[lbo-talk] International petition against the apartheid and transfer wall

[Bryan Atinsky]

Please consider signing this petition against the wall initiated by Etienne
Balibar. It calls upon the International Community to pressure Israel to
stop building the wall.

Also please send the link to your lists.

Petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/stw/petition.html

To: The United Nations, the democratic forces and governments, humanitarian
organizations and the Jewish communities around the world

The Israeli government is currently erecting the Wall of Separation –
euphemistically called the “Security Fence” – which is supposed to block
“terrorist attacks” (but certainly won’t prevent missiles and helicopters
from hitting their human targets) at an estimated cost of 2 billion dollars
in the middle of the Occupied Territories of the West Bank. Plans also exist
to complete it along the Jordan River. In any case it is already creating a
situation with immeasurably tragic consequences. But at this time, the
reactions and objections from international organizations, governments,
public opinions outside and inside Israel (with the notable exception of
such courageous groups as Gush Shalom, B’Tselem, Ta’yush), remain strangely
restrained, as if the construction were a fait accompli, as if protest must
wait for the work to
be completed or tactical precautions must be observed during a period of
renewed “peace talks” under the auspices of the U.S. and other world powers.

Directly or indirectly displacing populations and/or depriving them of their
means of subsistence (uprooting trees, denying access to water and to arable
land) and opportunities for learning and work, through the dire restriction
of movement, the Wall strikes at the capacity of the Palestinian people to
persist, comparable to the mass expulsions of 1948 and the occupation of
1967. An estimated 90,000 to 210,000 Palestinians are going to be displaced
from their homes. As for all others, it is designed to make their lives so
utterly impossible that many will have no choice than leave, either their
villages, or their country. The Wall sanctions and renders irreversible the
Jewish settlements (all of them illegal by
international law) and the incremental seizure of East Jerusalem, both of
which transform the future, always promised “viable Palestinian State,” into
a mere patchwork of Bantustans and refugee camps, generalizing and
aggravating the model already realized in Gaza. It imprisons the
Palestinians (or better said that segment of the Palestinian people who
until now has succeeded in remaining and resisting on its own soil) on a
restricted part of the West Bank within a murderous triple line of concrete,
barbed wire and electronic fortifications, whose precedents in modern
history indisputably belong to the totalitarian tradition. It also
transforms the Israeli “defense forces” and the Israeli citizensm,
themselves into a people of camp wardens. In short, this is a new naqba that
promises for the present and the future only famine, deportations, terror,
war, and abjection – whatever transitory arrangements might be reached
through local and international agreements.

Are we going to watch this process without raising any protest, just to
discover after the event that we were guilty of “non-intervention” in a
crime against humanity committed before our eyes? The signatories here
refuse to accept the Wall as inevitable, and decry the cowardice of those
who do not raise their voices against this injustice. The signatories launch
an urgent appeal to democratic forces and governments, to the United Nations
and humanitarian organizations, to the Jewish communities around the World
who have kept the memory of their own past sufferings, and to religious,
moral, academic and legal authorities. The construction of the Wall must
stop immediately. World opinion must force the Israeli government to
dismantle the Wall and return and restore the Palestinian land it has
already appropriated and destroyed. This is not an object of “negotiation”.
It is a moral and political imperative.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned