There has not been a lot of good news on the Palestine front as of late.
After Viva Palestina 3 successfully defied an epic obstacle course of bureaucratic intransigence, broken promises, and serious police violence to reach Gaza, Egypt deported convoy leader George Galloway and announced that all further aid convoys would be banned from its territory.
So far, all of the Gaza Freedom March participants who have tried to reach Gaza independently have been turned back...except perhaps for one Indian man who had a letter of support from his embassy, something no American or Canadian can expect to get.
And, inconceivably cruel as it may seem, terrifying rumors of another war on Gaza continue to circulate.
So it is with great joy that I report a victory for our movement: Mohammad Othman and Jamal Juma', two prominent nonviolent activists with the Stop the Wall coalition in the West Bank, have both been released from Israeli prison.
Mohammad was arrested on September 22 and Jamal on December 16. Both were held without charges or trial, solely because of their participation in nonviolent resistance activities.
Another prominent nonviolent West Bank activist, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, is still imprisoned...along with up to 11,000 other Palestinians who are not famous, many of whom have never been charged with any crime. And the coordinated crackdown on the nonviolent resistance movement continues--one of the latest victims is Czech citizen Eva Novakova, the ISM media coordinator in the West Bank, who was arrested "Palestinian style" in a 3am night raid on her home in Ramallah and deported to Prague.
But there is no mistake that the release of these two activists is a victory extracted by the significant international solidarity campaigns that have been built around their cases. "The massive support and actions of international civil society clearly made my imprisonment too uncomfortable for the Israeli authorities," said Jamal Juma' upon his release. "This international solidarity has given our popular struggle against the Wall further strength. We are deeply thankful for all the efforts."
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