Open Gaza Borders
ISM | 05.02.2009 11:50 | Palestine | Repression | Social Struggles | World
Gaza is in the grip of a man-made humanitarian crisis. Thousands of tons of food, medical and emergency shelter aid including blankets and mattresses, is being denied entry through crossings by both the Israeli and Egyptian governments.
The United Nations has stated that 900,000 Gazans are now dependent on food aid. Only 100 aid trucks are being allowed into Gaza each day - 30 less than were being brought in last year and substantially less than before operation ‘Cast Lead’. This is a fraction of the estimated 500-600 trucks deemed necessary to sustain the population of Gaza according to the United Nations. According to UNRWA, food trucks are delivering enough food to feed just 30,000 people per day.With over 5,000 injured and 100,000 homeless, admittance of aid is crucial at this time.
Hundreds of medical patients are being prohibited from leaving Gaza. Over 268 people have died of preventable and treatable conditions after being denied access to treatment since the beginning of the ongoing siege two years ago.
Israel and Egypt have designated February 5th as the final day for all foreign nationals to leave Gaza through the southern Rafah border. Egypt has said it will close the Rafah border indefinitely. Despite a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Health that humanitarian cases will be allowed through, many patients have already been turned back, before the closing of the border. Hundreds of patients and some of those wounded from ‘Cast Lead,’ are still waiting for permission to exit Gaza through Rafah for medical treatment.
The Gazan community is concerned that Israel will be stepping up its’ economic, political, cultural and militarised stranglehold on Gaza in the upcoming weeks. Post Israeli elections, Gazans fear the Israeli government will conduct extra judicial killings and continue their deadly strikes on Palestinian governmental figures, targeting of social and economic infrastructure and indiscriminate killings of civilians in the process.
Thousands of internally displaced people face an uncertain future residing in flimsy canvas tents reminiscent of the mass dispossession through the ethnic cleansing of 1948 when the state of Israel was first established on Palestinian land.
A de-facto land grab and re-colonisation of Gaza is underway, with the demolition of hundreds of homes and destruction of farms in the Israeli defined ‘buffer zone’ areas of Rafah, Eastern (Shijaye) and Northern (Beit Hanoun) areas of Gaza. The ‘buffer zone’ has been expanded to cut into Palestinian lands by one kilometre. Israeli occupation forces have shot at residents that have attempted to retrieve their belongings from the bombed and bulldozed remnants of their homes along the border of Beit Hanoun. The army also continues to fire at farmers planting their fields in village areas such as al Faraheen near Khan Younis.
The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture says Israeli occupation forces have destroyed 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land during this winter’s war.
Effective international direct action and an escalation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign is necessary to resist the intensification of the collective punishment, imprisonment and ongoing war on the people of Palestine.
The situation is worsening: the stranglehold on the people of Gaza is tightening, humanitarian relief is being deliberately choked, trauma is deepening, people are being humiliated on a daily basis and development is not just blocked but in the process of being actively reversed.
We call on social movements, particularly No Borders networks, and people of conscience to target Israeli and Egyptian embassies, institutions, and corporations. Particularly in the coming days of intensified border closure, we must work to pressure both governments to abide by international law and open Gaza for the free movement of aid, goods and people.
Hundreds of medical patients are being prohibited from leaving Gaza. Over 268 people have died of preventable and treatable conditions after being denied access to treatment since the beginning of the ongoing siege two years ago.
Israel and Egypt have designated February 5th as the final day for all foreign nationals to leave Gaza through the southern Rafah border. Egypt has said it will close the Rafah border indefinitely. Despite a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Health that humanitarian cases will be allowed through, many patients have already been turned back, before the closing of the border. Hundreds of patients and some of those wounded from ‘Cast Lead,’ are still waiting for permission to exit Gaza through Rafah for medical treatment.
The Gazan community is concerned that Israel will be stepping up its’ economic, political, cultural and militarised stranglehold on Gaza in the upcoming weeks. Post Israeli elections, Gazans fear the Israeli government will conduct extra judicial killings and continue their deadly strikes on Palestinian governmental figures, targeting of social and economic infrastructure and indiscriminate killings of civilians in the process.
Thousands of internally displaced people face an uncertain future residing in flimsy canvas tents reminiscent of the mass dispossession through the ethnic cleansing of 1948 when the state of Israel was first established on Palestinian land.
A de-facto land grab and re-colonisation of Gaza is underway, with the demolition of hundreds of homes and destruction of farms in the Israeli defined ‘buffer zone’ areas of Rafah, Eastern (Shijaye) and Northern (Beit Hanoun) areas of Gaza. The ‘buffer zone’ has been expanded to cut into Palestinian lands by one kilometre. Israeli occupation forces have shot at residents that have attempted to retrieve their belongings from the bombed and bulldozed remnants of their homes along the border of Beit Hanoun. The army also continues to fire at farmers planting their fields in village areas such as al Faraheen near Khan Younis.
The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture says Israeli occupation forces have destroyed 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land during this winter’s war.
Effective international direct action and an escalation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign is necessary to resist the intensification of the collective punishment, imprisonment and ongoing war on the people of Palestine.
The situation is worsening: the stranglehold on the people of Gaza is tightening, humanitarian relief is being deliberately choked, trauma is deepening, people are being humiliated on a daily basis and development is not just blocked but in the process of being actively reversed.
