Israel bombs peace again

CPA Secretariat Statement

The Israeli military's bombing of a residential area in Gaza City last 
week, killing 14 civilians, including nine children and injuring 140 others 
has been widely condemned as a deliberate blow against a negotiated peace 
process which had been put in motion. A leader of the Hamas resistance 
movement was also killed in the attack. Israel made the hollow claim that 
his assassination was the sole purpose of the bombing.

Just a few hours before the attack another Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmad 
Yassin, had made an unprecedented public call for a cease-fire with Israel. 
It was the result of negotiations between the Hamas leadership and the 
Palestinian Authority to implement a ceasefire with Israel and put an end 
to suicide bombings providing the Israeli military forces withdrew from 
Palestinian cities.

"Israeli officials acknowledged that they had known of a possible 
Palestinian cease-fire proposal before the bomb was dropped, but they 
dismissed it as a futile attempt by Palestinians without influence over 
terrorist groups", declared The New York Times (25/7/02).

As has happened before, the fascistic leadership of Ariel Sharon has taken 
violent action deliberately intended to not only bomb and kill Palestinians 
leaders but also to bomb the prospects for a negotiated peace deal.

The worst nightmare for the present Israeli leaders would be the outbreak 
of peace and the possibility of the state of Israel and a Palestinian state 
living peacefully together.

Rather than accept this necessity, Zionist leaders are prepared to ignore 
the growing chorus of condemnation of their actions and commit ever-new war 
crimes to continue their objectives.

It is precisely these war crimes that the recently established 
International Criminal Court should be called act upon. It is up to the 
international community and particularly the United Nations Security 
Council to act decisively to bring an end to Israeli aggression against the 
recognised territory of the Palestinian Authority.

For decades Israeli governments have thumbed their nose at repeated 
decisions of the UN Security Council that demand Israel withdraw to the 
borders that existed before the Israeli war of aggression against Lebanon, 
Syria, Jordan and Egypt in 1967.

The Israelis have relied on the protection of the US which has armed and 
financed Israel as a military power shoring up US interests in the region. 
The US supplied the high-tech weapons used in last week's attack on Gaza 
City.

Furthermore, the US has repeatedly vetoed resolutions of the UN Security 
Council that would have compelled compliance by Israel.

Discontent within Israel itself is mounting. Deputy Defence Minister Dalia 
Rabin-Pelosof resigned following the attack, charging the Sharon Government 
with destroying the life work of the late Yitzsak Rabin.

The Zionist leaders of Israel couldn't survive in a peaceful Middle East in 
which Arabs and Israelis, Christians and Muslims live side by side. Left to 
themselves, this is what normal people will do.

The reality of Zionism has become the forgotten issue in the present 
dangerous conflict, yet it is at the centre of the apparent impossibility 
of achieving a peaceful settlement.

Zionism is the ideology of the wealthy, reactionary Israeli ruling class, 
backed by a network of organisations. They are closely tied to the leaders 
of US imperialism and have a powerful US lobby concentrated in New York.

They have become partners in the drive of the Bush administration for US 
world domination. Bush and Sharon are partners in conflict and war crimes.

The Zionists attempt to silence every critic by shouting that to be opposed 
to Zionism is to be anti-Semitic. But nothing could be further from the 
truth.

The real danger to the state of Israel comes from the wars that Israel's 
Zionist leaders have repeatedly imposed in the Middle East. It comes from 
their refusal to negotiate a peace settlement and support the creation of a 
Palestinian state. It is the Zionists who are the real enemies of the state 
of Israel.

Rather than find the way by which to live in peace with the Arab people in 
the region, the objective of the Zionists is to drive out the Arab people 
and seize the lands that they have occupied for many generations.

History

Following the 1967 war of aggression, General Moshe Dayan who became an 
Israeli Minister of Defence and Foreign Minister, demanded the 
unconditional annexation to Israel of the captured Arab territories. (The 
Jerusalem Post 14/8/67).

In justification of this objective he declared: "If there is a book of 
books — the Bible, if there is a Biblical people, then there must be a 
biblical land..."

Zionist ideologists have continuously spread the idea that the Jewish 
people are "a chosen people", are the "crown of creation" and have been 
"entrusted by God" with a special mission. The Zionists are the fanatical 
fundamentalists of the Jewish religion.

The time has come to change this course of events if the world is to 
survive the extreme danger of this fundamentalist aggression from spreading 
war throughout the Middle East and further afield.

It is time to bring an end to the sentiments of former Israeli Prime 
Minister Golda Meir, who declared: "Why when a [Palestinian] house is 
destroyed do people start raising cries of barbarism?"

In the present intensified conflict scores of Palestinian homes have been 
deliberately bulldozed or bombed and the people left homeless.

It is the continuation of the long attempt of the Zionists to carve out a 
racist Jewish land excluding all others. To do that they are systematically 
evicting Palestinians, seizing their land and, if they dare to resist, 
killing them. That is their agenda.

But the current leaders of Israel are slipping into a deeper and deeper 
crisis, as are the warmongering leaders of the US. Times are changing and 
the prospect of endless war in which hundreds of millions would be killed 
will meet with more and more resistance.