Vic Palestine Group Film Screening - Tuesday 29 September, 5pm, Victoria University

Couscous Dates Almonds Olive Oil

These are four Palestinian food products currently available at your local Trade Aid Shop http://www.tradeaid.co.nz/

Support Palestinian Producers

Che Guevara Tribute - Supported by Wellington Palestine Group - Saturday 13 June, 6pm, St John's Hall (cnr. Willis or Dixion St)

Israelis get four-fifths of scarce West Bank water, says World Bank

By Rory McCarthy

Jerusalem -- A deepening drought in the Middle East is aggravating a dispute over water resources after the World Bank found that Israel is taking four times as much water as the Palestinians from a vital shared aquifer.

The region faces a fifth consecutive year of drought this summer, but the World Bank report found huge disparities in water use between Israelis and Palestinians, although both share the mountain aquifer that runs the length of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water supply, while Israel, which controls the area, takes the rest, the bank said.

Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water a person each year, against 75 cubic metres for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans, the bank said. Increasingly, West Bank Palestinians must rely on water bought from the Israeli national water company, Mekorot.

In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians are surviving on as little as 10 to 15 litres a person each day, which is at or below humanitarian disaster response levels recommended to avoid epidemics. In Gaza, where Palestinians rely on an aquifer that has become increasingly saline and polluted, the situation is worse. Only 5%-10% of the available water is clean enough to drink.

The World Bank report, published last month, provoked sharp criticism from Israel, which disputed the figures and the scale of the problem on the Palestinian side. But others have welcomed the study and its findings.

Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli head of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said there was a clear failure to meet basic water needs for both Israelis and Palestinians, and that Israelis were taking "the lion's share".

"The bottom line is there is a severe water crisis out there, predominantly on the Palestinian side, and it will be felt even worse this coming summer," Bromberg said at a conference on the issue in Jerusalem.

Film Showing!!!!

Come along and watch Arna's Children, a great doco exposing more of the bleak realities in Palestine.

Palestine Teach-In !!!

Canada closes doors on Galloway

British lawmaker George Galloway has been banned from visiting Canada to deliver an anti-war speech over his support for blockaded Gaza.

Canada's immigration service says the outspoken anti-war legislator was denied entry on national security grounds.

Calling the ban "idiotic", Galloway vowed to use all means at his disposal to overturn the ruling.

"The outrageous decision is not something I'm prepared to accept," Galloway said Friday.

Meanwhile, the Canadian immigration ministry said the decision would not be overturned since it was designed to "protect Canadians from people who fund, support or engage in terrorism".

Galloway violated EU sanctions on Gaza earlier in March by handing over more than 1.5 million pounds of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip.

Canada considers Hamas, the democratically-elected Palestinian government confined to the territory, as a terrorist group.

Israel annexing East Jerusalem, says EU

A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of "actively pursuing the illegal annexation" of East Jerusalem.

The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority's credibility and weakening support for peace talks. "Israel's actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making," says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem. The report, obtained by the Guardian.

Fundraiser for Gaza

Khalid Amayreh - Obama's Inauspicious Beginning

With George Bush now dumped into the dustbin of history, millions of people around the world are hoping that the new American president Barak H. Obama will make a genuine departure from the conspicuously criminal policies that characterized his predecessor’s gloomy era.

Undoubtedly, Bush excelled in the perpetration of evil. He murdered, killed, deceived and lied, thinking he was doing a great service to America and the world.

His era was drenched with blood, mostly the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, killed unjustly under the misleading rubric of “the war on terror.”

Hi Everybody,

here are the details of the March for next week, please bring any old keys etc along to the March to represent the number of dead in Gaza since the beginning of the Siege.....we want to have around 1000 keys on the day.

'Die In' for Gaza/Palestine

'Die In' for Gaza/Palestine

Meet: Tuesday 13 January - 12.00 midday

Rabin memorial - Harris Street, Wellington

(Organised by Christians for Justice in Palestine)

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Christians for Justice in Palestine (CFJP)

CFJP is a group of Christians shocked into action by the present massive casualties in Gaza. We have gathered to demand a more active role from the NZ government in ensuring a just and lasting peace in Palestine.

As an initial action, we will be meeting at the Rabin memorial in Harris Street for a moment of silence to remember the 60 years of dispossession and suffering of Palestinians since 1948. The group will then move to Civic Square where a mass 'die-in' will take place. Participants will be invited to 'die' as a symbolic representation of the lives being lost at present.

At the end of the protest, a petition will be presented to the government via the nearby National Party headquarters.

The protest will be non-violent. All who wish to participate - believers or non-believers are invited. Please bring/ wear "bloodstained" clothes and/or bandages to be presented with the petition. Religious ministers are invited to wear their clerical garb.

Contacts: Cat Noakes-Duncan & John Maynar

Wellington Palestine Group's Statement

The Wellington Palestine Group states that it was collectively responsible for the action which Gerard Burns undertook at the Yitzak Rabin Memorial in Wellington on Tuesday. Gerard Burns courageously carried out the symbolic act which was prepared and planned by the Group.

Wellington Palestine Group spokesperson Omar Khamoun says “we chose this memorial in Wellington as the object of our protest to highlight the long trajectory of Palestinian dispossession and suffering, which former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was party to”.

Khamoun says “Israeli historians document Rabin’s war crimes including the key role he played in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the districts of Lydda and Ramleh in 1948; his leading of Israeli forces in the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights. He is also infamous for his "broken bones policy" which openly encouraged breaking bones of peaceful Palestinian demonstrators during the first Intifada”
The memorial which was placed in Wellington in 2000 without public consultation is sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Khamoun says “The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is a racist organisation that administers the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by managing land stolen from the Palestinians for the exclusive benefit of the Israeli Jewish population.”
The group also chose the memorial to illustrate the insidiousness of the international public relations campaign waged by Israel creating mythical stories of figures like Rabin as peacemakers. “Rabin was never a peacemaker. Even after the signing of Oslo, he declared in front of the Israeli parliament that Israel will get peace without conceding anything”. Khamoun says.

The Wellington Palestine Group supports a solution to the Palestine/Israel question based on UN resolutions 242 and 194, but it sees this becoming increasingly difficult because of Israeli settlements and ongoing military repression.

Vatican justice and peace minister Cardinal Renato Martino described Gaza yesterday as “increasingly resembl[ing] a big concentration camp.” The military history of Rabin and the present bombing of Gaza make “spilling blood” on Rabin’s plaque entirely appropriate.

If the newly founded ‘Kiwi Friends of Israel’ are so offended by a drop of blood mixed with water soluble paint, then they should be outraged by the rivers of blood flowing in the streets, mosques, schools and hospitals of Gaza. What is really being desecrated, a stone monument or the sacredness of real lives?

PALESTINIANS MASSACRED IN GAZA: PROTEST VIGILS

The Wellington Palestine Group will hold the following protest vigils against the war crimes Israel is currently perpetrating in the Occupied Gaza Strip:



Thursday 08 January

12 - 2.00pm

Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade

195 Lambton Quay (cnr. Panama Street)

Wellington




Thursday 15 January

12 - 2.00pm

Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade

195 Lambton Quay (cnr. Panama Street)

Wellington