Stop the Wall Campaign

Here in Ramallah, close to the infamous Qalandia checkpoint and just overlooking the Palestinian Red Crescent building, is the offices of the Stop the Wall Campaign. It's a small office, populated with twiggy, chain-smoking, coffee-guzzling Palestinian revolutionaries, activists, intellectuals and their international allies. A huge poster of Che - Hasta la Victoria Siempre, it says - hangs above books and pamphlets on the Occupation. An out-dated UN poster from 2007 of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank on one door, Mahmoud Darwish's angry poetry on another. Boycott the Occupation posters lay scattered on the floor.

Burn-out central. Sigh. Sounds like my kind of place...

I'll be volunteering with the Stop the Wall campaign (www.stopthewall.org), a grassroots, decidedly not NGO which helps to coordinate local action and international solidarity with Palestinian activists. Last week, at midnight on December 16th, the Campaign Coordinator, Jamal Juma' was arrested by occupation authorities, and today we found out that he will be charged with 'incitement'. Incitement to exactly what, no one knows. According to Israeli military regulations, a Palestinian detainee can be held in custody for up to 12 days without knowing the reason for his/her arrest, and without seeing a judge. Afterwards, they can be charged, released, or giving administrative detention. Administrative detention is where the Israelis basically say that they have no proof of illegal activities, but they have a 'secret file' and thus are forced to hold you. No one can see that 'secret file', so know one knows why you are in. Administrative detention orders can be infinitely renewed. The Stop the Wall Youth Coordinator, Mohammad Othman, was arrested a few months ago, and after finding no reason for which to charge him, Israel put him under administrative detention.

I'll be putting together the website for Jamal Juma' - freejamaljuma.wordpress.com. It's really ugly, so if anyone has suggestions, please let me know. I'm basing it off Mohammad Othman's website (freemohammadothman.wordpress.com, duh!). Aside from web-building and translation, I will be helping with the Campaign's work on researching Israeli arms trade with Latin America, so if anyone has any articles or interesting information, please let me know. Currently, I'm looking into a agricultural trade agreement into which Israel and El Salvador entered. The idea is to inform grassroots organizations and Latin American civil society about Israel's attempt to prop up its sagging occupational economy. You can find a great article about Latin America and Israel written by Jamal on the Wordpress blog - http://freejamaljuma.wordpress.com/about/

You can also learn more about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement which is building steam across the globe - www.bdsmovement.net

Thanks!