Madison Rafah Journal

Commemorating the life of Rachel Corrie

Sunday, March 21
4:30-5:30 pm Silent Auction viewing and bidding
5:30-6:30 pm Vegetarian Dinner by Lulu's restaurant
6:30-9:00 pm Program
Fellowship Hall, First United Methodist Church
203 Wisconsin Avenue, Madison [Map]

A benefit dinner and program sponsored by the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and Madison Playgrounds for Palestine.

Tickets for the dinner and program are $15 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under. All proceeds will help provide Palestinian children with a new playground in Beit Sahour, West Bank through Playgrounds for Palestine, and a water purification system for a school in Rafah, Gaza through the Maia Project of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA).

Besides information on these two humanitarian projects, the program will mark the seventh anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death on March 16 with (Read on …)

Photo: Laura Durkay

Edgewood College
Predolin Humanities Center [Map], Room 307
Madison
7:00 pm

Josh Brollier, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Non-Violence, will give a talk with slides about this historic January 2010 march where 1300 delegates from 43 countries tried to break the siege of Gaza from Egypt.

Sponsored by Pax Christi, Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, and Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. For more information email rafahsistercity (at) yahoo.com or call 238-1227.

ARON HELLER, Associated Press, March 9, 2010

JERUSALEM – Vice President Joe Biden condemned an Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in disputed east Jerusalem on Tuesday, casting a cloud over a high-profile visit that had been aimed at repairing ties with the Jewish state and kickstarting Mideast peace talks.

Israel's Interior Ministry said late Tuesday that it had approved construction of 1,600 new apartments, an embarrassing setback for Biden after a day of warm meetings with top Israeli officials.

Although ministry officials said the announcement was procedural and unconnected to the visit, a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was blindsided and tried to contain the damage at a late-night dinner with Biden.

Nonetheless, Biden issued a harshly worded statement after the dinner, saying its timing was especially troubling by coming on the eve of a new round of U.S.-mediated peace talks.

(Read on …)

Israel builds still more facts on Palestinian ground, while stalemate persists

The Economist | Mar 4th 2010 | JERUSALEM

EVEN as the Americans strive to jump-start fresh talks between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli government has been using the hiatus to intensify the refashioning of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as their future capital. This week the city’s Israeli mayor, Nir Barkat, unveiled his latest plan to turn Palestinian districts into Jewish biblical heritage parks. Fearing that their half of the city is being cast in an increasingly Israeli mould, Palestinian stone-throwers clashed with Israeli forces on the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, which Muslims venerate for its al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, and which Jews revere as the site of the biblical Temple. While George Mitchell, Barack Obama’s envoy, is yet again bidding to open “proximity talks” between the two sides, the Palestinians have been literally losing ground.

Unlike previous Israeli prime ministers, who built on the open hilltops above Arab population centres in the West Bank and on the edge of Jerusalem, Binyamin Netanyahu and his officials are concentrating on Jewish settlements bang in the midst of them. Car-parks and conservation areas, rich with Israeli symbols, are sprouting across East Jerusalem. Settlers with state protection are opening religious schools there. Scarcely a week passes without an Israeli newspaper heralding new Jewish housing units being built in Arab districts. Israeli archaeologists are scraping away the eastern parts of the city’s Arab surface in search of a Jewish past. Last month one of them declared she had “probably” found King Solomon’s city walls.

Inside the Old City itself (see map), the Israeli government’s East Jerusalem Development company has begun to interrupt the main Palestinian artery into the ancient centre, for sewage works. Mr Barkat says the project will improve services, but Palestinians fear it presages fresh archaeological digs aimed at exposing Jewish ties along the pilgrims’ route to the Temple that Jewish groups from the religious right seek to rebuild. To fulfil millennial Jewish yearning to restore the tabernacle, the company is also repairing what it says are ancient ablution pools.

(Read on …)

Parents want case to highlight events that led to American activist's death under Israeli army bulldozer

Rory McCarthy, guardian.co.uk, 23 February 2010

Peace activist Rachel Corrie died while protesting in front of a bulldozer trying to destroy a Palestinian home in Rafah in March 2003. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP

Jerusalem — The family of the American activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago, is to bring a civil suit over her death against the Israeli defence ministry.

The case, which begins on 10 March in Haifa, northern Israel, is seen by her parents as an opportunity to put on public record the events that led to their daughter's death in March 2003. Four key witnesses – three Britons and an American – who were at the scene in Rafah when Corrie was killed will give evidence, according the family lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein.

The four were all with the International Solidarity Movement, the activist group to which Corrie belonged. They have since been denied entry to Israel, and the group's offices in Ramallah have been raided several times in recent weeks by the Israeli military.

(Read on …)

Voices of the Peacemakers: From Roots to Reconciliation
May 23- June 5, 2010
Delegation Leaders: Anna Baltzer and Cathy Sultan
Co-Sponsored with the National Peace Foundation

This delegation will explore Palestinian and Israeli efforts to achieve peace and a resolution to their conflict based on justice. The delegation will feature meetings with Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers — leaders of civil society groups, grassroots organizers, religious leaders and more. Given the current situation in the West Bank, the delegation will focus on learning about the current challenges facing nonviolent activists resisting occupation. May also marks the annual commemoration of Israel’s independence and the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) and the birth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Your participation as an eyewitness to the situation will enrich your understanding of the conflict and empower your work back in the United States.

As with all delegations, you will meet with ‘ordinary’ Israelis and Palestinians, and people and organizations working for peace and justice. Delegates will confront and analyze the US role in the conflict and wrestle with ways to translate your experience to others when you return home.

(Read on …)