Palestinians recall slain U.S. hostage’s support for their cause

TEL AVIV – Palestinian activists honored American aid worker Kayla Mueller on Friday in what they said was gratitude for her support of their cause.

Mueller, who died in Islamic State custody last week, spent a month in the West Bank and East Jerusalem with the International Solidarity Movement before she traveled to the Turkish-Syrian border, where she worked with Syrian refugees before she was kidnapped in Aleppo, Syria, in August 2013.

Abdullah Abu-Rahmeh, an activist in the West Bank village of Bilin, said locals marched Friday with photographs of Mueller in their weekly protest against the route of Israel’s security barrier.

Israel began building the barrier roughly along the border with the West Bank in 2002 in response to Palestinian attacks. Palestinians say the barrier cuts deeply into the West Bank, leaving nearly 10 percent of Palestinian lands – including a sizable portion of Bilin’s land – on the Israeli side of the barrier.

Abu-Rahmeh said Mueller marched in Bilin five years ago and got to know the villagers. She wrote online about the Palestinian struggle during her visit and after she left.

She was particularly upset by the death of Jawaher Abu-Rahmeh, who died after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli troops in 2011. Of Bilin, Mueller wrote, “their best farm land, their wells, their olive trees, their livelihood, their very existence is silently and illegally being stolen from them; the village is slowly being strangled.”

“I am very proud to know Kayla,” said Abdullah Abu-Rahmeh, a cousin of Jawaher. “I will remember her all my life because she was a brave girl, and she supported us as a human being.”

In addition to her work in Bilin, Mueller attended protests against Israelis moving into Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem. She also accompanied Palestinian children to school in Hebron, where 700 Jewish Israeli settlers live among 250,000 Palestinians. In Tel Aviv, Mueller volunteered at an advocacy organization for African migrants to Israel.

Many in Israel view the groups Mueller worked with here with suspicion. The International Solidarity Movement comes under frequent criticism for its tactics.