DON’T BUY INTO THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: may 2011 :: RMTnews 22 DON’T BUY INTO THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION I was given the opportunity to spend five days in the West Bank, Palestine. I couldn't fly in to Palestine as Israel won't allow a working airport, so via Tel Aviv and then 50 minutes drive to Jerusalem. The driver, a Palestinian born and bred in Jerusalem, had the right ID and the correctly coloured number-plates to take me to a small family run hotel in east Jerusalem, this was to be base for the visit as I engaged with the Palestinian people, its trade unions, its political representatives, its refugees, its roads, its security, its laws and its neighbour who is occupying its land and taking its water and terrorising its people and children.... I learned and saw so much that in all honesty 800 words isn't enough, I could do 8,000 and still not do it justice. I saw how water is taken off Palestinian land and sold back to the Palestinians for more than twice the price that Israelis are charged, the same apartheid tariffs are in place for electricity and gas. Children as young as 12 are imprisoned for allegedly throwing stones, stood in a military court in shackles and cuffs, barely able to see over the dock at the hearing officer, Palestinians are under constant military law. I met Mohammed, an elected representative, his English was way better than mine and he laughed out loud and chuckled as he told me at the Red Cross headquarters where he is in self- imposed house arrest, “my children are too young to understand, they think I don't love them, they know I’m not in a prison, ‘come home with us daddy,’ they say" he told me. Mohammed was elected, but Israel didn't like the election result, so they put him in jail for 14 months, and 18 hours after his release they issued him with papers for exile, so he slipped into the Red Cross building some 229 days earlier and has stayed there ever since. Down to Hebron, here I found Israeli soldiers guarding roads and streets and pavements that the Palestinians could not use, only the Israeli settlers could use them, in reality this is basic, raw apartheid. I went to meet the Hamimi family. The men started the story about how their house was attacked by soldiers with tear gas, but the women who spoke after the men made it so much more real. When a woman is telling you how she will die to save her child, how she did everything to stop the soldiers firing into her house, how she was arrested and driven off to a military base and the children had to go to the top of the house to get away from the tear gas as the soldiers wouldn't let them out of the front door, to fresher air; when a woman, a mother is telling you this and passion is there and love is there and it is said with face contortion and emotion, I defy anyone not to feel disgust. The UN are here and they have solid detailed work of Palestine life. It is full of graphs and percentages and numbers THE WALL: The Israeli government is busy building walls around the Palestinian communities in the occupied territories. It has imposed a law which deems that if you fail to tend your land you lose it. Palestinian land on the wrong side of the wall which allow no access is confiscated by Tel Aviv. Garry Hassell of the RMT executive reports on a recent visit on behalf of the union to the Palestinian territories under Israeli occupation