IN FOUR weeks of Friday protests at the Gaza ‘border’ more than 32 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 injured by Israeli snipers who shoot-to-kill if Palestinians approach the illegal ‘border’ fence.
The Palestinians face both bullets and gas delivered by Israeli drones which double as spotters of Palestinian targets for the Israeli snipers. The fact that Israeli casualties have been zero brings out the illegal, murderous nature of the mass killings and woundings being carried out on a people whose land was stolen from them in 1948, following the 1917 Balfour Declaration, when a British Foreign Secretary pledged the land of the Palestinian people to the Zionists.
There will definitely be no air strikes to defend the Palestinians. Instead the UK-US-French air strikes have taken place on the Syrian people, with Israel joining, making a common front against Arab liberation movements. The reason why Israel can gas the Palestinians and kill them at will is that the tactic, however obscene, is part of the new US diplomacy to push through the ‘deal of the century’, to establish a ‘Greater Israel’ and complete the eviction of the Palestinian people from their homeland through massive pogroms.
This new diplomacy saw the light of day when President Trump announced to the world that the US embassy would be moved from Tel Aviv to the internationally-recognised illegally-occupied City of Jerusalem. Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Saeb Erekat has called on the countries of the world, especially the member countries of the United Nations, not to comply with the US pressure to relocate their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, since East Jerusalem is an occupied territory under international law.
The Palestinians have been demonstrating as part of the Great Return March, which started on March 30th, Land Day, and is expected to reach a climax on Tuesday May 15th, the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) Day. Last Friday, for the fourth consecutive Friday, an estimated 10,000 Palestinians gathered at the border fence.
By the end of the day, Israeli army snipers had killed four Palestinians, including 15-year-old Mohammad Ayyoub, from Jabalya, who was shot in the head, injured 729, including 45 children, among them 156 hit by live ammunition, four of them in critical condition, and around 20 shot in the neck and head, as reported by the Ministry of Health. Two more were shot and killed inside the Israeli created buffer zone along the border and their bodies are being withheld by Israel.
The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nikolay Mladenov, expressed outrage over the killing of the child, Ayyoub, and called for an investigation. Mladenov wrote on Twitter: ‘It is OUTRAGEOUS to shoot at children! How does the killing of a child in #Gaza today help #peace? It doesn’t! It fuels anger and breeds more killing. #Children must be protected from #violence, not exposed to it, not killed! This tragic incident must be investigated.’
However, there will be no investigation and no action will be taken against Israel!
President Mahmoud Abbas has stated that Palestinians will establish an independent state and will not allow any country to transfer its embassy to Jerusalem. However, the new diplomacy continues! The US State Department dropped from its annual human rights report, released on Friday, the term ‘Occupied Territories’ when making reference to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza!
The US and Israel are getting ready for the big and bloody push to drive the Palestinian people out of their land.
The British trade unions cannot just stand idly by as the US and Israel with UK support moves to eradicate Palestine. On Tuesday May 15th, on Naqba Day, when the Palestinian masses take to the streets, the TUC-led trade unions must call a general strike and a mass demonstration of millions in support of the Palestinian people. They must insist that there must be a state of Palestine and that the UK must recognise it. Further, that Jerusalem must be its capital, there must be no settlements and that all Palestinian refugees have the right to return.
