Westland — As reports of constantly worsening conditions in the Palestinian territories accumulate, a new website is offering a proactive way for people to take action and put their frustrated energy to work.

Five for Palestine, an online campaign created by a Washington-based non-profit, offers a clear set of quick measures to take for people wanting to advocate for Palestinian rights.

Zachary Wales, of the American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights, has been traveling the country to spread word of the movement to get each concerned person to do five simple things:

1- Take five minutes to visit www.fiveforpalestine.org.

2- Take five minutes to sign up for the campaign.

3- Contact your congressperson about the situation in Palestine five times per year.

4- Contribute $5 a month to the campaign to help expand it.

5- Recruit five friends to join the campaign.

“We want to get 10,000 people to join this campaign by the end of the year,” Wales said at the Ramallah Club in Westland on April 13, where he met with local activists to announce the campaign.

“What is needed is persistent focus,” he said.

Wales hopes the initiative can help consolidate the power that groups and communities around the country have to influence policy makers.

“It’s easy to network. It’s hard to focus,” he said.

He said the concrete platform and the efficiency of the website can facilitate the focus for a collective, strategic movement, without duplicating the efforts of countless other Palestinian rights organizations.

“The goal is not to get in the way of groups who already have a presence—but to augment what you’re doing,” he said.

The website has social networking capabilities that include tracking fulfillment of the five goals for each member and each recruit. It also facilitates contacting and getting messages across to representatives in Congress.

“It’s snappy. It’s easy to do,” said Jon Swanson, an Ann Arbor activist of the anti-occupation group Friends of Sabeel.

“People always want to know what they can do. Now you can plug them into something they can do… I think the time is ripe for this. Eyes are focused on the region.”

Wales said that while the simplicity of the project appeals to activists, who are often stretched thin and have little time and resources to offer, it also targets groups and places where there is a lack of awareness and activity related to the issue.

It’s designed to appeal to people who haven’t thought about this before,” he said.

“We look at the landscape and find out where it’s not happening.”

Wales said the failure of peace and rights advocates to effectively have their voices heard has caused representatives in Congress and presidential candidates to ignore Palestine while paying a wealth of attention to Israeli interests.

“If that’s what you have to do to get elected, then we’re not doing our job,” Wales said.

Karen Deslierres, another Ann Arbor activist involved with multiple groups that fight for awareness of violence and home demolitions in the Palestinian territories, said that contacting members of Congress can often be an intimidating task for people.

But she said that after working up the courage to make the calls, she’s found the offices of her representatives to be very interested in accounts of her travels to the region.

“They end up being incredibly grateful for that insight,” she said. “Lobbying and educating can be the same thing. Our congressmen really do want to hear from us and need to… We’ve got such a wealth of personal narratives in this area.”

Visit www.fiveforpalestine.org for more information.