We would like to meet that person. There are lots of victims, Amy, when you look at a war and what happens. And we lost Rachel, and that hurts every day, but that bulldozer driver lost a lot of his humanity when he crushed Rachel. We’re told by B’Tselem, for instance, that in 2004, I believe, the highest—the cause, proportionately, of deaths in the Israeli soldiers, the highest one is suicide. There’s a big toll to soldiers. And I guess I have to hold out my hand, in some way, that if that man could understand what he’s done, in terms of our loss, if he could mourn our loss of Rachel, I could mourn his loss of humanity.

There’s a lot of steps, as Sarah says, that would have to happen that way. But yeah, I’d like to meet him. And it’s not about trying to put him in jail. It doesn’t do me any good if his children don’t have a father, if he has children. But some way, like Desmond Tutu talks about, of mending the tear in society, and I think it’s more like a wound in your arm, and to expect that one half of a wound would heal and the other half stay unhealed is impossible. Both halves have to heal.

Forgiveness is obviously at the very core of nonviolence, but it is often a difficult task to carry out. The fact that someone like Craig Corrie is ready and willing to do this should motivate anyone who harbors anger toward another human to repair the divide. His gesture also shows that good has come from Rachel’s untimely death and perhaps even more is on the way, should he ever meet the driver.

In his latest comic for World War 3 Illustrated, Ethan Heitner, a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and a member of Jews Against the Occupation (JATO-NY) and Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Middle East Justice, describes the reasons that he supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Israeli occupation.

Last year, Naomi Klein wrote an important piece for The Nation in which she counters several arguments that are often made against this campaign, that is well worth a read. She argues that BDS is the “best strategy” in the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, and that surrendering these nonviolent tools “verges on active complicity.”

To learn more about how you can get involved in the campaign in your community or on your campus, click here.

Here is a bit of hopeful news from Palestine. Two and a half years after the Israeli Supreme Court deemed that the section of the separation wall that cuts through the village of Bil’in was illegal, the Israeli military has begun re-routing the wall to comply with the ruling. This move will return 30 percent of Bil’in’s land to the village.

In response to the news, Mohammed Khatib, the coordinator of the West Bank-wide Popular Struggle Coordination Committee and a member of the the Bil’in Popular Committee, said:

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the only reason that this is finally happening now are the five years of persistent struggle and the sacrifices the people of my village have made. While we are happy for the lands that do return, we do not forget the lands and crops that remain isolated behind the Wall. Our struggle will continue until all of our lands are returned and the Occupation is over.

Since the wall was erected in 2005, Bil’in has been a focal point for nonviolent resistance in Palestine and garnered widespread support and positive media attention around the world. Residents from the village, along with other Israeli and international activists, participate in a weekly march to the wall every Friday. According to the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:

In addition to grassroots demonstrations and nonviolent direct actions, Bil’in has held annual conferences on popular resistance since 2006; providing a forum for villagers, activists and academics to discuss strategies for the unarmed struggle against the Occupation.

In their latest weekly protest, activists from Bil’in demonstrated their creativity by dressing and painting themselves as the native Na’vi from the film Avatar.

Israel’s response to the burgeoning nonviolent movement reveals its power. As Ben White noted last week in an op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor:

Israel’s escalating crackdown suggests that the movement is not only already considered a threat to Israel’s apartheid-style rule, but also has the potential to develop into something more important. In recent months, Israel has targeted leaders such as Jamal Juma, Mohammed Khatib, Mohammad Othman, and Abdullah Abu Rahme with detention without trial and trumped-up charges.

[...]

Israel, which markets itself as the region’s only democracy, has also snatched dozens of villagers in night raids over the past 18 months. Since 2005, 18 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,500 have been injured in antiwall protests.

To stay on top of developments in Bil’in check out the village’s website. Anna Brown also has written extensively about her personal experience in Bil’in last summer and other developments with the nonviolent campaign (archived here) for this site.

• On Saturday, some 6,000 people gathered at a rally in Tokyo calling for the withdrawal of U.S. Marine base stationed on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

• Russian police broke up anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Sunday, and detained more than 100 demonstrators, including several opposition leaders.

• More than 150 inmates at a prison in Spuz, outside Podgorica, Montenegro launched a hunger strike last Wednesday, claiming guards are abusing them. This is the second such protest in ten days.

