--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Art Heitzer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "nlginternational listserv" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"Progressive Wisconsin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 23:10:23 -0600
Subject: [NLGInternational] from UFPJ: Arafat's Legacy: Understanding
What We Are Fighting For
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Two days ago the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli
Occupation issued a statement on the occasion of the
death of President Yasser Arafat. The U.S. Campaign is
a member group of United for Peace and Justice and we
thought the other member groups might like to see this
piece.
Please feel free to share this with the members
of your organization and others.
Leslie Cagan National Coordinator UFPJ
-----------------------------------------------
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
Arafat's Legacy: Understanding What We Are Fighting For
November 10th, 2004
The Steering Committee of the US Campaign to End the
Israeli Occupation extends its sympathy to the
Palestinian people on the death of President Yasser
Arafat. The international focus on his last days
reminded the world that he has his place in Middle East
history and politics, in spite of attempts by Israel
and the United States to marginalize him by confining
him to his destroyed office compound and to demonize
him as an obstacle to peace.
While the spotlight focuses on Arafat, the daily lives
of Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and East
Jerusalem remains defined by Israel's illegal military
occupation. Over the course of a two-week period in
September and October, Israel killed more than 130
Palestinians in the Jebalya refugee camp and partially
or completely destroyed hundreds of houses there.
Arafat will be remembered as the leader who forged a
unified Palestinian people from the despair of
dispossession and put the question of Palestine back on
the map after the creation of Israel in 1948.
He will also be remembered as the leader who signed
peace agreements with Israel but was powerless to
challenge Israel's expanded pace of settlement-building
and refusal to recognize or realize Palestinian rights.
In the end, he served as a convenient scapegoat for a
peace process bankrupted by Israeli policies of
colonization.
Our movement can draw lessons from Arafat's legacy in
the endeavor to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine
and to achieve justice for the Palestinian people and
peace, security and human rights for all.
We are right to remain focused on the occupation and to
build a national and international movement to end it.
The balance of power remains heavily weighted on
Israel's side. Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, Israel,
under both the Labor and Likud governments, has set the
pace, timing, and nature of its withdrawals from
occupied territory - culminating in the Sharon plan for
unilateral disengagement from Gaza, which will maintain
an Israeli siege around the territory and consolidate
Israel's hold on the West Bank. Without a national and
international movement against the occupation we cannot
shift the balance of power.
We are right to remain focused on challenging those
U.S. policies that sustain the occupation. Israel
could not keep up the occupation without U.S. aid worth
over $3 billion a year, loan guarantees of $9 billion,
and the latest military weaponry and equipment.
Israeli violations of international law are protected
by the U.S. veto at the United Nations that prevents
the implementation of international laws applicable to
this conflict and the dispatch of an international
protection force to protect the Palestinians. We must
educate people and mobilize to change these facts so
they can hold their elected officials accountable.
We are right to frame our work using human rights and
international law. The principles of international law
have just been eloquently restated by the International
Court of Justice in its ruling on the illegality of the
Wall in July 2004. The ICJ has also reminded the
international community that international law must
underpin the efforts to resolve this conflict, and we
are acutely aware of its absence from the Oslo Accords,
the Camp David talks, and the Road Map.
Israel, as a member of the state system, is protected
by the same set of laws that we are working to uphold
for Palestine. However, Israel cannot demand the
protection of international law while undermining it.
The powerful principles of international law not only
show us what we are fighting against - the occupation -
but also what we are fighting for: freedom
and self-determination. As the ICJ itself declared,
there is a Palestinian people and it has a right to self-
determination, and we must support that right.
Through exercising their right to self-determination,
Palestinians can decide - as the occupation is ended -
whether they want to live in one state alongside Israel
or in a binational state, or in some other arrangement.
We work too for the right of Palestinian refugees to
make their individual choice to return or compensation
as guaranteed by international law and U.N. Resolution
194.
The Palestinian people face serious challenges ahead:
maintaining national unity; avoiding the trap of
endless negotiations about occupation while Israel
colonizes the last pieces of Palestine; and
articulating a strategy to guide their struggle to a
just and lasting peace.
We in the international movement can already draw our
guidance from the clear principles of international law
as we mobilize to hold our representatives accountable
for the law in U.S. policies towards this conflict and
in the U.S. position at the U.N.
More than ever, the Palestinian people need our
solidarity in their quest for freedom, democracy,
statehood, and self-determination. November 29th is
the international day of solidarity with the
Palestinian people, an annual commemoration marking the
U.N. plan to partition historical Palestine into two
states. The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
has joined an international call for action on November
29th, and we urge you to take part in this day of
solidarity.
(For details see
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Together, we will help achieve Palestinian human rights
- we will hasten the day when Palestinians will no
longer die so far away from home and know not where
they may be laid to rest.
In solidarity
The Steering Committee of the U.S. Campaign to End the
Israeli Occupation
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