5 July 2009

I can remember the appearance of the hills around Ramallah in 1979, before any Jewish settlement came to be established there. In the spring of that year I walked north from Ramallah, where I live, to the nearby village of A’yn Qenya and up the pine-forested hill. A gazelle leapt ahead of me. When I reached the top I could see hills spread below me like crumpled blue velvet, with the hamlets of Janiya and Deir Ammar huddled between its folds. On top of the highest hill in the distance stood the village of Ras Karkar with its centuries-old citadel that dominated the area during Ottoman times. I had been following the worrying developments of extensive settlement-building elsewhere in the West Bank and wondered how long it would be before these hills came under the merciless blades of the Israeli bulldozers. I didn’t have to wait long. A year later the top of the hill was lopped off and the settlement of Dolev, then a cluster of red-tiled Swiss-style chalets, was established.

Now, more than 25 years later, Dolev has expanded and taken over the hills to its north for vineyards. Numerous highways for the exclusive use of its Jewish settlers connect it to the many other settlements in the area and to Israel’s coastline. Those settlers travelling to and from Israeli cities where they work can only see road signs indicating other Jewish settlements. They encounter no Palestinian traffic on the roads nor do they see any Palestinian villages. No wonder then that I was once stopped by an armed settler and interrogated as to why I was taking a walk in his hills. When I asked him what right he had to be there, he answered: “I live here.” He then pointedly added: “Unlike you, I really live here.”

Not a single year has passed since Israel acquired the territories in 1967 in which Jewish settlements were not built. Had it pursued peace as assiduously, surely it would have achieved it by now. Instead, whenever the US pressed for a peace initiative, the “proper Zionist response” was the creation of new a settlement. The pattern of settling the Ramallah hills illustrates well the workings of this doomed policy. The Jewish settlement of Talmon was established in 1989 on the lands of the Palestinian village of Janiya, when the government of Yitzhak Shamir was being pressured to agree to start negotiations with the Palestinians. Talmon B was established, about two miles away, when the US secretary of state, James Baker, arrived in Israel two years later to broker the first ever peace conference between Israel and Arab countries.

At that time, Shamir dismissed the new settlement as “just a new neighbourhood”. The signing of the Oslo accords under a Rabin government in 1993 led to the building of a road connecting Dolev to Beit Eil, running through private Palestinian land. This winding road passed through the beautiful wadi linking Ramallah to A’yn Qenya, causing extensive destruction to the ancient rock formations and olive orchards along the way. One rockface that I particularly miss used to be studded with cyclamens during the late winter months, coming down all the way to the spring – which was also destroyed.

The Israeli policy of speeding up settlement construction in the face of US diplomatic pressure shows no sign of changing. Following the latest US administration declaration that Israel must impose a complete freeze on settlements, the country’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, declared last week the decision to establish 300 housing units in Givat Habrecha (Hebrew for hill of the blessing), one of the 12 outposts near the settlement of Talmon in the Ramallah hills. A few days later, on 29 June, he announced a further expansion of the illegal settlement of Adam, where 50 families are to move to a new neighbourhood located on a relatively large parcel of land outside the built–up area of the settlement. This also violates the Israeli commitment in the road map agreement not to expand the area of existing settlements.

This demand for a freeze on new settlements – which is not accepted by Israel even temporarily, as one Likud minister underlined today– falls short of what should happen if a viable peace is to be achieved: a complete evacuation of all the settlements built illegally in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Some would say this cannot possibly happen, given that there are around half a million Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. But who would have thought in 1962 that it would be possible to evict a million French Algerians who had been living in the country for almost a century and who represented roughly 9% of the population ?

Until this happens, we will have a continuation of the present reality where there is a single apartheid Israeli state encompassing pre-1967 borders and the Palestinian occupied territories. The sad truth is that when Israeli illegal settlements come to an end, as they must, Palestinians will not be able to undo the damage caused to the landscape by this massive, politically motivated development.