• In India, 10,000 teachers from 35 central universities began a two-day strike last Thursday, demanding changes in the regulation on service conditions which seeks to link their promotion to output.

• Dozens of students at Little Miami High School in Cincinnati walked out of class Monday morning on the eve of a critical levy vote. The walkout was followed by a sit-in at the school.

• A large number of staff at Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport, including security personnel, walked off the job yesterday and attended union meetings in protest against plans to outsource two employee canteens. Other employees who have downed tools include baggage handlers, the fire department, cleaning crews, technicians and drivers.

• Immigrants held in a South Texas detention center have begun an indefinite hunger strike. Its the second mass hunger strike in a year. Some of the detainees say they’ll refuse to eat until they are released.

• The Sheikh Yassin coalition organized a protest outside the Egyptian embassy in Paris on Saturday, demanding that Egypt stop building an underground steel barrier on the border with the Gaza Strip.

• Palestinians took part in a protest in Gaza City yesterday, calling for the release of their loved ones imprisoned in Israeli jails.

After more than half a century of intransigent injustice, the Palestine/Israel “conflict”—or “disaster,” or whatever you want to call it—only seems to get worse. In the last few years, Israel has pummeled both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip with devastating impunity and, especially in the Strip, forcibly prevented its victims from making any kind of meaningful recovery. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian activism in Israeli civil society is reportedly on the decline. But, in one of a series of events since returning from the partly-thwarted Gaza Freedom March, a group of activists spoke of their experiences on Thursday at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, telling a packed room of more than 200 people, “We are here to celebrate an achievement.”

The Egyptian government didn’t let most of the over 1,300 protesters from around the world into Gaza for the planned march, but those at Judson said that they witnessed a new stage in the emergence of a global movement, facilitated by the Internet, that may well be poised to end the international support that makes Israel’s policies possible. The linchpin of the movement, the Cairo Declaration of the Gaza Freedom March, was drafted by would-be marchers while they waited in Egypt. It includes commitments to:

Palestinian Self-Determination

Ending the Occupation

Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine

The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees

The Declaration also calls for comprehensive boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel and the interests that enable its occupation.

Ali Abunimah, founder of the Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, outlined the dire situation in the Gaza Strip and the prospects for active, nonviolent resistance. The present crisis began with an American-supported Israeli campaign for regime change, after Hamas was fairly and legally elected in a 2006 election. Of the 100,000 Gazans made homeless by Israel’s 2008 attack, more than 20,000 remain so today. People wait weeks to enter or leave the Strip, and many die because they are unable to receive necessary medical care. The area’s agricultural capacity has been reduced to almost nothing, and 90% of Gazans suffer daily electricity blackouts. He stressed that the war against the Gaza Strip is a war against children, as 52% of people there are under 18.

Egyptians, Abunimah says, have taken a lead in pressuring their government—which utterly depends on US aid—to end its collusion with the blockade, and they do so at great risk to themselves. They need the support of a mass movement, one that reaches as far as does the web of money and power which props up Israel’s policies. A turning point is being reached; widespread criticism, fueled by civil disobedience, is beginning to render Israeli claims to be a liberal democracy illegitimate. An article about Israel’s Haiti response in yesterday’s New York Times suggests that the bad press is beginning to sink in there:

“Israelis are caught in a great confusion over themselves,” noted Uri Dromi, a commentator who used to be a government spokesman. “There is such a gap between what we can do in so many fields and the failure we feel trapped in with the Palestinians. There’s nostalgia for the time when we were the darlings of the world, and the Haiti relief effort allows us to remember that feeling and say, you see we are not as bad as you think.”

“Now They Love Us,” was the headline Wednesday on the column of Eitan Haber, a close aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s and a Yediot columnist. “In another month or two, nobody will remember the good deeds” of Israeli soldiers, he wrote. “The very same countries and very same leaders who are currently lauding the State of Israel will order their representatives to vote against it at the United Nations, proceed to condemn I.D.F. operations in Gaza, and again slam its foreign minister.”

