Today, October 25, Howard, Jeff, Paul and Rula went on the ICAHD tour of the Wall around Jerusalem. Our tour involved a detailed lecture of the continued isolation of East Jerusalem and the slow but certain strangling of Palestinian villages and neighborhoods because of their isolation from the economic life of Jerusalem. We drove through the large Modi’n settlement and saw the dunums of olive orchards that have been cut to the ground to make room for the settlement roads and new development. We left Jerusalem for Bethlehem where Jeff and Howard toured the Alarga textile factory with owner Elias Alarga, who is currently working with the progressive No Sweat company to begin manufacturing No Sweat products and bring hundreds of jobs to the depressed Bethlehem economy. In cooperation with our contacts with Shaher Saed, General President of the Palestinian Federation of Trade Unions, the factory has recently been organized under the jurisdiction of the Bethlehem Textile Union of the PGFTU. In the evening, we met with several local councilmen from Bethlehem, Anton Salman and Khalil Shokeh, to discuss the economic impact of the international restrictions on trade within Palestine.
PLEASE CONTINUE. http://blog.jewishvoiceforpeace.org
PLEASE CONTINUE. http://blog.jewishvoiceforpeace.org