We condemn in the strongest possible terms the latest Israeli war crimes committed against our people in the Gaza Strip. We call on the international community and the Arab and Islamic worlds, to take up their responsibility to protect the Palestinian people from this heinous aggression and immediately terminate the continuing Israeli policy of collective punishment.
Over the last 6 days, Gaza City has been bombed by Apache helicopters,F16 and drones. More than 16 civilians, including children, have been killed and more than 70 injured in Beit Hanoun, Jabalya, Khan Younus, and Gaza.
Gaza has been enduring Israeli policies of extermination and vandalism since June, 2006. The Palestinian people have already been under siege for more than 6 years. The continuing international conspiracy of silence towards the genocidal war taking place against the 1.5 million civilians in Gaza indicates complicity in these war crimes.
We call upon the international community to demand that the rogue Apartheid State of Israel end its siege. We also would like to remind the members of the UN that the International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law such as The Fourth Geneva Convention stipulate the protection of civilian lives and property, unless Palestinian women and children are not considered civilians.
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU)
General Union for Health Services Workers
General Union for Public Services Workers
General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers
General Union for Agricultural Workers
Union of Women’s Work Committees
Union of Synergies—Women Unit
Union of Palestinian Women Committees
Women’s Studies Society
Working Woman’s Society
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PSCABI)
University Teachers’ Association
The One Democratic State Group (ODSG)
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine and its eminent panel of jurists has determined that Israel’s practices against the Palestinian people are in breach of the prohibition of apartheid under international law. Following two intense days in Cape Town listening to testimony from expert witnesses, the Tribunal concluded unanimously that “Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law.” The jury reached this conclusion having paid particular attention to the legal definition of apartheid and ensuring that each of the defining criteria was met. This included the following facts: “(i) that two distinct racial groups can be identified; (ii) that ‘inhuman acts’ are committed against the subordinate group; and (iii) that such acts are committed systematically in the context of an institutionalised regime of domination by one group over the other.” They considered in their judgment the widespread evidence of, inter alia, “targeted killings”; the “use of lethal force” against peaceful demonstrators; and the torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians.
The Tribunal declared that although “the Palestinians living under colonial military rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid” the latter extends to Israeli treatment of Palestinian citizens within Israel, and that “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.”
The Tribunal also held that there were sufficient grounds to declare that another Crime Against Humanity is also being committed by Israel and that is the crime of persecution. This involves “the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights of the members of an identifiable group in the context of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population.” It concluded that the crime of persecution could relate to several Israeli acts, including “the siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip as a form of collective punishment of the civilian population; the targeting of civilians during large-scale military operations; the destruction of civilian homes not justified by military necessity; the adverse impact on the civilian population effected by the wall and its associated regime in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; [and] the concerted campaign of forcible evacuation and demolition of unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev region of southern Israel.”
While the Tribunal has no legal status and is a purely civil society initiative – “a court of the people” designed to be a “citizen-based Tribunal of conscience” – its jurors are nonetheless made up of individuals of sufficiently high calibre, expertise and experience for its judgment to carry a lot of weight. It is hoped that this judgment will go some way to expose the crimes being committed by Israel; to inform the public who may be unaware of some of the most pertinent issues; as well as to exert pressure on global institutions and decision-makers who have thus far failed to take a strong enough stance in the face of Israeli crimes against humanity.
In terms of the legal consequences of the judgment, the Tribunal has called upon Israel to “cease its apartheid acts and its policies of persecution and offer appropriate assurances and guarantees of non-repetition”, as well as to make reparations and pay compensation to Palestinians for the damage it has caused. They call upon the international community to fulfill its individual and collective duty “to cooperate to bring Israel’s apartheid acts and policies of persecution to an end”, including by ending any aid or assistance being given to it.
In their recommendations the Tribunal members also call for the following: the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to initiate an investigation into the international crimes being committed by Israel; Palestine to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; and the UN General Assembly to convene a special session “to consider the question of apartheid against the Palestinian people” including considering the roles of individuals, organisations, corporations and all public and private bodies which have been material in assisting Israel in its apartheid policies.
An in-depth MEMO report on the Tribunal as well as interviews with several key members of the jury will be available on the MEMO website in the coming days.