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a participant in the March, echoed this. “The Israelis,” he said, “have trouble knowing what to do with straight civil disobedience that they can’t label as ‘terrorism.’” He also gave a moving account of life in the West Bank—where he and others went after being unable to get into Gaza. It is “the world’s biggest jail,” built according to a deliberate “architecture of apartheid” meant to ensure that even a “two-state solution” will be indistinguishable from occupation. The language of “apartheid” has become common among pro-Palestinian voices, from Jimmy Carter to the South African delegation at the March.

There was a lot of gray hair in the audience at Judson, but one of the speakers showed that the future of the movement is in good hands. Jenna Bitar is a high school senior in New York City who joined the March with her mother and brother. She still has braces on her teeth, but her speech was bold and eloquent, with stories of her success fooling the Egyptian police and of the violence she witnessed on the streets of Cairo and the Gaza Strip. The task, for her, was “to make some noise” for all the world to hear.

The cause for optimism was evident just in the number of organizations that hosted the event and which got the chance to speak briefly of their work at the end. Each offered different ways for people to get involved. You can boycott Motorola and Ahava products. You can support the Free Gaza boat trips that try to break the blockade. And you can find more information, organizations, and resources at the Palestine Freedom Project.

As this movement grows in the international community, it is vital that the interests of Palestinian—and Israeli—people remain at the center of it. The goal of a nonviolent movement should be to enlist Israelis as partners in a just solution, making them see it as in their interest to do so. But until they do, the movement needs to ensure that they, and the rest of the world, can no longer afford to be blind to the injustice that goes on daily in the occupied territories.

Peace will not come until Palestinians enjoy the rights that they deserve, not simply the pittances Israel has so far offered to provide. At Judson, the Gazan filmmaker Fida Qishta reminded us that, for her people, humanitarian aid isn’t enough. “We don’t need food, and we don’t want money,” her friends back home insisted that she say to the world. “We need to be free.” She showed haunting footage of the post-attack devastation in Gaza: demolished buildings, unexploded bombs lying in houses, and teenagers with shrapnel in their bloody bodies.

“I want to be human, and I want to be myself,” Qishta said, together with the one and a half million on the other side of the blockade.

Residents of At-Tuwani Village block the path of an Israeli military jeep.

Every time I return home after a vigil, I am asked, “How was it?” How does one answer? We were present? Ignored? Warmly greeted? Does it matter? The war goes on. Guantánamo remains open. Lies continue. We show up. We pray. We walk. So to attempt to describe my voyage with a Christian Peacemaking Team (CPT) delegation to Palestine/Israel in late November is more difficult to answer than the journey itself.

I am blessed to have been led to this step by Catholic Workers and very dear friends. My desire to join a delegation elsewhere was rerouted by the suggestion that I should go to Palestine. As I have related many times, when Anne Montgomery—an 80-year-old nun who travels the world taking part in nonviolent direct actions—says go to Palestine, you go. I went.

For 11 days, our delegation of seven—three women and four men, including a Briton, two Germans, a Canadian, and three Americans—jumped in and out of cabs, buses, hiked hills, climbed mountains, slept in hostels, caves, tents, met with lawyers, activists, shepherds, soldiers, teachers, settlers, and NGO human rights groups. We talked, vigiled, prayed. We learned. We tried to learn. For me, the more I heard, the more confused I became. I felt in the middle of a sudden death battle in which neither side would give in. But I also felt completely at home, welcomed.

In Hebron, I went through a checkpoint. I showed my passport, as instructed and walked on. Then I heard the Israeli soldier manning the post call. I was sure he was yelling at me, but I continued. He called again, in Hebrew. I turned and he asked, “What state?” I answered and he waved me on. But it made me aware that if one does not speak the language of the occupier, one can most certainly be put in harm’s way.

We moved from Jerusalem to At-Tuwani, Tuba, Hebron, Bethlehem and then back to Jerusalem. We toured part of East Jerusalem with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition. We saw the huge discrepancy between Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages. We saw remnants of destroyed homes that were razed because people didn’t have a building permit—a virtually impossible item to obtain. It was always heart wrenching to see the rubble sitting on the ground, almost like a mass tombstone, a reminder that a family could be housed on that lot. Once given a notice of demolition the bulldozers can come at anytime, day or night, the same day or 20 years later—certainly a mechanism to squelch resistance.

