April 2009

"I’ve got a message for all the world leaders who are gathering in London today. There will be no just world and no peace in the Middle East without an free and independent Palestine alongside Israel.

And there will be no independent Palestine unless you make it happen.
We’ve seen what happens if we leave this issue to the Israelis
They launched a ferocious and inhumane attack on Gaza as far as I can see just to help win an election
They killed 1500 Gazans, nearly all civilians, to gain three points in the opinion polls
And then they stopped just in time for President Obama’s inauguration.

We’ve heard from the testimony of soldiers in one of their military colleges
That there were under orders to clear houses by shooting without warning.

Because the lives of Palestinians were, in the words of one soldier, “very very less important than the lives of Israelis”

We now have an Israeli prime minister who doesn’t want peace talks and a foreign minister who lives in an illegal settlement in the West Bank.

We know they don’t want peace.
Because they are still building the wall.
They are still building more checkpoints and
They are still expanding illegal settlements.
The only people who can deliver peace are the only who are sitting down to a Jamie Oliver dinner tonight.
And the only way they can do it by imposing a cost on the Israelis if they refuse.
Stop giving the Israelis preferential tariffs.
Suspend the EU-Israel trade agreement.
Reimpose the arms embargo.
Investigate the war crimes.
Arrest the war criminals.
Ban settlement produce.

So, President Obama, you owe it to the children of Gaza
Not only the four hundred who died,
But to the hundreds who were injured
And face lives devoid of all hope,
To bring Israel, kicking and screaming if need be, to the negotiating table."

Martin Linton