IDF operations. It is not the job of internationals to
stand in the line of fire, unless they are the son of God, but he hasn't
come yet."

The Palestinian authority, meanwhile, continues to appeal for
international observers to be deployed in the occupied
territories. "We have noticed in areas where international
volunteers are present and witnessing the oppression, that the
Israelis have exercised some restraint," says Afif Safieh, the
Palestinian delegate to the UK.

Caoimhe tells me she is OK. A chunk of her thigh is missing but she is
grateful that the bullet passed through her leg. Tragically, her friend
Ian Hook was shot through the stomach and died. Earlier that day, they
had been negotiating with the army to get a sick child
to hospital, but the IDF refused to let an ambulance through. When Hook
was shot, the ambulance was detained again.

Will she now leave? "I'm going nowhere. I am staying until this
occupation ends. I have the right to be here, a responsibility to be
here. So does anyone who knows what is going on here."

The following correction was printed in the

Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications

column, November 29 2002

In the above report, we perhaps gave the mistaken impression that both
Caoimhe Butterly and the author of the article were at one time running
with 15 armed fighters towards the sound of gunfire. This was not the
case. There was a group which included five young
fighters, not 15, not all were armed, and the rest were civilians eager
to know where the sound of Israel Defence Force gun shots was coming
from. The group ran on to the streets, not towards the IDF who were in
an adjacent street. Shortly after this, a young boy on a bicycle was
shot. Caoimhe Butterly ran to his aid.
========================================5-Partners on a suicidal course

"In an unguarded moment, Omri Sharon recently told a group of Likud
faithful not to lose any sleep over his father's support for a
Palestinian state. He explained: `We are not living in a vacuum; there
is an international reality. But when you speak softly, you can wield a
big stick. Today, after all, we are located in the
Palestinian areas, we are violating international agreements, but no one
is saying anything. The United States is with us. So we talk
Palestinian state, Palestinian state, but in the meantime, not even Area
A exists. And there is no Orient House, there is no Palestinian
representation in Jerusalem, and the Palestinians are afraid to
wander around with weapons even in their own cities. Obviously we all
want peace - who doesn't want peace? But the statement about a
Palestinian state is a very remote statement."

International Herald Tribune

Partners on a suicidal course
Henry Siegman IHT
Tuesday, January 7, 2003

More Sharon

PARIS There are those who believe that when Ariel Sharon assumes a
second term as prime minister after the Jan. 28 election - a
likelihood predicted by all polls and reinforced by the latest
suicide bombings - he will turn his attention to peacemaking with the
Palestinians. Clearly, that is what Sharon would like Israeli moderate
voters to believe.

To that end he has not only embraced President George W. Bush's
vision of a two-state solution but has publicly warned fellow Likud
members that those who object to his "commitment" to Palestinian
statehood will have no place in his new government.

Those who entertain a benign view of the future based on such
declarations are profoundly out of touch with Israeli political
realities. Sharon's talk of Palestinian statehood is about as
sincere as his stated determination to punish cabinet members who refuse
to cooperate fully with the attorney general's investigation of a Likud
vote-buying scandal, in which, according to Israeli
police, the prime minister's son Omri is allegedly involved.

Unfortunately, there is good reason to fear that the situation will only
get worse if Sharon returns to power. Contrary to the image
of moderation that he has so assiduously - and effectively -
cultivated these past two years, he remains single-mindedly
committed to preventing the emergence of a viable and independent
Palestinian state. From the very outset of the settler movement in the
1970s, Sharon's overriding goal has been to assure so extensive an
expansion of Jewish settlements and their supporting
infrastructure - highways, power grids, water sources - as to make a
Palestinian state a political and physical impossibility. Sharon
learned during his first term of office not to rub his true
intentions in the face of an American president, particularly one
already inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Instead he has
missed no occasion to declare his support for President Bush's vague
"vision" of a two-state solution, even as he intensifies
settlement activity that assures the defeat of such a vision, and turns
away every effort to open a political process with the
Palestinians.

In an unguarded moment, Omri Sharon recently told a group of Likud
faithful not to lose any sleep over his father's support for a
Palestinian state. He explained: "We are not living in a vacuum;
there is an international reality. But when you speak softly, you can
wield a big stick. Today, after all, we are located in the
Palestinian areas, we are violating international agreements, but no one
is saying anything. The United States is with us.

"So we talk Palestinian state, Palestinian state, but in the
meantime, not even Area A exists. And there is no Orient House,
there is no Palestinian representation in Jerusalem,
and the Palestinians are afraid to wander around with weapons even in
their own cities.

Obviously we all want peace - who doesn't want peace? But the
statement about a Palestinian state is a very remote statement."

Until now, Sharon, the stealth hawk who pretends to be a moderate, has
pursued his real agenda with great caution, fearing that he may
jeopardize his goal if he overreaches. But by now he may well have
concluded that he has even greater leeway than he realized.

Israel's press has reported his boasts to his inner circle that only a
year ago the international community came down hard on Israel if Israeli
forces merely crossed the border into Palestinian areas A and B, while
now they move about as they please throughout the
entire West Bank and Gaza, and no one says anything.

Sharon has surrounded himself with security, military and
intelligence leaders who are as hawkish as he is. The chief of
staff, General Moshe Ya'alon, the Mossad chief, General Meir Dagan, the
defense minister, General Shaul Mofaz, the head of military
intelligence, General Aharon Zeevi, and the national security
adviser, General Efraim Halevy, are all cut from the same military
cloth.

All believe that Israel must avoid returning to a political process
until Palestinians are totally defeated militarily and until this defeat
becomes deeply ingrained in their consciousness. All believe that it is
only when Palestinians think and act like a defeated
people that a political process can begin. This view was first
articulated by Ya'alon after he assumed command of the armed forces in
early September, and was subsequently endorsed by Sharon.
(Actually, this view was first articulated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the
godfather of militant Zionism, who wrote in the 1920s that the
Palestinians would never willingly give up their land, because they are
a people and it is their country. Jabotinsky said the only way Zionism
could succeed would be if the Jews coming to Palestine built an ``iron
wall" -- that is, military strength so strong that the Palestinians
could never defeat it and would ultimately despair and then beg the
Zionists not to throw them out.)

Ironically, what hope there may be for a better outcome is provided by
the Likud vote-buying scandal, which, according to the latest
polls, has already cost the Likud 10 Knesset seats (down from an
expected 41 seats to 31).

According to Doron Rosenblum, writing in Ha'aretz, until now
Israelis thought that "Sharon's personal lack of basic credibility" was
a virtue in the Middle Eastern context, for it balanced the
lying of Arafat. "That is why Sharon's winking cynicism, his talk of
'seven days of quiet' that must precede 'serious negotiations,' was
received with the same winks and smirks that accompanied his
announcement about his 'agreement on the American road map' or his
promise of a 'Palestinian state.' It's all hogwash, poppycock! But what
virtuosity!"

Now that with the vote-buying scandal Israelis have found that they,
too, are the objects of Sharon's deceptions, they seem no longer
amused. If the attrition in support for the Likud is not reversed,
Sharon may not be able to form a new government without the Labor Party,
whose conditions for joining his government - including an immediate
halt to all settlement activity - might reverse the
suicidal course that both Israel and the Palestinians now seem bent on.

Whether Labor would take a principled position in these
circumstances, and not sell its soul for a mess of pottage as it did the
last time around - in return for which, Shimon Peres and
Fouad Ben-Eliezer served as apologists for Sharon's worst excesses -
depends on whether Labor's new leader, Amnon Mitzna, is the man
of integrity he claims to be.

The writer is a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on
Foreign Relations in New York.