C h e c k p o i n t s

  The Palestinian Daily Experience


What happens at a checkpoint? Checkpoints surround Palestinian towns
and are a feature of the Israeli military occupation.

Curfews and roadblocks: ambulances and emergency vehicles often denied
access.

Checkpoints seal off of the Palestinian economy: Palestinian laborers
unable to reach their jobs inside Israel. Food and medicine often in
short supply.

Arbitrary searches and seizures: NO Due Process for Palestinians.

Random arrests: over 1250 uncharged detainees in the past 4 months.

Legalized torture: Sanctioned by Israeli Supreme Court

Apartheid, a fundamentally biased system of laws and policies

             "Apartheid? Wasn't that South Africa?"

"I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a
description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
could describe events in South Africa."
      - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African Anti-Apartheid activist,
      December 25, 1989. Ha'aretz

Israel claims a sacred law of "return" - any Jew anywhere in the world
can easily obtain Israeli citizenship. However, Palestinians expelled
from the same piece of land during the founding of Israel in 1948
cannot return to the land where they were born. The Palestinian
refugees are the oldest and largest refugee population in the world,
making up roughly one in four of the total world refugee population.

We pay for it. While the rest of the world condemns Israeli
criminality, Israel is the highest recipient of US foreign aid,
receiving over three times the aid to all of sub-Saharan Africa. It is
enough to subsidize the college education of millions of students in
America. Instead, we pay for a state founded on dispossession and
violence to continue a systematic state of oppression. We must at the
very least DIVEST FROM ISRAEL!

Since September 2000, more than 842 Palestinian fatalities and over
16,667 injuries.