In Palestine we have already organised a number of protests and activities, resisting Israel’s apartheid Wall and occupation… and this is only the start. We anticipate that Israel, especially in a year of elections and under the unconditional protection of the US administration, will escalate its attacks on our people and our land. Let’s stand together in joint resistance and more than that:
Let’s make 2019 a crucial year for our collective struggle not only against Israel’s apartheid Wall but for a #WorldwithoutWalls!
On November 9 1989, exactly 30 years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated across the globe, from Germany to Washington.
Since then, member states of the European Union and the Schenghen area have constructed almost 1000 km of walls, more than six times the total length of the Berlin Walls. The US president continues to keep government shut down insisting on billions of dollars to continue building the Wall at the Mexican border. Across the globe, over 70 walls are militarizing borders or unilaterally impose territorial control.
The largest part of this new generation of walls has been erected after 2002, when Israel started to construct its apartheid Wall stealing our land, displacing our people and enclosing our communities into ghettos.
Inspired by Israel and built by its corporations, these new walls define the spaces that protect priviledge, demarcating the outside as spaces of dispossession, oppression, discrimination and exclusion. Together with these physical walls, we are witnessing a growing tide fo far right politics that elevates injustice as a value to perpetuate and celebrate.
30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and 17 years after Israel has started the new era of walls, we know that people are uniting their struggles and together we will overcome the Walls of our times!
In 2017, we have called from Palestine to Mexico on November 9 for a Global Day of InterAction for #WorldwithoutWalls and 370 movements and organizations from across the globe have joined us. 2018 has seen once again an amazing coming together of voices, ideas and initiatives for a #WorldwithoutWalls.
See some highlights below.
Throughout 2019, we have an urgent task to unite and let all those that protect their power and priviledge behind Walls that we will break them down. Let’s work together to end the ‘Israelization’ of our world – let’s stop Israel from exporting its lethal ideology, methodology and technology of apartheid, propping up and profiting from human rights violations across the globe.
| ("No wall can stop our dreams of Justice….", Sonora/Nogales at the Mexican border with the US.) |
Highlights from the Global InterAction for a #WorldwithoutWalls
Walls of Injustice
Palestine – against Israel's apartheid Wall
In Palestine, we have organized a mass demonstration against Israel's apartheid Wall in Niĺin – a historic place of grassroots struggle in the West Bank.
Spanish State – Walls across the globe
In Cantabria, a conference about Israel's apartheid Wall, Morocco's Wall violating the rights of the Saharawi people and the US Wall at the Mexican border has been organized.
Germany/Berlin – Walls across time and space
BDS Berlin has organized an exhibition of Walls – not only those that still exist but also those that were and are built against refugees, people in need, the "others" in each case. See photos of the exhibit here.
France – against Walls and Wall-profiteers
Association France-Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), BDS France, UJFP and others have organised 10 #WorldwithoutWalls events between November 3 and December 1 – in Paris, Grenoble, Clermond Ferrand, Montpellier, Lyon, Valenciennes, Douai, Reillanne, Evry and Annonay – and have promoted the campaign to press AXA Insurance to divest from Elbit Systems, Wall builder and Israel’s biggest private military company, as well as banks financing Israel’s illegal settlements.
Walls against Migrants
Report: 'Building Walls' – Fear and Securitization in the European Union
This report, researched by Centre Delas and co-published by Transnational Institute, reveals that member states of the European Union and Schengen Area have constructed almost 1000 km of walls, the equivalent of more than six times the total length of the Berlin Walls, since the nineties to prevent displaced people migrating into Europe. Read more here.
World Social Forum on Migration
During the World Social Forum on Migrations, held November 2-4 in Mexico City, the call for a #WorldwithoutWalls was a core demand.
To watch an intervention at the WSF on Migration during the seminar on the 'Globalization of Border Control and Resistance of the People', click here.
On the US side of the border Wall
A large World Without Walls Coalition organized in Oakland a public event entitled 'Investing in Sanctuary: Freedom to Stay, Freedom to Move, Freedom to Return'.
On the Mexican side of the border Wall
Bringing struggles together
Palestine – Mexico – USA
The Deadly Exchange campaign of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has organised on November a conversation with the Palestinian grassroots organization, Stop the Wall, and the Human Rights Observatory of Indigenous People, on the connections between militarization on the Mexico-US border and the ongoing occupation of Palestine.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions to Stop the Walls
Colombia – #StopCemex from building the Wall in Palestine!
On November 9, BDS Colombia has launched its interactive map of 'Spaces Free of Cemex'. Cemex is Mexico's construction material giant that holds production plants in illegal settlements and sells construction material for the Wall and Israel's settlements. 
US-Mexico Border – Divest from US-Israeli repression: Demilitarize Borders
A workshop during the annual Border Encuentro focused on the ways that the United States, Israel, and security corporations such as Elbit Systems collaborate to impose border imperialism and militarization on indigenous communities in Palestine and in the Americas on the ancestral land of the Tohono O’odam people along the US-Mexico border. Nellie Jo, an organizer with the Tohono O’odam Anti-Border Collective and a participant in the recent “World Without Walls” delegation to Palestine, shared about the and parallels between the struggles for territorial sovereignty by the O’odam and Palestinians. Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, has been involved with militarizing the border since 2009.
See the video of the workshop on the CODEPINK Facebook page.
Argentina – Culture against Apartheid
The Argentinian Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People and BDS Argentina has organized an arts festival with the title World without Walls and launch the Argentinean cultural boycott pledge.
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