‘ENOUGH is enough!’ The Palestinians must be treated with equity, with Israel ending its occupation of the Palestinian territories.
That was the message from the launch of a new, broad-based coalition including British celebrities, trade unionists and MPs at Westminster on Tuesday, in the run-up to a mass demonstration to be held in London in June on the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Among those who have put their names to the campaign are Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Jeremy Hardy and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Richard Burden, MP for Birmingham Northfield, opened the press conference, saying: ‘Today is a very important event.
‘This is an idea that has been in the making for quite a long time now, by groups trying to promote a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
‘It is 40 years since the invasion of the West Bank and Gaza.
‘All the organisations involved, and those of us who have been out to that part of the world, are very very clear that it has got to stop: the Palestinians have suffered for so long and in so many ways over that time.’
Burden said that Gaza doctor Mona El-Farra and prize-winning Gaza cameraman Zakaria Abu Harbid had both been prevented from attending the London press conference.
He added: ‘Our thoughts go out to all the people in the West Bank and Gaza at this particularly difficult time.’
Actress Miriam Magolyes said: ‘I want this brave attempt to succeed.
‘All Arabs see is a soldier with a gun in his hand and a visor over his face.
‘I was born in 1941 before the establishment of the state of Israel.
‘My parents were gloomy when Israel was founded in 1948 because they foresaw the problems, that Israel was founded on an injustice and all the talking in the world is not going to take that injustice away.’
Professor Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian ambassador to Britain, said: ‘There is a lot of resonance for us as Palestinians to see how much we are supported by the British people.
‘It is so hard to talk about occupation, especially when you live under occupation.
‘This is one of the longest occupations of modern history, 40 years, but this conflict has been a protracted conflict for the last 100 years.
‘Palestinians are struggling to survive and exist under the harshest conditions.’
He condemned the ‘creeping annexation by Israel.
‘Israel is controlling the geography and getting rid of the demography – the ethnic cleansing is still continuing today, in a very smart and subtle way.
‘What’s left for Palestinians to establish a viable Palestinian state?’ he asked.
‘I think the idea of a “two-state solution’’ is dead now.’
He said the ‘thickening’ of illegal Zionist settlements and the extension of the Apartheid Wall of Separation by Israel was leaving the Palestinians with only ‘a series of Bantustans’.
He added: ‘One of the major pitfalls is the policy of closure and checkpoints, preventing the flow of Palestinian goods and making our ordinary economic life almost impossible.’
He said that ‘2.4 million people (80 per cent) are under the poverty level in the West Bank and Gaza and more than 50 per cent are unemployed.’
He said that Israel’s ulterior motive was to create a ‘totally socially and economically dislocated society, totally dependant on foreign aid.’
The Palestinian National Authority faced a $110 million cash deficit every month, affecting all PNA employees – breadwinners for around 1.2 million Palestinians.
The stock market of the PNA has slumped by 30 per cent since the start of the Al Aqsa Intifada in 2000, he continued, while Israel withholds the tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinians under the terms of the Paris protocol.
Although $100 million has been handed over under intense pressure, $900 million still remains in the hands of the Israelis since the election of the Hamas government by the Palestinian population a year ago.
‘One in three Palestinians is actually seeking work that is non-existent!’ he exclaimed.
‘The international community and the EU have imposed sanctions on the occupied, rather than the occupier! . . .
‘How can an occupier be a democracy at the same time?’ he asked.
‘I think this is one of the ironies of history.’
The Palestinian delegate said that a healthcare catastrophe was rapidly unfolding, with hundreds of basic medicines unobtainable because of the siege by Israel and its Western allies.
He said that Israel was placing countless ‘stumbling blocs and impediments’ before the Palestinian people, adding: ‘They want the Palestinians to kneel down!’
But he said Israel’s efforts to destroy the Palestinians by making them fight each other would fail.
‘We are conscious enough and aware enough to understand that we have one common enemy and that is occupation.’
Palestinian farmer Sharif Omar said his livelihood had been shattered by Israel’s Apartheid Wall.
‘From 1948 until now it’s clear that the Israeli government want to steal our land, by direct and indirect methods.
‘We are not allowed to sell inside Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank.
‘The Israeli government uses the British Mandate law to confiscate our land, if it is needed to constitute new roads for settlements, to install pipelines for water or for sewage, and if the land is considered unfit for agriculture, the Israeli government has “the right’’ to confiscate it.’
