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An Open Letter from Gaza:
Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice
By Gaza NGOs
Besieged Gaza, Palestine, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, January 10, 2011
We the Palestinians of the Besieged Gaza Strip, on this day, two
years on from Israel's genocidal attack on our families, our houses, our
roads, our factories and our schools, are saying enough inaction, enough
discussion, enough waiting - the time is now to hold Israel to account for
its ongoing crimes against us. On the 27th of December 2008, Israel began an
indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The assault lasted 22 days,
killing 1,417 Palestinians, 352 of them children, according to main-stream
Human Rights Organizations. For a staggering 528 hours, Israeli Occupation
Forces let loose their US-supplied F15s, F16s, Merkava Tanks,
internationally prohibited White Phosphorous, and bombed and invaded the
small Palestinian coastal enclave that is home to 1.5 million, of whom
800,000 are children and over 80 percent UN registered refugees. Around
5,300 remain permanently wounded.
This devastation exceeded in
savagery all previous massacres suffered in Gaza, such as the 21children
killed in Jabalia in March 2008 or the 19 civilians killed sheltering in
their house in the Beit Hanoun Massacre of 2006. The carnage even exceeded
the attacks in November 1956 in which Israeli troops indiscriminately
rounded up and killed 275 Palestinians in the Southern town of Khan Younis
and 111 more in Rafah.
Since the Gaza massacre of 2009, world
citizens have undertaken the responsibility to pressure Israel to comply
with international law, through a proven strategy of boycott, divestment and
sanctions. As in the global BDS movement that was so effective in ending the
apartheid South African regime, we urge people of conscience to join the BDS
call made by over 170 Palestinian organizations in 2005. As in South Africa
the imbalance of power and representation in this struggle can be
counterbalanced by a powerful international solidarity movement with BDS at
the forefront, holding Israeli policy makers to account, something the
international governing community has repeatedly failed to do. Similarly,
creative civilian efforts such as the Free Gaza boats that broke the siege
five times, the Gaza Freedom March, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and the many
land convoys must never stop their siege-breaking, highlighting the
inhumanity of keeping 1.5 million Gazans in an open-air prison.
Two
years have now passed since Israel's gravest of genocidal acts that should
have left people in no doubt of the brutal extent of Israel's plans for the
Palestinians. The murderous navy assault on international activists aboard
the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea magnified to the world
the cheapness Israel has assigned to Palestinian llife for so long. The
world knows now, yet two years on nothing has changed for Palestinians.
The Goldstone Report came and went: despite its listing count after
count of international law contraventions, Israeli "war crimes" and
"possible crimes against humanity," the European Union, the United Nations,
the Red Cross, and all major Human Rights Organizations have called for an
end to the illegal, medieval siege, it carries on unabated. On 11th November
2010 UNRWA head John Ging said, "There's been no material change for the
people on the ground here in terms of their status, the aid dependency, the
absence of any recovery or reconstruction, no economy.The easing, as it was
described, has been nothing more than a political easing of the pressure on
Israel and Egypt."
On the 2nd of December, 22 international
organizations including Amnesty, Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid,
and Medical Aid for Palestinians produced the report 'Dashed Hopes,
Continuation of the Gaza Blockade' calling for international action to force
Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade, saying the Palestinians of Gaza
under Israeli siege continue to live in the same devastating conditions.
Only a week ago Human Rights Watch published a comprehensive report
"Separate and Unequal" that denounced Israeli policies as Apartheid,
echoing similar sentiments by South African anti-apartheid activists.
We Palestinians of Gaza want to live at liberty to meet Palestinian
friends or family from Tulkarem, Jerusalem or Nazareth; we want to have the
right to travel and move freely. We want to live without fear of another
bombing campaign that leaves hundreds of our children dead and many more
injured or with cancers from the contamination of Israel's white phosphorous
and chemical warfare. We want to live without the humiliations at Israeli
checkpoints or the indignity of not providing for our families because of
the unemployment brought about by the economic control and the illegal
siege. We are calling for an end to the racism that underpins all this
oppression.
We ask: when will the world's countries act according to
the basic premise that people should be treated equally, regardless of their
origin, ethnicity or colour - is it so far-fetched that a Palestinian child
deserves the same human rights as any other human being? Will you be able to
look back and say you stood on the right side of history or will you have
sided with the oppressor?
We, therefore, call on the international
community to take up its responsibility to protect the Palestinian people
from Israel's heinous aggression, immediately ending the siege with full
compensation for the destruction of life and infrastructure visited upon us
by this explicit policy of collective punishment. Nothing whatsoever
justifies the intentional policies of savagery, including the severing
of access to the water and electricity supply to 1.5 million people. The
international conspiracy of silence towards the genocidal war taking place
against the more than 1.5 million civilians in Gaza indicates complicity in
these war crimes.
We also call upon all Palestine solidarity groups
and all international civil society organizations to demand:
- An
end to the siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian people in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of their exercise of democratic choice.
- The protection of civilian lives and property, as stipulated in
International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law such as
The Fourth Geneva Convention.
- The immediate release of all
political prisoners.
- That Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip
be immediately provided with financial and material support to cope with the
immense hardship that they are experiencing
- An end to occupation,
Apartheid and other war crimes.
- Immediate reparations and
compensation for all destruction carried out by the Israeli Occupation
Forces in the Gaza Strip.
Boycott Divest and Sanction, join the many
International Trade Unions, Universities, Supermarkets and artists and
writers who refuse to entertain Apartheid Israel. Speak out for Palestine,
for Gaza, and crucially ACT. The time is now.
Besieged Gaza,
Palestine 27.December.2010
List of signatories:
General Union for Public Services Workers General Union for
Health Services Workers University Teachers' Association Palestinian
Congregation for Lawyers General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers
General Union for Agricultural Workers Union of Women's Work
Committees Union of Synergies-Women Unit The One Democratic State
Group Arab Cultural Forum Palestinian Students' Campaign for the
Academic Boycott of Israel Association of Al-Quds Bank for Culture and
Info Palestine Sailing Federation Palestinian Association for
Fishing and Maritime Palestinian Network of Non-Governmental
Organizations Palestinian Women Committees Progressive Students'
Union Medical Relief Society The General Society for Rehabilitation
General Union of Palestinian Women Afaq Jadeeda Cultural Centre for
Women and Children Deir Al-Balah Cultural Centre for Women and Children
Maghazi Cultural Centre for Children Al-Sahel Centre for Women and
Youth Ghassan Kanfani Kindergartens Rachel Corrie Centre, Rafah
Rafah Olympia City Sisters Al Awda Centre, Rafah Al Awda Hospital,
Jabaliya Camp Ajyal Association, Gaza General Union of Palestinian
Syndicates Al Karmel Centre, Nuseirat Local Initiative, Beit Hanoun
Union of Health Work Committees Red Crescent Society Gaza Strip
Beit Lahiya Cultural Centre
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