Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association

promoting human rights and

respect for international humanitarian law

PO Box 34265

London NW5 2WD

tel + fax  0845 458 1167

www.camdenabudis.net

contact@camdenabudis.net

charity number 1112717

Reem will be giving a workshop on Palestinian and Arabic singing at the WFA Film Society, 9 Lucy Street, Manchester at 2.15pm next Saturday 6th Dec: http://www.labournet.net/events/0811/pscwfa1.html.

For more details please phone 01706 648104 or 01422 320139.

I hope you can make it.

Best wishes and thanks for your support.

Chris

ReemKelani & Chris Somes-Charlton
The Miktab Limited
PO Box 31652
London W11 2YF
www.reemkelani.com

[note - you can buy Reem Kelani CDs from Olive Cooperative here - Ed.]

Olive Planting Program - February 2009

A program for Civil International Solidarity with Palestinians

Invitation to the Olive Planting Program
7^th - 16^th February, 2009

Agricultural experts in the Holy Land estimate that over a million olive trees have been uprooted and destroyed by Israel since it was created in 1948. Almost half of these olive trees were uprooted since the start of the 2^nd Intifada in 2000 (Palestinian uprising against the Israeli Military Occupation).

Disrespecting its’ religious, cultural, natural, nutritious and economic value, the olive tree has been constantly targeted by the Israeli military occupation under the guise of security, the construction of the Wall on Palestinian lands, and the expansion of Israeli – Jewish only - colonies (settlements). The destruction of olive trees has had intentional and destructive results on the lives of many Palestinian farmers, land owners and the Palestinian population in general.

For these reasons and many others, the Olive Tree Campaign was launched in 2001 as a positive response to systematic destruction by addressing the needs of effected farmers. The Olive Tree Campaign uses the olive tree as a tool to advocate for the Palestinians right to peace with justice. So far six successful seasons of planting have helped hundreds of Palestinian farmers and land owners, and brought awareness to an expanding international network of friends and partners about the real life of the Palestinians who have been striving for peace with justice for more than half of a century.

Up until 2007, The Olive Tree Campaign - Keep Hope Alive has used two days during the Olive Planting season to invite friends and partners to plant olive trees as a sign of solidarity with the Palestinians. In February 2008 we had our first Olive Planting program, where people came from various corners of the world to show solidarity with the Palestinians and to strengthen our mission to “Keep Hope Alive” for a better future of peace with justice to the oppressed in this ongoing conflict.

The JAI and the Alternative Tourism Group (ATG) are glad to invite you for the 2^nd Olive Planting Program taking place in February 2009.

Besides olive planting, the program will feature introductory presentations about the current situation in Palestine and the effects of the Apartheid Wall, tours in the old city of Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, in addition to cultural events and social gatherings.

It is our pleasure to invite you to be part of our mission in keeping hope alive together and to learn more about daily Palestinian life under a merciless military occupation.

Proposed schedule

· Saturday, Feb 7, Day 1:  Arrival to the airport and travel to Bethlehem to meet representatives from the organizing institutions for an overview and discussion of the program. Dinner and free time.

· Sunday, Feb 8, Day 2: Visiting Bethlehem. An afternoon of site-seeing and an introduction to the town. Watching Documentary about the situation in Palestine.

· Monday, Feb 9, Day 3: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. Visiting Duheisha refugee camp. Evening with BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugees’ Rights. Dinner and free time.

· Tuesday, Feb 10, Day 4: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. Meeting with the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ) for a presentation on the Israeli Apartheid Wall and land expropriation by Israeli authorities. Dinner and free time.

· Wednesday, Feb 11, Day 5: Visiting YMCA headquarters in Jerusalem, A tour in the old city of Jerusalem to visit the main sites in the city. Lunch. In the afternoon we will join The Israeli Committee Against House Demolition ICAHD for a settlement tour around Jerusalem. Dinner and free time. (suggested family stay)

· Thursday, Feb 12, Day 6: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. A tour in the old city of Hebron to visit the Ibrahimi Mosque, es-souq (the market), and to see the Israeli division of Hebron and the Israeli settlers who occupy the center of the city. Followed by a meeting with an organization based in Hebron. Dinner and free time (suggested family stay)

· Friday, Feb 13, Day 7: Visit to the city of Ramallah. A meeting with Defense for Children International DCI, Al-Dameer and a Palestinian political representative. Dinner and free time.

