The World March of Women joins the demand for an end to the genocidal onslaught of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people
The World March of Women joins the demand for an end to the genocidal onslaught of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, especially Palestinian women and children living in Gaza, Jenin camp,and the West Bank.
On October 9, in the midst of our 13th International Meeting, we were able to experience with our sisters from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the desperation, anguish and anger that the beginning of the bombing of Gaza meant. We shared with them not knowing about their loved ones, the uncertainty for the future of their children, communities, projects, and even not knowing if they would be able to return to their homes or if they even had homes to return to, to all of them our deep gratitude for being an example of strength and resistance.
We sympathize with the families whose loved ones have been killed or deprived of their freedom in the actions of October 7, we deeply regret that the Israeli government has condemned them to death and is instrumentalizing their pain to justify the Palestinian genocide. We understand that the indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza, far from guaranteeing the return of their loved ones, means their doom.
We have listened with horror to the terrible words of the spokesmen of the Israeli occupation, statements that dehumanize an entire population, that condemn millions of Gazans to a punishment unprecedented in modern history, that expose once again the impunity with which the Israeli occupation has been allowed to act for 75 years and the uselessness of international institutions to protect peoples when it comes to confronting imperialist and colonialist powers.
Likewise, we are deeply outraged that official Israeli spokesmen present as military victories the massacre of a population 40% of which is made up of people under 15 years of age, where 33% suffer from extreme poverty, i.e. they are not guaranteed even one meal a day, and only 13% of the population had access to running water and only 7% of the water supplied complied with the standards of the World Health Organization. All these data are from the UN and prior to the latest attacks.
Faced with the incomprehension and inaction of governments and international organizations, of presenting the invasion and genocide as just another spectacle in the media co-opted or muzzled by transnational interests, the World March of Women has joined various spaces for debate, articulation for actions and analysis of the devastating consequences of the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian people.
Our common understanding leads us to tell the world that it is impossible to classify what is happening in Gaza as a war, we are in an advanced phase of an operation of extermination, at the time of writing these lines are counted the murder of more than 10 thousand people in Gaza, 60% of them women, girls and boys. These deaths cannot be considered collateral damage, when the bombing targets are mosques, hospitals, markets, schools turned into shelters and residential areas, it is clear that Palestinian families are the military target.
We echo the denunciations made by La Via Campesina organizations about the use of food and water as weapons of war and in this case as part of the Palestinian extermination policy. In the last 17 years Gaza has suffered a merciless blockade that prevents imports and exports of medical, agricultural and food supplies. In addition, the Israeli occupation forces have created a military exclusion zone on almost half of Gaza’s arable land and a maritime buffer zone that allowed access to only 15% of the Mediterranean for Palestinian fishermen. All this makes it impossible for Palestine to produce the food to sustain the communities and exposes 63% of the population to food insecurity (estimated before the latest Israeli aggressions). In addition, access to water is also a target of Israeli aggressions. Over the last 17 years, the construction of water wells, the collection of rainwater, access to the Jordan River, and the poisoning of water and land by frequent herbicide spraying have been prohibited. This already critical situation is further exacerbated by the Israeli ban on the transit of humanitarian aid roads to Gaza since the latest escalation of aggression on October 9.
We denounce the use of chemical and banned weapons in the siege of Gaza, their use is not only causing unimaginable damage to the bodies of Palestinian women, girls, boys and men, but is also causing an environmental disaster that compromises the existence of any form of life both now and in the future.
We denounce that the aggressions against the Palestinian people do not only occur in Gaza. We are aware that the Israeli occupiers, called settlers, have been armed by their government, that they attack with impunity the Palestinian population in the West Bank, that they shoot farmers on their way to their olive groves in the middle of the harvest season, and that they have assassinated at least 120 people. We know that no Palestinian anywhere in the occupied territories can sleep peacefully as they suffer daily from raids, unjustified arrests and forced disappearances.
We denounce the bombings in Lebanon and Syria, we stand in solidarity with these people who have lived under constant threat since the imperialist, colonial, and racist imposition of the Israeli occupation.
We condemn once again the illegitimate occupation by theIsraeli occupation of the territories that since time immemorial have been known as Palestine and where historically various peoples and their religious expressions had coexisted without major conflict until 1948, when a state of permanent war was imposed against the peoples of the region through the imposition of the Zionist Israeli occupation.
We recognize the right of the Palestinian people to resist and struggle for their liberation and condemn the partiality of international politics that supports and arms a genocidal state and justifies, minimizes or simply complicitly turns a blind eye to the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the Israeli occupation.
We call on the global community to actively support the liberation of the Palestinian people in the streets, raising their voices before their governments demanding their positions in favor of the Palestinian people and exposing in all community and political spaces the reality, the suffering, the right to resistance and struggle of the Palestinian people.
We demand that the UN and all international bodies uphold the human rights of Palestinians and that the Zionist Israeli occupation and its leaders be held accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
We emphasize the urgent need to end the occupation and ensure the freedom of the heroic Palestinian people who have been fighting against the Israeli occupation for 75 years.
We March On Against Wars ….
World March of Women