"The Accomplices"
By Luisa Morgantini*
Published in Liberazione, Italian Newspaper
January 22, 2008
"Palestine, A Need to Break the Silence. Italy and Europe should Act Here and Now"
The late and uncertain reactions of the European Union are aggravating
the isolation and the dramatic situation of the people in the territories.
More than forty Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded in just one week of heavy Israeli raids into the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Amongst the victims is a woman who died as a consequence of the attack on the Interior Ministry, carpet bombed on Friday, January 18th, according to plan: a planned war and collective punishment against an "enemy entity" in which 1.5 million people live.
By this hour the crossing point for fuel and medicine has supposedly been reopened. Yet this happens only after four consecutive days of total siege during which the inhabitants of the strip were forced to stay for hours in the cold and darkness due to the fuel cut. The defense ministry, in reality the war ministry, led by Ehud Barak, has completely sealed all the borders, blocking even the humanitarian convoys from the United Nations in a strip already suffocated from months of closure, with patients in the hospital who can't receive care, generators and water pumps shut, long lines for bread in front of bakeries, and the UNRWA announcing: "If the present situation persists we'll have to stop distributing food for 860,000 people by Thursday or Friday." The UN agency that deals with assisting Palestinian refugees however, has repeated these denunciations over and over in recent months. Evidently though, this has been ignored by those "merchants of politics and wars" when we are still seeing, according to Amnesty International and other NGO's, at least thirteen patients with cancer or other severe diseases not allowed outside the strip for treatment and facing the risk of dying in silence. This is what happened to 62 others since the beginning of the siege due to lack of permits and what continues happening to even more people being wounded and killed now in the latest bombings.
Its hard to keep up with the number of the dead; they increase hour by hour at every time one checks with the news agencies. It's hard to explain that behind each number there are children, women and men: "we've killed 810 Palestinians," says Diskin, head of the Shin Bet and commander of the Gaza Brigade. Colonel Ron Ashrov congratulates himself for having conducted an operation with great success given his operation had killed eighteen Palestinians last week in Zeitun.
And there is no condemnation from the international community nor from the European Union, apart from the isolated statements of the EU commissioner for exterior relations, Benita Ferrero Waldner, who yesterday demanded that Israel "resume the delivery of oil and reopen the borders" to humanitarian aid, and the late voices from the Italian and French governments who express preoccupation over "an already catastrophic humanitarian situation." Apart from condemnation for the worsening of the humanitarian crisis and requests to allow the entrance of medicine and fuel, nobody has so far firmly demanded the reopening of the strip's crossings to people and merchandise and the end of the embargo that is strangling Gaza. Ending the siege also represents the only way to stop the Qassam rocket launchings on Israeli civilians by Palestinians, condemnable, counterproductive, and a sign of powerlessness and anger, not of resistance. The European Union, instead, has remained deaf to the resolution voted on last October in the European Parliament demanding that the Israeli government put an end to the siege of Gaza, and has demonstrated a complete lack of political efficacy for an immediate stand against all we are witnessing numbly, and yet are responsible for.
The EU should first ask forgiveness for not having helped end the Israeli military occupation and for not having helped the formation of two people and two states; ask forgiveness for the dead in the Strip, for not having ordered immediately and with a unified voice a stop to Israeli air strikes. Forgiveness for not yet having the strength to propose the immediate intervention of an international force that would protect both civil populations, of occupied Palestine and of Israel, and can guarantee them the legality and security that forty years of Israeli military occupation have washed away, together with any hope for peace and notwithstanding the broken promises of Annapolis.
Yesterday a new international presence to protect civilians was demanded by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in an interview with the newspaper L'Unita "to create the minimal condition for negotiations to develop in the best way." He also appealed to the Italian government to "act, together with other European countries, on Israel, and make it end its collective punishment inflicted on the civilian population in Gaza."
Instead the policies of the EU and the international community have contributed to the division of the Palestinian population and the weakening of it's political representation; wasting the chance to strengthen the cohesion by denying support to the national unity government, a government in which all Palestinian political entities were gathered around a table and agreeing on a shared political platform of resuming negotiations with Israel, the right of two states for two peoples based on the 1967 border and with Jerusalem as a shared capitol. We have contributed in the creation of this crisis and to the basis for a logic that is key to US and Israeli politics of dividi et impera consuming a people already exhausted, occupied, and under siege. Also we are now complicit in this logic if we do not promote the principle that only a policy of inclusion can lead the way for a just and lasting peace, if we don't concretely support the tenacious efforts of President Mahmoud Abbas and of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad for the unity of the Palestinian people and territory, and if at last we don't at last send positive messages, even within tragedies, like a delegation of Fatah members did a few days ago visiting Mahmoud Az-Zahhar, Hamas leader and ex-foreign minister in the Gaza Strip to express condolences for the killing of his son Husam during one of the Israeli air strikes last Tuesday, or like the grief of the father of the Israeli soldier Shalit, kidnapped by Hamas and not released because the Israeli government does not want to free Palestinian prisoners.
With all of this blood, with all of these deaths, nobody can be absolved for their silence. The European Union, just like the policy of the Quartet, are responsible and need to assume responsibility: demand the end of the bombings and the siege of Gaza – as asked by civil society the world over reunited in the "End the Siege" campaign ( www.end-gaza-siege.ps / email: end.gaza.siege at gmail.com) - that on the 26th will see Israeli, Palestinian and International organizations try to break the siege by marching together at the Eretz crossing into Gaza with a convoy carrying goods gathered by the Israeli population. Also in Rome, as in other cities in the world, people will gather to ask for the end of the siege of Gaza. But it should be the government and the United Nations to act to ensure an international protection of the civilian population, work for the unity of the Palestinian people and the end of the Israeli occupation.
And overall it is time to put pressure on Ehud Olmert's government to respect the promises made to gain peace and security, starting with the end of the raids into Gaza and ceasing the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Olmert's current policy pushes for acts of war, spreads violence and incites revenge, destroying any possibility of peace and security for both populations.
We need to break the silence and act: Italy and Europe should respond to the appeal by Fayyad to "save Gaza from pain," it's also the way to stop the rockets that are raining on the city of Sderot and support the many Israelis and the majority of Palestinians who want peace and equal rights and who still find the courage to refuse and the tenacity to resist in the popular and nonviolent fight.
*Vice President of the European Parliament
Translated into English by Corinna Giorgi e Ben Scribner
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