· Saturday, Feb 14, Day 8: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. Meeting with representatives from the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and YWCA of Palestine Dinner and free time.

· Sunday, Feb 15, Day 9: Half day planting trees at a selected field followed by lunch. Evaluation meeting followed by a farewell dinner at a local restaurant with staff members and volunteers. Overnight in Bethlehem.

· Monday, Feb 16, Day 10: Departure

More Information:

· The cost of the 10 days program including accommodation, meals, and local transportation is 620$.

· A tour guide will be present with the group at all times for facilitation purposes.

· Travel from and to the airport is not included in the cost but can be arranged for groups.

· Places are limited.

For any other information, questions, concerns, or to request a registration form, please contact:

· Jawad Musleh, Alternative Tourism Group, program coordinator, via email at: jawad@atg.ps or by phone at (+972) 2 2772151.

· Baha Hilo, the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and the YWCA of Palestine campaigns officer via email at: olivetree@jai-pal.org / bahilo@gmail.com or by phone at (+972) 2 2774540.

Raz Bar-David Varon is an 18-year-old Israeli who just graduated from 12th grade. And as I write this, she’s sitting in jail in Tel Aviv because she refuses to join the Israeli army.

In my day we called them the “refuseniks” and here in the U.S. they’re “conscientious objectors.” In Israel, they’re still in high school and they are the Shministim. Get used to that word because I’m going to ask you to know it, to say it, to use it. You see, Raz Bar-David Varon and another dozen or so  Shministim have asked Jewish Voice for Peace for our help and this is one request we can’t refuse.

The Shministim - all about ages 17, 18, 19 and in the 12th grade - are taking a stand. They believe in a better, more peaceful future for themselves and for Israelis and Palestinians, and they are refusing to join the Israeli army. They’re in jail, holding strong against immense pressure from family, friends and the Israeli government. They need our support and they need it today.

They have asked people like us to let the Israeli government know we are watching, and that we support their courage. They’re hoping to receive hundreds of thousands of postcards to be delivered to the Israeli
Minister of Defense on December 18th, when they will hold a huge rally and press conference. They’re hoping to stand strong on the steps of this majestic building - and on the steps of history - representing not only the thousands of refusers who came before them, not only the many young people to whom they are an example of a better world, but also to represent us.
They have asked you, me, and every person who strives for peace to be on those steps with them, on that day. I will be there. See: www.december18th.org

Will you join me? It’s simple. Sign a letter now. And don’t stop there ask your loved ones to join you. During this week of giving thanks, signing a letter is the least we can do to give thanks for the courageous among us.Raz is a Shministit. Raz is Courage. And with our support of her today,  you and I are Shministim too.

Thank you - and go sign that letter.
http://www.december18th.org

The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
29^th November

In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly called for the annual observance of the 29^th of November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. On the 29^th of November 1947 the United Nations adopted resolution 181 which stated that the British mandate of Palestine was to be partitioned. The original idea was that the partition would be a solution to the conflict which had arisen from several waves of Jewish immigration before, and after, the Second World War. In what had once been a territory with a large Arab Palestinians majority, there were now to be two states, with 55% of the land given to the quickly expanding Jewish minority.

When the dust settled by 1948 the Jewish minority had seized 78% of the former Palestinian territory and the State of Israel was declared. The new Israeli state ethnically cleansed its new territories, destroying 450 Palestinian villages and turning the Palestinian nation into a Diaspora people. Today the Palestinians number more than eight million and are scattered throughout world, including inside Israel and the Occupied Territories, the surrounding Arab states and other countries.

This was followed by the seizure of the remaining Palestinian territories (22%) in 1967, and is presently being heavily colonized by Israeli settlements and infrastructure, with mass land seizures and the construction of the Apartheid Wall. This is a policy of changing facts on the ground and when this process is complete the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to have their own state, as laid out by numerous United Nations resolutions, will be lost forever.

