The Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine, the American Friends Service Committee,
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| Ayed Morrar is from the Palestinian village of Budrus where he organized the first Popular Committee Against the Wall in 2003. Since then, Budrus has staged more than 60 nonviolent demonstrations and became the model for other villages in the West Bank. Ayed is a well-known advocate and speaker for nonviolent resistance in Palestine, has advised other committees on tactics and principles, has sat on government councils, and has conducted one previous overseas speaking tour (in Sweden). He has been physically attacked many times for his efforts and has spent more than six years in Israeli prisons. |  |
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Jonathan Pollak comes from the activist Jewish community in Israel. Like Ayed, he has been a tireless organizer, and also formed a popular committee against the Wall among his Jewish colleagues. He has participated in more than 200 Palestinian-organized demonstrations in the West Bank over the last three years in villages like Budrus and Bil'in, has been arrested dozens of times, wounded, jailed. Jonathan has mobilized hundreds of Israelis to stand in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli occupation. He is an eloquent spokesperson for the Israeli solidarity movement in support of Palestinian rights. |
 Largely unnoticed by the world's press, thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israeli supporters are waging a major nonviolent resistance campaign against the occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land, and especially against the Annexation Wall that destroys Palestinian villages and strategically annexes Palestinian land and vital water resources for illegal Israeli settlements. The nonviolent resistance movement is a grassroots movement: thousands of farmers, workers, mothers, and students, together with Israeli and international volunteers, brave teargas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, live ammunition, arrests, beatings and even death to defy their expulsion from their land. This struggle has been embraced by thousands of men, women and children in Palestinian villages, and by Israeli and international solidarity volunteers. In hundreds of unarmed mass protests and demonstrations, they block the construction of the Wall with their bodies. In a rare victory for nonviolence over the Israeli military, Ayed Morrar led his village of Budrus in a campaign of over 50 peaceful protests in 2003-2004, forcing a substantial change in the path of Israel's Separation Barrier.
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