Of all the situations that we denounce habitually in this Platform on the Conflict in Middle East, the deterioration, the suffering and the asphyxiation of the living conditions of the Palestinians imposed in Gaza by Israel and silenced by the International Community is one of the most intolerable and unfair.
What has happened since Bush visited the area is very graphical: 38 dead men up to the present with a high percentage of murdered civilians who have nothing to do either with Hamas or with the launch of rockets Qassam to Israel, innumerable injured men, population imprisoned in their own ghetto without any chance of communication and exit of the Gaza Strip. And in the last hours thousands of Palestinians trying to run away across the Rafah crossing in the border with Egypt to look for sustenance.
this Platform is seriously worried about the heading of the world newspapers on January 23rd “The Israeli siege on Gaza pushes thousands of Palestinians to jump the border with Egypt” because it is a new forced manifestation of Palestinians' expulsion of their territory.
The International Community must stop immediately this situation putting an end to the problem: any form of seizure that puts on the ropes the Palestinian people like this.
No electricity, no food and no medicines have generated a psychological condition totally devastating for the population. The situation is extreme.
Just an example: in Gaza five patient have died in the hospitals in the last hours because of the power cut.
The continuous launch of hundreds of Rockets Qassam over Israeli territory tries to move further away the peace and it only provokes the strengthening of the militaristic positions and of the Israeli extreme right which have influence on the decisions of the Government, as for example, the Israeli reprisal provoked by the death of an Ecuadorian worker in an adjacent Kibutz with the Gaza strip.
Israel's response is not only inadequate but a genocide, because it attacks indiscriminately civilians and tries to show to the International Community that, somehow all Gaza is Hamas and therefore terrorist.
The comments from the Israeli government regarding the situation at Gaza are ridiculous: ‘the crisis which the Palestinians talk about is artificial, it’s a new Hamas manoeuvre to attract the international public opinion’. It’s impossible to be more hypocrite.
In the last hours the pressure of NGO's, the United Nations and the European Union on Israel have relieved partially the situation in Gaza by means of the scanty supply of fuel and food, though it comes too late. The "blood driving " has turned the donkeys into the most valued elements for transportation. When we are near to this limit, we must ask ourselves if the delays are by chance or causal, if they were causal it would imply a civil and penal responsibility on Israel who makes prevail the idea of collective punishment.
The Israeli Defence Secretary Ehud Barak has allowed the entry of fuel to produce electricity, though he continues refusing at the entry of food or of petrol for vehicles, so the Organizations that distribute products of the first need (among them the UN) in the refugee camps, cannot distribute it.
Olmert continues justifying his offensive to Gaza: " While our civilians go to bed scared, get up scared and scared send their children to the school, the life of the Palestinians will not be comfortable in Gaza, and if they do not have petrol, in my opinion, let them walk ".
The indignation that Olmert's declarations allude to dictatorship and ethnic cleansing. If the President of Palestine had done them, Olmert would have denounced such declarations as a direct affront against the human rights of the Israeli people.
In this situation, though Mahmud Abbas denounces and cries out against the Israeli injustices committed in Gaza, he is going to do nothing different in the practice, since his lamentable attitude before the gravity of these facts shows clearly that he will continue in his attitude to the negotiations with the Israelis based on a small Palestinian state and in West Bank, which is not representatively of most of the Palestinian people.
There will no be chance of Annapolis coming to good end if there is not discussion about the Gaza strip in the negotiations. There is need of a cease fire. There is need of the presence of international forces in the region, in order to guarantee the cease fire.
We won’t desist from repeating it, it is indispensable the opening of the crossings of the Gaza Strip to the world.
All that is happening a week after the end of George Bush’s tour through the Middle East.
Though in his initial declarations in Israel, he exhorted to the creation of a Palestinian independent and sovereign state at the end of the Israeli occupation and to the dismantlement of the wild settlements as well as the freezing of the construction of the new ones, to guarantee the safety of Israel (and not the safety of the Palestine), today it seems that this declamation turns out to be hollow before the serious events that happen every day in the region and where the complicity of the silence of the International Community and the lack of condemnation is the dominant attitude.
