and return to susanha103@yahoo.ca so
we can forward a joint statement to the
media.
and Wael for forwarding it.)
Then attach it again. And email it back
to susanha103@yahoo.ca
email address and phone number to include.
January 21, 2008.
Gaza City was plunged into darkness Sunday after Israel blocked
the shipment of fuel that powers its only electrical plant. 1.5 million
Palestinians civilians who live in Gaza are already besieged
and are suffering from severe food, medicine and life essentials
shortages imposed on them by the inhumane Israeli
aggression. Israel who occupies the Palestinian lands
are committing a 21st century Holocaust against the
Palestinians by starving and killing them hoping to
force them into submission and into accepting the
illegal occupation of Palestinian land and to forgo the
right of return.
We the Palestinian Canadian community and our
Canadian friends, signatories below, demand that
the Canadian government, our politicians, our MPs:
-Condemn the latest Israeli aggression against the
Palestinians in Gaza,
-Demand an immediate halt to all Israeli brutal use of military
force against the Palestinians which is taking a serious
humanitarian toll on civilians,
-Lift the blockade on the Palestinian people and allow all
living essentials, food, medicine and energy to enter the
territories without any delay.
-Allow an independent international tribunal to enter the Palestinian
territories to investigate the Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip and
- Call upon the international community and Canada in particular
to act immediately to stop these crimes;
- And call upon the international community and Canada in particular
to renew the call to the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth
Geneva Convention to fulfill their responsibility under Article 1 of the
Convention, to ensure that it is respected under all circumstances,
and their responsibility under Article 146 to pursue persons
suspected of perpetrating serious violations of the convention.
We affirm that Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) violations are
considered war crimes under Article 147 of the Convention and
under its first protocol.
We ask that our Mayor, our MPs, MPPs and MNAs join
the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and
international human rights groups who have warned that the
blockade will cause a health catastrophe, will drastically affect
hospitals, sewage treatment and water facilities and to
condemn Israel and force it to lift these inhumane measures
which defy basic humanitarian standards.
BACKGROUND:
Israel is responsible for creating an impossible balance of
human suffering on both sides of the border. Basic foods
such as rice, flour and cooking oil are in acute shortage;
bakeries stopped operating because they had neither
power nor flour. People are dying in hospitals and homes
because dialysis machines are not working and medicine
supplies are gone.
Although Israel supposedly pulled out of Gaza in 2005,
Israel still controls most land, sea and air access to the
territory. Israel must lift the blockade because of the
humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza.
Gaza is a prison where 79 percent of households live in poverty,
and children scavenge through dumpsters. It is also an Israeli
target range, where schools, bridges and electric plants have
been destroyed.
In the West Bank, Israel continues to expand its settlements
and build its wall deep inside Palestinian territory,
destroying dozens of Christian and Muslim Palestinian
communities. Meanwhile, Palestinians are the first ever
occupied population to be placed under international sanctions.
The international community including Canada must ensure
that the Israelis meet their legal obligations, without
discrimination against the Palestinians and to respect
and recognize their right to live in freedom and dignity.
The Israeli military and economic siege of Gaza has led to
a collapse in Palestinian living conditions and many people
only survive by looking for scraps of food in rubbish dumps.
The siege created mass despair, anger and a sense of
hopelessness and abandonment.
Israel closed the entry and exit points into the Gaza Strip, home
to 1.5 million Palestinians, this last week and has conducted
frequent raids and bombings that have killed well over 35 people
and wounded hundreds for the past week. The crisis in
Palestine has been largely ignored by Canada. People are
eating only one meal a day, bread with tomatoes or cheap
vegetables, the crisis has worsened; some 80 per cent of
people in Gaza could not meet their family's food needs.
People are raiding garbage dumps. Not only do Palestinians
in Gaza get little to eat but what food they have is eaten cold
because of the lack of electricity and money to pay for fuel.
In one month alone 6 per cent of Gaza's agricultural land
was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. The total closure imposed
by Israel, supplemented by deadly raids, has led to the
collapse of the Palestinian economy. The 35,000
fishermen cannot fish because Israeli gunboats will fire
on them if they go more than a few hundred yards from the shore.
The people of Gaza are paying a heavy price for being Palestinian;
for merely inhabiting the land which every nation in the world
has confirmed belongs to the Palestinian people. We believe
that this Zionist escalation is the result of Bush's visit and a
natural result of the cover supplied by Bush to the Israeli
occupation authorities to go forward in their aggression
against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza
Strip. 115 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF since
the end of the Bush's Annapolis Peace Conference.
A Palestinian boy sits at his house, which was destroyed
during an Israeli army raid on the Rafah refugee camp in
the southern Gaza Strip. This is the area where the Israeli
army previously destroyed over 250 homes.
Signatories,
Palestinian Association of Hamilton,
Ontario Wael Ghuniem waelgh@yahoo.co.uk 905-870-7905
Niagara Palestinian Association,
Susan Howard-Azzeh niag_pal@yahoo.ca 905-984-6515
Canadian Palestinian Foundation of Quebec
CPFQ, Faraj Nakhleh faraj.nakhleh@gmail.com 514-781-4613
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