January 3, 2009

Today, January 3rd 2009, it has been confirmed that Israeli troops entered the Gaza Strip for military occupation and a further massacre of the Palestinian people. This was as expected - the first phase of the killing of Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza came to an end this morning. Over the last week, this has meant more than 700 air strikes, 450 dead and over 2000 injured. The next phase, the occupation of Gaza, will be bloodier and more destructive for the Palestinian people. The Israeli army will destroy hundreds and hundreds of homes, schools, mosques, medical facilities and all possible infrastructure, as well as killing hundreds more Palestinians in order to force them to surrender and accept Israel’s terms and conditions for “peace” and “settlement”. People of the world are asking: if this is not genocide, then what is it? Israel will go down in history for committing the Palestinian Holocaust.

But the vicious Israeli rulers must have understood by now, after more than 60 years of the occupation of Palestine, that none of their killings, massacres, expulsions, or imprisonments have been able to crush the simple demand of Palestinians for self-determination. Nor have they been able to end the heroic Palestinian resistance to this brutal and inhuman occupation. Since the occupation of Palestine and the foundation of the state of Israel 61 years ago, the Zionist state has relied on a policy of imperialist-supported violence and ethnic cleansing to rid the land of its Palestinian inhabitants and stifle opposition. Today there are more than 6.4 million Palestinian refugees, and the approximately 2 million remaining Palestinians live in the equivalent of an Israeli-controlled open air prison. Regardless of the betrayal to their cause by so-called agreements, from Camp David in 1979 to the Madrid Conference in 1991, from the Oslo Accords in 1993 to Camp David in 2000, and from the Road Map of 2003 to Geneva Accord of 2003, the Palestinian people have continued to defy occupation...

Click here to view complete statement in text format

Click here to view complete statement in MAWO Newsletter #19