In At-Tuwani, we met the first of two CPT teams. At-Tuwani is a small village in the south Hebron hills. Built on a hillside (a small mountain to my aging knees) it consists of about 300 villagers. Electricity comes from a generator and runs only between five and nine at night. Its groan can be heard throughout the village, along with the various noises from roosters, mules and sheep. The grammar school sits atop the village and has been presented with a notice of demolition, punishment for building an addition to house more children. The village mosque was demolished but rebuilt.

Overlooking the village is an Israeli settlement. Hidden deep within a foreboding forest, you cannot see the homes, only the massive electric security lights. Again, noting the disparity in living conditions, these lights burn all night. Each school day, approximately 16 children walk the road right in front of the settlement. Due to numerous occasions of settler attacks on these children, the Israeli military actually escorts the children past the settlement. An armored vehicle plus three soldiers on foot walked behind the children each morning we were in At-Tuwani. If the soldiers do not show up, the children must walk a more difficult, longer route to school. I reflected on the lost innocence of youth, having to come to terms with the stark nightmarish reality these children live under and wonder what path their future will take because of this way of life.

CPT monitors these escorts the entire time the military and the children are together and armed with video cameras, they film any situations that occur. They also go out into the fields with the local shepherds and keep a lookout for potential attacks from settlers. The day before we arrived in At-Tuwani, one of the CPT staff, Laura, was attacked in the fields and hit on the head with a rock, requiring stitches. The police were called in and seemed to be stonewalling the investigation—a seemingly regular habit. But Laura did put herself between the shepherd and the attack of the settlers, securing the safety of the Palestinian. This sobering story was told to us after worship the evening before we arrived in At-Tuwani.

We came to learn, to question and to witness. I came away with a deep fear that peace will never come to the area. Over and over we heard there is no hope for the two state system. Israel wants all the land—a statement somewhat apparent when one looks at the green line, then the actual wall and the ongoing placement of settlements, which seem to cut through Palestinian land at will. It seems to be a strong belief that the second intifada is not over, but dormant. “We are looking for better ways of resistance,” we were told by one leading Palestinian journalist in Dura. “Rocket bombs do not work anymore.”

I left deeply saddened. I missed my home, my community, my friends and the soup line. But I have never been so warmly greeted, accepted and tended to as by the strangers I encountered on this trip. I hope I can strive to be the same with those I encounter from here on out.

At the Catholic Worker, we endeavor to live simply. We do this in our own way, each one differently. I give away a book and a tee shirt, I acquire a banjo. The struggle goes on. So visiting the village of Tuba—an hour hike up and over a mountain—and spending the night with Ibrahami and his family in their tent, taught me another lesson in what we really need to live. Or the night in the Dehiseheh refugee camp. Altallah Salem has lost two of his three brothers, one killed by a rocket, one banished six years ago to Gaza, yet he warmly greeted us, brought us to his other brother’s home in the camp where we dined and spent the night on their floor. “Tell the truth. Tell what you have seen. Invite others to come and see for themselves. We are not terrorists. We only want to live.”

In writing I can do no justice to this journey. I am awed to have been a small part of a delegation of voyagers. We each met looking for something different. We all came from different walks. But as one we saw the lives, heard the stories, and walked the neighborhoods. A part of me stayed behind. And I will return to reclaim it. I cannot say why. As I cannot say why I live at the Worker. I only know that God as led me. And I am thankful.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, not the national holiday which is Monday. As an activist member of Jewish Voice for Peace, I have at times faced counter-demonstrations while I speak out against unjustifiable atrocities being committed allegedly for me and by “my” side. Being from the United States, I could be doubly responsible for the US/Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. As a long-time member of the War Resisters League, King and I share a belief that (in his words) “social change comes more meaningfully through nonviolence,” that the “business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love,” and that God didn’t choose “America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.” 42 years have passed since he was assassinated.

