2018 has seen Stop the Wall involved deeply in the struggle against Israel’s relentless efforts to reduce the Palestinian people into Bantustans, dispossessed, displaced and enclosed by walls and checkpoints. Against all odds, we have achieved a number of victories and given hope and support in the crucial moments to our people in struggle. Stop the Wall is now releasing an inspiring summary of our struggles and achievements throughout 2018. Reinforcing Steadfastness is the main strategy to resist Israeli plans of expulsion and dispossession.
We’ve stood up against the Israeli settlement policy and won where the United Nations and the international community has failed: we’ve stopped four settler outposts from being built during the last year!
We have been part of the communities most affected by land confiscation, planting over 13 thousand trees to defend the people’s land. We have given a key contribution to the struggle against Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing policies – from Khan al Ahmar to Bardala in the Jordan Valley – and have spearheaded Marches of Return of Palestinians displaced during the Nakba to their destroyed villages. We’ve strengthened the Palestinian struggle against Israel’s routine punishment of our people, standing in solidarity with our prisoners and fighting home demolitions.
We have continued to put substantial efforts to ensure a new generation of Palestinians receives education and builds its own forms and visions of struggle by continuing our campaign for the Right to Education and supporting the Palestine Youth Forum in its process of formation.
Based on our firm believe that our cause is interconnected with social justice and anti-colonial struggles across the globe, we have continued to build ties with movements across the globe through the initiative for a #WorldwithoutWalls. The global day of action on November 9 has shown once again that our quest for justice, freedom and equality is a shared call to overcome Israeli apartheid as much as the rising tide of far-right, racist and supremacist powers that see Israel as its model. We have been building alliances, especially in the global south and continued our efforts to build campaigns for boycotts, divestment and sanctions to hold Israel and its accomplices accountable.
It was daily resistance of small and huge initiatives and actions. Below we bring you some of the highlights of our struggle during 2018.
2019 brings huge challenges, in a difficult global political climate and ever louder calls by Israel’s establishment to move to annex the West Bank and finalize the Bantustanization of our people. We are gearing up to resist this at every inch of land Israel wants to confiscate, every community it wants to displace, every settlement it wants to build. We are aware of the urgency and confident about our strength.
Exactly 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as Stop the Wall we will take up our responsibility to work together with movements across the globe to overcome this new era of Walls we are living and which has been started by Israel’s apartheid Wall on our land. Together we can create a #WorldwithoutWalls.
Highlights of
Stop the Wall’s struggle in 2018
“Popular organizing capacity and nonviolent direct action has proven more effective than all UN resolutions in defending Palestinian rights against Israel’s Wall and settlement project!”
1) We have dismantled four settler outposts!
Probably the most inspiring success in 2018 was the fact that our grassroots resistance has been able to effectively dismantle and stop four settler outposts from being built.
In the past, we had achieved an exceptional victory in Israeli courts that lead to the dismantling of ÙAmona settlement outpost. This time, we didn’t wait for the outposts to be established, neither did we hope for Israel’s court system to rule according to laws that are made to oppress and dispossess us. We rose and resisted immediately. After Stop the Wall’s audacious action in Al Aqaba (Toubas area) in June last year was successful, other movements joined us for further action.
One settlement at a time, we are challenging Israel’s settlement project.
Popular organizing capacity and nonviolent direct action has proven more effective than all UN resolutions in defending Palestinian rights against Israel’s Wall and settlement project!
Al Aqaba – Stop the Wall sets a precedent dismantling settler outpost!
In June of 2018, Israel dimantled its military outpost close to the Tayassir checkpoint in the area of the Palestinian village of al Aqaba. As soon as th military had left, Israeli settlers came with their cows and stationed their caravan houses there to take the military’s place and build a new settlement outpost.
People from al Aqaba, one of the most persecuted and resilient communities in the West Bank, alerted Stop the Wall and together we took action: We mobilized people from all over the northern West Bank and organized massive marches towards the area where the settlers had illegally occupied the land. After 20 days and two mass protests and long confrontations, during which the people resisted brutal repression by the military, Israel caved in. The settlers wer eventually evacuated!
