The destruction two weeks ago (July 9) of fourteen Palestinian homes in
Shuafat Refugee Camp at East Jerusalem was the shocking news to be seen on TV
screens all over the world - as was the arrest of Rabbi Arik Asherman who lay
down with other Israelis and Palestinians in front of the bulldozers. The
additional destruction of a score of Palestinian homes at Rafah on the day
after didn't leave place for anymore doubt: the Sharon government is not
interested in achieving calm. Foreign Minister Peres felt obliged to criticize
the rendering homeless of hundreds of people though he did not emphasize any
principled objection but rather that "such actions hurt Israel's image" and
"severely damage the Foreign Ministry's international public relations
campaign."

In these weeks in which killings (the ones called "liquidations" as well as the
ones called "terrorist attacks") became a daily routine, as well as the ever
more strangling sieges of Palestinian towns and villages, we had to complete
the long-overdue task of producing and sending out the July issue of The Other
Israel newsletter. The increasing tensions in a way made it possible: the
situation was bad enough for the mainstream media to pick up themselves the
things which so often only get the attention of peace and human rights groups
sending out desperate alerts and press releases. In the past weeks it was
forces bigger than us who warned about the apparent preparations of our
government for full-scale war. And at last the need of international
intervention, at least at the level of sending observers, has become an issue
with which our government must reckon.

In the newsletter, a double issue of 24 pages there is a long and thorough
analysis of the first 100 days of the Sharon-Peres government, from which it
becomes crystal clear that Sharon has been trying to collect credit points from
the international community in order to gain a free hand against the
Palestinians (you can read the full article, The Option Of Naked Force,
which is editorial of The Other Israel 98/99, July 2001 at
http://members.tripod.com/~other_Israel/ed.html). Or - if you didn't see the
printed version before - make use of the free sample option (don't forget to
include your postal address).

In the printed version, you find also reports on a variety of many little,
sometimes bigger actions through which hundreds of very devoted peace
activists mobilized by such groups as Gush Shalom, Coalition of Women, Rabbis
for Human Rights, Ta'ayush, Committee Against House Demolitions, International
Solidarity have been trying, together and alternatingly, to confront
government policy - often leading to an involuntary visit to a
police station located in a settlement, and sometimes to the first aid section
of a hospital. Special attention was given to the long-drawn struggle of El
Khader villagers against the encroaching Efrat settlers. .

Together with the newsletter the readers of this issue also receive the
concrete maps which show what Barak's so-called "generous offers" were really
worth - produced as handbills in great quantity by Gush Shalom, for those who
didn't yet see it on the Gush Shalom website http://www.gush-shalom.org/. (You
find there also the weekly statements published as paid ads in Ha'aretz and
posted on the site in Hebrew and English, as are the most current articles of
Uri Avnery.)
***
Furthermore:

- The Feisal Husseini Memorial
- The solidarity visit to Khares.
- Signs of a revival of the larger peace camp
- Increasing number of CO's and
manifestations of reservists' discontent

- The Feisal Husseini Memorial
The government's attempt to ban the memorial service 40 days after Feisal
Husseini's death at the Orient House, Palestinian headquarters in East
Jerusalem, backfired. The heavy police cordons greatly reduced the number of
people able to attend, but they also drew worldwide attention to the defiant
ceremony which did take place in the besieged building, and underlined the fact
that Israel is an occupier in East Jerusalem. We have been able to play our
part: a handful of Israelis did manage to penetrate into the Orient House and
were treated as guests of honor in the memorial (Uri Avnery prominent among
them) while activists of Gush Shalom and Peace Now who were denied entry held a
nicely-covered protest at the massive police barrier.

- The solidarity visit to Khares.
Last week the army imposed a tight siege on the villages of
Khares, Kif-el-Khares and Dir Istiya, with a total population of more than
10,000 people, prohibiting movement in and out, even on foot, and erecting
barriers cutting off the three villages even from each other. All this,
supposedly, in retalation for some shooting on a settler bus, in which nobody
was hurt. (Needless to say, the army took no measures of this kind when on the
same day a settler-based underground organization claimed responsibility for
the random killing of three Palestinians, including a baby, and the wounding of
four others).
This week several dozens of us - activists of Gush Shlom, Women for a Just
Peace, Ta'ayush and Rabbis for Human Rights - managed to elude the army and
slip into Khares, climbing terraces and walking through olive tree groves. We
were able to bring a message of solidarity to the crowd of unbroken villagers,
to walk with them through the streets of the village and together with them
take up shovels and break down one of the earthen barriers erected by the army.

But we could not be there on the following night, when the army and security
services made a late-night raid on the same village, hauling eight Palestinians
out of their homes and taking them off to detention on unspecified charges...

