Frome Friends of Palestine talk

Frome Friends of Palestine are delighted to announce that Ali Morgan will be speaking on Friday 23rd at Catherine’s Hall in Frome.

“This summer, she returned to the West Bank as a human rights observer, and she will be speaking about what she found there,” explained Adam Stout from Frome Friends of Palestine. “She’ll be talking about the communities she visited and the people that she met. She’ll be talking about the Israeli administration’s strategic use of settlement expansion, discriminatory planning, demolition, and other policies to forcibly ‘transfer’ the Palestinian population from their land. And she’ll be talking about why the international community takes no meaningful action to stop these violations of international law.”

The talk will start at 7.30pm. Admission by donation. All welcome.

The following is an exert from Ali’s blog: “Upper and Lower Yanoun are two tiny villages with only 80 people in total, in the bottom of a valley that opens out to the Jordan valley. The village economy is based on sheep and goat milk and cheese production and olive production, but they are incredibly poor now as all but the land in the valley bottom has been stolen by the settlers from Itimar.

“Palestinians can no longer access the land on the valley sides and the settlers regularly come into the village and threaten people – also the military. They have even taken control of some of the land in the valley bottom now and are allowing their cattle to damage the olive trees there. The Palestinians cannot obtain permits to access most of their olive trees except at harvest time. Every direction you look in from the villages, there are settlements outpost buildings and communication masts all around the tops of the hills – only half a mile or so away – overlooking the village.

“The psychological affects of being overshadowed in this way are huge. And it must be very disturbing for children brought up in this atmosphere of constant tension and with us foreigners constantly coming and going, even though we are here to help. The entire village fled in 2002 because the settlers were coming into the village every Saturday and attacking people and finally gave the villagers an ultimatum to get out or be massacred. There has been an EAPPI presence here ever since.”