JOINT PRESS RELEASE
May 19, 2001
A JUST PEACE: THE ONLY WAY
OUT
A JOINT PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI APPEAL TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
Israel’s use on Friday of F-16
warplanes for the first time since the 1967 War against targets in the heavily
populated cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, and Gaza signals a dangerous
escalation of the conflict to which the world cannot be indifferent. Israel’s
massive attacks on Friday and Saturday represent a concerted attempt to break
Palestinian resistance to an unjust and imposed “peace,” to use its powerful
military arsenal to browbeat the Palestinians into submission, and specifically
to cause the collapse of the Palestinian Authority. Behind the rhetoric of
self-defense, of blaming the Palestinians for the violence, lies an absolute
refusal to abandon its occupation, and in particular its steadily expanding
settlements. While we deplore the loss of innocent life in the attack on the
Netanya shopping center, an act immediately condemned by the Palestinian
Authority as well,
this is no way justifies the Israel government’s attempt to cast its military
campaign against the Palestinian people as mere “reaction.” There is no
symmetry here, no proportional or sensible link. The Israeli government presents
its actions as “self-defense,” as though there were no occupation.
Seven months of attacks with Apache helicopters, tanks, missiles and troops
culminated (but did not end) in Friday’s attacks on Palestinian cities with
US-supplied F-16 warplanes. Add to this the destruction of hundreds of homes
over the past seven months, the uprooting of thousands of fruit trees and the
clearing of hundreds of acres of farm land, the wholesale attacks on the
Palestinian infrastructure and the killing of more than 500 civilians, many of
them children, and the claim of mere “reaction” collapses. So, too, does the
illusion of symmetry.
Israeli policy, initiated by Ehud Barak and escalated by Ariel Sharon,
highlights the futility of trying to impose an inadequate solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict by force. There is only one way out: through a just
peace based on an end to the Israeli Occupation, the emergence of a viable and
truly sovereign Palestinian state and the resolution of the refugee issue in
accordance with UN Resolution 194. Despite the current polarization of our
peoples, we believe that the overwhelming majorities in both our societies
desire a genuine peace.
We, representatives of Palestinian and Israeli human
rights and peace organizations, call on the international community:
* To end the Israeli government’s escalation of military force against the
Palestinian people, to lift the multiple siege on Palestinian towns and
villages, to put an end to Israel’s policy of political assassinations, extra
judicial killings and abduction of targeted Palestinian political figures and
activists, to stop the destruction of human lives, to stop the demolition of
Palestinian homes and to stop the uprooting of trees and confiscation of land.
* To take immediate and concrete steps in providing international protection to
the Palestinian people;
* To oppose Israeli attempts to strengthen its Occupation, including settlement
activities, as called for by the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative and the Mitchell
Commission;
* To hold Israel accountable according to the principles of international
humanitarian law and UN Resolutions; and
* To ensure that any peace settlement be based on a complete Israeli withdrawal
from the Occupied Territories, including east Jerusalem, and conformity with
United Nations Resolutions 242, 338 and 194, and the ‘land-for-peace’
equation, formally adopted in Washington DC in 1993.
Only a just peace will free both our peoples from the tragic loss of life this
weekend has brought us.
Signed:
(Palestinian & Israeli organizations)
MIFTAH: The Palestinian Initiative for Global Dialogue And Democracy
LAW: The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the
Environment
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
The Jerusalem Media and Communications Center
The Alternative Information Center
BAT SHALOM
Palestine Affairs Council