6 July 2009

A Nobel Peace Prize winner and a former U.S. congresswoman are among eight people to be released today and expelled after having sailed on a protest ship heading to Gaza from Cyprus, the Israeli Interior Ministry says.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her peace campaign in Northern Ireland, has been in prison in Israel since Tuesday after being removed from the ship.

Israel has imposed a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, so the ship, which flew a Greek flag, was intercepted by the navy. Among the passengers detained was former U.S. congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

When the crew of the Greek ship failed to respond to the navy’s order to stop, the vessel was boarded by Israeli forces, but no weapons were fired. The ship was taken to the port of Ashdod. “Free Gaza,” the organization that organized the attempt to sail to Gaza, has said Israel’s navy used electronic devices to scramble the ship’s navigation equipment.

This was not the first foray into Middle East politics for Maguire, who shared her Nobel Prize with Betty Williams for their efforts at conciliation between Catholics and Protestants. In the past, she has also advocated awarding the Nobel Prize to Mordechai Vanunu for his anti-nuclear activities. Vanunu was jailed by Israel for leaking details of Israel’s nuclear program to the press.

McKinney released a statement contending that the ship was a civilian vessel that was unarmed and carrying humanitarian assistance in international waters.

5 July 2009

Physicians for Human Rights will be offering a first aid course on July 11 near the security barrier at the West Bank village of Bil’in for protesters to help them deal with injuries they incur in almost weekly confrontations with what the group’s doctors call an aggressive Israeli occupation.

“In a way, they are going to risk themselves,” said Ron Yaron, director of the international group’s occupied territories department, who explained the need for medical assistance in the West Bank.

“There are medical fields that are not available in the West Bank both due to Israeli restrictions and the entry of goods and medical equipment,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

The Israeli government limits the number of medical personnel who can travel between Israel and the West Bank, he said. Hospitals have to limit the number of workers they hire based on government quotas and medical supplies are also limited. According to Yaron, this “causes many delays” and “patients cannot reach hospitals on time.”

The Palestinian Authority has “not able to provide adequate health care to its residents,” he added. “The health care system still relies on external medical services.”

Yaron explained that the doctors involved in the training hope to provide basic skills in first aid for the protesters so they can “deal with the injuries that they face.”

Well-known Israeli doctors, including Rafi Walden, vascular surgery expert and board member of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, have been involved in the event. Many other highly skilled doctors will be teaching the course.

In addition to providing medical training, Physicians for Human Rights will also be working on a mobile clinic to treat patients who cannot reach hospitals in time. Other Israeli citizens will come to the area to provide medical care for the population.

The first aid course is as political a move as it is a medical one. One of its aims is to show solidarity with the protesters against the Israeli occupancy of the West Bank. As Yaron puts it, “People are wounded by the Israeli army and its use of weapons in an illegal way” on a weekly basis. The aim of the training is first an act of solidarity with the people who fight against the occupation and the building of the wall,” said Yaron.

Professor Zvi Bentwitch, a Physicians for Human Right board member who will be helping out at the event, agrees with Yaron, describing the protests as a “just cause.” Protesters come every week to protest at the Bil’in wall, which has also seen border policemen and other security personnel injured by rock-throwing Palestinians and their supporters.

The training is not intended for the general public, with only protesters – 20 Israelis and 20 Palestinians – allowed to take the course.

Yaron believes that the main problem surrounding medical care is rooted in recent history. “Israel didn’t develop the Palestinian system at all,” he explained. “Israel should bear responsibility [to help Palestinians].”

Bentwitch sees the first-aid course as a positive step in Israeli-Palestinian relations and considers it a “very positive bridge to peace between Palestinians and Israel.”

“I think that even protesters, if they get hurt, should get proper medical treatment,” said Bentwitch.

While he agrees with the Palestinian cause, he emphasizes that his principle focus is helping those in need. “We are doctors and don’t see any differences in gender, religion, or belief,” he explained. “It is one small contribution towards a major goal,” he said. “As a doctor, I am proud to help.”