Jibiya – We stopped them on the way…
Near Jibya village, in Ramallah district, Israeli settlers attempted to open a road between Hanish settlement and a nearby hilltop where a new settlement was to be built. As works for the new road began, the people in Jibya got alerted and called for support. Inspired by the success in al Aqaba, this time Stop the Wall was joined by other popular committees in the organizing to stop the road and the settlement to be built.
It took five mass demonstrations confronting the road works in order to stop the construction. The company, workers and equipment left the area and until this day never again returned. Neither settlements nor their infrastructure shall pass on our lands!
Bethlehem – a hilltop saved from being colonized
In Bethlehem area, a settler intent to build on the nearby hilltop an agricultural settlement outpost, moved a barrack to the hilltop as an outpost. People immediately mobilized and Stop the Wall in coordination with other popular committees organized mass demonstrations. The Israeli military immediately erected a checkpoint to stop the people from reaching their land, which the settler has illegally taken over. Lawyers brought the case into the Israeli courts while the demonstrations continued and continued to grow. After 3 weeks of protests, the Israeli military once again gave in to peoples’ power, evacuated the settler and removed the checkpoint.
We saved yet another hilltop from being colonized by Israel’s illegal settlers.
Burin – Defending our homes from settler take-over
In Burin, Nablus district, Israeli settlers wanted to take over the home of one of the villagers. Burin suffers from continuous settler attacks, threatening people’s lives and livelihoods with the ultimate aim to expel the community. People in Burin are used to resist and years of work together with Stop the Wall has allowed them to act immediately. In only a few hours, we helped the village to mobilize over one hundred people that challenged the settlers. Before the end of the day the settlers desisted and left the home and Burin village.
2) “Here we will Remain” – a campaign to deepen our roots and resilience
“One tree after another, we have strengthened our resolve to defend our land and to stand together as a people. No one will be left alone, because here we will remain together!” Suhail Salman, grassroots coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign
Throughout the year, we have been supporting communities to resist settler attacks, whether invasions of the villages and physical attacks on people, destruction of lands and crops or attempts to takeover lands of the farmers. We have done so, developing local context-specific strategies and actions. One West Bank wide campaign was the large scale planting of trees on threatened lands.
2018 has begun with a massive effort to to plant trees across the West Bank, wherever settler attacks and Israel’s destruction of Palestinian land and attempts to confiscate the fields was most acute. In over 30 locations – from the Jordan Valley and Toubas area to the south of Nablus and Burin, Araq Burin and Madama and many more places – we have planted 13 trees within the first three months of 2018!
Every week some 50 activists from the Stop the Wall Popular Committees, the Farmers Union and the Palestine Youth Forum and local activists gathered in another village and worked throughout the day. One tree after another, we have strengthened our resolve to defend our land and to stand together as a people. No one will be left alone, because here we will remain together! As a people united, we can overcome Israeli apartheid.
3) The olive harvest – a campaign to strengthen steadfastness
“I am very happy to see all this youth with us, hand by hand, picking olives. This will strengthen their love and connection to the land and that is what we need to protect it from the Israeli settlers." Amal Najjar, 68 years, from Burin.
The olive harvest has been historically a collective moment for Palestinians, coming together to help each other in the effort. Since Israel’s occupation begun, it has become a moment of collective resistance as it has become fundamental to harvest in large groups to protect each other from settler attacks.
Like each year, Stop the Wall has been part of the collective olive harvest efforts to support the farmers in the most affected villages. This year we have teamed up not only with the Land Defence Coalition, the Palestinian coalition of social and grassroots movements. Together with Birzeit university we have worked to bring the students out to the fields together with the Stop the Wall activists and the members of the Palestine Youth Forum.
