Please Endorse Appeal : The Palestinian People Must Live!
21 July, 2010
To All People of Conscience,
To All Supporters of Human Rights
Once again in the course of their tragic history, the Palestinian people are living dark times.
In Gaza, more than 1.5 million people are literally being held prisoner jointly by the State of Israel's blockade and the wall built by Egyptian President Mubarak, with the complicity of the European Union and the United States.
In the West Bank, a wall that is truly a wall of shame has confiscated still more land, separating families and destroying everything in its way. In this territory rife with over 700 military check-points and roads forbidden to Palestinians, as in Gaza, the population is enclosed, and unemployment and poverty keep soaring. The evictions from their homes of hundreds of Palestinian families (particularly in Jerusalem) are on the daily agenda, and all this is taking place to allow for the building of new settlements.
In Gaza, as in the West Bank, police incursions or military actions arrest or kill Palestinians. Within Israel itself, racial and social segregation, permanent threats of expropriation and ethnic cleansing rain down on the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians who have been dispersed into exile in numerous states throughout the region and all around the world are denied any perspective of enforcement of the right of return.
They are a people who are being destroyed, who are deprived of their land, of their right to a nation, of the elementary right of the dignity of families, of the right to a normal life.
For decades now, turning their backs on the recognition of the elementary rights of the Palestinian people to the unity of all their components, all the « peace » and « security » plans have only led to renewed violence and a worsening of the breaking up of that unity.
The situation has become urgent. It is urgent that voices be raised around the world to say loud and clear:
* Stop the destruction of the Palestinian people!
* Palestinian youth have a right to breathe and to live! They have a right to a future!
We -- who remain staunch advocates of democracy and the right of all peoples to live in dignity, no matter our respective opinions on the solutions to be provided, -- call on international democratic opinion: We can't allow this to go on happening. We can't let a people be threatened in their existence whilst nothing is done, nothing is said.
Over and above the dispersion in which the Palestinian people find themselves, we must reassert that, just as all peoples of the earth, the Palestinian people have political, economic and social rights that must be respected.
- the blockade against the Palestinian people must be lifted,
- free circulation for the Palestinians must be guaranteed,
- - the walls and the barbed-wire must be taken down,
- - the right of return for all Palestinians to their homes is indivisible,
- - the right to the land and to the nation is inalienable!
We solemnly call on all those who hold firm to democratic freedoms, human rights and human civilisation to unite with us and say: The Palestinian people must live!
Initial endorsers
- Louisa Hanoune, General Secretary, Workers Party of Algeria,
- Daniel Gluckstein, Coordinator, International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples ,
- Salah Salah, Member Palestinian National Council
- Abdelmadjid Sidi Said, General Secretary, General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA),
- Kane Mokhtar, General Secretary, Union of the Free Trade Unions of Mauritania,
- Mohamed Bewah, General Secretary, Union of the New Generation of Workers,
- Demba Diop, Deputy General Secretary, of the Organisation of African Trade Unions,
- Belamine N'gioje, Democratic Workers Union of Senegal,
- Osiris Oviedo de la Tosse, Representative, World Trade Union Federation in Geneva
- Tolé Sagnon, General Secretary, General Confederation of Labour, Burkina.
- Mohamed Khalif, Deputy General Secretary, General Union of Palestinian Workers - 1967 occupied territories (Palestine),
-Jean Pierre Barrois, Editor, Dialogue Review
- Joe Marino General Secretary Bakers and Foodworkers union BFAWU UK
Robert Irminger, Vice Chair, San Francisco Region-Inlandboatmen's Union/ILWU
Monadel Herzallah, Arab American Union Members Council
Jack Gerson, Oakland Education Association, California USA
Alan Benjamin, editor The Organizer, California,USA
Francesca Rosa, trade unionist California USA,
Martha Mamosehle Mosoang,Lesotho trade union congress
Setondsi Anounou Florentine, National Union of Workers Trade unions in Benin (UNSTB)
ENDORSEMENT COUPON
To be returned to JP Barrois [email protected]
[ ] I endorse this appeal
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Jean Pierre Barrois 87 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis 75010 Paris, France -