On Friday after the midday prayer, Palestinian residents, with the support of international and Israeli solidarity activists, gathered to demonstrate against construction of the Apartheid Wall in Ni’lin. Demonstrators gathered and marched to the Apartheid Wall, where several cut away razor wire that runs alongside the Wall. Six jeeps were already at the site alongside a large group of Israeli armed forces, who after a few minutes began firing tear gas and sound grenades at the group of protesters.

In response to the violence of the Israeli military, young Palestinian men threw stones at the army’s jeeps. Several people were hit by tear-gas canisters, including one of the medical personnel. The demonstration continued for two hours, as protesters cut the barbed wire around the illegal Wall and Israeli forces shot tear-gas canisters at the demonstrators. In addition to being hit with canisters, several had to be treated for severe tear-gas inhalation and tear-gas residue in the eyes. The group ended the demonstration when Israeli snipers approached.

Israeli forces commonly use tear-gas canisters, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators.

To date, Israeli occupation forces have murdered five Palestinian residents and critically injured 1 international solidarity activist during unarmed demonstrations in Ni’lin.

• 29 July 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

• 30 July 2008: Yousef Amira (17) was shot in the head with two rubber coated steel bullets. He died in a Ramallah hospital 5 days later on 4 August 2008.

• 28 December 2008: Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) was shot in the back with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

• 28 December 2008: Mohammed Khawaje (20) was shot in the head with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition. He died in a Ramallah hospital 3 days later on 31 December 2008.

• 13 March 2009: Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile. He is currently at Tel Hashomer hospital with an unknown

• 5 June 2009: Yousef Akil Srour (36) was shot in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

In total, 35 people have been shot by Israeli forces with live ammunition in Ni’lin: 7 were shot with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and 28 were shot with 0.22 caliber live ammunition.

Since May 2008, residents of Ni’lin have been organizing and participating in unarmed demonstrations against construction of the Apartheid Wall. Despite being deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004, the Occupation continues to build the Wall, further annexing Palestinian land.

Ni’lin will lose approximately 2,500 dunums of agricultural land when construction of the Wall is completed. Israel annexed 40,000 of Ni’lin’s 58,000 dunums in 1948. After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the illegal settlements and infrastructure of Kiryat Sefer, Mattityahu and Maccabim were built on village lands and Ni’lin lost another 8,000 dunums. Of the remaining 10,000 dunums, the Occupation will confiscate 2,500 for the Wall and 200 for a tunnel to be built under the segregated settler-only road 446. Ni’lin will be left with 7,300 dunums.

The current entrance to the village will be closed and replaced by a tunnel to be built under Road 446. This tunnel will allow for the closure of the road to Palestinian vehicles, turning road 446 into a segregated settler-only road . Ni’lin will be effectively split into 2 parts (upper Ni’lin and lower Ni’lin), as road 446 runs between the village. The tunnel is designed to give Israeli occupation forces control of movement over Ni’lin residents, as it can be blocked with a single military vehicle.

5 July 2009

At approximately 4:15 on the morning of 5.7.09 more than 100 Israeli Soldiers invaded Bilin Village. Many of them were masked and all carried automatic weapons.

They attacked several houses and arrested Oda Rebhe Abu Rahma, 20, and Mahmoud Issa Yassein, 17. Upon request the soldiers would not tell their families where they were taking them or the name of an officer in command. Palestinian and international presence questioned the soldiers and dearrested several people who were documenting the kidnappings. This is the third week of night raids in Bilin village. Israeli soldier have conducted night raids almost every night and have arrested seven village youth during this period.

5 July 2009

The Israeli prison guards are denying the right for Mairead to access her medicine. Continue to email and call Mark Regev and Shlomo Dror and express your outrage over the treatment of the FreeGaza21 while they are imprisoned. The women have no access to their luggage or their clothing.

