BY CHRITINE GAUVREAU
The US-based Labor Art and Mural Project's delegation to Palestine is facing a grave challenge. On August 22, the Israeli authorities — the Israel Defence Force, the Civil Administration and the police department — arrived at the group's work camp in East Jerusalem. LAMP activists are helping to construct a peace centre, complete with a mural, in memory of the solidarity activist Rachel Corrie, who was murdered by the Israeli military in March.
The authorities issued a "stop work" order and confiscated building materials. They announced that the building and mural — scheduled for completion on August 28 — would shortly be demolished.
Israeli and Palestinian activists are massing in the building in an attempt to stall or prevent the demolition. Some activists will carry out civil disobedience.
The Beit Arabia Peace Centre is a project of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions. As an act of resistance to the Israeli occupation, ICAHD is rebuilding on the site of the home of Arabia and Salim Shawamreh. Israeli authorities have demolished the Shawamreh home four times.
In addition to memorialising Corrie, the centre will also be a memorial to Nuha Makadma Sweidan, a pregnant Palestinian woman who was killed in Gaza in March when an Israeli military bulldozer demolished her home on top of her. The centre will house a permanent exhibit of the tragedy of house demolitions and will also serve as a centre for educational activities, study tours, activist events and peace-building between Palestinians and Israelis. It is poignantly located across a valley from a new Israeli police and interrogation centre.
The mural is being painted by US artist Mike Alewitz. It features an image of broken bulldozers and war equipment, and images of Corrie and Sweidan. A railway track runs to the horizon, representing the goal of pre-1948 radical Jewish and Arab trade unionists who fought for a united organisation of Haifa rail workers.
It is this kind of vision of Jews and Arabs fighting together for a socialist future, in which the interests of working people will be central, that the Israeli authorities hope to bury. The progress of the mural can be viewed at <http://www.marxmail.org/AgitProp/>.
Please protest against Israel's threats by contacting: General Yaakov Orr, Ministry of Defence, Tel Aviv, phone: +972-3-697-5351 or fax +972-3-697-6306; Shlomo Politis, legal advisor to the Civil Administration, phone +972-2-997-7071 mobile +972 2 50-511782 or fax +972-2-997-7326; Yossi Hasson, planning committee Civil Administration, phone +972-2-997-7307 or fax +972-2-997-7344.
From Green Left Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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