This trip had the aim of advancing in a process of fair peace between Palestinians and Israelis, at least that is what Bush said in his preliminary declarations. But in the practice he did not focus on it but on the threat to Iran.
His aim is to strengthen bonds with the Arabic Governments of the region and especially with the Saudi Monarchy, waiting for its unconditional support, in order to stop the advance and the influence of the regime of the Ayatollahs, plans that have failed, provided that no Arabic Government has initiated a campaign against Iran.
Anyhow he was taking in his suitcase a warlike gift promised to the Saudi monarchy; 8000 million dollars in armament, number that is going to increase to more than 19 billions for the whole region, according to an agreement agreed last year.
Bush continues with his tendency to divide to the world in "good ones" and "bad ones", which is translated to: Sunnis, Palestine National Authority and Israel are the good ones versus Shiite, Hamas and Hezbollah the bad ones. That’s how simple is he.
As the journalist from "Haaretz" Gideon Levy has commented ‘Bush is the president who has granted legitimacy to every criminal act, from the expansion of the settlements up to even ignoring signed agreements, including those which Israel signed with the Palestine Authority under the sponsorship of The United States, and he is the president who has helped most to establish the occupation and to make it crueller’.
In the politics of the Middle East what should prevail is a multilateral vision, where the diverse Arabic countries play an important role in the negotiation between Palestinians and Israelis, as in the constant and tenacious complaint of all the enemies to the Peace Process, but it is fundamental to include Hamas in the negotiations, at least to establish conversations with the moderate sectors.
Insofar Palestinians and Israelis keep going with the one-sided USA point of view in the region, or with the two-sided Palestinian – Israeli point of view and do not see the advantage of the help that can give the Arabic League with the Saudi Plan of Peace, which would allow to open a new page in the International relationships in the region to help to achieve a fair solution of the conflict along with a independent voice from the EU, the solution moves further and further away.
What is obvious is that Bush's visit has weakened the position of the Palestinian negotiators towards Israel, when he tries to impose to the Palestine National Authority the fulfilment of the road map in Gaza (what is not possible since the Strip is controlled by Hamas), enabling Israel to continue with the policy of settlements and with the criminal attitudes exercised by the Israeli executive, when they try to close down the Gaza strip isolating the country of the foreign world.
It’s a shame the role the EU is playing since Annapolis to the current drama of Gaza. What economical and politic interest hold her? How it is going to explain this silent complicity to their people?
Where is the influence promised by Mr. Blair, special correspondent sent by the European Union to the region?
What could happen if at the end of year we do not have a fair peace based on a new Palestinian State, a fair solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees and the double capital city of Jerusalem, as principal achievements?
We do not trust in the peace that USA or the Israeli Executive want, the Israeli Executive who influences decisively on the Bush Administration and its decisions and not the other way round.
Bush behaviour in the Palestinian - Israeli conflict seems very false and hypocritical, which serves to conceal the historical atrocities committed in Iraq and in Afghanistan and to wash his injured public image.
Our hopes must be supported on the pressure and mobilization that the civil society does on its respective Governments, so much in Palestine with its two current executives as in Israel, denouncing and acting firmly on the political and military actions that encourage to the confrontation and move away the peace.
We agree with the worry and sensitivity expressed by the President Zapatero over the crisis of Gaza and We support the initiative of Spanish Foreign Office with its contribution of 240 million Euros to the Palestine National Authority being the second country contributor of the EU after the United Kingdom.
Finally, we want to emphasize that we agree with the denounce of the injustices and atrocities of most of the Spanish articles published in Internet in relation to the Palestinian - Israeli conflict, but we cannot overlook this: that few or almost none of the columnists suggest solutions of political negotiation for the peace between Palestinians and Israelis in the conflict and, it does not seem suitable just to criticise and denounce.
