(ENGLISH VERSION)PAZ AHORA dennounces before the Spanish Consulate in Eastern Jerusalem the abuses that its cooperates have suffered from the Israeli authorities

PAZ AHORA denounces before the Spanish Consulate in Eastern Jerusalem the abuses that its cooperates have suffered from the Israeli authorities.

Gregorio Dvila Daz, Spanish citizen, DNI 50862409W

DECLARES:

• that he acts as a representative of the Spanish NGO Paz Ahora, of which he is president since the general assembly of the associates celebrated in June 2002
• that in this moment he participates in a humanitarian mission of our NGO in Jerusalem and West Bank
• that our cooperates have been exposed to different abuses by the Israeli troops and security forces who are impeding the right to free movement and humanitarian assistance.

1. The Israeli army has stopped in two occasions the shipment of a truck with supplies and medicines destined to the area of quimiodialisis of the Municipal Hospital of Jenin. In the first occasion the truck chartered by the pharmaceutical company "Lemix", situated in Ramallah could not get out of the city, and it was stopped at the checkpoint of Qalandia. In the second occasion the Yenin city council marked a truck to ensure the transport, made contact with the Israeli authorities to ask for transit permission and, as last precaution, a Paz Ahora vehicle, with Israeli license plates accompanied the truck. This served for passing through Qalandia and leaving Ramallah, but not for getting to Jenin. At the check point of Majsmo Gitit (close to Jerico), the militaries accepted no possibility of dialogue, although the Jenin City council was in permanent telephone contact with the military command.
2. On Sunday, August 24^th, it was denied to one of the Paz Ahora cooperates to get on the plane of the IBERIA to return to Madrid. The Israeli security service member submitted her to an interrogation for various hours and it ended when the airplane already had left. Throughout all this long process they tried to find contradictions between her declaration and the interrogation to which another Paz Ahora cooperate, who only came to accompany her to the airport, was submitted simultaneously, staying at all point out of the international area separation line. This case was even more serious, because the other cooperate was not intending to travel, and he was submitted to a harsh interrogatory while his passport was kept away from him illegally during various hours. The main preoccupation of the airport security interrogators was the fact that the two of them traveled to Israel together and they were returning separately. The lack of consideration of the Israeli security reached such point that they interfered in our cooperates private lives asking if the one who stayed was married to other woman and the one that was with him had to return alone.

   Our cooperate suffered important damages because:

   1. she lost a day of work in Madrid
   2. she had to finance the costs of a second airplane ticket because the Israeli authorities did not assume any responsibility for the matter
   3. she had to finance another night in the hotel and the return ticket between the hotel and the airport

   A good proof of the airport securitys implicit recognition of responsibility in the incident was that the following day (August 25^th) our cooperate was the ONLY passenger of the Iberia flight who wasnt submitted to an exhaustive register (accompanied in various cases with physical searching) to which ALL the other passengers of the flight were submitted.

3. Two of our organizations cooperates were carrying out humanitarian activities in the Al-Faraa refugee camp, whose base is situated in an apartment rented by Paz Ahora from the Jenin city council, were impeded in returning to the city by the militaries on the checkpoint on the road from Nablus Jenin (via Tubas). The car in which they traveled was perfectly identified by the big anagrams of our organization, it has Israeli license plates and the cooperates had informed that they were invited by the city council. In spite of this, it stayed for hour in no mans land without possibility of moving forward or backward, being forced "in extremis" to sleep in the refugee camp, staying in communicated from the rest of our missions members.

ASKS:

• to take notice of the denouncing of these facts
• protection of the Spanish consulate when returning to Spain. Effectively, around 25 cooperates of different Spanish NGOs (Paz Ahora, Sodepau, Xarxa denlla amb Palestina, Paz y Tercer Mundo, Asamblea de Cooperacin por la Paz, Paz con Dignidad y Acsur Las Segovias among others) have participated in an international seminary in Bethlehem, organized by the Israeli organization Alternative Information Centre, with cooperation of the Bask government. As the majority of the Spanish participants return home between 1 and 8 of September, we fear a massive interrogatory in order to find contradictions in the declaration, when so many people are involved could impede us from taking our planes on time.

Gregorio Dvila Daz

President of the NGO Paz Ahora