Stop the Siege of Gaza - Int. Campaign
Ahmed B. - 01.11.2006 16:52
Stop the Siege of Gaza - International Campaign
Israëlische vredesorganisaties roepen op tot wereldwijde protesten tegen de belegering van Gaza. De acties staan gepland van 4 november tot 2 december.
Stop the Siege of Gaza - International Campaign
Dear All,
Please take a minute or two to read the call for action bellow.
International campaining and solidarity is necessary.
Please contact one of the Gaza Activists Group if you would like to join
or initiate an action. Smadar:  smadar.nehab@gmail.com; Eilat:
maozeila@gmail.com ; Debby: debbyl@actcom.co.il
Gaza
Stop the Siege! Stop the War!
A month of protest: November 4 - December 2, 2006
The situation in Gaza has reached emergency levels - inadequate water,
electricity, and medicine; widespread hunger, poverty, and unemployment;
schools and other services out of operation; and constant bombardments and
attacks by the Israeli military. The problem is the siege of the Gaza
Strip by Israel and the sanctions imposed by the international community,
made worse by ongoing IDF attacks. If this siege continues, we will see
spreading disease, malnutrition, and anarchy.
Join Our International Campaign
The community of peace organizations in Israel has joined together in a
coordinated, major campaign to end the siege of Gaza and call upon Israel
to embark upon negotiations with the Palestinian legitimate
representative. Israel and the international community must respect the
political choice of the Palestinian people.
Gaza: Stop the Siege - Stop the War!
Throughout November: Vigils, teach-ins, petitions, flyers, posters
December 2: Demonstrations around the world
Please join us in this humanitarian and political effort: Use the month
until the big demonstration on December 2 to raise awareness in your
community. Send letters, faxes, and petitions to your elected
representatives. Hold vigils and teach-ins.
Let us know your plans so we can empower each other with our numbers and
advertise on our websites.
Activities planned for Israel
Perhaps some of these will give you ideas for your own activity:
Printed material - informational flyers, a poster, an ad, and stickers.
Local events - "teach-ins" that bring films, witnesses, journalists,
Gazans, etc.
Small vigils/demonstrations - In front of the Prime Minister's office, the
EU, the foreign embassies, the offices of selected Knesset Members. At
the Rabin Rally on November 4, activists will distribute printed materials
and hold a human chain.
A special Knesset conference will be held to which strategic members of
Knesset will be invited. They will hear reports from Gaza - Palestinians,
human rights organizations, and journalists.
Media - We will write articles, letters to the editor, blogs, talk-backs -
for newspapers, TV, radio, and internet.
Car cavalcade to the Gaza border.
Mass rally on December 2 in Tel Aviv and all over the world to include
phone hookups with Gazans and, if possible, solidarity events held
internationally.
International campaign:
Actions to raise awareness and bring pressure on the US and European
governments - appeals to decision-makers and civil society in the EU and
the US to demand that their governments overturn the embargo.
December 2 - demonstrations all over the world.
Background Material:
The Economy of Gaza
.According to the World Bank, Palestinians are currently experiencing the
worst economic depression in modern history. The opprobrious imposition of
international sanctions has had a devastating impact on an already
severely comprised economy given its extreme dependence on external
sources of finance. For example, the Palestinian Authority is highly
dependent on two sources of income. The first is annual aid package from
Western donors of about $1 billion per year (in 2005, according to the
World Bank, donors gave $1.3 billion in humanitarian and emergency
[$500m/38%], developmental [$450m/35%] and budgetary [$350m/27%])
assistance, much of it now suspended. The second is a monthly transfer by
Israel of $55 million in customs and tax revenues that it collects for the
PA, a source of revenue that is absolutely critical to the Palestinian
budget and totally suspended. In fact, Israel is now withholding close to
half a billion dollars in Palestinian revenue that is desperately needed
in Gaza.
The combined impact of restrictions, notably the almost unabated closure
and the ongoing economic boycott, has resulted in unprecedented levels of
unemployment that currently approach 40 percent in Gaza (compared to less
than 12 percent in 1999). In fact, Palestinian workers from Gaza have not
been allowed into Israel since 12 March 2006, Gaza's primary market and
all entry and exit points have been virtually sealed since June 25, 2006
when Israel's current military campaign in Gaza began. In the next five
years, furthermore, 135,000 new jobs will be needed just to keep
unemployment at 10 percent. Trade levels have been similarly affected. By
early May 2006, for example, the Karni crossing, through which commercial
supplies enter Gaza, had been closed for 47 percent of the year with
estimated daily losses of $500,000-$600,000. Compounding this are
agricultural losses amounting to an estimated $1.2 billion for both Gaza
and the West Bank over the last six years.
By April 2006, 79 percent of Gazan households were living in poverty
(compared to less than 30 percent in 2000), a figure that has likely
increased; many are hungry.
Sara Roy, The Palestine Center
October 12, 2006
Not an Internal Palestinian Matter
.These are the steps in the experiment: Imprison (since 1991); remove the
prisoners' usual means of livelihood; seal off all outlets to the outside
world, nearly hermetically; destroy existing means of livelihood by
preventing the entry of raw materials and the marketing of goods and
produce; prevent the regular entry of medicines and hospital supplies; do
not bring in fresh food for weeks on end; prevent, for years, the entry of
relatives, professionals, friends and others, and allow thousands of
people - the sick, heads of families, professionals, children - to be
stuck for weeks at the locked gates of the Gaza Strip's only entry/exit.
Steal hundreds of millions of dollars (customs and tax revenues collected
by Israel that belong to the Palestinian treasury), so as to force the
nonpayment of the already low salaries of most government employees for
months; present the firing of homemade Qassam rockets as a strategic
threat that can only be stopped by harming women, children and the old;
fire on crowded residential neighborhoods from the air and the ground;
destroy orchards, groves and fields.
Dispatch planes to frighten the population with sonic booms; destroy the
new power plant and force the residents of the closed-off Strip to live
without electricity for most of the day for a period of four months, which
will most likely turn into a full year - in other words, a year without
refrigeration, electric fans, television, lights to study and read by;
force them to get by without a regular supply of water, which is dependent
on the electricity supply.
It is the good old Israeli experiment called "put them into a pressure
cooker and see what happens," and this is one of the reasons why this is
not an internal Palestinian matter.
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz
October 4, 2006
Israel's scandalous siege of Gaza
Israel has killed 2,300 Gazans over the past six years, including 300 in
the four months since an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, was
captured in a cross-border raid by Palestinian fighters on June 25. The
wounded can be counted in the tens of thousands. Most of the casualties
are civilians, many of them children.
The killing continues on a daily basis - by tank and sniper fire, by air
and sea bombardment, and by undercover teams in civilian clothes sent into
Arab territory to ambush and murder, an Israeli specialty perfected over
the past several decades.
How long will the "international community" allow the slaughter to
continue? The cruel repression of the occupied territories, and of Gaza in
particular, is one of the most scandalous in the world today. It is the
blackest stain on Israel's patchy record as a would-be democratic state.
Patrick Seale International Herald Tribune
October 27, 2006
The siege is sowing anarchy and death in Gaza.
It is a man-made disaster that we must bring to an end.
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