For over 2 months, we have organized olive picking days from the north in Nablus to the south in Hebron. The main activty was held in Burin, where 200 volunteers gathered from all over the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and from inside the Green Line to support the community. Burin is located in Nablus district and under continuous attack. 80 percent of Burin’s land is located in area C and under continuous attack by the Israeli military and the illegal settlers from Bracha outpost, built on the village land.
4) Not one refugee more! – Fighting the ongoing ethnic cleansing
“Israel continues its settler colonial project as they started it in 1948. They are convinced that a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is still possible. They don’t want to understand that times have changed and we Palestinians have changed, This is our land, we will not leave. We will not be refugees another time.” Salah Khawajah, Stop the Wall Campaign.
Stop the Wall has been supporting since its ineption communities from being displaced and has bee campaigning against Israel’s ethnic cleansing plans to wipe out all those Palestinian communities located outside the Bantustans delimited by the Wall. In 2018 our efforts have focused on Khan al Ahmar and Bardala.
Khan al Ahmar – a victory in the struggle against displacement
In July, Israeli authorities decided to destroy Khan al Ahmar, the Bedouin community that is resisting since years expulsion. A massive mobilization at local and international level started and, against all odds, forced Israel to retreat and has saved the community until now.
Stop the Wall has been a core actor in the broad coalition that has formed and has kept for months a daily presence of some 100-200 Palestinian activists from across the West Bank in the community to support Khan al Ahmar to defend themselves from destruction. During the months, activists have faced various attempts by the military to dismantle the solidarity presence there: the solidarity camp that activists build overnight has been destroyed, access roads have been blocked, activists and residents have been intimidated and attacked.
Yet, people resisted, international pressure grew and on October 21 Israel announced the temporary freeze of the demolition of Khan al Ahmar. Members of the cabinet and the media have been explicit in attributing this change of mind to the combination of local and international pressure. This was a huge victory for all involved, not only because it saved Khan al Ahmar until now. The Bedouin community is the first in the line of other 46 communities in the area to be demolished.
Khan el Ahmar is a Palestinian Bedouin village of some 40 families belonging to the Jahalin tribe. They have been ethnically cleansed from their homes in the Naqab in 1951 and then resettled in the hills East of Jerusalem. They leased the land that they now live on from the Palestinian landowner in Anata. After the occupation of the West Bank, Israel confiscated the land and then allocated it for the establishment of the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. Today, the community is squeezed between the Israeli settlements of Ma’ale Adumim and Kfar Adumim.
Bardala – defending our water as a source of resistance
Bardala, in the northern Jordan Valley is one of the villages Israel tries to depopulate be all means. Denying the people access to water is one of the key tools in the Israeli attempt to force the 5000 inhabitants to leave their village.
Stop the Wall, together with the Popular Council to Protect the Jordan Valley, has been resisting together with the community since years and has organized protests and campaigns to fight for Bardala’s right to water. First, Israel forced the villagers to close their own well and to buy their own water at high costs from Israel’s national water corporation Mekorot. Then, Mekorot reduced water supplies to almost nothing. Left with no other choice, the people of Bardala connected themselves to the water infrastructure that runs through their own land, stealing their water to supply the surrounding settlements. In August 2018, Israeli military forces invaded the village and destroyed the water infrastructure of the community.
Stop the Wall organized together with the people of Bardala a large protest and helped them to get access to their own water again. So far, the determination of the people has gained them basic water access again but Bardala and Stop the Wall are already preparing for the next attack on the village.
5) For the Right of Return of the Refugees – Our Marches of Return across the Wall towards our destroyed villages
“I am back home, I feel I am again 10 years old. This is our land, this were my house was. We will come back and my sons will built it again.” Najeyyeh, 84 years old, from Th’heriya village, who lives now in Nilin, commented on the ruins of her village.
Stop the Wall initiated the Marches of Return that bring our people back to the villages, from which they were expelled during the Nakba, Israel’s mass ethnic cleansing in 1948, and connect them with the Palestinians that as third class citizens of Israel still live in the area.
