Stop the Wall Highlights 2020 -

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Our top 10 highlights in less than a minute

Watch our top 10 victories against Israeli apartheid in 2020 in less than a minute here:

For people across continents, 2020 was a challenging year due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oppressed and colonized peoples were the most to suffer from the pandemic due to structural and systematic oppression and health negligence. In Palestine, during 2020, Israel has intensified its apartheid and settler colonial practices and has officially announced its plans to transform de facto annexation of 33% of the West Bank into de jure status. Yet, in 2020, we witnessed an intensification of different forms of popular struggle actions to combat Israeli apartheid regime.

We present to you our impact nationally and internationally during 2020 below.

Looking into 2021, we know that we are in a period that is decisive for our struggle and our rights. Will Israel be able to “normalize” its apartheid regime over our people or will we and the world be able to hold Israel accountable? Will we be able to defend our people to resist further ethnic cleansing and rise the cost for apartheid on the ground? Will we be able to ensure Israel’s human rights violations and apartheid are being investigated and effective measures taken to end them?

Will we, the people across the world, be able to come together to ensure that justice, freedom and equality prevails over profits, power and supremacy?

Protesting ongoing annexation… Decolonizing our land

During 2020, we Palestinians have faced another plan to liquidate our just cause in the so-called ‘Deal of the Century.’ The Trump administration announced the no-peace plan on January 28^th, 2020.Intensified construction of Israeli settlements has accompanied it.

Israel’s pillage of land has targeted almost every area in the West Bank. On the looted lands, more settlement housing units and new settler outposts have sprung up across the West Bank.

Yet, Palestinians have met the escalated settlement expansion with more counter popular actions. They have erected sit-in tents and organized protests on a regular basis. Stop the Wall took part in liberating large swathes of Palestinian lands by ousting nine settler outposts. Please read more about our actions of land decolonization here.

We showcase here some battles of liberation:

On Mount al-Arma, the Palestinian flag was raised!

Since the 1980s, the Israeli settlers have assigned Mount Al-Arma, Nablus district, a place in their strategic plans. They have definied it a historical Jewish site as a justification to seize it. Once they arrived to set up a first presence, Palestinians immediately mobilized. For a month, Palestinians protested and set up a sit-in tent until they succeeded in warding off Israeli settlers in March, 2020.

To know more Palestinian popular actions and sacrifices to take back mount Al-Arma from the grip of Israeli settlers, please read our report here.

Once upon a time, there was a settler outpost in Sinjel…

Sinjel is a small Palestinian village located 21 kilometers northwest of Ramallah. As Sinjel is perched on a hill, its strategic location has made it a target for settlement expansion. In 2020, a group of fanatic Israeli settlers set up a settler outpost consisting of movable houses.

To ensure that the popular actions of the people of Sinjel are well-coordinated, Stop the Wall has created a popular committee there. This committee succeeded in removing the settler outpost and ousting the illegal settlers. Although the settlers tried to come back, the popular committee was vigilant enough to thwart all of their attempts to establish a new settler outpost.

The walk to liberation is still ongoing….

Our protests are still ongoing to oust other settler outposts built on our lands.

Please read about the continuous protests in Beit Dajan and Kufr Qaddoum to free the colonized lands here.

Please, also read about Palestinian popular actions in the village of al-Mughayir here.

Right to Exist Campaign

Stop the Wall has initiated in 2020 the campaign for the Right to Exist. The Campaign focuses on three rights: the Right to land, to water and to education. We seek to support those Palestinians that are threatened with expulsion and to strengthen their resolve to stay on the land despite Israel’s attempts to forcibly displace them. The Right to Exist Campaign will act whenever Israel denies Palestinians the right to water, education, building and access to and cultivation of their land.

Right to Education:

We have formed the Right to Education Coalition, a network of national and international NGOs. The coalition has mounted its efforts throughout 2020 to resist Israel’s attempts to expel Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley. One of the main tools used by the Israeli occupation to force the people to abandon their communities was to deny them access to proper education. We succeeded in building two new kindergartens in Ein el-Baida and Al-Maleh. We also renovated the school and kindergarten of the community of Arab al Ka’abnah.
Stop the Wall has conducted a research on the challenges Palestinians face in accessing education in the Jordan Valley. The research was based on testimonies of students, parents, teachers and popular activists in the Jordan Valley. The research recommendations have guided activities of the Right to Education Coalition. They will guide future actions organized by the coalition to facilitate access to proper education for Palestinians in the Jordan Valley.

