Gaza: Together we will tear down the Apartheid Wall!

November 9 – 16, 2011
9th Annual Week against the Apartheid Wall

At the beginning of this year the people in the Arab world rose up, took to the streets and squares and made crucial steps on the long road towards a just and free Middle East. The Palestinian Intifada has become Arab; the walls of fear from dictatorship have been torn down. People in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, and beyond have inspired the world with their courage. They have shown that people, determined and united, can make a difference. Spring turned into summer, summer to fall, and as we look still ahead to winter, the world witnesses the uprisings continuing in full force. We are not tired!

Prolonged, popular struggle, however, comes at a high cost. Mass killings, large scale arrests, and torture have been used by the regimes to protect their power. Now it is time for the world, the movements, organizations and people of conscience to stand up and support the Arab and Palestinian people by pressuring their governments, institutions, and corporations to withdraw their protection and support of Israeli apartheid, colonialism, and occupation because Palestine is the heart of the Arab world and without a solution to the Palestinian issue there will be no lasting peace and justice!

Now is the time for the autumn of solidarity with Palestinian popular resistance.

We know that together we can stop the Wall and with it the Israeli project of the bantustanization of our people and the Israeli attempts to bury our dreams of liberation and justice.

The Apartheid Wall, once finished, together with the settlements and military closed areas would annex some 50% of the West Bank and steal most of its water resources. The Wall isolates Jerusalem and puts over 260,000 Palestinians at risk of expulsion. With some 60% already constructed, popular resistance has played a primary role in delaying the construction of the Wall. When Israel started its construction in 2002 it was to be completed in 2005; then in 2008; then in 2011; this year Israel set the deadline for 2020.

We are continuing the struggle, but we need your solidarity.

Palestinian activists and communities are paying a high price for their resistance to the ghettoization of their people. Hundreds have been imprisoned, thousands injured, and 16 have been killed in their attempts to save their lands and preserve their rights.

The Arab Spring demonstrates that we are not alone in this struggle.

The Arab Spring has changed the Middle East. Solidarity protests have shaken Tunisia, the people in Egypt have literally closed down the Egyptian embassy. To the north, hundreds of Palestinian refugees together with Syrians and Lebanese have torn down the fences in the Syrian occupied Golan Heights and Lebanon and they did what Israel fears: Palestinian refugees stepped on their ancestral lands.

Emboldened by impunity, Israeli reaction was murder, repression, and more walls. Israeli authorities already announced the construction of a wall along the Egyptian border and in the Syrian Golan Heights.

However, no walls will shield Israeli apartheid against our spirit of rebellion and our calls for justice and self-determination.

Visit the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign web site: www.StopTheWall.org

ENDS

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