PALESTINIAN Foreign Minister Riyad Malki said yesterday that Palestine is still waiting for the US Administration to submit its ideas and plan for achieving peace.
However, the US’ chief ally in the region, Israel, launched a bombing blitz on Khan Younis on Monday, in a major attempt to sabotage and blow up the Fatah-Hamas unity government agreement.
Malki reiterated Palestine’s readiness to cooperate with the US efforts to revive the peace process in the hope that it ‘will pressure Israel to abide by international law and resolutions or reach a conviction that Israel is the party obstructing and thwarting efforts to reach an agreement to end the occupation.’
The US silence over the Gaza bombing is the answer to this plea. The US supports one state in the region, the Israeli state, and has already pledged to Israel that it will support moving its capital to Jerusalem if the Palestinians refuse to make the kind of deal that Israel wants!
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi yesterday condemned what she described as ‘the dangerous plan’ proposed by Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs Minister Zeev Elkin aimed at ethnic cleansing Palestinians from Jerusalem.
She said: ‘Should this be adopted, such a deplorable plan would forcibly displace thousands of indigenous Palestinian Jerusalemites and transform their status to “non-existence,” depriving them of the most basic rights and services, including shelter, healthcare and education. It is beyond a doubt that Israel is deliberately working to erase the Palestinian presence from our occupied capital and to distort the demographic, cultural, religious, and political character of the city.’
The US and the UK has refused to condemn this plan for ethnic cleansing. In fact the UK government is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration through which it handed Palestine over to the Zionists. Yesterday the Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO called on Britain to ‘rectify its historic mistake against the Palestinian people’ by recognising the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
‘The Palestinian people and friends of Palestine around the world commemorate on November 2nd the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which has entailed a heavy political and human price for the Palestinian people since 1917. This Declaration promised the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, which led to the displacement and uprooting of the indigenous Palestinian people and replaced them with other people,’ said the statement.
‘It has been 100 years since this infamous promise, seventy years after the partition plan that paved the way for the Nakba, which led to the forceful displacement of the people of Palestine, and fifty years since Israel’s colonial occupation of Palestine.’
The statement went on: ‘Palestine continues to demand from the British government a formal apology to our people, to redress its victims in addition to compensation, and to recognise the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. The centenary of Balfour Declaration, therefore, grants a historic opportunity for Britain to rectify this historic mistake and injustice inflicted on our people.’
The British government, far from apologising for the Balfour Declaration, is celebrating it!
On November 4th there is to be a national march and rally in London to demand ‘Justice Now: Make it Right for Palestine’. All the major UK trade unions and the TUC are supporting this demonstration, and support its main demands that the UK government should apologise for the Balfour Declaration, and recognise the State of Palestine.
However, the trade union contribution to the liberation of Palestine must not end with attendance at this demonstration. The same UK government that stands by the handing over of Palestine to the Zionists is oppressing the UK working class for every minute of every day. We are all therefore in the same trench.
From this demonstration the TUC and all British trade unions must boycott Israel and launch a series of mass demonstrations and political strikes leading to a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government. This will even up the struggle a little by recognising the State of Palestine and giving every assistance to secure its complete independence, and its long term survival in the face of imperialist opposition. This is the way forward.
