ISM mounts its anti-occupation activity

A Scottish peace activist was deported from Israel yesterday, 10 days after being arrested near Nablus.

Andrew Muncie, who is a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was detained on August 17 after trying to stop soldiers blowing up and bulldozing the house of a Palestinian family where he was staying.

Mr Muncie, a 29-year-old first-class honors graduate, from Spean Bridge, Lochaber, near Fort William, was deported along with Andreas Koninek, another activist, from Sweden.

According to the Israelis, Muncie chained himself to a pole in the house at a refugee camp near Nablus and was arrested by their defense force which "blindfolded, handcuffed, and took him to the police station in Ariel".

Muncie, who plans to study for a PhD at Cambridge University, had been in the region for 10 days.

The men lost an appeal against their deportation last Friday after an Israeli judge ruled they had been endangering themselves and the Israeli military.

The ISM is a Palestinian-led non-political movement which helps to organize non-violent protests against terror and illegal occupation.

Meanwhile, a Westcountry student has told of his experiences as a peace activist at a flashpoint on the Israeli and Palestinian border.

Chris West, from Exeter, told how he was nearly arrested with 47 others when they tried to stop the Israeli army destroying a house inside the fortress town of Qalqilya. The Palestinian town of 40,000 people has hit the headlines recently after the border area was sealed by a massive wall which has cut off vital farmland and water resources.

Chris, 23, who is in the region with the International Solidarity Movement, said: "I escaped by the skin of my teeth. There was a soldier who was grabbing me and I somehow managed to persuade him not to arrest me. Others weren't so lucky." Chris, a physics student at Manchester University, said he had traveled to Israel and Palestine because he wanted to understand all sides of the conflict. He had previously been to Auschwitz in Poland to try to better understand the Holocaust.

Several international observers and reporters have been shot in the region in recent months, including Devon journalist James Miller as he worked in the Gaza Strip. His widow Sophy, from Braunton, has sworn to uncover the facts about the shooting and is claiming he was "deliberately targeted" by the Israeli military.

But Chris did not believe his life was in danger, although he worried he might be deported if arrested. His parents in Exeter were worried but supportive, he said.

"It's a bit of a pain to be deported," he said yesterday from Qalqilya, "because it might affect my chances of coming back, and I want to come back. I didn't want to be here just as an activist - I wanted to be involved in community building with the Palestinians. And I wanted to see things from different viewpoints, and understand the history and political background to what's happening.

"I don't think it's crazy to come here - it's not like I've gone to Liberia - and I think both sides act with a degree of honor to someone who is an international." Chris had been to Palestine before in January, and this time had entered Israel overland via Jordan. He said it was difficult even to cross into Israel as the border guards were wary of letting in internationals who might enter Palestinian areas.

He had no idea of how he would get back to England, but was not worried, and intended to stay for at least another week. Chris had recorded his impressions en route. He wrote of the forbidding scene that greeted him as he arrived at Qalqilya: "Qalqilya is right on the Israeli border. We took a taxi from Jerusalem, and turned off down a settler road. I could see Qalqilya.

"It wasn't difficult to miss the huge wall surrounding it on one side, and the enormous fences and barbed wire sheets on all sides.

"It looked to me like an enormous prison, and my first impression turned out to be correct. Within two years, a town of 40,000 people has been turned into a giant ghetto." He had managed to enter Qalqilya, he said, by pretending to be a journalist, and was ready for further events as and when they occurred.

"It feels safe, but the situation here can change in heartbeat."