The
International Solidarity Movement (
ISM) is a
Palestinian-led activist organization that recruits civilians from western countries to participate in non-violent acts of resistance against
Israeli activities during the
Israel-Palestinian conflict. 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."
Past ISM campaigns have used the following strategies:
- Acting as human shields to deter Israeli military operations.Specifically detering the shooting of unarmed children.
- Freedom Summer.Physically removing roadblocks put in place by the Israel Defence Forces.
- Attempting to block military vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers[?] demolishing civilain homes in contravention of the Geneva convention.
- Walls of Apatheid. Violating curfew orders and blocking the building of the Apartheid wall.
- The Olive Harvest campaign.Protecting Palestinian olive farmers from attack by illegal Israeli settlers
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 destroying weapons-smuggling tunnels from Egypt.
- On March 27, 2003, Islamic Jihad member Shadi Sukiya was arrested in the ISM offices in Jenin.
- 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.
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 has no relationship with the Polish trade union, Solidarity.)