Women for Palestine
Australians for Palestine
24 January 2008
PHOTO:Timesonline
By now, people watching their news programs around the world
would have caught a glimpse of Gaza City in candle-lit darkness.
A pretty sight indeed
if it were not for the fact that most of the people in the Gaza Strip will
have to depend on these candles as their only source of light now that the
power plant servicing the 1.5 million population has shut down completely.
There is no fuel to keep the plant running because Israel has imposed a
complete lockdown of this most densely populated place on earth.
That means no movement in or out of the Gaza Strip for people,
or any kind of shipments in of vital food, fuel supplies and medicines.
It is more than a miserable existence: it is a slow death.
This the sixth day of Israel’s draconian action against a people already
suffering from the punitive sanctions imposed on them after their
democratic elections in January 2006 did not yield a result palatable
to Israel and parts of the international community. Israel’s latest
24 hour reprieve to let in some supplies is not going to change the
circumstances under which the Palestinians have had to live for
the last two years. At most, these supplies will last two days.
The Palestinians have been struggling to survive in conditions
that reached emergency levels even before this latest
siege. Hunger, poverty and unemployment are widespread and in this
maximum-security prison surrounded by Israel’s military cordon, disease,
malnutrition and anarchy are dangerously close to breaking out.
Israel claims that its actions are in response to the homemade rocket fire
aimed at the Israeli town of Sderot bordering the Gaza Strip. But, for many
Palestinians that rocket fire is a legitimate act of resistance against
Israel’s unrelenting sanctions and belligerence. By no stretch of the
imagination is it an even contest. The Palestinians are imprisoned in Gaza
and have no military force other than guns and homemade rockets. Israel, on
the other hand, has the most sophisticated weaponry in the world at its
disposal and it uses it with merciless ferocity. It is bombing the Gaza
Strip with its F-16 fighter planes and helicopter gun ships and is launching
artillery fire from the tanks it has surrounding this tiny stretch of land.
In just the last few days, some 40 people have been killed and 120 injured,
most of them civilians. To add insult to injury, Israeli armed vehicles and
bulldozers are entering the Strip and soldiers are setting fire to houses
and preventing ambulances from reaching the wounded.
Israel’s responses are completely disproportionate to the damage caused by
the rocket fire from Gaza, which is largely psychological and a symbolic
retaliation for Israel’s aggression. While it certainly makes life
miserable for the residents of Sderot, Israel itself is not under threat and
Israel could easily evacuate the people from Sderot until negotiations for
peace find a just solution. The number of Israelis killed and injured by
these rockets has been very few compared to the Palestinians killed in Gaza.
In seven years, eleven Israelis have been killed while hundreds of
Palestinians have been killed in retaliation, not to mention the hundreds
more that have been wounded, often permanently maimed.
Such collective punishment of an entire population is illegal under
international law. Most of the Palestinians in Gaza are not militants.
Like in any other population, there is the usual mix of civil servants,
doctors, teachers, lawyers, health care workers, engineers, journalists,
politicians, students and the thousands of people upon whom any society
depends to keep services running - except that hundreds of thousands are now
unemployed. And then of course, there are the mothers and children, the
elderly and the sick, the incapacitated, the mentally impaired, the charity
workers, volunteers, people who do not have a say about what decisions are
made. There are also angry young men who feel helpless to protect their
families and people already burdened by decades of humiliation and
oppression, and many of them are fighting back as any people would do under
attack, but their means are primitive and limited because they cannot leave
the confines of Gaza.
Over 1000 Palestinian civilians have gone out on the streets in protest and
to beg the world to put an end to this enforced starvation and siege.
People are queuing up to find bread, but no one is baking because there is
no electricity. Connections with the outside world are dwindling as mobile
phones and laptops run out of battery power. There is no water because the
pumps need electricity. Washing machines, cook tops and ovens are useless.
People cannot get to work because there is practically no fuel for cars and
buses. Hospitals with generators are running out of fuel to power them,
halting all surgery procedures. Babies in humidicribs will die once the
power goes. Asthmatics on ventilators will suffer. People needing dialysis
machines and heart monitors will collapse. Clinics and laboratories will
lose their tests and vaccines. Soon, all communication with the outside
world will cease and what are we going to do about it?
Najwa Sheikh Ahmad who works for UNRWA in Gaza and began the Candles for
Gaza Campaign with her husband last year in October has written to say “The
Israeli side is doing its best to steal every joyful moment in our lives.