Right to Land

Israel’s settler colonial project affects the daily life not only of the Palestinian society as a whole, but individuals, too. Abu Jamal, a Palestinian farmer and human rights defender from the village of al Luban al- Sharqiyya, Nablus district, has been bearing the scars of Israel’s systematic violence against him for 17 years. The most recent attack against him and his family was in last November. Israeli soldiers demolished their property and looted the intact property.

As part of the efforts to support the steadfastness of Abu Jamal, we bought him six sheep. The sheep represent a sustainable source of income for Abu Jamal and his family to continue to exist on their land against all odds. Please read more about Abu Jamal’s story here.

‘You Are not Alone’ Campaign

For seventeen years in a row, we have been asserting to our people in affected areas that we are with them through the ‘You Are not Alone’ Campaign:

Olive harvest season

Every year, we help Palestinian farmers subject to settlers’ violence in nearby settlements during the olive harvest season. Volunteers affiliated with the Palestine Youth Forum join in this collective initiative. Through that, we support farmers in dismantling Israeli apartheid’s invisible wall of fear by reaching their lands, harvesting their olive trees and celebrating this ‘national wedding’ as we usually call it. Please read more about the olive harvest initiative here.

Olive trees cultivation

During 2020, we planted over 750 olive trees in areas threatened with confiscation across the West Bank. The cultivation of olive trees is a tool to strengthen Palestinian attachment to their ancestral lands. This is a counter measure in response to Israel’s attempts to detach Palestinians from their lands through violent and intimidating practices.

Israel’s apartheid and settler colonial practices have caused an environmental destruction. Israel first ethnically cleansed the Palestinian people in a largescale campaign starting in 1947. Afterwards, it planted pine trees on top of the ruins to erase the traces of the crime. The afforestation projects of a shrubland ecosystem like Palestine threatens both animal and plant species with extinction.

At the same time, Israel constantly uproots trees belonging to Palestinians. This is another cause of the environmental destruction we face. Please read more about the war Israel wages on our nature to ethnically cleanse Palestinians here.

As Israeli apartheid practices to take over our land are never green, we believe that our effort to cultivate more trees is not only an anti-apartheid and ant-colonialist struggle. Rather, it has an environmentalist dimension, too. This asserts that our anti-colonial struggle is green as we are struggling to protect our environment on the long path of decolonizing our land.

Palestine Cop26 Coalition

Stop the Wall has co-founded and organized for the creation of the Palestine Cop26 coalition, a consortium of Palestinian grassroots organizations and Palestine’s Green party. We co-created the Palestine Cop26 Coalition to represent Palestine in the Global people’s Cop26 Coalition in Glasgow.

The Palestine Cop26 Coalition participated in the first global gathering of the people’s cop26 coalition titled, ‘From the Ground Up’ last November. We jointly held a webinar with Gastivists Network about the Eu-Israeli gas projects and how such projects entrench Israeli apartheid and fuel conflict in the Middle East.

The Palestine Cop26 coalition will also represent Palestine in other global gathering events throughout 2021. We seek to ensure that Israeli organizations taking the lead in greenwashing Israeli apartheid crimes are kept out of the people’s summit and eventually banned from the governmental proceedings, too.

Israeli neoliberalism vs. Palestinian steadfastness

Stop the Wall has helped the people of al Janiya, Ramallah district, to renovate an old and forsaken water spring. Recently, illegal Israeli settlers have repeatedly raided the site in an attempt to take it over. However, through our support, the people of al Janiya could make the water spring a destination for the residents of the village. The constant presence of Palestinians makes it more difficult for settlers to plunder the water spring and the surrounding area.

The renovated water spring has also become a source of irrigation for any cultivated crops. This has encouraged farmers to jointly cultivate large swathes of lands threatened with confiscation by the Israeli occupation.

Currently, more than one agricultural cooperative has been created in the area surrounding the water spring.

Reinforcing the culture of worker-owned and managed cooperatives is a way to fight back against Israel’s neoliberal system. Since decades of colonization and pillage of Palestinian land and natural resources, Israel has created a stunt and de-developed Palestinian economy. Palestinians, therefore, are forced to depend on Israel’s neo-liberal system of economy.

