The Lesson of the Flotilla Bloodbath: End the Occupation!
Zaytoun on June 8th, 20107 June 2010
The Lesson of the Flotilla Bloodbath: End the Occupation!
Sindyanna of Galilee, a Fair Trade Association aiming to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, strongly condemns the Israeli army raid on the Freedom for Gaza flotilla, which has resulted in nine dead and dozens of wounded.
Israel’s attempt to divert the argument away from its blockade on Gaza, and on to the resistance that its troops encountered while attacking the flotilla, is futile and grotesque. Soldiers sent to prevent civilians from breaking an unjust siege cannot be compared with 1.5 million Palestinians caught in a four-year humanitarian catastrophe!
Sindyanna asserts that Israel’s stubbornness, and its refusal to pay the price of peace — namely, an end to the occupation and recognition of the Palestinian people’s right to a sovereign state — is the main reason for the continuing bloodshed. In its suffering, the Palestinian people’s cause has become the banner of the international community.
We join the other forces of peace in our region and the world in the call for a broad-based international action that will force Israel to agree to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, within the June 1967 borders. If the efforts of the current crisis focus on a compromise with Israel for investigating the flotilla attack, without bearing down on the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the region will continue to deteriorate.
Jews and Arabs alike suffer here, as do people in the rest of the world, from a ruthless capitalist regime, which discriminates against workers, and tramples over their rights for the benefit of financial tycoons. However, the political conflict merely heightens the suffering of both peoples. We believe, now more than ever, that we must work together to stop the Occupation, offering an alternative to Israel’s policy of domination by force. Now more than ever we need your solidarity so that the idea which unites us, that of a fairer world, may be fulfilled.
For more on the qonsequences of the Flotilla of Blood, we invite you to read the pieces published in Challenge’s website www.challenge-mag.com
