The Palestine 2.0 Delegation explores current realities for Palestinians, including the repression of strategic organizing, the separation and segregation of the Palestinian population, and creative ways communities are continuing to resist.
Follow the delegation to read eyewitness accounts from the grounds, reports from meetings, and experiences with Palestinians and Israelis.
Exclusive content will also be available on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook under the hashtags #eyewitness67.
This delegation is Eyewitness Palestine's 67th, successfully exposing more than 1,300 people to the daily realities facing Palestinians in their quest for justice.
We believe in the power of eyewitness experience and transformation. Given the opportunity to speak directly with Palestinians and Israelis, delegates return to the United States better informed, more energized, and with a deeper understanding of the possibilities for true justice in the Middle East.
Everywhere daily life is constrained by endless barriers: physical, bureaucratic, economic. It is a comprehensive plan, a form of incipient state violence, that denigrates the Palestinian nationality, and is designed to suck the life force out of the people. Of course, it won’t; fascists never win in the long run. But it takes its toll.
Read MoreThe delegation joined local and international activists in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem to resist the Sabbagh family’s pending eviction from their home that would displace 40 members of the Palestinian family. The Sabbagh family is one of at least 180 Palestinian families in East Jerusalem threatened with eviction by Israeli authorities.
Read MoreWhen our Eyewitness Palestine delegation reached the Negev desert (inside the official borders of Israel), we were greeted by gorgeous blue skies beneath which straight rows of lush green barley were growing and solitary Bedouin shepherds were peacefully herding their sheep while being buffeted by a wondrous wind.I am a Midwesterner from Nebraska. At last I was seeing an area of ancient Palestine where I felt at home and at peace.
Read MoreOur delegation joined Bedouin residents of Al-Fura’a village and other human rights organizations at the Israeli Supreme Court for the latest stage in the battle against a planned phosphate mine in the Naqab (Negev) in southern Israel that will displace their entire village to an urban ghetto - an urbanization plan. This is part of the larger racist settler colonial plan of Israel to take as much land as possible …
Read MoreWe spent 4 days in Al-Khalil (Hebron). Spending time at the Youth Against Settlement Center. It’s a scrappy little building with a few rooms and hardly any furniture. Since it is small, we spend most of our time outdoors on the patio (“patio” makes it sound fancier than it is). Like nearly every place in Palestine, a land of hills, it has a great view, but I digress.
Read MoreThroughout the West Bank Hebron has the reputation of having the most in-your-face examples of Israeli settlers attempting to stamp Palestinian society into the ground. We spent four days here, seeing examples of settler brutality and Palestinian resistance. It was simultaneously heart wrenching and inspiring.
Read MoreWhen I visited Hebron with Eyewitness Palestine in October 2016 the oppression of Palestinians was bad. In tours yesterday and today I saw that things are far worse. There are more Israeli settlers, continued efforts to evict Palestinians from their homes and worst of all increased attacks on Palestinians in an effort to drive them out of this ancient city.
Read MoreSumud is Arabic for “steadfast perseverance” and a description of the resistance we saw and heard about today from villagers from the Palestinian southern Hebron hills - from Susiya, to Al-Twani, to Saroura. The courage to live out - “To exist is to resist!” - requires Sumud when the Israeli settler-colonial empire brings so many expanding layers of violence.
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