We would like to attempt to describe to you first hand the experiences of civilians in the occupied territories.

* The civilian population has been living under artillery barrage, sniper fire, and air raids. As well as the constant presence of tanks literally on their door step.

* The deliberate destruction by Israeli forces of property, cutting of electricity and water supplies is utterly illegal according international conventions and designed to spread fear throughout the civilian population.

* Many people are beginning to run out of basic supplies like food and water.

*Red Cross ambulances have been stopped by Israeli soldiers from rescuing non-combatant and combats injured during the invasion. Occupation forces have also blockaded the main hospitals in the city of Ramallah

* Israeli forces have cut electricity supplies and blocked entry and exit of local hospitals.

* Bodies are left lying where they fell with families unable to bury them. Many of those injured have died of the loss of blood and not as a direct result of their injuries.

* Hundreds of male civilians between the ages of 15-50 have been herded into makeshift detention camps and detained without probable cause.

* From our own group three girl subjected to an intrusion into the flat that they were staying in with local families, by Israeli troops who trashed the entire flat breaking as much furniture as possible; separating them from each other for interrogation and pointing guns at people who were obviously not a threat to them.

* Israeli soldiers are stealing goods and looting local businesses to supply their own troops.

* From our own group there remain over 300 Europeans demonstrating at the main checkpoint between Occupied East Jerusalem and Ramallah.

As part of a worldwide effort to protect the Palestinian people from the oppressive and illegal military campaign by the Israeli state now underway in the West Bank and Gaza; 150 European citizens are trapped in Ramallah witnessing the horror of the occupation first hand. We are angry and frustrated by the silence of European governments to the physical threats posed by the occupation forces to our fellow citizens.

And yet all we hear on our battery operated radio’s are the tired rhetoric of an oppressive Israeli government supported by the United States. Verbal condemnation of Israeli action by European governments is hollow as long as they continue to supply them with the weapons now being used on the streets of the West bank, and billions of dollars in aid. The European Union should immediately withdraw the moral support that it has given successive Israeli governments in the wake of these atrocities. We want a more concrete form of condemnation. This is not an equal conflict this is a nuclear state disseminating a desperate and defenseless civilian population.

You might be asking what we want?

1. We want decisive action by our governments to stop the Israeli rampage in the West Bank.

2. We want protection for the civilians.

3. We want Israel to be made to conform to the conventions governing military action in civilian areas.

4. We want Israel as a state to be forced to comply with United Nations resolutions.

5. We want Israel to conform to international legal norms.

As a note we would like to inform you that: Geoffrey Adams (consul general) and Sherrard Cooper-Coles (ambassador) the British representatives to Israel were contacted on our arrival. Mr. Cooper-Coles had is mobile phone switched off in a time of crisis in the knowledge that British citizens were in grave danger. Mr. Adams, the consul general, could only regurgitate tired bureaucratic rhetoric that it is beyond their control despite the fact that they have the means to contact us they have not done so and we remain unaware of how we are going to get out of Ramallah.

If you wish to contact us by telephone you can call.

+972 22953592 or +4407733112816 (UK mobile)

Ramy M K Aly

Osama Muttawa

Rudy El-Fekaiki

Salma Karmi

Anais Lafaite

Dan Glazebrook

Sukant Chandon

Zaki El Salahi

Karren Wheeler