Annapolis no, Palestine yes!

New York City Photo: Charlotte Kates

Hoisting signs reading “Annapolis—No; Free Palestine—Yes,” more than 50 people held a militant picket line during the evening rush hour outside the Israeli Mission in New York City Nov. 27. The action was one of several held across the United States to protest the Bush administration’s so-called Middle East peace conference at the U.S. Navy War College in Annapolis, Md.

Chanting “End the siege of Gaza” and “U.S. out of the Middle East,” protesters pushed back an attempt by New York police to force the swelling picket line onto a tiny sliver of pavement. They liberated most of the sidewalk on a busy block of Second Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets.

Hollywood, Calif. Photo: Ramon Armendiaz

“It’s an outrage and insult to the anti-war movement—which is most of the people in this country—that Bush would call a ‘peace conference’ while occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and preparing for a new war in Iran,” declared Larry Holmes of the Troops Out Now Coalition, which initiated the call for protests against the Annapolis meeting. “This is a war conference, a colonialist conference.”

Charlotte Kates of Al-Awda New York and New Jersey Solidarity-Activists for the Liberation of Palestine led the crowd in chanting, “Not one more penny, not one more dime for Israel’s crimes.” She said that while the Annapolis gathering was aimed at sowing more divisions within sections of the Palestinian and Arab leadership, the Palestinian people are united in their opposition to any bogus agreement made under U.S. aegis.

“Thousands of people came out today to protest in Gaza, and also in the West Bank, despite severe repression,” Kates reported.