- Signs of a revival of the larger peace camp
The open calls for all-out war made by cabinet ministers and generals, and the
detailed plans for such war made by the army and leaked to the international
press, seem to start arousing the larger peace camp from its lethargy and
disarray. The leaders of this camp - Peace Now, Meretz and what is left of the
Labour doves - conducted talks with an impressive group of Palestinian
leaders, culminating with a joint paper presented at a press conference
yesterday; there was good media coverage for Peace Now's "stop the unnecessary
war" vigil in Jerusalem; there is an increasing number of articles in the
mainstream media contesting the myth of "Barak's generous offers" whose
rejection by the Palestinians was made into a justification for all acts of
oppression; Yossi Sarid of Meretz, long the head of Sharon's "loyal
opposition", started to make statements rather more suitable for the head of
Israel's largest dovish party - such as outright support for sending
international observers to the territories, criticizing (in at least some
cases) the "liquidation" (in newest government euphemism "interception") of
Palestinians deemed to be terrorists, and also admitting that Israel has broken
the US-brokered cease-fire at least as often as the Palestinians did.
It is all supposed to culminate with a march and rally against the threatening
war, which the "Peace Coalition" intends to hold in Tel-Aviv on the evening of
August 4. It remains to be seen whether these forces would be able to hold to
their posts in the kind of eventuality for which the Israeli warmongers are
openly waiting, and which many actions by the army and settlers seem calculated
to provoke: another suicide bombing at an Israeli population
center...

- Increasing number of CO's and manifestations of reservists' discontent
Official Israeli Army estimates, leaked to the foreign press and from there
retranslated and prominently published in Israel, put the price of reconquest
of the Palestinian cities at hundreds of Israeli lives and thousands of
Palestinians.
It might not be a coincidence that the past month saw a clear increase in the
number of Conscientious Objectors imprisoned, either for refusal to take part
in the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians or for refusal to enlist
altogether.
And it might be no coincidence, either, that the media is nowadays full of
reports about far wider manifestations of discontent among reserve soldiers -
not directly challenging the occupation and government policy, but more than
tangenially connected with them. Reservists charged with protecting one of the
illegal "outposts" created by settlers on seized Palestinian land are
complaining of harsh conditions and of haughty treatment by the settlers which
they protest, and who refuse to let their protectors use electricity from the
settlers' generator; at another reserve unit, whose revered commanding officer
was killed in the beginning of the intifada and which was now called up again,
dozens of reservists are known to have obtained psychiatric discharges or
simply failed to show up; a whole battalion, soldiers and officers together,
threatened not to show up for a tour of duty unless guaranteed state-finaced
insurance in case of being killed or disabled, and negotiated with the miltary
authorities in the exact manner of well-unionized workers... With the ongoing
struggle requiring more and more intensive use of the army's limited manpower
pool, the incidence of both phenomena - principled outright refusal of service
by individuals and organized discontent in whole units - is likely to increase.

We would like to end this message by asking you to send letters of solidarity
to three conscientous objectors presently spending time behind bars in the
military prisons and thus at the forefront of the struggle to prevent the
coming war.

- Conscript David Haham-Kherson (18.5), jailed for refusing to serve with his
unit near Jericho in the West Bank. At his trial he declared: "I believe in an
army of defence, not an army of occupation. As a Jew, I am not prepared to
take part in a campaign of repression and denial of freedom."

Letters (preferably postcards) to: David Haham-Herson, I.D. 7189924, Military
Prison 4, Military Post 02507, IDF, Israel;
or via his parents, Tel: 972.2.6783418, e-mail: nono@bgumail.bgu.ac.il

- Conscript Hilmi Nafaa, now on his third term of imprisonment for refusal to
serve in the IDF, is member of the Druze community of Israel - a community
whose members are subject to military conscription just like Jews, and also to
the discrimination in all spheres of life against Arabs.
Hilmi Nafaa prefered imprisonment to conscription. In prison, too, Druze CO's are habitually treated much more harshly by the military authorities than Jewish ones.

Letters: Hilmi Nafaa, Military Prison 6, Military Post 03734, IDF.

- IDF reserve Serg. Alex Lyakas (26), who refused either to serve in the
occupied territories or to support the units there by cooking meals for them at
a kitchen located within pre-`67 Israel, (the compromise offered by his
commander). Lyakas, a student of computer science from Haifa, and an immigrant
from Lithuania in the former Soviet Union, wrote to his military superiors: “I
am not prepared to participate in taking human lives, violating their freedoms
or other natural rights, as I believe is being done today in the West Bank and
Gaza.”

Letters to: Alex Lyakas Military Prison 4, Military Post 02507, IDF.

Yesh Gvul is planning a solidarity vigil outside Prison 4 (Tzrifin) on
August 2 (info: Cherryk@zahav.net.il).
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Selected articles at the website http://other_Israel.tripod.com/