by Hans Lebrecht, Kibbutz Beit-Oren, March 24, 2003 Tel: (972 4) 8307 237, Fax: (972 4) 823 25 24, E-Mail:hlebr at trendline.co.il
Many thousands of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel marched Saturday through the main streets of Nazareth, Sakhnin, Umm-el Fahm and other Arab inhabited or >>mixed<< cities in Israel to protest the Bush aggression against Iraq. At the head of these marches, Arab Knesset Members, City and village mayors, and other leading politicians were seen. At all these massive and militant demonstrations, organized by the Monitoring Committee of the million strong Arab Minority, Jewish citizens from progressive and democratic circles took part.
In downtown Haifa, at a very busy street crossing at the Allenby street and Wadi Nisnass (near the Arab Ghetto neighborhood, a strong vigil against the Bush war was held also on Saturday under the auspices of the Haifa Peace Forum.
>>We are protesting the aggressive and destructive war, which the Bush
administration is leading in Alliance with the old British colonialists
against an Arab nation in order to gain anew the control of that country's
oil recourses and en route to impose the new colonialist so-called 'New
World Order' upon the peoples of Central Asia and the Middle East<<, the
spokesman of the Monitory Committee, Abed Inbitawy stated to the media.
<<We do our part in the struggle to stop that Texas trigger-happy cowboy
policy of Bush and his accomplices, who are causing pain and sufferings to
the people of Iraq<<. He added that those demonstrations are also directed
against the Sharon government policy towards the Palestinian brothers and
sisters in the occupied territories, >>which are likely to get dangerously
worse under cover of the war on Iraq<<. He stressed that all those
manifestations are in no way supporting the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq,
the fate of which is the sole matter of the Iraqi people, but are directed
against the war criminal Bush-Blair assault against Iraq started in
contravention of the United Nations Charter and the Security Council
position.
Already on Thursday last week, hundreds of anti-war militants of the Gush-Shalom peace bloc, the Women4Peace coalition, the Alternative Center, a group of occupation army service objectors (representing already more than a thousand objectors, officers and men), and other groups of the peace coalition held a vigorous >>moving vigil<< in front of the so-called Defense Ministry in Tel-Aviv. Holding banners and posters with slogans against the Bush war on Iraq and the accomplice with it by the Sharon government and its war minister Mofaz, waving red and black flags. They moved from one entrance gate to the others around the huge ministry compound, in which also the Army Headquarters are situated, bordering on three streets. At one gate, the protesters were attacked by Military Police forces in common by mounted police, and dispersed. Some of the protesters had been temporarily detained. However the anti-war vigil participants assembled again at the next gate and continued their action with even more vigor.
In almost all of the Israeli occupied Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, huge, exceptionally militant demonstrations and mass rallies took place over weekend. >>Stop the USA-British war crime aggression against our Iraqi brother nation!<<, and >>Long live Saddam Hussein, the heroic defender of the Arab Nation against the brutal colonialist Bush war!<<, and >>Stop the Bush-Sharon Terror Alliance!<<, were some of the paroles held high and sung out in rhymes there.