International Solidarity Movement

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The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was founded in 2001 by Adam Shapiro, a New York Jew, and his wife Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian Christian along with the Israeli peace activist Neta Golan. The organisation recruits civilians from Western countries to participate in accompaniment and acts of non-violent resistance against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The group has attracted a great deal of criticism and controversy, as well as praise for its non-violent methods, some of which is explored below.

Contents

[edit] Strategies

Past ISM campaigns have used the following strategies:

  • Acting as human shields to deter Israeli military operations. Note: Some ISM volunteers object to the use of the term human shield to describe their work because, they argue, in a Palestinian context the expression more usually refers to forced use of captive Palestinians by the Israel Defence Forces when searching Palestinian neighbourhoods.
  • Accompanying Palestinians to minimise harassment by Israeli settlers or soldiers, for example ensuring that queues at Israeli checkpoints are processed efficiently and providing witnesses and human shields during olive harvests which are often disrupted by settlers.
  • Removing roadblocks. These are large unmanned mounds of earth and concrete on roads in the West Bank, sometimes at the entrances of Palestinian villages by the Israel Defence Forces, thereby isolating those villages' inhabitants.
  • Attempting to block military vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers.
  • Violating Israeli curfew orders enforced on Palestinian areas.
  • Interfering with the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier and damaging the barrier.
  • Entering areas which have been designated 'closed military zones' by the Israeli military. NB this is not really a 'strategy', but a prerequisite for ISM being able to conduct many of the above activities, since areas in which the ISM are active are often summarily declared 'closed military zones'.

[edit] Noteworthy ISM events

  • The ISM received extensive media coverage of its presence in Yasir Arafat's compound in Ramallah and at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
  • On April 1, 2002, Australian ISM volunteer Kate Edwards sustained severe internal injuries from a direct hit to the centre of her stomach, by a fragmentation bullet fired by Israeli forces during a peaceful protest in Beit Jala. She still has the 8 bullet pieces in her stomach. She and her colleagues were walking slowly backwards with their hands in the air at the time.
  • On March 16, 2003, ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie was killed while trying to block an IDF armoured bulldozer she believed was preparing to demolish the home of a Palestinian doctor.
  • On April 5, 2003, ISM volunteer Brian Avery suffered severe facial injuries from debris kicked up by machine gun fire from an IDF armoured personnel carrier while he was outside in the street investigating the source of gunfire heard during an IDF enforced curfew.
  • On April 11, 2003, ISM member Thomas Hurndall was left clinically brain dead after he was shot in the head by an IDF soldier whilst protecting children from Israeli gunfire during a protest at a roadblock in the Gaza Strip. He died on January 13, 2004.
  • ISM has been nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize by Svend J Robinson, a New Democratic Party of Canada member of the House of Commons of Canada. [1].

[edit] Legal Action against ISM

The leader and co-founder, Huwaida Arraf, and French ISM activist Angela Coppin were charged with violating a court order barring them from the area of Bidou, near Jerusalem where the Israeli West Bank Security Barrier was under construction. According to reports in Israeli newspapers, Bidou and its environs have been the site of numerous violent attacks resulting in hospitalization of some workers constructing the barrier and some police personnel. Bidou is also the site of non-violent protests occurring either at the same time as the violent attacks or without violence. It is alleged that individuals engaged in the two activities freely intermix, resulting in claims that the non-violent protesters are deliberately providing safe haven to those engaged in violence. The two were arrested in April 2004 and ordered by the court at that time to distance themselves from the area of Bidou.

[edit] Further Reading

  • C. Seitz, ISM at the crossroads: the evolution of the International Solidarity Movement, Journal of Palestine Studies 22, 4 (Summer 2003), 50-62.

[edit] External links

Image:Peace_black.gif This page is part of the Anti-war and Peace Resources section.

Retrieved from "http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/International_Solidarity_Movement"
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