BREAK THE SIEGE ON THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

Comment: I agree with the Al-Awda coalition. All of us must condemn the Israeli government and its siege on the Palestinian people. These are great crimes being committed without just retribution and all who are silent on this gross violation of the humane rights of the Palestinian people are actual accomplices to this injustice! The corporate controlled mass media must also be exposed for what it is, a fascist front for the Amerikan Empire. All these great crimes going on and CNN focuses on Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi doing Elvis impersonations.
~Peta de Aztlan

palashc biswas <palashcbiswas@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Forwarded.Palash Biswas--- "Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition"<alerts@al-awda.org> wrote:
BREAK THE SIEGE ON THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

For immediate release
June 30, 2006

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, condemns in the strongest possible terms the Israeli war crimes committed against the Palestinian people, including the comprehensive
siege imposed on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. We call upon the international community to take up their responsibility in protecting the Palestinian people from this aggression, and terminating the continuing Israeli policy of collective punishment.

Since Tuesday, June 27, 2006, Israel destroyed vital bridges, water and electricity stations. As a consequence more than two-thirds of the people have been denied access to water and electricity.
Children, the sick and elderly are the first to be affected.

Israel also arrested more than 64 elected Palestinian Legislative Council members, city mayors, cabinet ministers and lawmakers.

Israel, the US and European Union governments have put the Palestinian people under siege for the past few months as collective punishment because they did not approve of the results of the
democratic elections Palestinians held. Palestinians understood that the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip which took place this past year was meant to turn it into the largest prison with the largest population of prisoners in the world. The acquiescence of world governments to this indicates complicity in these war crimes.

Nothing justifies the Israeli savagery, including the elimination of water and electricity access to hundreds of thousands of people. Racist media coverage in North America has been trying to
minimize the importance of these war crimes.

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, calls upon all people who support the Palestinian struggle for self determination and return, to demand of their representatives, the media and their governments to ensure that the genocidal Zionist State of Israel ends its siege and fully compensates for the destruction of life and infrastructure that it has visited upon the Palestinian people. The potential future cost to human life the destruction of the water and power supply may cause cannot yet be determined.

Al-Awda calls upon the international community, Palestine solidarity activists and groups, Arab community organizations including community centers, mosques and churches, to demand:

- Ending the siege imposed on the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
- The protection of civilian lives and property, as stipulated in International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law.
- The immediate release of all political prisoners, including all elected representatives of the Palestinian people.
- To provide Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with financial and material support, and to Demand the implementation of their inalienable right to return to their homes and lands from which they have been dispossessed since the imposition of the Zionist state in 1948 and thereafter.
- An end to all Zionist occupation, Apartheid and all other war crimes
- An end to all U.S. aid to Israel which supports the continuing occupation
- Immediate reparations and compensation for all destruction carried out by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.

To find out about a demonstration in your area to protest the siege, please
visit the messages posted at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-News/messages