Freedom Summer Palestine is less than two weeks away! Hundreds of people from all over the world will converge in Palestine for 6 weeks of actions aimed at highlighting and challenging the oppressive Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and lives, through coordinated popular direct-action.

ISM will be joining Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza in paving roads, dismantling roadblocks, challenging checkpoints and tearing down the Apartheid Wall.

More information on joining us is available below and on our website at http://www.palsolidarity.org

From July 1 - August 15, 2003 the International Solidarity Movement invites you to join the Palestinian people for Freedom Summer Palestine 2003 - a campaign designed to directly challenge the Israeli occupation policy of caging Palestinians in their cities, towns and villages, denying 3 million people their basic right to freedom of movement.

The Palestinian people are living under a brutal military occupation that is a source of a terrible cycle of violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. But while the world focuses on the "War on Terror" a blind-eye is turned to the terror practiced by the State of Israel against a largely unarmed population struggling for their freedom. Even as the mainstream media focuses on the "road map" to peace, effective roadblocks are being constructed daily - including roads for colonizing settlers that continue to be paved over Palestinian olive trees, new settlement outposts that pop up throughout the West Bank, and the "Apartheid Wall" that is being constructed to annex land and water from Palestinian territory to Israel. And all the while, Israeli soldiers and roadblocks prevent Palestinians from traveling freely to home, work and school, thus preventing any kind of life for the Palestinian people.

The Israeli government continues to build a massive wall to surround Palestinian areas and turn their ghettos into large prisons. Twice as high and planned-to-be three times as long as the Berlin Wall, Israel's latest project of dispossession has already uprooted tens of thousands of Palestinian fruit and olive trees and has destroyed or isolated from Palestinian farmers tens of thousands of dunams of farmland, de facto confiscating the Palestinian people's most fertile land and most important water wells. Entire farming communities are losing all of their agricultural land. More statistics:

- 10% of the West Bank will be confiscated by and for Israel by the path of this wall. As of December 2002, some 11,500 dunams of land have been razed for the footprint of the wall, and 83,000 trees uprooted.

- Over 31 groundwater wells will be in the confiscated areas of the wall's first phase. A number of villages are to lose their ONLY source of water.

- Land confiscation, destruction, and severe restriction of movement will translate into the loss of over 6,500 jobs.

- Over 100 buildings have thusfar been destroyed to make way for the wall, mainly shops, an important source of income for families and communities

- At least 17 Palestinian communities will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line. Some communities will be surrounded on all sides by the wall.

- If completed as planned, some 95,000 Palestinians will be isolated

- A number of small villages have been informed that their proximity to the wall will deem most of their community demolished.

- Courtesy of PENGON. For more information and statistics, see: http://www.pengon.org

The ISM invites you to join the Palestinian people in coordinated direct-action, nonviolent resistance to this strangulation, oppression and affront to peace initiatives. While leaders talk about peace and the "road map", take part in working for justice on the ground and paving the road to freedom.

LOGISTICAL INFORMATION

FREEDOM SUMMER Palestine 2003

Training:

Orientation and training is mandatory for all who are coming to join the ISM campaign. Even if you have been on previous ISM campaigns or otherwise have significant experience in the region, affinity group building and updates on the situation are important elements of the training and orientation that cannot be missed. The training dates for the summer campaign are as follows:


Tuesday/Wednesday July 1 -2
Friday/Saturday July 4-5
Friday/Saturday July 11-12
Friday/Saturday July 18-19
Friday/Saturday July 25-26
Friday/Saturday August 1-2 Friday/Saturday August 8-9

The ISM cannot accept volunteers who do not attend the training and orientations in Palestine.

Training site:

Training sites may change due to circumstances in the region. However, when you arrive in Jerusalem and contact the ISM, you will be given updated information about the next training. An ISM volunteer will meet you and other new arrivals on the morning of the training and accompany you to the training site. Trainings are usually held in hotels where we can all be together. You can expect to pay approximately $20 per night for two nights at the hotels where we hold our trainings.

Costs:

In addition to the cost of your airline ticket, you can expect to spend approximately $100 - $150 per week of stay in Palestine. This will include food, accommodation and travel.

Other costs (not required)

Purchasing a mobile phone: $80 - $100 Better and in the end cheaper than renting at airport

Mobile phone cards: $35 per week on average

Campaign t-shirts: $10.00 each



Accommodations:

If you arrive in Palestine before the scheduled training and orientation dates, there are a number of low-cost accommodations available in Jerusalem:

Hostels - there are many. Generally activists choose:

Faisal Hostel: 20 NIS per night (approx. $4.50). Usually crowded, noisy and less than clean, but the location is great - across from Damascus Gate, and you will meet a lot of activists.
Phone number: +972-2-628-7502

Golden Gate Hostel: 30 NIS per night (approx. $6.50) Very clean; generally quiet; good location. Located inside the Old City walls (enter from Damascus Gate, take the right fork in the road, after approximately 50 meters (at the Via Delarosa) take a right. The Golden Gate is on the left.)
Phone number: +972-2-628-4317

Hotels:

The Knight's Palace: $22 per person per night based on double occupancy and stated affiliation with the ISM. Located inside the New Gate. Reservations usually not required.
Phone number: +972-2-627-4058

During the campaign

International activists will be staying in towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza. Accommodations will be arranged by local coordinators in ISM housing or with Palestinian families.

Upon Arrival:

Please contact Hisham upon arrival to Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem. Hisham will give you updated information on training and instructions regarding getting to training. He can also answer questions you may have about orienting yourself in Jerusalem. If you cannot reach Hisham, please feel free to use one of the other numbers listed below.

Hisham - 052-244-983

ISM Office - 02-277-4602
George - 054-351-3399
Ghassan - 052-595-319
Huwaida - 067-473-308