News of completed study tour & national march Photo: New graffiti that has appeared on the Separation Wall in Bethlehem Reports from the Latest Study Tour Photo: Jeff Halper speaking to the participants in the Maale Adumim settlement The internationals who participated in the recent study tour have much to process especially as this tour happened at a time when genocide is also spreading into the West Bank. They learned that many Palestinians are terrified of their homes being demolished and with them then being forcibly displaced. Arrests and imprisonments are a constant concern for anyone who dares to even criticize what Israel is doing. There is growing poverty and complete uncertainty about their future. The participants were safe the entire time. They witnessed many atrocities and have come away with greater understanding of the complexities and challenges involved in bringing peace with justice to this part of the world. Their commitment to this most moral struggle has deepened and many want to return for another visit. They know that their lives will never be the same again. Where is Humanity? Does Anyone Still See Us? Photo: Children in Hebron The 15 internationals who participated in the recent ICAHD 11-day issue-based study tour to Palestine/Israel were repeatedly asked these questions. Palestinians are staggered by world governments that not only support Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, but who also facilitate it. Several expressed that they have no faith in the international community and question why people are so uninterested and dispassionate about their suffering and death. The tour programme took the group as far south as the Naqab (Negev), north into the Galilee, west to Jaffa, Tel Aviv and Haifa and east along the Jordan Valley. Most of the time, the group was based in Bethlehem and then it relocated to Nazareth during the last few days. The tour acknowledged the historical roots of Israel’s settler colonial agenda and its attempt to take as much land as possible with as few of the indigenous Palestinian population remaining. Photo: The campus at Bethlehem University is an oasis of peace. Bethlehemites depend upon tourism and with the few internationals and pilgrims visiting, the economic impact on Bethlehem is devastating. Our hotel in Bethlehem opened just for our group as did the Walled Off Hotel where we were given a private tour of the premises which contains an outstanding museum that begins with the impact of the Balfour Declaration on the Palestinian people and continues with historical events up until the present. We received similar news about lack of internationals visiting when our host for our morning in Hebron met us. He said that since 7^th October, he’d provided three tours and of them, two have been for the ICAHD study tours. We were taken into the market and on into H2, the part of Hebron that is under Israeli military control and where extreme religious settlers reside. Far more netting has been installed over the market to protect the Palestinians from Israeli settlers who live above the market and who throw rubbish onto the Palestinians below. However, the netting doesn’t protect them from urine, faeces and acid also thrown by the settlers. The full article with additional photos is on the ICAHD website Report on Study Tour to Israel/Palestine Spring 2025 with ICAHD We are thrilled to share this report on the tour that has been prepared by Mary, one of the participants. Photo: The key at the entrance to the Aida Refugee Camp Travelling at this point in time was both revealing and alarming. Israel is scrutinising visitors in a way that it has not previously, using the electronic visa as an additional way to filter out travellers of whom they disapprove. Fear and Control are the key to maintaining the occupation and the sense of both dominate life. The tour was so full and intense that it’s impossible to capture everything here. We heard from a wide range of speakers and met ordinary people who are living in fear all the time. Nothing about the place and its appearance felt “normal” and the sense of danger for the Palestinians is ever present. The world has changed in the Occupied Territories since 7^th October (2023). We witnessed some of the effects over the past year and a half, namely an increase in disruption, imprisonments, expulsions, surveillance and lawlessness in the rural areas caused by settlers. Inevitably, there has also been a dramatic drop in international visitors to the region, which has resulted in high unemployment in the tourism and hospitality industry compounded by the ending of employment for West Bank Palestinians who previously worked in Israel. For the first time ever, some of the people we heard from feel they are facing an existential threat. There was a sense of weariness and resignation that the world knows what is happening and yet still no action is taken. On a visit to the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, we were able to walk around the permanent structures which were built in the 1960s and where 7k people now live. It is next to the large Israeli military camp in Bethlehem and has the eight-metre-high cement separation wall situated next to it. The wall itself displays ever more graffiti about the Occupation and tells tragic personal testimonies about the impact of this separation on ordinary people. The camp is under surveillance constantly and the IDF often raids the camp as it has in other areas of the West Bank. This is because Aida Refugee Camp is used for military training on raiding homes and because most resistance leaders have grown up in refugee camps. The Aida Youth Centre within the camp provides a safe and nurturing space for young people in the camp, particularly those who are under-achieving at school, providing mechanisms to deal with the trauma they face, including sport, arts, health and