Gush Shalom Calls for International Intervention

GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033

Press  Release 31/7/2001

Today's bombing in Nablus in which eight Palestinians were killed, two of them children, is the latest and the worst in a whole series of recent provocations by the war-minded government which holds power in our country. In the sending of attack helicopters to bomb a seven-storey building in the heart of a major Palestinian city, the killing of innocent civilians could not have come as a surprise;  the civil and military leadership which knowingly ordered the attack has committed an act of state terrorism, an act of terrorism distinguished from other kinds of terrorism only by the enormous firepower at the disposal of the Israeli Air Force.
 
The government of Israel claims that the bombing in Nablus has prevented or deterred terrorist attacks against Israelis. In fact, the very opposite is true. The Nablus bombing already aroused furious reactions and calls for revenge on the Palestinian side, greatly increasing  the danger of suicide attacks in the Israeli population centers. Those who ordered today's provocation must have known that this would be the result; this, indeed, may well have been the intention - to provoke a reaction that would drown in blood all efforts to implement the Mitchell Commission's report and revive the peace negotiations.
 
This afternoon Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, sent messages to the Tel-Aviv embassies of the Five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, and the European Union Delegation to Israel, calling upon them to immediately initiate the sending of an international force to the Occupied Territories. "An intensive intervention by the International Community is the only way to stop the dangerous escalation which threatens to set the whole region on fire and severely affect other parts of the world as well. We are citizens of the state  of Israel, a state which prides itself of having a democratic regime - yet we are sorry to note that over the past year, the democratic processes in Israel are all but paralyzed where the cardinal issues of peace and war, life and death are concerned. The political system and mass media of Israel, which should have provided a break, are instead carried along by the demagoguery of the warmongers. We have no doubt that eventually the Israeli public will wake up from its stupor - but before that, we may witness terrible bloodshed and irreversible damage to both peoples. We find ourselves obliged to call upon the international community to intervene, before it is too late."

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 (including the Boycott List of Products of Settlements)
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