Final Note:
“The Israeli Government was invited to present its case before the Tribunal but chose not to exercise this right and provided no answer to correspondence from the RToP”
22 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
Fifty Palestinian youth marched from Gaza’s International Committee of the Red Cross compound to the Commodore Gaza and Al-Quds International Hotels, celebrating the release of 477 political prisoners Tuesday and welcoming those exiled to Gaza, who are currently housed in the hotels.
The demonstration ended in the Al-Nour Cultural Center, where four exiled prisoners, as well as the son of a current prisoner from Gaza, addressed the crowd.
“We are trying to awaken youth about the situation of the prisoners through ongoing activities,” said Majed Abusalama, one of the organizers of the event.
“This is peaceful cultural resistance,” he said. “We want to pressure the international community to take action for the rights of Palestinian prisoners.”
Abusalama added that the group hoped to hold weekly events calling attention to Palestinian political prisoners detained by Israel.
On Monday, the human rights organizations ADDAMEER and Al-Haq warned that Israel’s exile of Palestinian prisoners “violate[s] Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits forcible transfers and deportations of protected persons, a proscription that is part of customary international humanitarian law.
“Unlawful deportation or transfer also constitutes a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV) and qualifies as one of the most serious war crimes,” the groups said in a joint statement.
The right to return is a core goal of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Since 1947-1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes – and more than 700,000 were ethnically cleansed from their country altogether – they and their descendants have organized to demand the rectification of this historic injustice. The refugees of the Six-Day War in 1967 (after which Israeli forces drove 300,000 Palestinians out of the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank ), the 1967-1994 Israeli administration of the occupied territories (during which Israel stripped 140,000 Palestinians of their residency rights), and the ongoing colonization of Palestine and displacement of its indigenous inhabitants, have added their voices to the growing global movement for return.
In recent years, the right to return has also emerged as a key demand of international solidarity activists supporting Palestinian aspirations for freedom. On July 9, 2005, for example, the Palestinian Civil Society Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) – the founding document of a Palestinian-led global movement for justice in Palestine – stated that “non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by … respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.”
Today the seven million Palestinian refugees are the world’s largest group of refugees, comprising one-third of the total refugee population. Their right to return to their homes, and to receive compensation for the damages inflicted on them, are enshrined in international law. Resolution 194, which the United Nations General Assembly adopted on 11 December 1948 and Israel agreed to implement as a condition of its subsequent admission to the United Nations,
resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
Additionally, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948, states that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” And Resolution 3236, which the General Assembly adopted on November 22, 1974, “reaffirms … the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to the homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.”
Despite its clear obligations under international law, Israel continues to resist demands by Palestinian refugees that they are allowed to return to their homes. Most recently, on Sunday, May 15, the 63rd commemoration of the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of the 1947-1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israeli troops responded to demonstrations by unarmed refugees marching towards their homes with lethal force.
Israeli forces killed at least 15 demonstrators on three borders (with occupied Gaza, Lebanon, and between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights), wounded hundreds more with live gunfire, artillery shells, and tear gas, and unleashed a wave of arrests and repression in the occupied West Bank. This massive violence could only have been planned as a show of brute force, intended, along with Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated assertions that “it’s not going to happen,” to dissuade Palestinian refugees from asserting their historic rights and the global consensus for the right of return.
Yet the most enduring story from May 15 may be that of Hassan Hijazi. A 28-year old Palestinian refugee living in Syria, he braved the gunfire that killed four others along the border with the occupied Golan Heights, then hitchhiked, and finally took a bus, to his family’s home in Jaffa. Before turning himself in to Tel Aviv police, he told Israeli reporters, “I wasn’t afraid and I’m not afraid. On the bus to Jaffa, I sat next to Israeli soldiers. I realized that they were more afraid than I was.”
Millions more are resolved to follow Hijazi’s path. On Sunday, June 5, the 44th commemoration of the Naksa, or setback, Israel’s 1967 expulsion of 300,000 Palestinians following the Six-Day War, Palestinian refugees will return en masse to the borders. Announcing the mobilization on May 18, the Third Intifada Youth Coalition said, “The last few days proved that the liberation of Palestine is possible and very achievable even with an unarmed massive march if the nation decides it is ready to pay all at once for the liberation of Palestine.”