He went on: ‘Before the establishment of the Wall, merchants from Ramallah could come to buy our products.
‘Now you can’t pass through the gate if you haven’t got a permit for the gate.
‘We are not allowed to sell inside Israel and we are not allowed to sell inside our own cities. What are we to do?
‘One of my sons was in prison and so my family wasn’t allowed to have a permit.
‘Even without the problem of security you must prove you own the land on the other side of the Wall and you must have Israeli documents to prove it!’
He said an independent Palestinian state was ‘impossible as long as we have the occupation’.
He added: ‘Many of the Israeli people don’t know what is going on.
‘It was enough for Yonatan Shapira (the Israeli airforce pilot was also at the press conference) to visit us once to change his mind.
‘We have to have mutual respect and equality. We have to build one state there if we are really to have mutual respect and equality.’
Samia Botmeh, from Ramallah, said the Palestinians were now being reduced to the level of ‘caged’ prisoners or animals by Israeli occupation.
She said that even the World Bank recognised that the devastation caused to the West Bank and Gaza economy by the siege ‘has been one of the worst in history.’
She said this process of devastation ‘is really amazing’.
She said that 10 years ago, despite very difficult conditions, the Palestinian economy still functioned.
But now, she said: ‘The Palestinian economy has been reduced to a series of enclaves trying to mitigate the impact of Israeli policies.’
She said poverty had risen to ‘unprecedented levels for our region of the world.’
‘We’ve reached a level of dehumanisation,’ she continued.
‘We are very, very bitter at the international community.
‘The Israelis have enclosed and separated us and now only 37,000 people from the West Bank work inside Israel, mostly by smuggling themselves in, and Israel has announced by 2008 there will be no Palestinians working in Israel.
‘At the same time we are not allowed to export anything, not only outside but also within. It is impossible to move perishable goods.
‘We are really now a caged population.’
She said some food aid was now going in, but added angrily: ‘Israel caged us and the international community has now been feeding this caged community. They are caged by one party and another party is feeding them.
‘It is very puzzling for the international community, for Israel, how these people manage to keep themselves together so far.
‘They can’t put it together how these people manage to go on until now.
‘But this social capital is now being exhausted. Everybody’s situation is extremely bad.
‘There is no one to bail anybody out.
‘The international community has been making the situation worse.
‘Children have been very badly affected. We are very concerned about the future of the children.
‘They have witnessed the destruction of lives, property and their parents.’
As a result, she said, children have become ‘institutionalised’ to devastation.
‘It has become a way of life. They have been dehumanised to a very large extent.
‘This is more than enough. We are invisible to them (the Israeli occupation forces), you can just read it in their faces.
‘We used to be a viable society. That does not exist anymore.’
Yonatan Shapira, an Israeli air force pilot, said: ‘Many Israelis are now part of the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
‘Either people admire us very much or they hate us very much.’
He said that just two weeks ago the 10-year-old daughter of his Palestinian friend was shot dead by Israeli border police near Jerusalem.
‘I decided I will be here with you because it is the least I can do for my friend and the rest of the people who are suffering.
‘She was just one of thousands. How many people are now dying, were killed and will be killed in the future if we don’t stop it?’ he asked.
Bernard Regan, from the National Union of Teachers, said the TUC, representing 6.5 million British workers, overwhelmingly passed a resolution last year ‘for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, an end to occupation, to dismantle the Apartheid Wall and for the right of the refugees to return to their homeland.’
He described the resolution as an ‘historic watershed’.
He likened the situation to the struggle to liberate Vietnam and free South Africa from apartheid, but added that the president of South Africa’s COSATU trade union federation had said that Apartheid was like a ‘Sunday picnic’ compared to the oppression of the Palestinians.
He called for a campaign similar to the one successfully waged in Britain in the 1980s to isolate the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Louise Richards (War on Want), Joni McDougall (GMB trade union) and Linda Ramsden also spoke in the discussion.
Betty Hunter, from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said there would be ‘tens of thousands’ of people marching to Trafalgar Square on June 9 demanding an end to the 40-year-long Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
She predicted that ‘tens of thousands’ more would descend on parliament on the International Day for Palestine on November 28.
Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn thanked everyone who had attended the launch of ENOUGH.
‘June 9 is not a routine demonstration. We want to pack, pack, pack Trafalgar Square with people.
Support the ENOUGH campaign,’ he urged.