advocacy services. Despite this, the executive staff and board of the Youth Centre have been arbitrarily imprisoned and held without reason or explanation by the Israeli authorities. One of them described his experience of eight months of incarceration. Due to the torture he experienced, he thought he would die and said that he only survived by taking hope as his shield and with a strong determination to return home to his wife and baby son. During our stay, the larger Deheisheh Refugee Camp, also in Bethlehem, had leaflets distributed by the Israeli authorities to its 19k residents. The leaflets followed actions against refugee camps further north in the West Bank where residents have been attacked and forced out. "Residents of Deheisheh Camp, Be Alert! As you have already seen, the camps in the northern West Bank have paid a heavy price due to terrorist and militant activities. Wherever there is terrorism, life is damaged. Security forces will use all available means against any attempt or activity of this kind. scroll down the page The main march will assemble outside of Embankment Tube station, and we await the announcement about the exact assembly point for the Jewish bloc which is expected to be released on the 15^th. Once known, the location will be added to the banner on the ICAHD website home page. Coop Motion - Trading with Israel Members of the Co-op can vote on an important motion that calls for it to cease trading with Israel. It reads: Motion 13 Individual Member Motion – Trading with Israel. We ask the Board to demonstrate fairness and consistency in its ethical decision making and cease all trading with Israel. The Co-op was the first supermarket to boycott Russian products in March 2022, a week after the invasion of Ukraine. Since October 2023, Israel has completely destroyed Gaza and wiped out its key infrastructure - including schools, hospitals and universities. By July 2024, it was estimated that at least 186,000 Gazans – mainly women and children - had died as a result of the bombing, destruction of health facilities, and denial of essential aid (The Lancet 20.7.24). The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel has a 'plausible case to answer’ for genocide and that Israel's laws in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 are 'tantamount to apartheid'. Israel has invaded the sovereign nations of Lebanon and Syria. We urge the Board to show moral courage and leadership, apply the same ethical principles and values it did to Russia, and take all Israeli products off the shelves. There is also the opportunity to participate in an online Motions Event to discuss and debate this motion on 28th April - 18.00 to 19.30. Register in advance here. For more information see here . 27 April - 8 May - Jeff Halper's speaking tour of Germany. 'Two State Apartheid and Normalization: Erasing the Palestinian National Struggle" 27 April - Zürich, Switzerland 28 April - München 29 April - Mannheim 30 April - Stuttgart 1 May - Darmstadt 2 May - Bremen 3 May - Hannover 4 May - Bonn 5 May - Hamburg 6 May - Berlin 7 May - Berlin Contact Claus at ICAHD Germany for further details. Saturday, 17 May – National Demontration for Palestine – Nakba 77 - noon, central London. Details to follow. Saturday, 1 November – ICAHD UK Annual Conference, Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 235 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8EP. Details to follow nearer the time but please note the date in your diary Many thanks for your ongong support. If you're not already a member of ICAHD UK, please join usor make a donation to enable our campaign to spread at this critical time in history. From all at ICAHD UK. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Israeli-Committee-Against-House-Demolitions-UK/366423593418140 Facebook https://www.twitter.com/ICAHDUK/ Twitter http://icahduk.org Website mailto:info@icahduk.org Email April 2025 Newsletter * Reports from the Latest Study Tour to Palestine/Israel * National March for Palestine * Coop AGM Vote * Dates for Your Diary If you are not already a member of ICAHD UK, please join us (https://icahd.org/join-us/) to enable our campaign to spread at this critical time in history. Discoveries While at Bethlehem University we were told that since 7^th October 2023, it had only been visited by a few internationals with between one and four individuals visiting at a time. Ours was the first delegation to visit. We were impressed by the highly articulate students who addressed us in English and the staff who strive for improvement and excellence in the education it provides. The one who has been warned is now without excuse!" Continue reading the full report (https://icahd.org/2025/04/24/where-is-humanity-does-anyone-still-see-us-spring-study-tour-to-palestine-israel-2/) on the ICAHD webpage - National March for Palestine This march will commemorate the 77^th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, also known as the Palestinian catastrophe, when Israel forced 750,000 Palestinians from their homes to become refugees. Israel then demolished more than 530 towns and villages. The current genocide in Gaza that is spreading into the West Bank is referred to as Nakba 2 because Israel’s settler colonial agenda aims to complete clearing the land of the indigenous population. Its goal has always been to take as much land as possible with a minimum of Palestinians. This march, though peaceful, must demonstrate our outrage at our government’s complicity in allowing the genocide to happen. Dates for your Diary Saturday, 26 April – ICAHD UK AGM, 10am - on Zoom. This is a members-only event so if you have not already joined our organisation, do so now (https://icahd.org/join-us/) . Following the AGM, there will be an audience with Jeff Halper and the leaders of ICAHD Germany. — ICAHD (icahd.org) /newsletter/news-of-completed-study-tour-national-march