Brighton-Tubas Region Friendship and Solidarity Group

The Brighton Tubas Region Friendship and Solidarity Group is a network aiming at fostering links between community organisations in Tubas, occupied Palestine, and Brighton.

The Tubas Region, which includes the Northern Jordan Valley, is an area Israel wants to ethnically cleanse and annex. Israel is doing this by making life impossible for the people of the valley .

The Palestine Wildlife Society has recently installed 64 nesting boxes for barn owls and kestrels in the Jordan Valley, in the area around Atuf village. Imad F. Atrash, director of the Palestine Wildlife Society, arranged for a public event on the 2nd of January 2008, to celebrate the completion of this project at Atuf school.

The event took place to the accompaniment of live fire by the Israeli army, who were conducting military exercises less than a mile away. As the volunteers rigged up the sound system and displays, an Israeli army jeep drove past, no doubt attracted by the gathering.

As many of you will know, the Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group are involved in a joint solidarity project to build a much needeschool for the Palestinian village of Fasayil in the Jordan Valley Construction begun in the summer of 2007 in defiance of Israel's complete ban on house building in the area and the school is a physical manifestation of the Palestinian people's peaceful resistance to the occupation. On the 17th of October, Israel's 'Military Civil Administration' issued an injunction against the continued building of the school and unless the village apply for a permit by the 29th of December the school can be demolished. However, house permits are never issued in Fasayil as the land is designated as 'agricultural' by the Israeli

The Palestinian village of Al Mazra’a al Qibliah in the occupied West Bank was the scene of a vicious attack by armed Israeli settlers on 26th/27th/28th October following a demonstration participated in by the Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group.

Lucy Collins from Brighton who had just spoken to villagers from Al Masra’a said ‘On Saturday the settlers came back into the village. They uprooted and burnt olive trees, destroyed crops, attacked houses and broke windows. The settlers caught some of the villagers and beat them with sticks and bars.

‘On Sunday the army came to the village and arrested the mayor and another member of the village council. They also arrested thirteen other people, four of whom were university students, two of whom were children under fifteen. They have also denied the village the right to harvest their olives as an act of collective punishment.’

A delegation of ten people from Brighton have just returned from Tubas region of occupied Palestine. The delegation is part of the project by the Brighton-Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group. The group's aims are to highlight Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in the region, raise awareness about life under occupation and create practical solidarity links between grassroots organisations in Brighton and Tubas region.

This Summer the group helped to fund the building of a school in the village of Fasayil in defiance of Israeli military restrictions. Volunteers from Brighton also went out to help construction. Palestinians in Fasayil are prevented from building any new structures by the occupation force's military administration.