PALESTINIAN activist Dr Hanan Ashrawi yesterday called for the EU Foreign Affairs Council to stop ‘adopting Israel’s narrative’ and to stop ‘justifying Israel’s military assault’.
Dr Ashrawi said that Israel has murdered 745 Palestinians during its latest enslaught on the people of Gaza, and that Israel is engaged in the ‘annihilation of families wholesale’.
Dr Ashrawi was an important leader during the First Intifada, served as the official spokesperson for the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace process, and has been elected numerous times to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
She said: ‘While we appreciate the subsequent reiteration of the EU’s policy position and references to previous Council Conclusions, we believe the opening segment serves only to reinforce Israeli impunity and violence and to justify Israel’s military assault under the mantra of “Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself”.
‘The EU is portraying Israel as the victim reacting to “indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas and militant groups in the Gaza Strip, directly harming civilians” when we know that Israel instigated this assault and provoked a Palestinian response as part of a recurring pattern of Israeli violence against a captive population.
‘The people being murdered by the hundreds (745 to date) and bombed out of their homes by the thousands (146,000) are the Palestinians, not the Israelis.
‘The “criminal and unjustifiable acts” are those committed by the Israeli army and its military mega machine, whether by air, by sea or by land, against the Palestinians of Gaza, annihilating families (45) wholesale.
‘It is important that the occupying power, Israel, “renounce violence” against the occupied people and cease its acts of state terrorism, rather than calling on “all terrorist groups in Gaza to disarm”.
‘By using the dehumanising and racist language of Israel that accuses the civilian population of Gaza of providing “themselves as human shields,” the EU is subscribing to the usual Israeli distortion of blaming the victim.
‘It is therefore important for its own integrity that the EU language maintains a moral, legal, political and human consistency, rather than adopt Israel’s narrative in order to gain its damning approval.’
Meanwhile, Palestine’s chief negotiator, Dr Saeb Erekat, said: ‘The international community must intervene to stop the bloodshed in Gaza.’
Erekat is a PLO Executive Committee Member and head of the Negotiations Affairs Department.
Erekat continued: ‘An aggressor has no right to self-defence against an occupied people. What Israel is doing is defending its own occupation and the systematic denial of Palestinian national rights.
‘They are exercising every possible means to dissolve Palestinian national unity and weaken Palestinian institutions. In front of this systematic policy of aggression, the international community has two options: either they decide to remain complacent or they intervene to hold the occupying power responsible for its violations, protect the Palestinian people and give peace a chance.
‘Over 70 per cent of the population of Gaza are refugees. With 1.7 million inhabitants, Gaza has more than 5,000 inhabitants per square kilometre, a density which is even higher in the eight refugee camps that have been targeted by Israeli forces.
‘The fact that Israel bears responsibility for the creation of the refugee catastrophe is beyond argument, but Israel has decided to go even further, displacing thousands of people even within this tiny strip.
‘In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza. But it did not end the occupation. The “disengagement”, a unilateral step, aimed at turning Gaza into an open air prison while consolidating Israel’s colonisation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Late PM Sharon said the Israeli disengagement “will strengthen its control over those same areas in the Land of Israel, which will constitute an inseparable part of the State of Israel”.
‘Meanwhile, Gaza’s air space, maritime borders and any connection with the rest of Palestine would be controlled by Israel. Recent Israeli attacks against sewage and electricity plants as well as water lines are a further proof that Israeli attacks are not an act of self-defence.
‘There is no safe place in Gaza for Palestinians. Every single place is a potential Israeli target. During these past weeks, attacks have affected more than 20,000 homes, injured almost 4,000 people and killed over 600 people.
‘The killing of over twenty complete families is a further example of brutality against the Palestinian people. The killing of children also shows the disregard Israel has for Palestinian lives. The names of Umama Al-Hayyeh, aged nine; Dima Isleem, aged two; Mohamad Ayyad, aged two; Rahaf Abu Jumaa, aged four as well more than 130 other children killed are a reminder that every single Palestinian is a possible target for Israel.
‘If certain countries continue to treat Israel as a state above the law, we can expect the list to keep growing. We have requested international protection for our people. We are currently looking into ways to prosecute Israeli war crimes.
‘The international community must end Israel’s impunity by conditioning its relations with Tel Aviv to its respect for international law and human rights. Israeli war crimes should not be treated differently than others. Failing to act will only add frustration and bloodshed.
‘The international community must stop hiding behind calls for resumption of negotiations and implement their own responsibilities, including the responsibility to protect our people and hold Israel accountable for failing to respect its own obligations.’
• Israeli forces have shelled a UN school in Beit Hanoun, with at least 17 dead and 200 injured as many more are feared killed among the hundreds who had taken shelter there, with Israeli coordination.
The shelling of the school, which is affiliated with the UN’s Palestine refugee agency UNRWA, is the fourth time in two days that Israeli forces have bombed schools serving as shelters for the displaced in the besieged Gaza Strip.
A local radio station quoted an eyewitness as saying that immediately before the shelling, a man who introduced himself as a Red Cross official had asked displaced people taking shelter at the school to gather in the yard because they would be evacuated to another shelter.
An UNRWA official intervened when he saw people gathering and argued that there had been no coordination with UNRWA, telling them to go back to their rooms. During the argument, Israeli artillery shells started to hit the school.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness tweeted in response to the attack that the ‘Precise co-ordinates of the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanoun had been formally given to the Israeli army’.
