arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)
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For the Presidents and Heads of State in Europe by Nico Verhagen Wednesday April 10, 2002 at 10:37 AM |
From the participants in the International Civil Mission for the protection of the Palestinian people, present in the presidential palace of Yasser Arafat, Ramallah, Palestine.
Tuesday, 9-4-2002
We direct ourselves to the European Council of the European Union and we denounce the barbarian war that the government of Ariel Sharon intensifies since 10 days in occupied Palestinian territory.
After the war of the camps one month ago, after the invasion of the autonomous zones, the Israelite army invests the towns of Nablous and Jenine where there are systematic massacres by the army which occupies and devastates the town of Ramallah, depriving its inhabitants of water, of electricity, access to the care and means of communication. It besieges the elected president of the Palestinian people in what remains of the buildings in ruin of the palace of Mukataa.
We, present since more than one week in the presidential palace and direct witnesses of the atrocities, we make a call upon the European Union and to the president of the European Council, Mr. José Maria Aznar. We ask you to intervene urgently with the government of Israel to require that it immediately puts an end to the operations of ethnic cleansing, carried out in Nablouse and in Jenine, that it immediately releases the autonomous Palestinian zones which it has just re-occupied, that it evacuates immediately Ramallah and removes the siege imposed on the presidential palace.
We, participants of an international civil mission for the protection of the Palestinian people, entered the palace of president Arafat to make clear to all citizens in Europe, to our Heads of States and to our governments our will to put an end to the occupation of Palestine and to obtain the sending of a protective force. Our presence with the elected president, only legitimate representative of his people, wants to be to be a testimony of the right cause of resistance of the Palestinian people. Our presence is a call to Europe to face its responsibility, on the political as well as on the level of human dignity and universal values.
We denounce the arrests and expulsions of the delegations of civil missions.
We denounce the criminalisation by Israel of our activity as an international civil mission.
Resistance against oppression and military occupation is a legitimate right recognised by all international conventions.
It is even: a right and a duty,
Signed by the 40 of Mukataa