The simple act of bringing survivors of the Nakba across the Wall to visit the lands and now destroyed villages, from which they have been expelled, is of profound impact and importance to continue memory and ties among our people. It roots our struggle and gives us hope for the future.
Once again, the initiative started by Stop the Wall was later adopted by Palestinian civil society at large.
The first March of Return across the Wall
In occasion of Land Day (March 30) and the start of the Great March of Return, as Stop the Wall we developed our version and contribution to the March of Return, in cooperation with our Palestinian partners in the Galilee, inside the Green Line. The activists came to the West Bank and took 7 survivors of the Nakba as well as a number of other representatives and activists and brough them to the villages they had been expelled from. The seven survivors where respectively from Beit Nabala, Jimso and Ath’heriya. All three villages have been destroyed during the Nakba and nothing more but ruins are left from their lives before expulsion.
Some 100 activists from the Galilee joined them as they walked in each of the villages from ruin to ruin and recalled their memories. The elderly men and women rembered the places where the mosque stood and where the village well was located and told the stories of the village life, from the big events to the small anecdotes.
The moment was deeply moving for the direct survivors of the Nakba as much as for the new generation of Palestinians that still live in the area and under an Israeli regime that attempts all it can to deny them their history and identity.
TV stations and print media accompanied the event and gave it great visibility.
Nakba in Tantoura – May 25th
In occasion of the Nakba (May 15), the Higher Committee for the Commemoration of the Nakba, the Palestinian umbrella body established to coordinate action, worked together to promote a second edition of the March of Return, held on March 23.
After weeks of collective preparation, around 2000 Palestinians gathered on Friday, May 25, in Tantoura, an ethnically cleansed Palestinian fisher village close to Haifa, to commemorate the massacre of Tantoura and the ongoing Nakba. Palestinians from both sides of the Green Line broke the walls of fragmentation to come together in struggle and unity. Palestinians from Haifa, Yaffa, the Galilee and the so-called Triangle met with Palestinians from Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nablus, Hebron and Jenin.
The participants remembered the massacres since the start of the Nakba until the latest killing of over 110 people during the #GreatReturnMarch, sending video messages to Gaza. People marched together to the sea shore where the names of the martyrs of the #GreatReturnMarch were displayed in the sand and candles were lit.
Stop the Wall Campaign declared:
"For activists and people from both sides, this was an important and inspirational moment. 70 years after the ongoing Nakba started, we are still one people with one aspiration: justice. For Palestinians, the memory of the past is at the same time mourning about the present massacres and a reconfirmation of our commitment to our struggle for life – a life of dignity, freedom and justice. We will never give up the hope, indeed the conviction, that united we will overcome Israeli apartheid and occupation, ensure the right of return for our refugees and build a future of human rights for all."
6) United against Israel’s routine repression of our people
“Our protests are not only a message of solidarity to the prisoners but a clear response to the Israeli occupation – popular resistance will continue whether or not they arrest grassroots leaders.”
Stop the Wall has joined a number of national efforts to challenge Israel’s routine repression. The policies of repression and incarceration of Palestinian human rights defenders as much as the collective punishment of our people should never be normalized. Instead, defending our rights and our people’s lives is a key component of our struggle.
‘Free our prisoners’ campaign
We have been mobilizing for the liberation of our children and women in Israeli jails and have highlighted the plight and struggle of our prisoners. We have been part of the coordination of regular protests, release celebrations and built internationally visibility.
In particular we have been part of the campaigns for liberation for 17 year old Ahed Tamimi, long standing grassroots leader Munther Amira and Shadi Farrah and Ahmad from Jerusalem, the two youngest children that had been imprisoned during the uprising in Jerusalem three years ago.
Free Ahed Tamimi – a new generation of women in struggle
We have been part, at national and international level, of the campaign to free 17 year old Ahed Tamimi, who has been taken to prison with her mother after a video that showed her a slapping a fully armed Israeli soldier went viral.
