Viva Palestina is finalising plans for the Kick Off for Palestine campaign to construct and maintain links with sporting venues in the besieged Gaza Strip.

It is five years since the imposition of the siege on 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and nearly three years since Israel's Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,417 and destroyed tens of thousands of homes. The UN reports that conditions within Gaza remain appalling. And now a decision by the UN's cultural and sporting organisation to admit Palestine has been greeted with the immediate suspension of £60 million contributions to the body by the US and the decision by Israel to accelerate illegal settlement building in occupied East Jerusalem.

Yet in the face of all that, the Palestinian people are determined to rebuild. Pressure to finally end the siege is increasing and they are looking to the future of Gaza, which has a large youth population.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has recognised Palestine in an historic and overwhelming vote of the member countries. In response, the United States has cut off tens of millions of dollars of funding and Israel has announced the speeding up of the building of more illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

Viva Palestina is announcing a major new initiative, Kick Off for Palestine, in the wake of the UNESCO vote to bring aid and support to Gaza. We intend to raise £250,000 over the next few months to build three sports stadia and playing fields to enable young Palestinians, where unemployment is worst, to play football and other sports. This is an initiative strongly supported by Gazan civil society. We hope to see the first stadium open as early as Spring 2012.

We want to twin football clubs in Britain and beyond with Gaza and to engage footballers and other sports figures in this fund-raising project. Please get in touch if you can contribute funds or want to organise fund-raisers for this great project to bring a ray of hope to many young people in Gaza.

You can donate directly via Paypal below.

The first democratic elections since the fall of Mubarak are due to take place on 28th November. In addition to the uncertainties raised by the election campaign and outcome in Egypt, Israel is now clearly preparing major military operations against Gaza and may launch an attack on Iran in the next few days and weeks.

In this context, we have decided to postpone the VP6 convoy until the situation has become clearer. We still intend to take a convoy in as soon as possible, which we now believe will be possible at some point in the first three months of the New Year. In the meantime, we are concentrating all our efforts on raising funds for Kick Off for Palestine.