Gaza War

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• Gaza War

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Dismantling the Myths

• Is Gaza occupied
• All land crossing, costal access, airspace,
  economy, currency and even the diets of the
  Gazans are controlled by Israel
• Targeted assassinations, air strikes, arrests and
  house demolitions continued
• The UN and the US consider Gaza an occupied
  territory
• The significance of Disengagement is the freezing
  of the peace process (Weisglass)

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• Who broke the ceasefire
• In Nov 4th IOF conducted a raid into Gaza
  killing 7
• http//uk.youtube.com/watch?vKntmpoRXFX4
• The Blockade and the collective punishment of
  Palestinian is an act of war

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• Palestinian violence motivated by hatred
• Occupation and oppression is the root cause of
  the problem
• Violence is a symptom of injustice
• The majority of Palestinian resistance has been
  nonviolent (boycotts to business, hunger strikes,
  demonstrations and diplomacy)

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• Israeli forces does not target civilian
• The pressure at the border will be awful, Its
  going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to
  remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and
  kill. All day, every day." Professor Arnon
  Soffer, the Gaza disengagement architect
• Palestinians are bringing a holocaust on
  themselves (Vilnai, Israel's deputy defense
  minister )
• More than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed,
  including 410 children and 104 women, while 5,300
  are injured, of whom 1,855 are children and 795
  women.
• Israel has shelled three clearly marked UN
  schools, the headquarters of UNRWA, and
  hospitals, ambulances, and medical personnel. It
  has bulldozed homes with inhabitants alive
• On January 4, Israeli soldiers evacuated 110
  Palestinians into a house. Half of the evacuees
  were children. 24 hrs later, Israeli forces
  shelled the home repeatedly, killing more than 30
  of the inhabitants
• Israeli army has deliberately used white
  phosphorus on civilians http//www.guardian.co.uk/
  world/interactive/2009/jan/21/gaza-israelandthepal
  estinians

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• Is the war about security?
• The Palestinians must be made to understand in
  the deepest recesses of their consciousness that
  they are a defeated people Yaalon, former
  Israeli military chief of staff
• A hungry ration-dependent people are easier to
  dominate
• With Hamas accepting the two state solution
  Israeli gov. was faced with a Palestinian peace
  offensive, and in order to defeat the peace
  offensive, they started the Gaza offensive

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• The conditions to stop the war
• Recognize Israel
• Israel needs to recognize its own boarders
• Renounce violence
• it is Israel who continually provokes conflict
  and seeks war - it could have peace any time it
  chooses if it defined its borders, ended the
  illegal occupation and ceased murdering
  Palestinians as it steals their land
• Respect signed agreements
• Settlements more than doubled
• Movement restriction tightened

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The Current Situation

• The situation is more than miserable
• More that 20,000 homes were destroyed
• People are facing a food crisis as a result of
  blockade and destruction of more than 60 of
  farmland
• Farms, greenhouses, dairy farms, livestock,
  chicken farms and orchards were destroyed
• Water and sewer facilities and electricity grid
  were damaged
• The UN now helps feeding 1.3 million of Gazas
  1.42

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• The health care system is on the verge of
  collapse due to the overwhelming number of
  casualties and the limited amount of medical
  supplies and staff allowed in to Gaza
• 219 major factories destroyed include the
  concrete factory and the flour mills
• Financial losses in the Gaza Strip are estimated
  at 2.4 billion
• No construction materials are allowed in

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The way forward

• The defeated people policy is a defeated
  policy
• End the blockade on Gaza
• Call on the US to stop providing weapons to the
  warring parties
• Unilateralism will not work
• End the occupation
• Occupation is the mother of all violence. There
  will be no peace as long as the occupation
  exists.
• Recognize the right of return for the refugees
• Allow the creation of a variable secure
  Palestinian state on the occupied land along side
  of Israel

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What can we do

• Call on your representatives to stop military aid
  to Israel as long as the occupation exist
• Call on president Obama to change our policy in
  the ME
• Call on you congressmen to support HR 66 which
  asks Israel to permit the free flow of
  humanitarian aid and to oppose HR 29 that limits
  aid to UNRWA