Mairead is fasting, not just for her friends incarcerated along with her, but for the 11,000 Palestinians also thrown into jail, many without benefit of trial.

Hear her eloquent interview with Al Jazeera.

For Immediate Release:

Natalie Abou Shakra, Lebanon/UK, and Jenny Linnell, UK, two International Solidarity Movement activists who came to Gaza as part of the Free Gaza Movement voyages, both British nationals, were prevented from exiting the Gaza Strip via the Rafah Crossing on the 28th of June, 2009 by the Egyptian border authorities. In addition to having special coordination by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) based on the request of the British Embassy in Cairo, Natalie and Jenny were given approval to pass through the Crossing on the 9th of June, prior to an official opening, by a call from the office of Mr. Yasser Othman from the MFA. Nevertheless, on the 10th of June, they were returned back by the mukhabarat (intelligence services) at the Crossing demanding they both return back when the Crossing officially opens.

On the 27th of June, after more than 18 hours of waiting at the entry gate to the Egyptian terminal on buses packed with Palestinian women, children and elderly people, and patients in critical conditions in ambulances, the Egyptian authorities demanded all be returned back to Gaza. However, the people went down to the gates to peacefully demonstrate and protest against the cruelty, inhumanity and injustice of the border authorities, after which only a few ambulances went in from the dozens present on the Palestinian side.

The following day, the 28th of June, after many hours of waiting, a bus carrying Palestinian passengers, as well as the two activists, were let through into the Egyptian terminal. Palestinians were made to sit on filthy floors in the arrivals hall. There were many mothers and fathers with tired and ill children on their laps and sick, elderly people who lost consciousness, as well as women who begged on their knees to be let through, only to be constantly turned down and screamed at by aggressive Egyptian officers.

A young man who couldn’t speak and who was in a wheelchair, at one point of desperation, hit himself on the chest constantly as he attempted to express himself as they pushed him and the wheel chair aggressively. When an elderly man fell unconscious on the floor, Natalie approached to assist him and the mukhabarat officer who was dealing with their case told her, “I will make sure YOU will never leave Gaza.” “How did you get into Gaza,” asked another officer who saw them sitting on the floor with their luggage. “We came on the Free Gaza Movement boats.” He smiled and said, “So, you don’t need us to answer. You already know why you’re not being allowed out.”

After hours of waiting, Natalie and Jenny were told to enter the mukhabarat office and were asked what they had been doing in Gaza and how they entered the Gaza Strip. A short time later, their names were called out with those on the murjaa’ list (to return back to Gaza). The two activists refused to leave on the basis that they should be told why they were being denied entry despite having been granted permission to do so by the MFA and showing the permits they were holding from the Ministry. No genuine answer was provided. A little after midnight, Egyptian officers surrounded them and forcibly removed them from the Crossing, dragging them across the floor. As they forced the activists out, the man dragging Natalie by the wrists told her, “You’re lucky my shoe is not in your mouth as they would do in Jordan.” When she replied, “All that you have done to the people is registered in notebooks,” he replied to her coldly, saying, “Who will hold me accountable?” [meen hayhasibny] in a sarcastic tone.

The Crossing is the ONLY exit has to the world outside. Shutting this exit in the faces of the Palestinians is a direct participation by Egypt with Israel in crimes against humanity.

The British Embassy in Cairo, after being contacted by the activists, stated that, “We are working on it,” “We’ve seen them [Egyptian authorities] do this before,” “Wait till tomorrow when we can sort things out,”  and “You have everything you need to cross, the problem is from them [the Egyptian intelligence services].”