Starting from treating us like another weird species that should have no
mercy, to destroying the best happy moments that a family can have – the
wedding of a son – to the slow killing of my people - like banning their
right to have medical treatment outside Gaza which has seen 72 people die
already – to finally controlling every border and banning the regular rights
of having electricity, water and fuel – basic needs that no one should have
to bargain over. I am sitting in the dark cold with my three children and I
try to keep them busy, but the days are long and dark and they feel bored
and are starting to make trouble. Oh God, how exhausting it is to live this
way in the 21st century.”
John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the
Palestinian territories said that "The killing of some 40 Palestinians in
Gaza in the past week, the targeting of a Government office near a wedding
party venue with what must have been foreseen loss of life and injury to
many civilians, and the closure of all crossings into Gaza raise very
serious questions about Israel's respect for international law and its
commitment to the peace process.”
Luisa Morgantini, the vice president of the European parliament, has
expressed concern over the escalating acts of murder committed by the IOF
troops in Gaza and the West Bank and has urged the EU high representative
Javier Solana and the world community to work side by side to force the
Israeli government to stop the violence and mass punishment against
Palestinian civilians.
The UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, the Undersecretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said that “This kind of action against the
people in Gaza cannot be justified, even by those rocket attacks”.
Israel’s actions have done nothing to further the peace process over which
there was so much fanfare only a few weeks ago. Where will it all stop if
Israel is allowed to continue its siege? When people are taking their last
gasps in their battle for survival, who knows where desperation will lead
them – mass riots, anarchy, and absolute despair where death will be better
than life?
Israel might find that giving the Palestinians their freedom and allowing
them the dignity of self-determination in their own land might be far more
effective in bringing about a peaceful solution than all this bloodshed and
misery. Fifty years have passed since Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan
said “How can we complain about Gaza’s hatred towards us? For eight years,
they have been sitting in refugee camps while right in front of them, we are
turning the land and villages of their forefathers into our home.” How much
deeper must the hatred be after decades of oppression that has reduced their
existence to a mere spectre of life? Without a political solution that
includes Gaza in negotiations to settle the wrongs done to the Palestinians,
a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis is as remote as ever.
We are asking for your help again. The Palestinians need candles
desperately and they need your voice to speak for them. Please write to our
newspapers and politicians and urge them to take action and bring an end to
this humanitarian disaster. Also, a deluge of letters to the Israeli
Embassy would allow the Israelis to see that Australians do not support a
siege on the people of Gaza. We cannot stand by and allow this slow
agonising death of a whole people to continue whatever justification Israel
gives for its actions. There has to be another way that gives succour to
the people of Gaza and hope for a better future than the ominous one being
forced on them right at this moment.
Please see attached information on the Candles for Gaza Campaign.
We have also arranged for a representative in Amman, Jordan to
purchase candles for us to give to UNRWA for distribution. Money
can be placed in the following account if this is easier than sending
candles:
Name: Mariam Sheikh
Bank: St George Bank
Account No: 145272621
Letters, emails or faxes can be sent to:
His Excellency Yuval Rotem
Ambassador to Israel
Israeli Embassy
6 Turrana Street
Yarralumla ACT 2600
Australia
Email: info@canberra.mfa.gov.il
Fax: (02) 6215 4555
Please also cc our Foreign Minister and/or send him a letter or email
Requesting that the Australian Government call for an end to Israel’s siege
on Gaza.
The Hon Stephen Smith MP
Minister for Foreign Affairs
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra, ACT 2600
Email: Stephen.Smith.MP@aph.gov.au
Fax: (02) 6273 4112
Letters to the media can be sent to the following email addresses:
THE AUSTRALIAN <letters@theaustralian.com.au>
THE AGE <letters@theage.com.au>
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD <letters@smh.com.au>
THE CANBERRA TIMES <letters.editor@canberratimes
THE HERALD SUN <hsletters@heraldsun.com.au>
THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW <edletters@afr.fairfax.com.au>
THE COURIER MAIL <cmletters@qnp.newsltd.com.au>
THE ADELAIDE ADVERTISER <mailedit@adv.newsltd.com.au>
THE WEST AUSTRALIAN <westinfo@wanews.com.au>
THE MERCURY <mercury.news@dbl.newsltd.com.au>
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