Stop the Wall Campaign

Cicero Guedes, a former sugar cane cutter turned land rights activist, worked in Campo dos Goytacazes, a settlement in Brazil. There he organized with the Landless Workers Movement (MST) to help families achieve what he had received: legal claim to land as part of Brazil’s agrarian reform movement.

For his tireless work, Cicero was murdered, shot more than a dozen times while he rode his bicycle to the fields. His assassination seemed intended to send a message to other would-be land rights activists: organize and you will pay the ultimate price.

Israeli government repression of Palestinian human rights groups continues with arrest of Stop the Wall Youth Coordinator, Hassan Karajah.

At 2:30 in the morning of January 23, 2013, the Israeli military raided the home of Hassan Karajah, Youth Coordinator of Grassroots International partner, Stop the Wall Campaign, in the West Bank village of Safa, near Ramallah.  In the video below, Hassan’s brother gives a firsthand account of how the soldiers entered the house by force, searched all the members of the family (including Hassan’s mother and younger sister), ransacked their belongings, and took away computers and files, before blindfolding and arresting Hassan, and taking him away.   

The future success of global social movements depends largely on cultivating the next generation of activists. With the support of Grassroots International, local groups around the world are organizing creative social, political and environmental awareness programs explicitly engaging youth. Below are a few highlights from some of the grants we made this past year.

For the past year, Stop the Wall and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (both Grassroots International partners) have been working diligently with their Palestinian and Brazilian allies to fulfill the call issued in 2011 at the World Social Forum in Dakar. Then, participants expressed a desire to hold a thematic World Social Forum to explore ongoing social injustice in the occupied Palestinian territories; and to formulate an international response from the peoples of the world since states have either been unwilling or unable to provide pathways toward a just peace.

The Separation Wall is now 10 years old. The Israeli government has not reversed course despite protests, a UN General Assembly resolution (ES-10/13), an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion, and almost unanimous international condemnation.

Israeli military forces conducted an early morning raid of the Ramallah office of Stop the Wall, a civil society coalition organizing in opposition to the construction of the Separation Wall that Israel continues to build in the West Bank, and a Grassroots International partner.

By Alicia Tozour and Mina Remy

Compared to their Arab neighbors, the occupied Palestinian territories are endowed with an abundance of freshwater. Despite this fact, Palestinians do not have access to enough water to meet their daily needs or support their small farms. Although Israel’s illegal expansion into the Palestinian territories is commonly viewed as a land grab, the placement of Israeli settlements and the construction of the Separation Wall is also a strategic water grab.

On my last program visit to the Middle East, I had a chance to spend two days with Stop the Wall Campaign (a Grassroots International partner) staff and leaders throughout the West Bank. Through all of our conversations, two distinct but complementary themes arose – steadfastness and fierce determination from farmers who had been in the struggle for decades, and creative vibrant energy from youth who have recently taken on leadership in their local committees and in the broader movement.