Throughout 2020 Stop the Wall has also ensured the continuity and development of another cooperative in Burin village, Nablus district. The cooperative is run by women and Stop the Wall has helped to establish it in previous years.

Popular COVID-19 emergency Response

Bedouin communities living in Area ‘C’ (under full Israeli control) were the most to bear the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic in Palestine. Israel’s apartheid regime bans the construction of health centers in these areas as a measure to coerce them to leave their land.

To counter Israel’s apartheid measures and support the steadfastness of these communities, Stop the Wall along with other popular groups launched two phases of the COVID-19 emergency response.

In the first phase, we provided health kits for Bedouin communities and overcrowded refugee camps. Please read full report here. In the first phase of the initiative, we also marketed the dairy products of Bedouin communities living in the Jordan Valley. Dairy products are the main source of income for these communities. Due to the lockdown these communities were unable to sell these products without our support.

In the second phase of the COVID-19 emergency response, which took place in July 2020, we distributed food kits to Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills. This initiative is a show of solidarity with and support to the Bedouin communities that Israel systematically marginalizes in order to expel them from their lands.

We will never forget: Nakba Commemoration

The spread of the pandemic has prevented us from holding popular actions on the ground to mark the 72-anniversary of the Nakba. However, we commemorated it online through sharing a report about our ongoing Nakba, continuous resistance and the struggle Palestinian refugees share with immigrants and refugees around the world. Please find full report here.

Palestine Youth Forum

Pedagogy of the colonized

As we are strong believers in the power that lies in our youth to create an anti-colonial, anti-apartheid and social change, in 2020, we continued to support our youth.

As part of our decolonial pedagogical efforts, we held two induction tours for the Palestine Youth Forum despite of the COVID-19 lockdown. Over 100 youth participated in these tours and acquired an indigenous knowledge of Palestine’s geography. Israel systematically reconfigures Palestine’s landscape. This effort is embodied in the construction of the Apartheid Wall, Jewish-only settlements, and bypass roads. This transformation risks to obliterate the memory of the precolonial landscape as young people may forget or not even ever know. To geographically and historically orient our youth, is a way to preserve indigenous knowledge of Palestine and to fight back.

The tours also included an overview about Israel’s settlement expansion practices and plans in the visited areas. We have also discussed how we can fight back against such practices.

Youth camp

In a two-day camp, our decolonial teaching of youth continued through participatory discussions with the youth. The meaning of mutual solidarity and joint struggle with other oppressed /colonized peoples around the world was one of the main topics that the participants touched on during the discussions.

During the camp, the youth also discussed the process of democratic representation of the members of the youth forum through elections; two weeks after the camp, the members of the steering committee of the youth forum were democratically elected.

A message of solidarity from Palestine to Brazil

Due to the spread of the pandemic, we could not be physically present in international events such as the Black July. Black July is a month of awareness raising and struggle held every year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It usually highlights racial injustices committed by the Brazilian government against the residents the residents of the favelas.

We organized a webinar where Palestinian and Brazilian human rights defenders decried exclusionary practices of oppressive regimes. The webinar endeavored to approximate the different, yet universal experiences of the people residing in the favelas and in Palestine. Please read more about the event here.

Palestinian Truth vs. Israeli lies

Solidarity from the Basque Country

Before the spread of the pandemic, a delegation from the Basque country visited Palestine. We organized the visits of the delegation in different areas in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the 48 area (present-day Israel).

Throughout the tour, the delegation met with Palestinians to hear their stories under occupation, which confute all Israeli lies on Western mainstream media.

International Students in Palestine

As part of our relentless efforts to inform people of life under occupation and apartheid, we conducted a lecture with international students learning Arabic at Birzeit University. The students who came from different parts of the world to Palestine have learned more about the trajectory of Israel’s Apartheid Wall and its long-term implications on Palestinian lives.

Stop the Wall internationally

Throughout 2020 has continued to keep our supporters, friends and comrades and all those that want an update here and there informed. On our website, facebook and twitter we have continued to produce regular updates in English and Spanish on Israeli policies of apartheid, Palestinian grassroots struggle and sturdy steadfastness.

We have as well launched a new mobile friendly website with lots of great new features.