An Urgent Plea from Israelis

Dear Chevra,

What follows is both urgent and important. We hope that American Jews who affirm that Israel's physical security and its Jewish ethical future require a just and decent peace with the Palestinians will help support the emergency actions being called by a number of Israeli peace and human rights groups.

Of the groups mentioned, we have especially been in touch with Rabbis for Human Rights (the only Israeli rabbinic group that includes Reconstructionist, Reform, Orthodox, & Conservative rabbis) and Bat Shalom, an Israeli women's group that works closely with Palestinian women. We trust these people.

We will very soon send you a further letter with our suggestions for action (see the Action Guide to Support Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking ).

In the meantime, we urge you to plan for holding on April 4 a "Seder for the Children of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah," at which you can share with your friends and community further plans for action. (This Seder was woven by Rabbi Arthur Waskow. It recounts the story both of conflict and of grass-roots peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the Torah and Koranic stories of the ancient struggles and reconciliations in our two families. The home demolitions mentioned so powerfully below are one of the major themes of the Seder.)

The Seder appears in the current issue of Tikkun magazine. If you send to Shalom Center, P O Box 380, Accord NY 12404, a check for $8 and a stamped self-addressed LARGE (9x11) envelope bearing $2.09 in postage, we will send you the Tikkun issue and a memo with recommendations for making the Seder itself into an action in support of peace.

With blessings that your own actions for peace between the two families of Abraham will bring flowing back into your own life a sense of harmony and peace

---Cherie Brown, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, & Rabbi Arthur Waskow, for Break the Silence.

The Israeli statement follows:

WE THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS:

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; Bat Shalom; Rabbis for Human Rights (Friday only); Gush Shalom; The Alternative Information Center; Yesh Gvul; Netivot Shalom - Oz v'Shalom (Friday only); The Student Committee for Human Rights of the Hebrew University; Women in Black; The Committee for Solidarity with Hebron; The Arab Student Committee of the Hebrew University; Campus, Tel Aviv University; Action Committee of Jaffa; A Bridge to Peace; The Committee for the Arabs of Jaffa

ANNOUNCE AN ISRAELI CAMPAIGN AGAINST PERPETUATION OF THE OCCUPATION:

• 6,000 Palestinian houses demolished on the West Bank and East Jerusalem
• 30,000 people left homeless
• Tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land confiscated
• Hundreds of thousands of fruit and olive trees uprooted
• More than 90% of the Palestinians confined to isolated cantons
• 180 settlements established - 13 in the last few weeks - with 180,000 settlers
• A massive system of by-pass roads carving up the West Bank and foreclosing peace

In the last few weeks Netanyahu's government has escalated its policy of settlement and displacement in the Occupied Territories in a last-minute attempt to frustrate any peace settlement. Hundreds of bulldozers are at work 24 hours a day in a desperate attempt to create irreversible "facts" on the ground. The massive violations of human rights involved in house demolitions, land expropriations, the uprooting of thousands of fruit trees, harassment of farmers during planting season, closure and other expressions of the Occupation have become intolerable.

DON'T LET THE BULLDOZERS DEMOLISH THE PEACE!
Join Us In Opposing The Perpetuation of the Occupation!

HOW:
Come build with us Palestinian houses demolished by the Israeli authorities on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Come plant with us olive trees in place of those uprooted by the settlers and the Civil Administration. Come join us in protesting by-pass roads designed to close Palestinians into small and disconnected enclaves. The time has come to act! Now - before it's too late.

WHEN AND WHERE:
JERUSALEM

-- Friday (12/3). Buses will leave from the parking lot of Gan Hapa'amon (the Liberty Bell Garden) at 9 AM (return by 2:30 PM).
-- Saturday (13/3). Buses will leave from the parking lot of the Gan Hapa'amon (Liberty Bell Garden) at 10 AM.
TEL AVIV
-- Saturday (13/3). Buses will leave from the Takhanat Rekevet Tsafon (Northern Train Station), by the El Al Mosof/Terminal at 10 AM.
HAIFA

Saturday (13.3). Buses will leave from the Haifa Checkpoint at 9 AM and will pick up people at Tsomet Megiddo at 9:30 and Tsomet Iron at 9:40.

