Solidarity with Palestinian and Israeli campaigns and activities
Page last updated 28 Jun 2015
Introduction
This page is really a marker, a reminder that so much of solidarity work abroad consists of support for campaigns organised by both Palestinians and Israelis on the ground.
As we say on the About page, WE SUPPORT many Israeli and Palestinian peace and human-rights organisations morally and financially, including Adalah; Al Haq; Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights; Alternative Information Centre; Anarchists Against the Wall; Association for Civil Rights in Israel; Bereaved Families Forum; Breaking the Silence; B’tselem; Coalition of Women for Peace; Combatants for Peace; Emek Shaveh; Freedom Theatre, Jenin; Gaza Community Mental Health Programme; Gisha; Gush Shalom; Hope Flowers School, Bethlehem; Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; Israel Social TV; Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch; Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy; Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality; New Profile; Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Gaza; Physicians for Human Rights-Israel; Public Committee Against Torture in Israel; Rabbis for Human Rights; Sadaka-Reut, Arab Jewish Youth Partnership; Ta’ayush, Arab-Jewish Partnership; Tent of Nations; Villages Group; Windows – Channels for Communication; Yesh Din; Yesh Gvul; Zochrot.
We have focused at different times on particular campaigns e.g. support for young Israeli army refuseniks, helping to support the Freedom Theatre, against the expulsion of the Bedouin of the Naqab/Negev, and in solidarity with every Israeli peace movement initiative against the blockade and wars on Lebanon and Gaza. We were responsible for organising the logistics of the 2010 Jewish Boat to Gaza.
Insofar as such work is charitable, the British Shalom-Salaam Trust, established in 2004 by a group around Jews for Justice for Palestinians in response to the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East caused by the occupation, plays an important role. It has supported a very wide range of organisations and projects based in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, bringing benefit to every community – Palestinians, Israeli Jews, migrants and asylum seekers. These projects have focused on human rights work, cross-community collaboration, education, health, women’s rights and anti-poverty programmes.
In 2013-14, these included:
Amerat of the Desert, a tiny volunteer-based Bedouin women’s organization in a Negev township; Arous Elbahr (Bride of the Sea), a Palestinian women’s project in Jaffa; Arteam, Sudanese Asylum Garden Library as part of a Sudanese asylum seekers theatre group reaching out to Israelis in schools, workplaces etc; Association for Arab Single Women (AASW, an organisation of divorced Palestinian women within Israel; Awareness for You, tackling domestic violence, including honour killing of Palestinian women, in Israel; Citizens Build a Community within the city of Lod; Combatants for Peace, a bi-national peace activist movement of former Israeli and Palestinian combatants; Friends of the Earth Middle East/Eco Peace; Gush Shalo; Hebron International Resource Network (HIRN); Holy Land Trust’s Social Change through Music project; Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD); the Jerusalem-based Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD); Israel Social TV, an independent media organisation which exposes human rights violations and supports activist groups and communities threatened by the Israeli Occupation; Al-Jama’ah Community Center for the development of community leadership; Jenin Autism Project; Jenin Freedom Theatre; Madaa Silwan Centre, a community cnetre close to hotly contested archaeological sites in East Jerusalem; Al-Manarah – The Association for Arab Persons with Disabilities; Min-El-Bahar Seaside Holidays taking Palestinian families on the West Bank to the sea; Microfy, helping disadvantaged communities in Israel sustain themselves and become economically independent; Peacock of Silwan Theatre Projec; Physicians for Human Rights – Israel; Rachel Corrie Foundation; Sindyanna, a women-led non-profit that operates in the Arab population of northern Israel and in the Palestinian Occupied Territories; Social Development Committee – Haifa; St. John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital;Tent of Nations, a Palestinian Christian project brings together young people of different cultures and religions; Unitaf, a project that operates day care centers and after-school program for children of migrant workers and asylum seekers; the Villages Group, a joint Jewish/Palestinian support group working in villages in the South Hebron Hills and in Salem near Nablus; Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center which helps to resolve disputes within the Palestinian community by implementing the traditional Arab form of mediation; Windows: Channels for Communication, a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization that strives for a future based on human rights, liberty, dignity, equality and democracy.
Full details of these projects and links to them are on the BSST website.
Contents of this section
a) Negotiating for peace
b) Palestinian popular resistance
c) Boycott, divestment, sanctions
Some early history
The campaign against settlement goods and institutions
Arms boycott
Boycott of companies profiting from the occupation
Academic and cultural boycott
Sanctions: the EU and Israel-Palestine
d) Israeli social movement opposition
e) Solidarity with Palestinian and Israeli campaigns and activities
f) Hamas’s strategy
g) The call for equal rights
h) Using International Law