Israeli War Crimes
A ceasefire has been called in Gaza. It comes after 11 days of Israeli bombing which targeted medical facilities, schools and residential areas, killing at least 230 people, including 63 children. There is no question that Israel has once again committed war crimes in Gaza.
Make no mistake: Things could have been a lot worse, were it not for the heroic popular resistance of the Palestinian people and the global movement that rose up in solidarity with them. Israel had stated that there would have to be “total, long-term quiet” before it would consider a ceasefire.
A United Palestine
But Palestine – all of historic Palestine – is anything but quiet now. Palestinians from Gaza to Jerusalem, from Haifa to Ramallah have risen up in what is being called the Unity Intifada. Hundreds of Jordanians – many of them Palestinian refugees themselves – broke over the border into the Occupied Territories to protest. Millions joined the general strike on Tuesday, including 1.6 million Palestinian workers in Israel.
At the heart of this movement are young Palestinian activists, neighbourhood committees and grassroots collectives who are rejecting a traditional Palestinian leadership that collaborates with Israeli security forces.
A Global Movement Can End Israeli Apartheid
The bombs may have stopped dropping on Gaza for now, but the Israeli Occupation and the Apartheid system remains in place. Israel continues to expand its settlements, to destroy Palestinian homes, to brutalise and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people.
Over the past week, millions of people across the world took to the streets to support the Palestinian people. Dockers in Livorno in Italy refused to load cargo onto a ship transporting weapons to Israel. South African dockers refused to offload Israeli cargo from a ship in Durban. Activists in Leicester occupied an Israeli arms factory and shut down production.
Now is not the time to de-escalate, but to ramp up the pressure on Israel and the imperialist powers that support it. Israel must be isolated from the world, as Apartheid South Africa was in the 1990s.
People Before Profit is in full support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. We call on the Irish government to:
- Expel the Israeli Ambassador
- Place sanctions on and cut trade relations with Apartheid Israel
- Use our position at the United Nations to argue for a global boycott of the Israeli State
We also assert that the latest assault on Gaza and the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank makes a mockery of the idea of a two-state solution. The Israeli state was founded on violence and dispossession. From the 1947 UN Partition Plan onwards, every concession made to the State of Israel has laid the groundwork for further ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
The only just solution is a single state of Palestine, with equal rights for all its citizens. Included in this must be the Right of Return for the 6 million Palestinian refugees living all over the world.
People Before Profit stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people, whose unbroken spirit of resistance shines like a beacon for the world.
FREE PALESTINE!