Rights & Democracy Supports a Women's Peace Project in Palestinian Occupied Territories
MONTREAL – January 30, 2003 – Rights & Democracy has approved a grant of $10,000 to the International Women's Peace Service (IWPS) to cover the partial costs of running an International Women's House (IWH) in Hares, Salfit, Palestine, with the intention of creating a permanent presence of international monitors.
Hares is at the centre of a vulnerable group of Palestinian villages, located next to Ariel, the biggest of the illegal Israeli settlements, built on land forcefully expropriated from Hares and which is still expanding into more of the Palestinians' rich agricultural land.
The IWPS-Palestine will train women from the international community to witness, monitor, document and publicize human rights abuses; peacefully intervene to prevent such abuses from taking place and support the growth in non-violent resistance to the military occupation of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Gaza. The IWH will also provide a much needed safe space for Palestinian and Israeli peace and justice groups wanting to engage in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.
"Villages, like those around Hares, are particularly isolated due to the difficulty of transport caused by the closure and are vulnerable to isolated military and settler incursions. They do not, however, benefit from the presence of international monitors, journalists and NGOs as the major towns do," said Rights & Democracy's President Jean-Louis Roy.
The House was established at the urgent request of the local community to establish a permanent presence in Hares to provide timely responses to emergency calls. The presence of international civil society peace monitors will fill a void in the absence of an official United Nations presence in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. In the absence of any commitment by the UN for official UN human rights monitors, it has become imperative that civil society fill the gap. The IWPS project will attempt to do just this.
To enable efficient communication with the outside world and the fast and reliable transmission of information and evidence, the House will be equipped with digital still and video cameras, and the related technical equipment for basic media editing and Internet access. There are mobile phones for those periods when Israel cuts the telephone lines to the village. The House will also provide a library with maps, background information and other learning resources, to be used not only by the International Women's Team but also by visiting volunteer activists, delegations and local villagers.
Members of the Advisory Board of the IWPS include Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists, such organizations as Bat Shalom, the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People, the Jerusalem Centre for Women. In addition, the IWPS has an extensive network of partners and supporters, including Women in Black, Amnesty International, Rabbis for Human Rights, and B'tselem.
The first team of women arrived in the village in August 2002 and the project has been in continuous operations since that time. The team is regularly supplemented by volunteers who come and stay for two to three weeks at a time.
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