Prof. Jeff Halper, Co-ordinator of The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (http://www.icahd.org/) and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee this year (nominated by the Quakers), holding aloft a sign outside her hotel in Jerusalem this evening, demanding that US Secretary of State,
Condoleezza Rice, newly arrived here (finally) on shuttle diplomacy, stop the war crimes Israel is committing. Rice had said in Washington that "As to the timing of this, look, yes, I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do. " We would respectfully suggest, Madame Secretary, that you could have been shuttling for the past two weeks trying to save lives. Stopping Israel from destabilising the whole region, pushing us all nearer to the edge. Instead, you stayed away while the whole world went up in smoke and thousands are homeless, with future lives in shreds. Not to mention anyone who still didn't hate us, now doing so. Doesn't anyone out there understand how terrorism is fuelled by all this s***? Whether you want to call them terrorists or freedom fighters or militants, seems to me nothing more terrorising than F16s raining phosphorus and cluster bombs.
Well you can see the riot police were all over us. We were about 60 people, with a dozen or so of them. We had four arrests - they were really violent, pushing, shoving, grabbing. Doing everything to get us away from the hotel lobby area. Not before the press there came in for photos (helping to keep it less violent, too) and an AP TV interview. "Why have you come here?" asked the AP cameraman. "Because she has to stop it. These war crimes. We see it all on TV. It has to stop. The Occupation, the bombings, the violence. It's just creating more and more hatred and terror. I came to say it's not in my name..." We even shouted all the slogans extra loud when we saw that the main TV station was doing a live link-up at the time of the 9 pm News. Hope it got onto the screens and into Israeli homes. Maybe make them think some of them...
Stop the Killing. Start negotiations now. So we chanted, "Peretz. Peretz. Saar habitahon. Kama yeladot ratzahta ad ha yom?" (Peretz, Minister of Defence. How many little girls have you killed to date?)
Difficult to find the energy, because of the violence, and the emotion of all the anger and fury at this. 
And now we're having weekly large demos in Tel Aviv and daily vigils at 6.00 pm outside the Prime Minister's office. Hope it grows. There again, hope soon there will be no need for it. Negotiations? Please God so.
