The BBC reports that, "Israel's supreme court has ordered the government to redraw the route of the West Bank barrier near Bilin village, a key focus of anti-barrier protest."

The Separation Wall is often used as a tool to destroy Palestinian villages, separating farmers from the fields that surround their communities, shutting producers off from local markets and depriving communities of access to traditional sources of water.

More than 5000 people rallied on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol on Sunday, June 10th to call for an end to the 40 year Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They represented over 300 organizations from around the country including Grassroots International—Grassroots’ Executive Director Nikhil Aziz participated in the rally. The organizations ranged from faith-based groups and labor unions to civil rights, students’, women’s and lesbian and gay groups. They demanded that the U.S. government act to bring about a lasting and just peace and an end to the occupation and conflict.

[img_assist|nid=768|title=Khalid Hedmi|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=75][img_assist|nid=769|title=Delegations meet|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=75]Farmers and activists from North America and Palestine meet in Mali to discuss their common struggles.

A recent World Bank report observed that the Palestinian economy was in the throes of "one of the deepest recessions in modern history exceeding the scale of economic losses suffered by the U.S. in the Great Depression, or Argentina during the recent financial collapse." More than one out of three available labor force participants are unemployed. And to keep pace with the expanding available labor force, 30,000 new jobs would have to be created each year. The highest percentage of unemployment is concentrated among youth: 37.2% among 15-19 year olds and 36.3% among 20-24 year olds.

[Editor's note: Nikhil Aziz and Jennifer Lemire have been in Palestine for the last week. We are very excited to bring you their reports from the Occupied Territories.]

For Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation, each day is an act of resistance. Each day that Palestinian men, women and children stand in line at the Qalandia Checkpoint waiting for Israeli permission to pass, each day that Wafa has to remind her daughter to conserve water because there might not be enough to last the week, each day that Ya'cub passes buildings in Jerusalem that before 1948 used to belong to his family, each day that Khaled works with farmers in Hebron to build cisterns to collect precious rainwater, each day that Jamal meets with families struggling to stay on their land in Salfit as the Separation Wall casts shadows on their homes, each day that Hasan helps organize Palestinian laborers working in the informal sector of the economy, each day that Samia walks to the fields just outsider her village to harvest zataar and lettuce from her garden. Each of these small acts is one of quiet resistance.

With much of the World's attention focused on the Gaza Strip and the impending Israeli disengagement, slated to begin Monday, Israel is quietly continuing its occupation of the West Bank.

Most of our partners, while not unhappy to see the settlers go, question how "disengaged" Israel can really be when they will continue to control all of their borders, land and sea, and even the airspace around Gaza. Most also fear that the disengagement from Gaza will be at the expense of the West Bank.

Waiting is something Palestinians live with — they wait in refugee camps established as temporary solutions in 1948, they wait in political limbo, they wait to learn what the disengagement plan will mean for their lives, and they wait in lines. (We ourselves found ourselves waiting in an hour long line to get into Ramallah yesterday for a meeting with our partner, the Rural Womens' Development Society.)

Many in the West Bank do not have to wait, however, to see how the geographic lines will be drawn in the peace plan blueprints because construction has already been completed in several areas. In the north, the Wall now completely encircles the city of Qalqiliya and encloses Tulkarm in a dead zone between the Wall and the invisible Green Line established in 1967 separating Israel from the Occupied Territories.

Over breakfast Fabricio read us the headlines from one of Jerusalem's daily newspapers…It seems Sharon has encouraged the friends and families of settlers to visit their loved ones in Gaza this Passover because it will be the last time they will be able to enter. After that, the Israeli army will move quickly forward with the disengagement plan - much sooner than the original July timeframe.

One of the objectives of our trip was to get a better sense of what the disengagement will mean for Gazans. The details of the plan remain quite mysterious and our questions about the disengagement were consistently met with shrugs. How will goods get in and out? What will become of the homes, lands and greenhouses of the settlements? How difficult will it be to get exit permits? Who will control the water and electricity? Will workers be able to continue working in Israel and in the industrial zones outside of Gaza? Will the Israelis coordinate at all with the Palestinian Authority?