So I am perplexed when I see “pro-Israel” signs that extol Martin Luther King’s defense of Israel, using quotes (which I also am fond of doing) by the late revolutionary, but in their case, highlighting things he said that seem to place him on “their” side of the police line, not mine. On the occasion of his birth, newsletters of synagogues may even have articles touting King as a staunch defender of Israel’s right to defend itself. They take quotes from 42 years ago as I do, to make our points. Certainly, after the Six Day War of 1967 (and before), King defended Israel. However, events of the last two score years I think would have reinforced King’s pacifism and “eternal hostility towards militarism, racism and economic exploitation.” He never would have become an anti-Semite, but I do think facts on the ground would have led him to become quite critical of Israel. I want to briefly mention five specific issues that would have negatively effected King’s perspective on Israel:

1. Regarding nuclear weapons and disarmament: as a critic of nuclear weapons, he would have pushed for real steps on the part of the US on this issue. He would have opposed ALL states building nuclear weapons, US allies or not. Israel has a formidable nuclear arsenal and delivery systems even though it and the United States refuse to admit it. Israel has nukes, and King wouldn’t have been fooled or supportive of the lie of omission. As he said, “In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth.”
2. Israeli support for apartheid in South Africa would certainly have given MLK pause. Maybe he would have been able to help change Israeli (and US) policy, but he certainly would have pointed out that supporting the horrific racism of South Africa was wrong, in the extreme. He would have seen Jews and some Israelis take anti-racist stands, but as a whole, and on a governmental level, he would have had much to rebuke.
3. Israel has been singular in its support for many of the worst aspects of US foreign policy like covert actions undermining democratically elected governments. Against oppressive regimes, he would have supported nonviolent actors. Actions he spoke against while denouncing the Vietnam war continue. Again, quoting King, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
4. I don’t think King would have laid all or even most of the blame on the Palestinian people for the unresolved catastrophe they have suffered. He would not have supported efforts to punish all the people of Gaza trying to make them turn on Hamas (a democratically elected party, like it or not). He would have supported conscientious objectors like the Shminitsim and the former fighters of Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace. He would see Palestinian homes being demolished or forcibly occupied by religious zealots (ala Hebron) and say that it was not just. He would surely have supported nonviolent Israeli and Palestinian initiatives and would have sympathized with people being shot at, imprisoned and abused for speaking out or demonstrating against the wall. He would have had solidarity with the people of Sderot, many of whom denounced Operation Cast Lead. He would have cared about every dead and injured person, but he would maybe have thought that the numbers also had an important story to tell. He would have denounced ALL war crimes, crimes against humanity and collective punishment committed in or from Gaza. He would hear appeals from Christian Palestinians and Palestinian civil society and be moved.
5. The second class citizenship that Israeli Palestinians have with its separate and unequal treatment by the State would have appeared eerily reminiscent of the occasion for lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts in the South. Even if they have more rights than people in many Arab states, such partiality makes a mockery of democracy. Would King be more likely to stand with Avigdor Leiberman and Ehud Olmert, or Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela?

I certainly don’t think King would have become an anti-Semite, but he may have become an anti-Zionist. They are not the same thing. “The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.” That is a quote of his that I have no doubt could accurately be updated to go beyond mention of Vietnam and include every military adventure subsequently waged by “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today–my own government,” including the US/Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

It was 3am when they came barreling into town – Israeli jeeps and tanks preempting the dawn and hollering menacing messages over their loudspeakers. ‘Wake up you Arab dogs’ they would exclaim as our team gathered to prepare our nonviolent direct response to the impending threat of violence.  What do we do?  Planning a course of action as a member of the International Solidarity Movement entails its own process, one that not always dovetails with the ethos of being a member of the body of Christ.  For those of us who have been led to Palestine by our love for Jesus, for God and for humanity, we inexorably find ourselves asking, like Christoper Dickey in his article in Newsweek, what would Jesus do in Palestine?  As followers of Jesus, our answer is crafted from the loving words and actions of the Good Shepherd who is both Jewish and Palestinian.

Side by side with self-proclaimed atheist anarchists, I found myself at times unnerved by the cavalier attitude of tank-chasers and the hostility of those who sought to provoke violence for the sake of their own aggrandizement.  This is not to devalue or dismiss the legitimacy of others’ motivations for being there but to honestly convey my own perception of existing ranks within the organization.  In fact, it was on this day that despite the disparity in our spiritual and political motivations we were able to act in concert for the betterment of the Palestinian people.  Why? Because we let love be our guide.  We assessed the situation and determined that our highest priority were the humanitarian concerns of those Palestinians who were unable to access food and essential provisions because of the curfew.  The team member in charge of facilitating communication was an Israeli-Jew fluent in Hebrew and English.  In all humility, he put himself in harm’s way on behalf of people he never met because he believed that those who shared his religion and ethnicity were perpetuating a grave injustice.  To me, this is what Jesus did during His time, and this is what Jesus would do today.