We call on social movements, particularly No Borders networks, and people of conscience to target Israeli and Egyptian embassies, institutions, and corporations. Particularly in the coming days of intensified border closure, we must work to pressure both governments to abide by international law and open Gaza for the free movement of aid, goods and people.
ISM
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Israeli Law of Return to be Revised
24.02.2009 16:55
Published: 2/23/09
"Interior Minister Sheetrit appoints special committee to discuss refining law which he says has been abused, allowing 'people that have nothing to do with Judaism' to receive automatic Israeli citizenship. Interior Ministry says 1 million illegal immigrants living in Israel.
"Hundreds of thousands of non-Jews have received Israeli citizenship over the past decade under the Law of Return, which has led Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit and his colleagues to believe the law should either be revised or abolished.
"A special committee, headed by Professor Yaakov Ne'eman has been appointed to discuss the sensitive issue on how to possibly amend the law, that allows all offspring of a Jew, including a grandchild, automatic Israeli citizenship.
"On Sunday the interior minister told members of the committee, "The Law of Return is an anachronistic law through which people that have nothing to do with Judaism receive citizenship."
"The committee appointed by Sheetrit includes some of the top legal experts on immigration. A number of alternative courses of action will be presented to the committee besides annulling the law.
"One of the alternatives is amending the law so that new immigrants do not receive automatic citizenship upon arrival, but only receive a resident status.
"Only after proving, over the course of a few years, their ties to the Jewish people, knowledge of the Hebrew language and loyalty to the State, will the immigrants receive Israeli citizenship.
"Redefining the Law of Return is not the only problem facing the members of the new committee. In recent days the Interior Ministry presented the members with data of some 1 million illegal immigrants residing in Israel.
"According to the data, some 30% of the residents of the southern town of Eilat are non-Jews. After hearing this numbers, Sheetrit warned on Sunday, "If we do not discuss these issues with urgency, in a few years Israel will no longer be the state of the Jews, and I do not want that.
"Demographic struggle
""We will decide once and for all who is allowed to live here. Anyone allowed to live here must take an oath of loyalty to the State. This is an imperative rule. Holland legislated such a law after the wave of Muslim immigration that threatened to alter the country's character."
"Sheetrit said the demographic struggle called for the limitation of the number of non-Jewish foreigners entering Israel. Non-Jews in Israel include Palestinians entering the State by virtue of family reunification or marriage to Israeli Arabs, foreign workers, illegal labor immigrants and non-Jewish olim.
"The data presented to the committee further showed that some 25,000 African infiltrators live in Israel, with only 600 of them being actual refugees from Darfur, tens of thousands of Palestinian woman married to Bedouins and allowed to reside in Israel, 16,000 Palestinian women living in the West Bank but receiving welfare from the State, and 46,000 Falash Mura Ethiopians that include many Christians.
"Age limit for citizenship?
"Head of the new committee, Prof. Ne'eman is aware of the responsibility bestowed upon him and his colleagues from the start of their work last weekend.
""We are, without a doubt, dealing with one of the most important issues on the agenda of shaping the face of the State," Ne'eman said on Sunday, "We will convene every week and examine the matter in depth."
"The new citizenship and immigration laws to be determined by the committee will be based on the recommendations of a prior committee of experts headed by Professor Amnon Rubenstein.
"Three years ago the committee submitted a proposal to the Interior Ministry to tighten Israel's immigration policy.
"Among other things, the committee recommended an age limit be placed on the citizenship of non-Jews marrying Israelis.
"On Sunday Rubenstein told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that, "We certainly need an immigration policy that we are lacking, and the fact that this hasn't happened yet is a serious setback.""
The urgent demand to open Gaza's borders is not unrelated to the No Borders idea.
Having a No Border Camp on the Gaza / Egypt border could be problematic as Israel keeps bombing this border to stop both humanitarian and defence supplies from entering Gaza.
The Palestinian refugees struggle for the Right to Return to the land their families worked before 1948 is not necessarily a struggle for a state; it is necessarily a struggle against the existing borders of Israel.
How do we break the borders of Israel? One strategy is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Another is to attack the borders directly, as Stop the Wall (the Palestinian farmers organisation), the ISM and Anarchists Against the Wall do. These actions are complementary but will be taken through various networks.
No Fascist State
Homepage:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3676035,00.html
Response from Bristol No Borders
06.03.2009 01:26
Bristol No Borders condems the closure of the borders at Rafah which prevents the movement of people, food, aid and other essential supplies and which serves to imprison and repress the population of Gaza. These closures are a stark example of what all borders are set up to acheive -
the control and repression of populations and the artificial division of people.
No Borders stands in solidarity with all those who are fighting to break the siege and stop the border control in Gaza. We call for collective action and practical solidarity with the people of Gaza. No Borders rejects all forms of nationalism and state based 'solutions'. Ethnicity does not
grant “rights” to lands, which require the state to enforce them. People, however, have a right to ensure their human needs are met, and should be able to live where they choose, freely.
Controls such as checkpoints, walls, barriers and borders, which exist throughout the occupied territories, are denying the fundemental right of freedom of movement to the Palestinian people and causing immense suffering to the population caged inside them.
We call for the immediate removal of all such barriers and demand the right to freedom of movement for all people. Bristol No Borders is committed to taking direct action action against companies based in our locality that are directly profiting from this system of control and
oppression. We urge other groups to take similar action.
In solidarity
Bristol No Borders
Bristol No Borders