This pressure’s got to stop.

Once again the pressure cooker is erupting. Because if the pressure keeps getting turned up, that’s all pressure cookers can do.

Palestinians live in a pressure cooker that’s constructed and controlled by Israel. They are blockaded in Gaza. Walled off in the West Bank. Denied equal rights inside Israel. They are subjects of a system of control that exerts extreme pressure on their lives on a daily basis.

Every now and then that pressure gets ratcheted up even higher, as it has been recently with the threatened evictions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem in Sheik Jarrah.

The images grabbing our attention and filling our screens right now are the horrific scenes of the Israeli bombing of Gaza – one of the most densely populated strips of land anywhere on earth.

But the terror is being felt everywhere.

Palestinians living in Israel as ‘Israeli-Arabs’ are being targeted throughout Israel. Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are facing the tightening of the de-humanising apparatus of occupation – with its walls, checkpoints, house demolitions, illegal settlements and stop-start utilities.

The Palestinians have lived in the Holy Lands for hundreds of years. And since the founding of our little festival in the 1970s, we have done our best to tell their story, stand in solidarity with them, and amplify their struggle.

We know that there is complexity and nuance to this seemingly intractable situation. But that complexity, and anxiety about being branded anti-semitic, must not silence us.

We have many Palestinian friends and contacts in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza and they’re all calling for help right now. They are desperate.

We must speak up and act. We cannot remain silent. We have put together some resources below to help.

Please do what you can – talk about what’s happening on social media, write to your MPs, connect with organisations on the ground that work for peace and justice in Israel-Palestine, get your communities, colleges and churches to take a stand.

This article has come to us from Greenbelt and we have shared it here.