Socorro Gomes: In repudiation of the demolition of Palestinian homes and the brutality of the Israeli occupation; end the occupation now!

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

It is with utmost concern and alarm that we are informed that, after years of a judicial battle in which residents of the Wadi al-Hummus neighborhood in Sur Baher, East Jerusalem (occupied Palestine) defied Israeli occupation, the Ministry of Defense of the occupying state ordered the demolition of dozens of Palestinian homes, which started early this July 22.

The media cite local sources according which 16 buildings with about 100 apartments were being destroyed. According to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israeli soldiers and bulldozers raided the village at dawn and drove families out of their homes. Israel's Ministry of Defense claimed to consider the buildings "security risks" because they were allegedly "too close" to the shameful Israeli wall, which cuts across Palestinian territory, stealing vast tracts of land. The pretext puts in evidence, as always, that which is a criminal and outlaw regime that violates international humanitarian law by destroying homes in occupied territory.

The World Peace Council has been repudiating in the strongest terms such arbitrariness, real war crimes for which Israel cannot once again go unpunished. While powers allied to the occupying regime issue modest condemnatory statements, in practice such a tactic of destruction of houses, expropriation of lands, devastation of olive groves, among other barbaric methods, under the pretext of Israel's security concerns, are nothing more than part of the colonizing strategy that aims to lead to the final consequences with the expulsion of the Palestinian people, to annex their territory and to bury the possibility of consolidation of the State of Palestine.

Also dismayed, we denounce with the strongest terms the tactic of intimidation and terror that Israeli soldiers routinely employ, as was the shooting, by an Israeli sniper, who struck in the head the 9-year-old boy Abd el-Rahman Shatawi in Kafr Qaddum, in the occupied West Bank. After carrying out the increasingly brutal repression of weekly protests in the region, the soldier, stationed on a hilltop, fired at Abd el-Rahman, who is in a coma, with dozens of shrapnels lodged in his head .

The brutality of the two episodes, although in separate events, puts in evidence what the regime of Israeli occupation and apartheid is and its aim, the colonization of the Palestinian territories and the expulsion or submission of its population. Its repeated war crimes have gone unpunished thanks to the imperialist alliance with the criminal regime of Israel, beginning with the United States, but also through the European Union's negligence, as well as the alliance of authoritarian governments led by proto-fascists around the world.

The World Peace Council has closely monitored the situation in occupied Palestine and has been united in an unwavering and unconditional solidarity with the brave Palestinian people, who stand up to the daily crimes of the Israeli occupation and against an internationally condemned apartheid regime.

End the Israeli occupation now! For the establishment of a free and sovereign State of Palestine!

Socorro Gomes
President of the World Peace Council