After a long-lasting campaign for her liberation, Ahed was finally released and on August 11, we helped organizing in Nabi Saleh a powerful celebration for her liberation and of a new generation of young women in struggle. Some 700 people gathered for the one day event, dominated by the power of a new generation of women in struggle. Janna Ayyad, the 12 year old Palestinian youth and media activists moderated the aevent organised in honour of Ahed Tamimi and the main performances was given by Nai Barghouti, 21 year old singer and flautist.
Shadi and Ahmad – the Palestinian struggle in Jerusalem will continue
Shadi and Ahmad were both 12 years old when in 2015 Jerusalem erupted in an uprising to defend the Old City of Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa Mosque from a brutal take over and full-scale surveillance by Israeli forces. Finally, Israeli forces had to dismantle the surveillance equipment and allow free access to Palestinians. During the protests, Shadi and Ahmad were arrested and then sentenced to three years of imprisonment.
At the end of 2018, both were released and Stop the Wall helped organizing a celebration in their honour, welcoming them back from prison on November 29 – International Day of Solidarity withthe Palestinian people.
Against punitive home demolitions – Save the home of Abu Hamed
The house of Abu Humaid, located in the refugee camp of Al Amari in Ramallah, has been targeted by Israel’s policy of punitive home demolitions. When Israel decided to destroy the home, the only ones left to live in the place were the women: elderly Latifa Abu Humaid, her daughters daughters-in-law and some children. All the men of the family had been either killed or are lingering in Israeli jails.
Stop the Wall joined the people from the refugee camp and other organizations to build a permanent solidarity tent that remained there full with people defending the women and there home with their presence for weeks. Finally, Israeli forces arrive with hundreds of soldiers in a large-scale invasion of Ramallah and destroyed the home of the women.
Stop the Wall is committed to continuestanding with the Abu Humaid women and help them rebuild their homes.
7) For a new generation in the struggle for Justice, Freedom and Equality
“Politicians and political analists describe our generation as a generation of facebook and mobiles phones, not as committed as older generations. The 2015 uprising that started in Jerusalem and the generation of Ahed Tamimi prove that we are the generation who will liberate Palestine.” Nisreen from Jenin, a university student and member of the Palestinian Youth Forum.
One of the guiding principles of Stop the Wall is our work for a new generation: “Generation after generation, we have to provide the youth with the lessons, guidance and trust they need and deserve so that they can continue to lead our struggle until one day we will be free and able to return to our homes.” Therefore, we have continued throughout 2018 our campaign for the Right to Education and have put great efforts in supporting the strengthening of the Palestinian Youth Forum.
Right to Education Campaign
Within this framework we actively resist Israel’s attempts to destroy Palestinian schools and to bar Palestinian children from accessing their basic right to education.
1. In Burin, one of the villages in Nablus district most affected by settler attacks and harrassment and invasions by the military, we have helped the community to re-build the playground of the school. The Israeli military built a watchtower on the southern part of the lands of the Burin High School, only 150m away from the school. Soldiers and settlers are continuously harrassing the pupils while at school. Since 2014, the Israeli military has prevented the boys from using the football playground which is located behind the school. The systematic targeting of Burin’s high school by Israel is part not only of the pressure built up against the village but as well of Israel’s ongoing policy to bar Palestinians from exercising their right to education. Together with the community we renovated the playground in several days of voluntary work and are since then organizing regular events to defend the playground as part of the village lands.
2. In Bardala, in the northern Jordan Valley, we supported students and the village with a voluntary work day to renovate the school. Dozens of youth activists from around the West Bank joined for this collective action of defiance in a village Israel is desperate to displace.
3. In Abu Nuwar, one of the Jahalin Bedouin communities east of Jerusalem that are under immediate threat of demolition and ethnic cleansing, we worked together with the ommunity to rebuild the school after it had been destroyed by the Israeli military and build a popular mobilization to defend the school from renewed demolition. As a result, the Palestinian authorities made a budget available to transform the makeshift school into an adequate building, called the School of Challenge [to the Israeli occupation].
