Statement from WILPF Israel- 21 June 2007

                                     THE GAZA STRIP  -   JUNE, 2007

The Israeli section watches the latest heartbreaking events in Gaza with pain and growing worry. We would like to offer our sympathy to all our Palestinian friends and our prayer and believe that the Palestinian people, who have manifested strength and courage during the prolonged Occupation, will overcome these black days, and rise over their difficulties to concentrate on their important struggle – the one for a just and honorable independence, alongside the State of Israel.

The Palestinians have suffered for 59 years from displacement, homelessness, discrimination, impoverishment and expatriation, but they withstood that suffering and never killed each other. The question is what happened to them now.

One and a half million human beings are imprisoned in a tiny, arid territory, cut off from their compatriots and from any contact with the outside world, starved by an economic blockade and unable to feed their families. Human beings react exactly like other animals when too many of them are crowded into a small area in miserable conditions - they become aggressive and even murderous. 
A safe and stable environment is one that produces normal children, while the environment the Palestinians have been living in since the Israeli occupation is one in which violence proliferates and becomes rampant. Israeli forces arrested tens of thousands of Palestinians and subjected them to systematic and various forms of torture as documented by research teams, both Palestinian and Israeli. The effects of torture extend from the individual to his community. The commonest problem arising from torture is the violence which the victim directs to women and children, which in its turn makes the home a battlefield. This phenomenon has created a cycle of internal violence. A research study on 3000 Gaza children found that those children were subjected to traumatic and violent experiences, all of which have left indelible effects on their psyche. The most excruciating experience was seeing their fathers beaten helpless by Israeli soldiers without resistance. Today, these self- same children are the armed men who saw their fathers fall helpless and defenseless victims of arrogant force. The Israeli soldier then becomes the model for the young Palestinian; his language will be the language of force and his toys and games will be those of death.

Research has shown that ongoing armed conflict results in what is known as chronic social toxication which makes people less sensitive and more ruthless, less rational and more impulsive, less conversant and more violent. Another effect of social toxication is the disintegration and disunity which is manifest in the decline of the father's authority and a tendency to search for a new assertive identity provided by organizations and armed militias; this rendered many persons alienated from their community.
(Based on : The Psychosocial Causes for the Palestinian Factional War, by Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme; 14 February, 2007 )

We regard Israel and the Western World as responsible, to a large extent, for the present crisis, by creating an impossible and unbearable situation in Gaza through tightly closing the entire area and thus creating a huge prison, by withholding money belonging to the Palestinian people and stopping aid so needed in this area, and by actively interfering with the internal affairs of the Palestinian people by supporting one group in this rivalry against the other.
We, therefore call upon Israel:

1. As an urgent measure, to open the passages to enable refugees fleeing this situation to pass to the West Bank;
2. To lift the siege on the Gaza Strip and to open passage to enable commerce, work, medical treatment, education, etc;
3. To immediately transfer the money belonging to the Palestinian people to its rightful owners;
4. To refrain from any interference in Palestinian affairs, whether economic, political or by arming one side against the other;
5. To refrain from attacking or reoccupying Gaza;
6. To make every effort to reach a viable, and just solution to the problem, based on real and just independence to the Palestinian people.