The activists stated that “…the treatment we were subjected to at the Crossing was a form of psychological and physical abuse. It is a kind of punishment, which the Palestinian people, and all those who stand in solidarity with their rights are also subjected to. The Egyptian authorities at the Crossing violated our basic human rights, something common to the Palestinians’ daily experience. Human rights, both of Britons and Palestinians were callously violated on the 28th of June, not to mention our rights as women, regarding the degrading and humiliating manner in which we were treated. As is evident from the verbal exchange mentioned above, this is a direct message from the Egyptian authorities to the Free Gaza Movement and the democratic will of any person standing in solidarity with the Palestinians. We are human rights activists and what we witnessed and experienced in that Crossing was a violation to every existing right, a crime against humanity, or rather… crimes.”

The activists entreat the British Embassy to “…urge the MFA to investigate what went wrong and to insist that those responsible for what happened on the 28th of June, particularly the intelligence office at the Crossing, provide an explanation as to why such treatment was issued and why we were denied entry despite having previously been granted permission to enter. It is only reasonable that we should know why we endured what we did, whose error it was, and specifically why the permission that was arranged earlier in June was not recognised by the officials at the Crossing, resulting in our passage being denied. It is the duty of the British Embassy to safeguard our rights as British citizens and also as human beings. It is to our dismay and utter disappointment that after going through the nightmare of the 28th of June, we were left feeling so stranded and neglected. Are we also being punished for our solidarity and human rights work by the British authorities? Why are human rights and citizen rights disregarded when an issue relates to the Israeli occupation and the other states which support Israel’s crimes? As a matter of urgency, we appeal to the Embassy to fulfill its responsibility – ensuring the safety and wellbeing of its citizens!”

4 July 2009

Adie Mormech, one of over 21 human rights workers and crew taken prisoner on Tuesday 30th June when their boat was forcibly boarded by the Israeli navy, has spoken by mobile phone from his prison cell at Givon jail, Ramle, near Tel Aviv.

Amongst the other prisoners from the Free Gaza Movement boat, Spirit of Humanity, are Nobel Peace prize winner, Mairead Maguire, and former US Congresswoman, Cythnia McKinney. A message from McKinney on 2nd July condemned Israel for its “illegal” action in “dismantl[ing] our navigation equipment” and confiscating both the ship and its cargo of medical aid, childrens’ toys and olive trees.

McKinney went on to say that “State Department and White House officials have not effected our release or taken a strong public stance to condemn the illegal actions of the Israeli Navy of enforcing a blockade of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians of Gaza, a blockade that has been condemned by President Obama.”

The Free Gaza campaign succeeded in entering Gaza by sea on several occasions in 2008, carrying humanitarian aid, medical personnel, journalists and human rights workers. However, later attempts have been met with aggression by the Israeli navy, with one boat, the Dignity, having to seek refuge and repairs in Lebanon after being rammed three times by an Israeli warship.

In a brief interview with Andy Bowman of Manchester’s Mule newspaper (http//www.themule.info), Mr Mormech gave the following account:

How are you being treated?

It’s bad, but the conditions are OK for me, I’ve not been beaten up, they’re a bit nasty sometimes and when they boarded the boat we had our faces slammed against the floor. It was bad for the older women like Mairead.

The four other UK nationals are in the cell with me. There’s 14 of us in the 7 by 7 meter cell which includes the toilet and shower, so very crowded. It’s very hot and there’s only a tiny window. We get awakened at 6 in the morning for an inspection and have to stand to attention, and then they repeat that at 9 am, and we are only allowed out of the cells for a few hours each day. They keep giving us forms to sign but they are in Hebrew so we don’t. Although I’m able to cope here, other people are less comfortable than me in the situation. If we’re here for a long time – like some of the other people in here have been – then it will be tough.

Have you had access to a lawyer yet?

We have, and at the moment we’re discussing what to do about our deportation. They’ve taken our personal items – laptops, cameras, phones and many other valuables, and we want to find out where these are. They obviously want to deport us as quickly as possible, but some of us are thinking about fighting the deportation. Firstly on the basis that if we get deported we won’t be allowed into the occupied West Bank or Israel for another 10 years, but also, because we didn’t intend to come here to Israel – we intended to go to Gaza, and went directly from international waters into Palestinian waters. There is nothing legal about what Israel has done to us grabbing us like this. We’re considering fighting the deportation on the grounds that we shouldn’t accept and legitimize this barbaric military blockade of Gaza.

