Feature: We Come Here to Protect Palestinians from Israeli Occupation

"I am a Jew and accept Israel, but I could not accept Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands," said Irene Siegel, an American Jew who would serve as a civilian international observer for the Israeli-Palestinian violence during the next 10 days.

Siegel is participating in a campaign organized by the International Solidarity Movement with the Palestinians, who announced on Thursday that the group would dispatch 60 to 70 foreign civilian volunteers to the occupied territories to "stand with the Palestinians in defiant non-violent actions against the forces of occupation."

At a news conference at the Jerusalem Hotel in East Jerusalem Thursday, the organizers said that in the next 10 days, Siegel and her colleagues would try to dismantle the roadblocks and defy the checkpoints set up by the Israeli army around the Palestinian- controlled areas since the violence began last September."

"They will also work with Palestinian farmers who "suffer from harassment and abuse" from the Israeli army and Jewish settlers, and stay in Palestinian villages overnight to play as human shields to protect the villages from Israel's "retaliation attacks," the organizers added.

Asked whether they were worried about their personal safety, most of the volunteers, from the U.S., England, Italy, France and other countries, said that the Palestinians have been living in such a situation for more than 10 months and they just stay for 10 days.

Terming the Israeli occupation as "military dictatorship," Linda Bevis, a high-school teacher from Seattle, the United States, told Xinhua that she came here to urge Israel to stop the illegal occupation and to protect the Palestinians' basic human rights.

Bevis said that most Americans, including her high-school students, are confused about the nature of the Israel occupation and know nothing about the U.S. military and economic assistance to the Israeli government, which amounts to 3 to 4 billion U.S. dollars every year.

She emphasized that some of the assistance was used by the Israeli government to suppress the Palestinians and the practice should be stopped.

Julien Salingue, a French youth, said that he came to tell the Palestinians that "they are not alone" against the brutal and illegal Israeli occupation.

Sve Finch, a member of the Women in Black Pro-Peace Organization, said that she came to call on all the governments to stop the assistance to Israel until the Jewish state ends the illegal occupation.

The volunteers, called "the civilian international observers," also urged the international community to immediately send " official observers" to monitor a ceasefire between the two sides following more than 10 months of violence, which has left more than 670 people dead, mostly Palestinians.

"We believed that the international community and our respective governments have failed to fulfill their obligation to the Palestinian people by failing to uphold the international law and ensure compliance with U.N. resolutions applicable to the occupied Palestinian territories," said a statement issued by the organizers at the news conference.

The Israeli government categorically rejected the proposal, put forward by the Group of Eight at a summit in July, for both sides to accept the international monitoring system, which the Palestinians have repeatedly called for.

Sera Simon, another American Jew taking part in the campaign, said that the Israeli government is arrogant and should have no authority to determine who could participate in the observer forces and when the forces should be sent to the region.

Asked why she, as a Jew, wants to protect the Palestinians from Israeli occupation, Sera replied that her actions are also protecting the interests of Jews, as the Jews, like all the nations in the world, should not violate human rights.

The campaign would only last for 10 days and it was not immediately clear whether there will be a second wave of foreign civilians to attend the movement, but Giovanna Lelli, an Italian, asserted that there is a permanent solution to the violence.

"The only way to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is through the implementation of the international law, namely, ending Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the realization of the right of return of Palestinian refugees, dismantling all the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and allowing the Palestinians to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital," Lelli said.

"The occupation must end. The occupation must end NOW," concluded Heidi Arraf, a major organizer, in her keynote speech.






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