The Preparatory Commission for the Right to Return, a nonpartisan coordinating body, has requested that supporters of the Palestinian liberation struggle also take action on June 5, by staging rallies, marches, and protests throughout the world demanding Palestinian refugees’ right to return. Appropriate venues could include Israeli embassies, consulates, and missions, BDS campaign targets, and foreign governments and international organizations that enable Israeli crimes.
”The May 15 marches were not an isolated incident, but were rather a declaration of the foundation of a new stage of struggle in the history of the Palestinian cause, entitled: ‘The refugees’ right to return to their homes,’” a statement by the Commission says.
For the first time ever, the Palestinians have switched from commemorating their displacement with statements, festivals, and speeches, to actual attempts to return to their homes.
The scene of refugees marching from all directions towards their homeland of Palestine sent a powerful message to the entire world that the refugees are determined to return to their homes however long it may take; and that 63 years were not enough to kill their dream of return; and that the new generations born in forced exile who have never seen their homeland are no less attached than their grandparents and fathers who witnessed the Nakba.
What happened on May 15 was only a microcosm of the larger march soon to come, a march that will be made by Palestinian refugees and those who support them. They will pass the barbed wire and return to their occupied villages and cities.
The crowds will head out from everywhere there are Palestinian refugees toward the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and occupied Palestine’s borders with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, in peaceful marches raising the Palestinian flag and the names of their villages and towns, the keys to their homes, and certification papers.
The Arab Spring’s “winds of change” are blowing through the refugee camps, no less than the Arab capitals, toward Palestine. And they show no signs of stopping.
21 February 2011 | The Alternative Information Center
Canada Park
Palestinian, Israeli and international activists gathered in front of the Representative Office of Canada to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Embassy of Canada to Israel in Tel Aviv for protest vigils on Monday (21/2) organized by the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Latrun Villages.
A Memorandum to the Representative of Canada to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Ambassador of Canada in Tel Aviv respectively was submitted, protesting on behalf of families of the Latrun villages, who were forcibly expelled from their villages in the 1967 war by the criminal action of ethnic cleansing, classified as a crime against humanity under international law.
Canada Park, built in cooperation with the Jewish National Fund, now occupies the site of the villages of Imwas, Yalo and Bayt Nuba, which were were completely destroyed in 1967. Their residents are now refugees in the West Bank and Jordan.
“Canada Park was planted and funded with the support of the Jewish National Fund of Canada over the lands and over the ruins of three ethnically-cleansed villages: Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba, occupied and ethnically cleansed in the course and the wake of the 1967 war,” Dr. Uri Davis told the Alternative Information Center (AIC) outside the Canadian Embassy.
“The ethnic cleansing was perpetrated by the Israeli army, not the JNF, but the JNF is complicit in this crime against humanity by veiling and covering up the crime, planting the Canada Park over the lands and over the ruins, and presenting itself as an environmentally-friendly organization concerned with public will and recreational welfare of all citizens of Israel.”
Participants carried banners reading: “CANADA PARK IS COMPLICIT WITH A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY PERPETRATED IN OUR VILLAGES,” “WE DEMAND THAT THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA RECOGNIZE AND ACT TO IMPLEMENT THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE OF THE LATRUN VILLAGES,” and, “WE DEMAND THE NULLIFICATION OF THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (JNF) IN CANADA.”
The village defense committee has repeated requested that the Representative Office of Canada to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah meet with the Ambassador of Canada to Israel in Ramallah and together tour the Latrun area and the visiting the remains of the destroyed villages over whose ruins the Jewish National Fund (JNF) has planted “Canada Park.”
“Most representatives of the destroyed Latrun villages are not able to come to Tel Aviv to meet the Ambassador, it is our request that the Ambassador arrive in Ramallah, meet the people concerned and with a delegation of the destroyed, ethnically cleansed villages, visit Canada Park and submit an official report of his fact-finding to his government,” Dr. Davis said.
He continued saying, “Canada Park represents a blatant violation of international law, but it also represents a blatant violation of official Canadian policy condemning any intervention of settlement or occupation or change of demographic composition or any other alteration in the 1967 occupied territories.”