4. In Khan al Ahmar, we supported the children during the entire time of the struggle against the demolition of the community with special activities. We organized a children’s festival together with international activists. We had a collective lunch, played games and entertained the children. A second festival for the pupils of the school was organized together with students from Birzeit University. A third festival was arranged together with Palestinian activists from across the Green Line.
Supporting the Palestinian Youth Forum
During the past two years, dozens of meetings and training sessions have been organized, educational workshops and brainstorming sessions, together with the opening of dialogues in various forms at the local level to develop the programs, regulations and guidelines of the Forum, to consolidate common concepts and to promote a culture of dialogue as a basis for strengthening the internal structure. The Preparatory Committee, with the support of STW, followed up and organized these activities with regional youth committees that were established by the first conference and before, which in turn collected the results of these discussions and drafted the papers presented at this conference for approval.
In October, the Palestinian Youth Forum in partnership with the Center for Development Studies/Bir Zeit University held its second conference at the University of Birzeit with the participation of: than 200 young women and men from various parts of the West Bank and Jerusalem, young Palestinian people from 1948 (Israel) and the Gaza Strip – connected by video conference -, Human Rights Defenders from popular committees, representatives of Birzeit University and the Land Defense Coalition.
8) For a united, democratic and accountable Palestinian society – The End the Siege Campaign
In June, Stop the Wall has been part of the organizing for the powerful mass movement in support of Palestinian unity and against the policies of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to cut funds to the people in struggle in Gaza. Just as Gaza was rising up in the Right to Return March, the PA sanctions against the people in the besieged strip, brought popular discontent to a boiling point. Thousands of people poured in historic marches into the streets of Ramallah – demanding popular and accountable policies towards national unity and an immeiate end to the PA sanctions on Gaza.
Suhail Salman coordinator of the popular committees in Stop the Wall Campaign, described the atmosphere:
“I felt that the entire Palestinian people have been waiting for this moment, whether in Gaza, inside the Green Line or outside. They waited to see when the West Bank was moving to oppose the PA policies that contradict the interests of our people and fragment us, in particular the appalling policies on Gaza.
"But more than anyone else, it was the people in the West Bank that have been waiting for this moment when the anger transformed into action.“
9) For a #WorldwithoutWalls – our bet for a new future
"Walls have become the sign of our times. Walls are growing in a global right-wing, racist tide that divides and opresses people, protecting and strengthening a global power structure in economic and environmental crisis of the capitalist system. As states and corporations intensify their exchange of ideology, methodology and technology, we have to globalize and join our struggles."
Stop the Wall has continued to promote the call for a World without Walls. Started in 2017 with a call for action that has been signed by over 307 movements, organizations and networks from across the globe, the call for a World without Walls is today ever more urgent. Almost every new hard right government that rises to power across the globe, seemingly inevitably declares its allegiance to Israel’s racist and supremacist project and the associated regime of Walls, militarization and repression.
We have throughout 2018 continued and deepened the conversation on the connections between Israel’s Wall and its associated regime and global repression and right shifts. As a result, the actions for the Second Global Day of Action for a #WorldwithoutWalls, November 9 2018, have shown a strong focus on connections and cross-movement conversations. We’ve seen conferences on different struggles against Wall, photo exhibits on the walls of our world, webinars and much more.
We have given particular focus to the connection between Israel’s apartheid Wall and the US Wall at the Mexican border. During November, we have held conferences in Mexico City, joint events with indigenous movements from the Mexican state of Oaxaca and have participated with a seminar at the III Border Encuentro in Sonora/Nogales at the US Wall.
We have further built stronger alliances with migrants movements across the globe as migrants are among those strongest affected by the exportation of Israel’s paradigm of Walls. We have continued to build connections with European migrants movements and have become members of the International Secretariat of the World Social Forum on Migration. Stop the Wall has therefore been able to launch the call for a #WorldwithoutWalls in the opening session of the WSF on Migration and throughout the days of discussions and deliberations.
