September-October 2009
North America
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, announced in September it would be conducting a fundraising campaign to help the Palestinian refugees arriving in the US with their transition to a new life. This action comes following the approval by the US Government of the resettlement of most of the population of the Al-Waleed Palestinian refugee camp in the coming year, with first families arriving in September 2009. For more information see:
http://www.al-awda.org/
Interfaith Peace Initiative published a report on “Global Actions to End Israel's Occupation of Palestinian Land”, comprising initiatives around the world to end the Israeli occupation. It contains hundreds of actions taken by governments, businesses, labour unions, NGO's, academic and religious organizations, and other groups. The report, published in September 2009, can be viewed at: http://www.interfaithpeaceinitiative.com/
US Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation’s olive tree replanting campaign will continue until the end of Palestinian olive harvest in November. For more information, visit:
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=2368
Europe
Boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) campaign in Europe called, in October, on the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) “to live up to the letter and the spirit of its statutes and to seize this opportunity to prove to the world that it stands for a more just world by sending Israel an unmistakeable threat of exclusion”. The campaign pointed out that Palestinian athletes suffered constant discrimination and violent assaults, which was “part of Israel's decades-long refusal to guarantee the Palestinians their rights, freedom, dignity and their physical and spiritual integrity”, and that three Palestinian football players from the national team were killed during the Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip earlier this year. For more information, visit: http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/571
British Trade’s Union Congress (TUC), at its 2009 Annual Congress on 17 September in Liverpool, voted overwhelmingly to commit to build a mass boycott movement, disinvestment and sanctions on Israel. The motion, passed by unions representing 6.5 million workers across the UK, calls for a ban on importing goods produced in Israeli settlements, an end to arms trading with Israel and disinvestment. "This is not a call for a general boycott of Israeli goods and services which would hit ordinary Palestinian and Israeli workers, but targeted, consumer-led sanctions directed at businesses based in, and sustaining, the illegal settlements," said TUC Secretary General Brendan Barber. The motion also called for the TUC General Council to put pressure on the British Government to support moves to suspend the EU-Israel trade agreement, condemned the Israeli trade union Histadrut’s statement supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, and called for a review of the TUC’s relationship with Histadrut. The motion, tabled by the Fire Brigades Union, was supported by the biggest unions in the UK, including Unite, the public sector union, and UNISON, which represents health service workers. For more information, visit: http://www.congressvoices.org/2009/76-palestine/
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) called on its members to get involved in the campaign to break the siege on Gaza by joining the PSC on the next Viva Palestina convoy, scheduled to take place in December 2009. For more information, please visit: http://www.palestinecampaign.org/index7b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=2&l2_id=14&Content_ID=922
Asia and the Pacific
Australian Friends of Palestine Association sponsored, in September, the Edward Said Memorial Lecture by Prof. Saree Makdisi, entitled “From Occupation to Reconciliation”. The lecture was hosted by the University of Adelaide. While in Australia, Prof. Makdisi also lectured on "Jerusalem: The Occupation of Memory", at Melbourne University, and “Excavating Memory in Jerusalem”, at Sydney University. For more details, visit: http://www.friendsofpalestine.org.au/index.html
Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem
B'Tselem, on 9 September, said many more Palestinian civilians had been killed during operation Cast Lead than the Israeli army reported. The research carried out by B’Tselem showed 1,387 Palestinians died, over half of them civilians and 252 of them children, contradicting an Israeli army report stating that fewer than 300 civilians died in the fighting. The overall B'Tselem figures broadly tallies with the official Palestinian death toll and the findings of other non-governmental organisations, although the proportion of civilians it identified was lower. For more information, visit:
http://www.btselem.org/english/press_releases/20090909.asp
The Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel, a leading Israeli feminist peace organization, dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights, has set up a database aimed at bringing to light the corporate involvement in the occupation. The project, based on ongoing grassroots investigations by the organisation’s activists, is currently focusing on three areas: the settlement industry; economic exploitation and the control of the population. In exposing companies and corporations involved in the occupation, the organisation hopes to promote a change in public opinion and corporate policies, leading to an end to the occupation. To learn more about the project, please visit:
www.whoprofits.org
The Geneva Initiative, a group of Israeli and Palestinian activists, in September 2009 presented annexes to its peace plan published in 2003, the Geneva Accord. The core of the plan is a Palestinian State in nearly 98 per cent of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip and the Arab-populated areas of Jerusalem. The plan was put together over the past two years by Israeli and Palestinian experts, ex-government officials and former negotiators.
The International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza, formed after Israel's offensive on Gaza in winter 2008-09, is mobilizing an international contingent for a nonviolent march alongside the people of Gaza on 31 December - the Gaza Freedom March. For more information, please visit: http://www.codepinkalert.org//article.php?id=5022
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) on 22 October released the English-language version of “Targeted Civilians: A PCHR Report on the Israeli Military Offensive against the Gaza Strip (27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009)”, comprehensively documenting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. The report is available at:
http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Reports/English/pdf_spec/gaza%20war%20report.pdf
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and its popular committees are coordinating collective efforts to safeguard the annual olive harvest and are calling on volunteers to stand in solidarity with Palestinian communities and join in the harvest, scheduled from 15 October-15 November. The harvesting of the olives is becoming more difficult every year as farmers face an intensification of settler attacks, the confiscation, isolation and destruction of their lands, and continued closure and permit restrictions, all of which have led to the strangulation of Palestinian communities across the West Bank. The campaign focuses on various hot spots in the Nablus, Salfit, Qalqilya and Hebron districts. For more information, visit: http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/2054.shtml#
The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, its popular committees and member organizations have called on activists to launch a week of global mobilization against the walls of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza, from 9-6 November. For more information, visit:
http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/2059.shtml
The Palestinian Lobby Group announced on 26 September that around 300 Gaza figures, including independent politicians and intellectuals, would form a lobby group to improve daily life in the area in the face of an ongoing Israeli blockade, with a view to putting pressure on the politicians to ease the inhuman living conditions of the Gazans.
The physicists from Comet-ME, a group of pro-peace Israeli scientists and activists, installed, in October 2009, solar panels and wind turbines to illuminate the Palestinians' homes in Susiya, a West Bank village with no electricity.
International
Boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) campaign: In view of Israeli arrests of Palestinian human rights activists, people across the globe rallied, on 16 and 17 October, under the call “If you want to arrest the BDS movement, you have to catch us all!” Actions were organized in Canada, the USA, South Africa, Norway, Italy, France, the UK, Japan, Spain, Greece and Occupied Palestinian Territory. For more details, see: http://www.stopthewall.org/
United Nations
Actress Mia Farrow, Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, was outraged by the conditions of children caused by Israel’s military offensive last winter, during her tour of Gaza in October 2009. She also criticized the militants’ rockets, advising Gazans "not to give the international community ammunition to view you in a negative way."
* *** *