Steve writes today:
I'm still in Jerusalem, safe and sound. The pressI don't see the following report anywhere else on the internet, so I will post it here complete as received.
release below describes what happened today outside
Jenin. The international Arab media are already
running the story; don't know about CNN/BBC/Times etc.
The media team here is stretched really thin;
anything media folks can do back home will help
greatly.Steve
> INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
> July 9, 2003
> For Immediate Release
>
>
> FOUR INTERNATIONALS ARRESTED AT PEACE CAMP
>
> [ARRABONY, Jenin Region] Four international
> volunteers with the
> International Solidarity Movement were arrested
> today while
> maintaining a presence at the peace camp set up by
> Arrabony
> villagers and the ISM to protest the confiscation of
> Palestinian
> land for the Apartheid Wall. The four arrested are:
>
>
> Tobias Karlsson from Sweden
> Tariq Loubani from Canada
> Bill Capowski from New York, USA
> Fredrick Lind from Denmark
>
> Full details are not yet known and none of the peace
> activists are
> answering their phones, however we just received the
> following text
> message: "at Salem abused and beaten". This seems
> to indicate that
> the four are being held at the Salem Military Base,
> north of Jenin.
>
> Since the peace camp was set up on Monday, July 7,
> 2003, activists
> have faced threats and harassment from the Israeli
> Military, from
> heavily armed security guards working for the
> Israeli company
> building that section of the Wall, and from Israeli
> settlers.
> Activists have been threatened with violence,
> removal, and arrest.
> The response of international activists was that
> they were there at
> the request of the people of the village, and didn't
> recognize
> Israeli military authority over the area. On
> Monday, soldiers came
> to the area of the camp to photograph international
> activists and
> local villagers and yesterday armed guards
> threatened to destroy the
> camp.
>
> Despite the harassment there has been steady and
> enthusiastic
> support from the people of the village of Arrabony.
> Men, women, and
> children have been a twenty-four-hour presence at
> the camp, and are
> coming every day in greater numbers. Activities at
> the camp have
> included games and sports, music, and more.
>
> For the past year the Israeli government has been
> building a massive
> wall that it claims is for purposes of "security".
> The wall,
> however, is being built inside of the West Bank,
> destroying and
> confiscating from Palestinians their most fertile
> agricultural
> grounds and de facto annexing into Israeli illegal
> settlements and
> valuable underground water aquifers. Tens of
> thousands of
> Palestinian fruit and olive trees have already been
> destroyed and
> farmers are being prevented from working on land
> that they've lived
> off of for decades. The Palestinian people have
> been marching and
> protesting this land confiscation and destruction of
> livelihood but
> have been met with violence from the Israeli
> authorities and silence
> from the international community. The Arrabony
> peace camp is one of
> 4 similar protest camps in the West Bank.
>
> For more information, please call:
> ISM Office: 02-277-4602
> Huwaida: 067-473-308
> Jordan: 066-312-547
> www.palsolidarity.org
>
> END