10) From below, from the south – building global alliances
"It is the commonality of our oppressors, their structures, and regimes, that today are more unified than ever. Solidarity, then, is not only an ideal but a concrete aspect of forwarding our struggles."
Stop the Wall’s strategic priority on building alliances with grassroots and mass movements as well as our focus on south-south relations has continued.
Participation in global networks
We have continued to actively participate in the Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity, a network of over 250 social movements, civil society organisations, trade unions and communities affected by the activities of Transnational Corporations. We have once again participated in the Global Week of Action in Geneva, held in October 2018, in coincidence with the UN negotiations on a Binding Treaty on Transnationals and Human Rights. Read here for more about the importance the treaty may have for the Palestinian struggle.
We have continued to play our part in the advisory council of the Observatory for Human Rights of the People, a global initiative started in Mexico in 2016 in order to defend the protagonism of the people and their movements in the protection and promotion of their human rights. We have participated in 2018 at the Global Assembly of Cooridnation of the Observatory.
We have in various occasions given solidarity and support to the struggles of other peoples for freedom, justice and equality. See here the inspiring video from Khan al Ahmar (Spanish/English) to the people in Honduras fighting for the end of impunity as just one example.
We have worked to build the connections across the continents with the Indian Dalit movement, which struggles heroically since thousands of years against a social apartheid system. See a Stop the Wall article for Dalit Roundtables here.
11) For Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions
"We are here from Palestine, particularly from Khan al Ahmar connected with Berta [Cáceres, assassinated in 2016] because Israel since decades gives weapons and training to the dictatorship and repression in Honduras. Honduras is now using the same techniques and weapons that have been tested on our people. Berta Vive! La lucha sigue!"
The Stop the Wall has continued to play a key role in the strengthening of the global BDS movement as part of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC). We have been supporting in particular de efforts of the BNC within the framework of the global campaign for a military embargo on Israel and with efforts to ensure the BDS movement is growing in the global south, from India to Latin America.
Among the important research, events and connctions we have been involved in are:
India-Israel’s agrotech cooperation: exporting exploitation and land theft
Stop the Wall and the Palestinian Framers Union have held a presentation at a conference in Hyderabad, India, to discuss with farmers that are struggling for their rights and survival in India about the role Israel’s agro-technology plays in the colonization of Palestinian land, dismantling at the same time the myth that Israeli agro-tech can help small farmers in India. Instead of ‘helping Indian farmers’, Israel reaps profits from the subcontinents public subsidies and uses the land and the farmers as a testing ground for its own tech development. This has contributed to laying the basis of a farmers boycott of Israel in India.
Simply Unsustainable: The EU’s energy projects with Israel
Stop the Wall has lobbied against the planned EU-Israel joint energy and gas projects. We have worked as part of the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network (PENGON) on a factsheet to counter the claims of the European Union and Israel about the planned energy cooperations. It’s environmental unsustainable, it supports Israeli apartheid and risks violating the EU’s own rules as well as its obligations under international law. For more see here.
Israel’s role in the militarization of Latin America: globalizing Walls and their associated regime
We have been supporting the compilation of the groundbreaking 85 pages report ‘Israeli militarism in Latin America’. This collective effort has been the basis for the I Public Hearing “From Palestine to Latin America – United against militarization”, held in Rio de Janeiro in july 2018.
See the English translation here.
This effort of collective reserch and analysis has built the basis for further campaigning towards a military embargo – from Mexico to Argentina.
StopCemex: Stop Mexico’s construction material giant from building Israel’s Wall and apartheid
The Mexican construction material transnational corporation Cemex has been denounced since years for its complicity in Israeli apartheid. Through a fully owned subsidiary, Cemex owns 4 production plants in Israeli illegal settlements and sells construction material for the Wall, the settlements and Israeli military checkpoints.
In 2017, over 200 Latin Ameircan moements have called for a BDS campaign targeting Cemex to pressure it to stop its complicity in Israeli human rights violations. In 2018, Stop the Wall has helped building further strength for the campaign, producing lobbying and advocacy material. See for example the infographic here.
