Report by: George Rishmawi

"Light a Candle to Stop Land Confiscation", that was the title which the 15th candle procession carried for the year 2005. Hundreds of Palestinians and international marched in the town of the Shepherds, Beit Sahour, east of Bethlehem, raising their voice against the ongoing Israeli policy of confiscating Palestinian land.

Despite the heavy rain on Christmas Day, December 25, marchers carried their candles, joined hands through the town starting from the shepherds field site.

Throughout the march, Christmas carols mixed with some national songs were played and the churches tolled their bells.

Palestinian youth distributed a fact sheet to the demonstrators showing the danger of land confiscation with numbers and figures about the effect of the apartheid wall on the Palestinian population.

The fact sheet was prepared by the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, (ARIJ) which part of its specialty to monitor Israeli settlement activities and land confiscation.

The march ended at the new location of the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People (PCR), the organizer of the march. The marchers were invited for a simple reception at the PCR premises for some cookies and Arabic coffee.

The candle procession is an annual activity that PCR organizes to transmit the message of the Palestinian people to the world since 1991.

One march was to light a candle for peace and justice, where another for freedom of worship and another for the national unity of the Palestinian people.

The march is one of the forms of the civil-based resistance to the occupation among other methods that PCR conducts to non-violently resist the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Among the figures who joined the march, the Mayor of Beit Sahour, Mr. Hani El-Hayek, the Governor of Bethlehem, Mr. Salah Ta'amari and Dr. Mubarak Awad who was deported from Palestine in the late 80s for his nonviolent activities and founder of several organizations that promote nonviolence as a strategy to end the Israeli occupation.

International peace activists from the International Solidarity Movement and others who came to join the International Conference on nonviolence which will be held in Bethlehem that is organized by the Holy Land Trust and Nonviolence International headed by Dr. Awad.