If you challenge the deportation could you remain in prison for a while longer?

Yes we could – there’s some people that need to get home, but some will challenge. And for those it will be a few more weeks in prison at least, we expect.

And you?

I’m veering towards challenging it on the basis that it’s a scar on my name to accept that I shouldn’t have been here, but in fact I have every right to go to Gaza just as everyone else does. That’s the whole point of these voyages and that’s the principle we want to stick to.

Have they told you what has happened to the cargo of the boat?

No, we don’t know what they’re doing with it. We’ve been told a lot of lies so far about where we’re going and what’s happening to us, so we just don’t know. They’re already prepared to deprive the people of Gaza of a lot of aid anyway.

What is your message to people back in the UK?

This is not about us here in the cells, it’s about the denial of human rights to the people of Palestine, and in particular the inhumane blockade of Gaza. People must not forget about what is happening to Gaza. At the moment they are even being denied food and medical supplies. After the carnage of the 1500 people killed in January, we won’t forget and we’ll keep on going and keep fighting for the human rights of the people of Palestine.

4 July 2009

This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation ‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16’s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water … It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime … I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color & paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream … like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better … The once proud, never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they arrived Israel told them “there is no UN in Israel.”

The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christian. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can’ were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let’s change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

Cynthia McKinney is a former U.S. Congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia, McKinney served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, from 1993-2003, and from 2005-2007. She was arrested and forcibly abducted to Israel while attempting to take humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to Gaza on June 30th.

For Immediate Release:

The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza assault that investigates violations of Human Rights and International Law committed in the context of the Israeli assault on Gaza in December 08/January 2009 will hear as well accounts of the repression meted out in the West Bank during this period.

As during any war and large scale assault Israel is conducting, during the attack on Gaza – which alone killed over 1400 people – the Occupation forces brutally repressed any protests and acts of solidarity by Palestinians anywhere within their reach.

On the 28th of December, during a demonstration in Ni’lin in solidarity with Gaza, the Israeli army killed two young men in Ni’lin. Israeli forces shot Arafat Khawaje, 22, in the back and he was killed instantly. 20 year old Mohammed Khawaje was shot in the forehead. He was pronounced brain-dead on the evening of the 31st December. (For more info, please go to: http://palsolidarity.org/2008/12/3742)

A resident of Ni’lin and a second eyewitness of these brutal murders are invited to go to Geneva and give their witness accounts during the UN public hearings (most probably in the afternoon of Monday 6th of July 2009). They are part of the fact finding work of the Mission and will allow victims, survivors and witnesses to submit information and speak for themselves before representatives of the international community. The public hearings will be broadcasted on live television (among others, through al Jazeera) and the video will also be subsequently uploaded and archived, normally within 2-4 days, onto a specially created webcast link on the OHCHR Fact Finding Mission webpage. Transcripts of the hearings will be subsequently published. The UN will publish a report on its findings in August/ September 2009. More info can be found on: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/FactFindingMission.htm

The murder of the two young men is only part of a broader strategy of the Israeli occupation forces. A vicious mixture of psychological warfare, threats, arrests and collective punishment is coupled with injuries and killings of people in the villages that resist the Wall. 16 people – half of them children – have already been killed, over 1500 people injured by the army in their attempt to quell the popular resistance against the Wall. However, left without land, without jobs and without future the struggle for our rights is our only option.

Even though these hearings will not bring justice for Mohammad and Arafat, at least Ni’lin has the chance to tell the world of these brutal murders. Five years after the International Court of Justice declared the Wall illegal and to be dismantled, the UN still has not taken any relevant action. They shall know that their inaction in front of the ongoing construction of the apartheid wall and Israeli crimes is being paid with the lives of our people.