THE Arab League has called on the international community to end its silence on the continuing Israeli atrocities across Occupied Palestine, and to compel the Tel Aviv regime to abide by the United Nations resolution barring construction of illegal settlements, and the destruction of tens of thousands of Palestinian homes.
The Arab League further slammed the Israeli regime’s continuing expansion of settlements as ‘unlawful and tantamount to flagrant violations of international law and resolutions of the international community’.
It urged Washington to take ‘immediate measures to stop Israeli plans seeking to expropriate large swathes of the Palestinian land, undermining the so-called two-state solution’.
It went on to call for ‘serious’ consideration of the so-called ‘peace process’ and engagement in ‘real’ negotiations that would lead to ending the Israeli occupation within a certain time frame based on the UN resolutions and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative – which conditions normalising ties with the Israeli regime on the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
However, that has never even been attempted, never mind realised.
In fact, as Hamas has correctly pointed out ‘Israel’s policies are setting the entire region on fire.’
Emboldened by the persisting US support, the Tel Aviv regime, which now includes fascists, has brazenly expanded its unlawful settlement construction efforts, in sheer defiance of the UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2334, which unequivocally condemned the establishment of settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds as a gross violation of international law.
The vast majority of the international community considers such settlements in the occupied territories as illegal, but will not lift even a finger to assist the Palestinians to liberate their country.
Now more than 600,000 occupying settlers live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
The UN Security Council has issued multiple resolutions condemning the Israeli regime’s settlement activities in these occupied territories. These have all been ignored.
Palestinians correctly insist on having the West Bank as part of a future independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was the Tel Aviv regime’s continued illegal settlement expansion.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has lambasted the Israeli regime’s brutal military actions in the West Bank, insisting that the moves amount to re-occupation of the occupied region.
He made the remarks in a meeting with Japan’s Senior Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Shigeo Yamada and Japan’s Ambassador for Palestinian Affairs Yoichi Nakashima in the central West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday.
Shtayyeh further emphasised that the atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli regime across Palestinian territories, including daily incursions, extrajudicial killings, detention raids, encroachments upon the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and land grab to make room for colonial settlement expansion and settler colonialism, all amount to re-occupation of the West Bank.
The Palestinian masses are now on the march and are determined to take advantage of the acute crisis within the Israeli regime to win their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The Palestinian people are determined to win back all of their land, and are now organised to wage that struggle.
What is holding up the struggle is that the UK TUC and other international trade union federations only back Palestine with occasional words but no deeds!
The UK trade unions and the TUC must now take their place in the struggle to liberate Palestine.
They must refuse to handle Israeli goods and launch a fighting fund to raise millions so that the Palestinians have all of the arms and the equipment that they require.
The support of the world’s trade unions for Palestine must be in deeds and not just words.
Now is the time for the TUC to black all Israeli goods, and launch a multi-million fighting fund to provide the Palestinians with the firepower that they need. The workers the world must unite to assist in the victory of the Palestinian revolution!