A nonviolent revolution is well underway in Palestine, one in which native Palestinians protest,  boycott and divest alongside Israeli and international partners.  We strive for the end of military occupation, to end the appropriation and destruction of Palestinian land, an end to the bloodshed and adherence to international law.  Yet for all this to happen one very important thing must happen.  Israeli Jews and Arab Palestinians must come to love and respect each other.  I heard Palestinians tell me that the conflict will only end when the Jews were pushed into the sea and obliterated.  I saw first hand how ruthless Israeli Jews and settlers could be towards Palestinians.  This is why I believe that recent efforts like those of B’Tselem are on target to address the conflict at its roots and are aimed at creating understanding, respect and tolerance amongst those at war with each other.  The conflict must be transformed by building bridges that showcase culture, through dialogue, by sharing hopes, dreams, tears and aspirations.

In short, Jews and Arabs must fall in love with each other.  Barriers and walls, rockets and arbitrary detentions only dash the hopes of a lasting peace built on a foundation of respect for mutual sanctity.  Palestinians must continue to tell their stories, for the very right to tell their own history is under threat.  In the midst of such an asymmetrical conflict, we must stand in solidarity with those who are in jeopardy of losing it all.  And, like Jesus, one who perfectly embodies a Jewish-Palestinian identity, we must call into unity and awareness all who are blinded by hate, power and greed.  We can and will do this with the simplicity of our impartial loving concern.

• British graffiti artist Banksy popped up with 4 new murals on the Regent’s Canal in London last week, one of which was this protest of global warming denialism.

• More than 1,000 people marched in Islamabad on Friday as part of a nationwide campaign that took place in 53 other Pakistani cities and towns to protest both Taliban bombings and the American drone strikes.

• Hundreds of demonstrators rallied on opposite sides of an Israeli-Gaza border crossing on Thursday to protest at the blockade of the strip imposed by Egypt and Israel. In Gaza, about 100 international activists staged a rally with some 500 Gazans, chanting and carrying signs denouncing the blockade. A small number of anti-Zionist, Orthodox Jews were among them.

• Hundreds of relatives of prisoners in a Mexican jail protested the expected transfer of inmates to make way for a film shoot with director Mel Gibson next year.

• Internally displaced people at a campsite in Nakuru, Kenya demonstrated along a highway to protest their poor living conditions following the onset of rains and demanded building materials.

• Dozens of Jordanians held a sit-in near the Egyptian embassy in the Jordanian capital on Sunday to protest Egypt’s plan to construct a steel wall along its borders with the besieged Gaza Strip.

• Thousands of people in Hong Kong took to the streets on New Year’s Day to demand full democracy in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The Chinese government ruled in 2007 that the territory cannot directly elect its leader until 2017 and its legislature until 2020.

• Police detained dozens of people at an anti-Kremlin protest on Thursday, including 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva, one of Russia’s most respected rights activists.

• Iranian riot police fired tear gas in clashes with thousands of opposition supporters who shouted anti-government slogans during a Shiite mourning event on Saturday. On Sunday, at least 15 protesters were killed as the demonstrations, which at times turned violent, continued. 

• Students at several universities in Germany staged a campus sit-in over Christmas to protest the worsening of study conditions and rising fees.

• Members of two of Turkey’s largest unions started work after an hour-long delay Friday to protest layoffs and the closure of offices that resulted from privatization. They plan to continue holding one hour protests every week until the ruling party hears their demands.

• Palestinians have held a mass demonstration against Egypt’s construction of an underground wall along the border with the Gaza Strip which claimed its first victim on Friday.

• More than 200 workers organized a sit-in Thursday morning in front of the Social Affairs Center in Jabriya, Kuwait to protest the withholding of their salaries for more than seven months, bad housing conditions and not having their residency permits renewed.

• Rallies, hunger strikes and demonstrations continued for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday in the Telangana region of India, where the demand for a separate state keeps gaining momentum.

• Taxi drivers in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki went on strike Saturday to protest the murder of a fellow taxi-driver in the region of Pylaia on Christmas Day.