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Muste Notes Spring 2004

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Muste Notes Spring 2004 March 1, 2004 Dear Friends, First, I want to thank all of you who sent in contributions in response to our NewsMUSTE from the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute December fund appeal. Without your support, we could not continue to pro- vide vital assistance to the movement for nonviolence and social change. NOTES The news in 2004 will be dominated by the presidential elections. Here it is VOL. 11, NUMBER 3 SPRING 2004 only March, and already we are inun- dated with stories about candidates, Nonviolence Against the Wall parties and election strategies. While it In recent months, at least three Muste is an important election, there are Institute grantees have been involved in grassroots activists and organizations active campaigns against the “separation all over the world who are continuing wall” being erected by the Israeli govern- ment across the West Bank. The barrier to work for global justice and an end to has come to be termed an “apartheid war. This work can’t be put on hold for wall” by Palestinian, Israeli and interna- a year. And the need for it will tional peace activists who oppose its role in segregating and isolating Palestinian continue, regardless of how the vote communities, severing residents from turns out. their lands, their jobs and each other. Our ability to help these groups and This past December, the Muste Institute granted $1,921 (the amount to carry on our other programs promot- requested) to Mas’ha Peace Camp, ing nonviolent action always depends formed in March 2003 by Palestinian on your support. If you didn’t respond residents of Mas’ha village together with Israeli and international activists to to our last fund appeal, please take this protest the Wall’s construction. opportunity to send in a contribution In June 2002, the Institute awarded a now. If you already contributed, please $2,000 startup grant to International CAMPAIGN WALL BY PENGON/ANTI-APARTHEID PHOTO Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) Palestine Two boys are dwarfed by the Wall as they pose consider making another donation to to establish an international team of holding a poster for the Campaign to Stop the help the Muste Institute’s work pro- women activists in Hares village in the Wall during a February 23 demonstration in moting nonviolent social change at the West Bank, where they document human the West Bank town of Abu Dis, marking the community level. rights abuses, work with the media, and first day of hearings on the issue at the join Palestinians in nonviolent protests. International Court of Justice in the Hague. In peace, Recently IWPS Palestine has become very active in the campaign against the Wall, Shalom in the group’s first year of exis- participating in demonstrations in tence. Gush Shalom has now spent 11 Mas’ha, Budrus and elsewhere. years educating and mobilizing Israelis Murray Rosenblith In 1993, the Muste Institute granted to demand an end to Israel’s occupation Executive Director $1,000 to the Israeli peace group Gush of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Over the past year Gush Shalom has become very involved in protesting the Wall. Grantee Profile: Meanwhile, the Israeli government refuses to participate in a hearing of the Mas’ha Peace Camp International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, on the legality of Mas’ha Camp was established in opposition. But as built, it imprisons the Wall. The Muste Institute is proud to March 2003 to protest construction by nearly half a million Palestinians, sever- support nonviolent social justice groups Israel of the “Security Fence” or “Wall.” ing them from their fields and orchards, in their efforts to protest and draw The “Wall,” which may either be a 25 ft. sources of water, employment, relatives, world attention to this grave injustice. high concrete wall or a complex of friends and from one another. For more info: fences or patrol roads, built on a mean- Mas’ha, a Palestinian village of 2,500, http://stopthewall.org.il/mashacamp dering path, cuts deeply into the is located at the terminal of the recently www.womenspeacepalestine.org occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. completed Stage 1 of the Wall. Over three www.gush-shalom.org/english Had the “Wall” been built on the 1967 years ago, at the onset of the second http://stopthewall.org “Green Line,” it would have drawn little continued on page 2 2 • Muste Notes Vol. 11/No.3 Mas’ha Peace Camp continued from page 1 Intifada (the Palestinian uprising), Mas’ha’s access roads were blocked off. A year ago Mas’ha received a second, mortal blow: the Wall would pass next to it and amputate 93% of its farmlands. Alarmed villagers began protesting in March 2003 as construction of the Wall approached. Together with equally minded Israeli