A checkpoint in the Jordan ValleyTwo weeks ago, after nearly three months of concentrated activities, the Action-A-Day campaign for the Jordan Valley has come to an end. The campaign aimed to bring public attention to the story of the Jordan Valley – the complex story of an ongoing policy that dispossess a community, which already lives in the margins of the margin. This was the third Action-A-Day campaign that ACRI coordinated, this time in cooperation with B’Tselem, Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights, and Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME).
Almost every day for nearly three months, the Action-A-Day team offered thousands of Israelis, who participated in the activities, small actions that they could each take – to impact policymakers and to help change policies that negatively impact the lives of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley.
The campaign also helped to raise public awareness in Israel to human rights issues in the Jordan Valley. Want to learn more about that? Click here to view the presentation “Five Facts about the Jordan Valley.”
Below are the closing words of the project staff.
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When you fight for what’s right, you need patience and perseverance. Things can change. Reality can change. And the public discourse can certainly change. Just like the discourse against privatization was once marginal and today brings hundreds of thousands of people to the streets, so our clear statement could become shared by many – a statement against human rights violations under the occupation; a statement for changing the lives of dozens of thousands who are under Israeli military rule; a statement for social justice for all, including Palestinians.
You, the people who did not give up, did not recoil when confronted with bureaucracy and numbers, did not hesitate to turn to anyone who could influence the situation – in order to demand what might seem to some as “hazy” or “esoteric.” You demanded the lifting of unreasonable movement restrictions so that Hisham could pass the Tayasir Checkpoint with the al-’Aqaba village council’s car. You came charging when the Gochya Gate was not opened on time, and a couple from the al-Hadidiya Bedouin community was stuck there with a baby running a high fever in the middle of a sweltering summer day. You wrote, called and faxed whomever was needed in order to prevent a plan that would increase the discrimination in the distribution of resources between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley. You spoke out to spread the story of the Jordan Valley, to show a more complex reality than what is usually depicted in the media, to bring this seemingly distant reality into the Israeli public discourse.
In these past two and a half months we got some answers, but not enough – and not for lack of trying. The indifference, the disrespect, the callousness – in the bottom line, that is what we are fighting against; and we will keep fighting until we get results.
Even if there is still no change on the ground, you managed to put piercing questions on the tables of several policymakers – questions regarding movement restrictions in the Jordan Valley. You didn’t give up until a few Members of Knesset agreed to help and contact the Minister of Defence. You flooded the system with questions, so that an unreasonable and immoral policy will not continue as though no one cares. The results might not be immediate – patience is a must, as written above – but many tiny ripples can, together, generate a huge flood.
We are ending the Jordan Valley campaign, but we will not stop following the situation, reminding decision makers that we are watching them and expecting them to improve matters on the ground.
And to each and every one of the people who took part in the Action-A-Day campaign, who struggled to enable other people to make a living, study, or just travel from one place to another, who fought to prevent injustice in the distribution of resources, who worked hard to remind other Israelis that the Jordan Valley is an occupied territory and that the policies relating to it have nothing to do with security – we would like to say a huge thank you to all of you, and we hope that you will join our next Action-A-Day campaign.
Yours,