PRACTICAL MATTERS:

Wear comfortable clothes and shoes. Bring:
(a) WATER;
(b) lunch for yourself;
(c) a hat against the sun;
(d) a CAMERA - stills or video to document events as they unfold...

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

The two months left before the Israeli elections in May will be among the most momentous in the modern history of the Middle East. For over 20 years Israeli governments, guided by the steady yet quiet work of Ariel Sharon, have been "creating facts on the ground." A structure of occupation, displacement and apartheid has been systematically constructed around the Palestinian population of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. It is designed to ensure Israeli control and de facto annexation of more than half the Occupied Territories, while confining its two million Palestinians to an archipelago of small, crowded, impoverished and disconnected bantustans.

The process by which this has occurred over the past two decades is best described as "low-intensity warfare" against the Palestinians - creating permanent structures of control and segregation while avoiding any outright clash or conflict that might draw international attention or effective opposition from home and abroad. Most important, the structure of apartheid had to be constructed in a piecemeal fashion over many years, so that the overall conception could not be comprehended. The steps were small, disconnected in time and place, each so unimportant that it wouldn't create a major fuss -- a small Israeli settlement here, some Palestinian houses demolished there, a short and functional by-pass road around that village, some expropriated land over that hill, another "neighborhood" around Jerusalem, an industrial park connected to a "bloc" of settlements, temporary, then permanent constraints on Palestinian movement, "autonomy" within isolated enclaves. As the final pieces are now hastily put into place, we awake and find ourselves confronting nothing less than an entrenched system of annexation and apartheid.

The results are staggering. Since 1967 Israel has taken control of 70% of the Occupied Territories. While more than 90% of the Palestinians are confined to small and disconnected enclaves, some 350,000 Israelis have been moved into luxurious towns and settlements throughout the West Bank, Gaza and "Greater" Jerusalem. While Palestinians are unable to move freely without passes, Israel has constructed hundreds of kilometers of exclusively "Jewish" roads, eating up hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and burying the delicate environment under masses of concrete. While Israel has moved its most polluting industries to the West Bank, Palestinians have been reduced to poverty and dependence on Israeli labor markets. In the process some 6,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by the Israeli army as it attempts to check natural urban or village growth, leaving at least 30,000 people homeless. The Occupation has made life miserable for the Palestinian population. But we Israelis suffer as well the constant violence, the brutalizing of our young people who are sent to demolish other people's homes, the corruption that comes with exploited cheap and unprotected labor. We are all caught in a downward spiral of violence, war, economic decline, oppression, hatred, hopelessness.

We are now witnessing the completion of the annexation and apartheid process - indeed, a brazen attempt by the Netanyahu government to "steal" the elections by making them irrelevant. Even if Sharon/Netanyahu/Arens lose, they will have made Israel's control of the Occupied Territories irreversible, foreclosing the option of a Palestinian state forever. If they win and are pressured to implement the Wye Accords, they will have created such "facts on the ground" that after Wye no further withdrawal could ever be contemplated. Bulldozers rather than negotiations and the ballot box are deciding the fate of the peace process with dire consequences for all of us, Israeli and Palestinian alike.

Now is the time to act. As Israelis who believe in the possibility and moral necessity of a just peace, we must call attention to the government's drive to solidify the Occupation, and rise up to oppose it. Israel's increasing campaign of house demolitions symbolizes more than anything else the cruelty and oppression of the Occupation. On March 12 and 13, hundreds of Israelis will join Palestinians in rebuilding demolished Palestinian homes on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. We will replant groves of olive and fruit trees uprooted by the settlers and our army, and block construction of the massive system of by-pass highways used to carve the West Bank into bantustans.

Join us in working for peace.

For further information: Jeff Halper (02-624-8252); Yoav Hass (052-673467); Arik Ascherman (050-607034); Michal Weiner (03-6052650); Ya'akov Manor (09-767-84547); Adam Keller (03-3565804).