Reply #2: Israel bars aid convoy to Gaza [View All]

[Tom Joad]

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BE7095BF-0E93-4AAB-A2CA-42B17264D16A.htm

The Israeli military has prevented an aid convoy organised by Israeli human rights organisations, peace activists, and former military personnel, from reaching needy families in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israeli groups braved dipping temperatures and the unusually rain-sodden grounds of the Erez border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Saturday, hoping that Israeli authorities would allow five tons of food through.

As of Monday, the Gaza-bound supplies, comprising non-perishable goods, are still warehoused at Kibbutz Kerem Shalom on the southern border of the Gaza strip, awaiting army clearance to cross into the strip.

Adam Keller, of Gush Shalom, an Israel-Palestine peace bloc, said: "We are still in negotiations with the army and are trying to mobilise Knesset members. We have an appeal to the supreme court that is ready to be lodged. We hope it will not come to that, but will use it if necessary."

The Israeli supreme court is already considering a wider appeal made last week by Israeli humanitarian organisations, asking that the court compels the government to lift its blockade on Gaza.
(snip)

Several of the speakers at the Erez crossing on Saturday praised Gazans on breaching the Rafah border last week, while condemning both Qassam rocket attacks from the strip on the Israeli border town of Sderot and Israeli military attacks on Gaza.

Eyad Sarraj, founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health programme, spoke from Gaza City by mobile phone and his voice was amplified on the Israeli side of the crossing."I am deeply honoured and proud to have the chance to talk to you," he told the Israelis.

"Every drop of blood shed in Israel or in Palestine is a crime against humanity that has to be prevented."

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This is an example of Israeli/Palestinian mutual support that the Israeli regime finds so threatening to the status quo. This is what many here support, real solidarity to end the occupation and the violence of that occupation and the terrible violence that results from keeping a people oppressed.

I also don't think we should mince words about what Israel policy really comes down to. It is a slow but deliberate genocide. Don't take my word for it, listen to International Law expert Richard Falk, written last June when the siege was less severe. (I would love to see an update on this essay!)

Israel is currently stiffening the boycott on economic relations that has brought the people of Gaza to the brink of collective starvation. This set of policies, carried on for more than four decades, has imposed a sub-human existence on a people that have been repeatedly and systematically made the target of a variety of severe forms of collective punishment. The entire population of Gaza is treated as the ‘enemy’ of Israel, and little pretext is made in Tel Aviv of acknowledging the innocence of this long victimized civilian society.

To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole. It is this prospect that makes appropriate the warning of a Palestinian holocaust in the making, and should remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of ‘never again.’

http://www.transnational.org/Area_MiddleEast/2007/Falk_PalestineGenocide.html/url

Don't say you didn't know!