WHAT IS ISRAEL DOING?
WE WATCH WITH HORROR the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. Everything reasonable must be done to secure Corporal Gilad Shalit’s safe release but nothing Israel is doing contributes to that aim. Instead, it is using its enormously superior military might to terrorise an entire people.
DESTRUCTION OF THE FRAGILE Gaza infrastructure will
not release Shalit. Bombing power stations and cutting off fuel
supplies deprives people of electricity, refrigeration, pumped
drinking water and sewage disposal services. It holds hostage
hospital patients on life support systems, or undergoing dialysis.
It brings the threat of epidemics and starvation.
AS GIDEON LEVY WROTE in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, this
is “not only pointless, but … blatantly illegitimate”. Gilad Shalit
has become a pawn in the Israeli government’s ongoing battle to
topple the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians.
PRESENTING THIS AS AN ISOLATED hostage-taking incident
ignores Israel’s regular snatching of Palestinians from their
homes.Thousands are held in ‘administrative detention’ without trial, women and children amongst them. A doctor and his brother – civilians – were kidnapped from their home in Al Shouka, near Rafah, the day before Corporal Shalit was captured.
Like him, they need to be returned to their families in the established practice of prisoner exchange. And all elected MPs, punitively imprisoned by Israel in recent days, must be immediately released.
FOR THE US AND ITS ALLIES merely to call for “restraint” is desperately inadequate – and evidently ineffective. This is a situation that requires determined action by the international community.
SUPPORT THOSE ISRAELIS protesting against their government’s
destructive actions.
WRITE TO YOUR MP to demand that the British Government
act to achieve an immediate ceasefire.
WRITE TO THE ISRAELI EMBASSY - Make them understand
their actions are wrong, their explanations unconvincing.
There are three hundred signatures. Apparently the turn around time was 48 hours between the initial appeal and the funds being raised or pledged to cover the cost.
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