Featuring Bassim Tamimi,
Shadia Sbait and Amir Toumie
The issue of displaced Palestinian citizens of Israel is a core aspect of the regional conflict, one whose solution has ramifications for any peace process. "In order to reach understanding, stability and a resolution of the local conflict, we urge the promotion of the Iqrit model. Our aim in this tour is to present our community, its struggle and its strategies for achieving our mission."
In November 1948, 6 months after the foundation of the State of Israel, the army ordered the people of Iqrit to leave their homes for a period of two weeks as atemporary measure due to military operations in the area. In coordination with the village priest, all the inhabitants of Iqrit were collectively transferred on army trucks to a nearby village. At that time, all inhabitants were legal citizens and carried Israeli IDs. Two weeks later, the Israeli authorities' promise was broken when the Iqrit villagers were prohibited from returning to their homes, and Iqrit was proclaimed a closed military zone.
For the past 66 years, Iqrit's Community has been united in a struggle for the right to return home, engaged in one of the longest and most persistent non-violent popular and legal struggles for justice the region has known.
Iqrit Community Association
جمعية اهالي اقرث ◼︎ עמותת קהילת איקרית
Our US Tour
Hosted by
Tufts SJP
Lincoln Filene Hall, Rabb Room
10 Upper Campus Road,
on the Green near Memorial Steps
"Our Destiny is to Resist"
Bassem Tamimi is a renowned Palestinian human rights activist from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, where, for the past 6 years, residents have opposed Israel’s illegal settlement construction and military occupation with weekly non-violent protests.
Tamimi has been detained over a dozen times, at one point spending 3 years in an Israeli jail without charges or trial. In 1993, Shin Bet interrogators left him unconscious for 8 days and partially paralyzed for months to follow. He has been an Amnesty International ‘prisoner of conscience’ and was featured in a New York Times Magazine cover story on March 17, 2013.
On August 30, 2015, the village of Nabi Saleh made world-wide headlines when videos and photos of Bassem’s wife and daughter physically preventing the arrest of the family’s 12-year-old son went viral over social media.