and international peace CAMP BY MAS’HA PEACE PHOTOS activists, they established a camp among Trying to negotiate passage through the Participants make posters at the Mas’ha camp olive orchards on a hill overlooking the Mas’ha gate village, where they spent days and nights collecting information about the property a “closed military zone,” and in an office shared with a Mas’ha Wall and its impacts, disseminating it demanded to vacate the Camp, members women’s organization. The Camp domestically and abroad, and engaging refused. Consequently, 38 internationals, remains an information center about the in nonviolent demonstrations against the 4 Palestinians and 20 Israelis were Wall, formulates plans to oppose it, and Wall. By working and staying together at forcibly removed and detained. All inter- supports other villages being closed in the Camp, Palestinians and Israelis nationals and Israelis were released on by the Wall. In January ‘04, camp mem- demonstrated that, contrary to popular bail the following morning after agreeing bers participated in a two-week misconceptions, they were not enemies in writing not to enter the occupied terri- demonstration at Deir Balout, protesting at all but quickly turned into friends. tories for two weeks. But Nazee Shalabi the destruction of a school which stands Camp members showed many local from Mas’ha was detained for three days, in the path of the Wall. The camp mem- and foreign visitors the meandering charged with being in a “closed military bers also try to provide assistance in path of the Wall and how it imprisoned zone,” and eventually fined by the court opening gates, which currently are the Palestinian population. Camp mem- NIS 1,500 (about $346). closed or, at best, opened for brief peri- bers established a website encouraging In November 2003, construction of ods at irregular intervals. worldwide opposition to the Wall. the Mas’ha Wall was completed. It con- They realize they cannot single-hand- Yet despite these efforts, construction tained two “access” gates to the outside edly rectify the situation, yet they continued. By July 2003 the Wall had world—one at the main entrance to the nevertheless continue to protest and encroached on the campsite, forcing it to village, the other about a mile north, attempt to draw the world’s attention to move closer to the village. In September supposedly to provide access to farm- the misery caused Palestinians by the 2003 they were forced to move again to a lands. Both gates have largely remained Wall. It is their hope that their activities third campsite, this time to Hani and closed despite an official promise that here and abroad will eventually generate Muneira Amer’s property to protest the they would be open at given intervals. sufficient pressure on the Israeli govern- Wall that would surround it, isolating The Army’s not very convincing reason ment to do away with the monstrous and imprisoning the family with their 6 for continued closure was “warnings of “Wall,” or at the least realign it on the 1967 children. Till then, confrontations with imminent hostile intrusions.” line and let people pass across regularly. authorities had been avoided. But when At present, the Mas’ha Camp contin- —Dorothy & Israel Naor, the Army declared the Amer’s house and ues functioning, no longer in tents, but Mas’ha Peace Camp Gush Against the Wall Gush Shalom conducted a protest Peace and others. It was part of a world- action against the Wall on November wide demonstration to commemorate 8th, 2003. About a thousand demonstra- the 14th anniversary of the fall of the tors—half of them Israelis, half Berlin Wall. Beate Zilversmidt, speaking Palestinians—converged on Saturday for Gush Shalom, pointed to the similar- morning on the East Jerusalem neigh- ity between the two walls. The borhood Sawahra, where a section of the demonstrators painted colorful graffiti “separation wall” is going to be built. It on slabs of the wall, which are already will cut tens of thousands of Palestinians there, such as “A Wall Prevents Hands off from the world—from schools, uni- Meeting”, “Enough of the Occupation” AVNERY BY RACHEL PHOTO versities, hospitals, businesses, and many others. Later in the day, the Gush Shalom activists paint protest messages workplaces, and even from their ceme- same organizations convened a mass on the Wall at a demonstration last Nov. 8. tery. The demonstration was organized meeting in Tel-Aviv’s Cinematheque by the Coalition Against the Wall, a Square. Some 2,000 people attended. originally planned as a security measure grouping of radical Israeli peace move- Gush Shalom spokesperson Adam Keller along the Green Line, into a political ments, including Ta’ayush, Gush accused Israeli prime minister Ariel weapon to destroy any possibility of cre- Shalom, the Women’s Coalition for Sharon of diverting the wall, which was ating a Palestinian state.
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