Political Statement and Call to Action on Palestine- From World Social Forum

[Tom Joad]

Nairobi, Kenya, January 2007 -- Forty years after Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and almost 60 years after the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, the Palestinian people is at a critical juncture.

Global solidarity and support will be decisive in enabling the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom, justice and durable peace to prevail.

To date, official diplomacy has failed in enforcing scores of UN resolutions and relevant principles of international law aimed at ending Israel's occupation, colonization, displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people. US-led Middle East diplomacy, favoring military intervention and unilateralism over respect for international law, is also directly implicated in wars and occupation in Iraq and Lebanon, complicit with Israel's colonial regime in Palestine, and actively encouraging division and civil war in the region. Rather than being part of the solution, the US and the entire Quartet -- including the EU -- have become part of the problem in the region.

After intense efforts, transparent and democratic parliamentary elections were held in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) with the fervent backing of the US and the EU, both of which rejected the election results that brought Hamas to "power," an outcome that was not in line with their plans for the region, particularly their attempt to "convince" the Palestinians to accept limited self-rule in the OPT under the overall control of Israeli military authorities. Subsequently, Israel, the US and most European powers imposed a severe, inhumane regime of sanctions against Palestinians under occupation. In the words of the UN Special Rapporteur, Prof. John Dugard, sanctions were imposed on the occupied rather than the occupier, the first time an occupied people has been so treated.

Poverty, unemployment, de-development, and destabilization of vital institutions providing health care, education and social services were among the immediate results of this merciless blockade. This, coupled with direct foreign intervention, encouraged dispute in the Palestinian political system, undermining the ability for effective coping and eventually triggering open conflict between the two leading Palestinian political parties.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=11927

[The Magistrate]

1. As Usual, Mr. Joad

The partisan claque masquerading as peace activists ignores crucial aspects of the situation.

Had hostilities against Israel not been pressed from Gaza, very little of the death and suffering decried would have occured: had the political leadership of Arab Palestine foresworn violence and acted on the declarations, none of it would.

Were Hamas to flatly state it recognizes the existance, legitimacy, right to exist, and territorial integrity of the state of Israel, no one would have the slightest objection to a Hamas government, but failing this, it is a war government, and it and the people who voted it on must accept the consequences of their actions.

You do not like having it pointed out, Sir, but it remains a fact that the political leadership of Arab Palestine has down the years dug most of the pit in which that unhappy people finds itself today, and their situation will show no improvement until this is recognized, and the first rule of holes is heeded.

[mitchtv]

2. Prisons are always violent places

and Gaza is just that.I think there is plenty of blame on both sides.
Long live Jimmy Carter

[The Magistrate]

3. Hyperbole Does Not Help, Sir

If the retirement of Israel's soldiers from the place had not been followed by the launching of artillery rockets against Israeli towns, and assaults on border check-points, none of the violence recently levied by Israel in the place would have occured. The various shooting afrays between Arab Palestinian political factions might still have broken out, of course.