On December 1^st 2005, the Assembly requested the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights, as part of the observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 29^th, to continue to organize an annual exhibit on Palestinian rights or a cultural event in cooperation with the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the UN. It also encouraged Member States to continue to give the widest support and publicity to the observance of the Day of Solidarity.

On the International Solidarity Day with the Palestine People, the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and YWCA of Palestine is calling for stopping the usage of double standard of international law enforcements and commitments concerning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and encouraging our partners, friends, groups, and individual peacemakers all over the world to take serious practical actions to advocate an end to the Israeli occupation and all injustice and to work actively for the establishment of Free and Independent Palestinian state.

Suggested actions to commemorate this day
(http://www.jai-pal.org/content.php?page=101)

Al-Haq, PO Box 1413 - Ramallah, West Bank
Tel: +972 2 295 4646/9 Fax: +972 2 295 4903
media@alhaq.org - http://www.alhaq.org

Gush Shalom

Press Release Nov. 26, 2008

The army issued four more demolition orders to houses in the tiny village of Aqaba, in the Jenin Area of the West Bank - altogether, 39 out of 45 village houses are slated for destruction, in practice, the entire village.

A European Parliament delegation visited Aqaba, and the village’s mayor met with Members of Congress in Washington.

Gush Shalom: The time is past when Israel could do dastardly deeds in faraway villages, without the world noticing.

Military forces which arrived at the tiny village of Aqaba, in the Jenin area of the West Bank, delivered a further four demolition orders for village houses. Aqaba is a tiny village with just some 300 inhabitants, living in a total of 45 houses – some of them homes to large families with ten children or more. Against 35 of the houses there already existed demolition orders, with the four new ones 39 of 45 houses are threatened – in practice, the entire village is slated for destruction by the army.

During the deliberations on a Supreme Court appeal lodged by the villagers, the state offered that they be allowed to build in just 3% of the village lands, The villagers rejected this idea out of hand, as being completely inadequate. However, oit seems the authorities don’t keep their word even with regard to this miserable offer, with two of the four new demolition orders directed against houses in the narrow area where the Supreme Court was told that building would be permitted.

Recently, a large delegation of the European Parliament toured the village of Aaba and heard of the dire threat hanging over its inhabitants’ future. Aqaba’s mayor, Haj Sami Sadek, had met with Members of Congress in Washington, D.C., and is regular contact with the UD consulate in Jerusalem. After the new demolition orders were delivered, villagers urgently contacted their Israeli and international contact persons and asked them to interleaved.

“The time is over when the state of Israel and its armed forces could perpetrate dastardly deeds in backwoods villages and expect to avoid the world’s notice. Nowadays, the world is carefully watching events in the Occupied Territories , and everything happening in out-of-the way West Bank villages would become known within hours in Europe, America and all over the world. Behaving as despicable, brutal occupiers is not only patently immoral. It would entail a prohibitively heavy international and political price” says the Gush Shalom movement in letters sent to Defence Minster Barak and Foreign Minister Livni, calling for the cancellation of all demolition orders and for letting the Aqaba villagers live their life without interference,

Contact: Adam Keller (Gush Shalom) adam@gush-shalom.org

Haj Sami Sadek, Mayor of Aqaba 09-2572201 or 0599-068808

Al Kurd family and YWCA reaction

Al Kurd family owns their house in East Jerusalem since the 1950s. Now Israel claims that it owns the land and therefore its Palestinian residents should be evacuated. A few years ago, the state of Israel confiscated half the house and placed Israeli settlers in it. Then they sent notices to 27 other houses eviction orders. Last week the Israeli police came and evacuated Al Kurd family in the early morning hours and placed the family out in the streets.

Read more details.

The family built a tent and lived in it since then. On Wednesday 19th, the Israeli forces came and bulldozed the tent and confiscated its furniture: a few mattresses and plastic chairs. The house is located opposite to the YWCA and their students visited the tent in a solidarity action and were there later during the time the tent was bulldozed.