Jeff Halper

Dear friends,

The summer has been a busy time for ICAHD with ongoing projects and new initiatives. Although we continue to rebuild demolished Palestinian homes as political acts of resistance to the Occupation and pressure the Israeli government through our international advocacy to end its Occupation, the situation on the ground, unfortunately, is deteriorating; settlements keep growing rapidly, house demolitions continue unabated, the poverty and suffering of the Palestinians deepens as the Wall is completed and the Occupation shows definite signs of becoming permanent. Our efforts to bring a just peace to the region have taken on an even greater urgency than before.

Over the past few months ICAHD, through its Constructing Peace Campaign, has built over 62 homes. While we normally build in the Territories, a campaign to demolish “unrecognized villages” within Israel, housing some 150,000 Israeli [Arab] citizens, gains momentum; a thousand Palestinian and Bedouin homes were demolished inside Israel last year, more than in the Occupied Territories. The campaign of displacement begun in 1948 is ongoing. ICAHD is currently building five more homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and we have allocated funds to help rebuild the Bedouin village of Twail Abu Jarwal in the Negev which has been demolished NINE TIMES!!!

26 volunteers from Europe and the USA arrived in July for ICAHD’s annual Rebuilding Camp in the West Bank village of Anata. On the second day, the volunteers witnessed the demolition of a home close to the camp worksite. A decision was made by the volunteers and ICAHD staff to immediately begin rebuilding the house, so this year the Rebuilding Camp built two complete homes in two weeks.

ICAHD continues its international advocacy as well. We just received the Rachel Corrie Peace Award from the Italian town of Ovada near Genoa, and were presented with the Olive Branch Award at the first national conference of the Jewish Voice for Peace in the US. ICAHD staff participated in several international meetings, most recently the Madrid Social Forum and the UN Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace held in Brussels. ICAHD staffers, including myself, spend weeks on the road lobbying governments and networking with our colleagues. Our tours of the Occupied Territories are also in great demand among diplomats, journalists and fact-finding missions; we run about 4-5 tours a week.

Our latest initiative is the launching of this web page, www.18000homes.org. It is intended to bring home the enormity of Israel’s house demolition policy: the destruction of 18,000 homes of Palestinian families in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Please visit the page and send the link to your families, friends and colleagues. We would appreciate it if those of you with blogs or web sites would place a link to your pages as well. Contact our webmaster if you are willing to place a small banner on your site. We believe this new web page will serve as a valuable tool for educating the public. Help us get the word out! Finally, in the name the ICAHD staff and our support groups ICAHD USA and ICAHD UK, I would like to thank all of you who have supported our efforts. Please consider donating to us again at this time when we need help urgently to advocate effectively for the end of home demolitions and the Occupation.

  In solidarity,
  Jeff Halper, Coordinator
  The staff and Board of Directors
  ICAHD-Israel

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice,
peace and brotherhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr.