The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led activist organization that recruits civilians from Western countries to participate in accompaniment and non-violent acts of resistance against Israeli occupation. The ISM is devoted to ending the Israeli occupation via non-violent activity, however, they do "recognize the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle" and have engaged in at least one act of sabotage.
The International Solidarity Movement has been tainted by various acts, including: sabotage of the Israeli security barrier, and two Muslims which Israel claims were affliated with the International Solidarity Movement, travelling on British passports, engaged in suicide bombings in Israel. The International Solidarity Movement denies any connection with the two terrorists.
ISM have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Svend J Robinson, a New Democratic Party of Canada member of the House of Commons of Canada. [1].
Past ISM campaigns have used the following strategies:
- Acting as human shields to deter Israeli military operations. According to the group specifically "detering the shooting of unarmed children". ISM members do not themselves use the term human shield to describe their work because the Israel Defence Forces routinely force captive Palestinians as human shields when searching Palestinian neighborhoods.
- Removing roadblocks put in place by the Israel Defence Forces.
- Protests against the West Bank separation barrier which in some cases involved minor damage.
- Attempting to block military vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers.
- Violating curfew orders.
Several events involving the ISM have received some degree of press coverage:
- On March 16, 2003, ISM member Rachel Corrie was fatally run over by an IDF bulldozer while attempting to prevent it from demolishing a building.
- On March 27, 2003, Shadi Sukiya, claimed to be a Islamic Jihad member, was arrested in a house in Jenin where the ISM, the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Frontiers rent offices.
- On April 5, 2003, ISM member Brian Avery was injured by debris kicked up by machine gun fire from an IDF armored personnel carrier while investigating the source of gunfire heard during an IDF enforced curfew.
- On April 11, 2003, ISM member Thomas Hurndall was left clinically brain dead after he was shot in the head by an IDF sniper whilst protecting children from Israeli gunfire during a protest at a roadblock in the Gaza Strip. He died on January 13, 2004.
- On April 30, 2003, two British Muslims blew themselves up at a popular Tel Aviv nightspot, Mike's Place. It was alleged that they had posed as ISM members. ISM denied the allegation, but admitted having encountered the two at a social gathering in Gaza.
- The ISM received extensive media coverage of its presence in Yasir Arafat's compound in Ramallah and at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
- The ISM have made several attempts to obstruct the construction of the Israeli Security Barrier, termed by the ISM as the Apartheid Wall.
(The ISM has no relationship with the Polish trade union, Solidarity.)
Further Reading
- C. Seitz, ISM at the crossroads: the evolution of the International Solidarity Movement, Journal of Palestine Studies 22, 4 (Summer 2003), 50-62.
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