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EDICOLA / KIOSK | LADINBolzano/Bozen, Göttingen, 29. August 2007
As an international human rights organisation Society for
Threatened Peoples has been monitoring the human rights situation
in Israel and Palestine closely. The plight of both Palestinians
and Israelis is worrying. For decades some Palestinians supported
by some of the surrounding Arab states spread terror in Israel to
reach their aims. An endless chain of bloody suicide attacks and
bombings has left many innocent people dead. But the Israeli side
is also responsible for severe human rights violations against
Palestinians. The surviving victims of the Holocaust have built
their state on 78% of the land formerly settled by Palestinians.
Forceful expulsions of Palestinian civilians and massive human
rights violations against them characterize this period of
Israeli-Palestinian history. Endless military confrontations
which brought great suffering to both Israeli and Palestinians,
civilians and soldiers, followed.
After decades of violence it is evident that neither the
Palestinian terror nor the Israeli policies of apartheid and
discrimination accompanied by human rights violations like
arbitrary attacks against civilians and the erection of a more
than 700 km long wall separating Palestinian from occupied and
Israeli territory will bring peace to the population and the
region as such. In reference to this Society for Threatened
Peoples regrets that in the past Israel has turned down so many
UN-resolutions and initiatives aiming at an end to human rights
violations and the peaceful settlement of the conflict. Israel is
furthermore responsible for several breaches of international
human rights conventions. Torture and illegal executions are
regular parts of Israeli occupation politics. Beduines in the
Sinai suffer from the repeated destruction of their
villages.
As an organisation that was founded in Germany we consider it as
our responsibility however to remind of the Holocaust originating
in Germany and, with the dreadful collaboration of other European
personalities, militias and even governments, resulting in the
genocide of six million European Jews. Israelis continuously fear
for their safety and for the existence of their state. The state
of Israel is volatile. Israel is surrounded by Arab states which
are in most cases heavily armed and do not accept the existence
of the State of Israel in the Middle East. These states have
tolerated and partly supported the suppression of ethnic and
religious minorities in their countries as well as genocides by
other Arab states like Sudan against the Southern Sudanese. In
the past decades Society for Threatened Peoples has, for
instance, worked intensively for equal rights for Kurdish and
Christian minorities in Syria, Iran and Iraq. The genocide in
South Sudan, where luckily some progress is to be seen, was the
focus of our work for a long time. But we miss the Arab world's
voice against the continuous genocide in Darfur. This and regular
gestures of menace against the State of Israel lead to the
requirement of international protection for Israel and the need
for the recognition of the State of Israel by the government of
Palestine.
After years of violence and suffering the overwhelming majority
of Israelis and Palestinians only has one wish: peace. The UN
Human Rights Council can do a lot to support those responsible on
both sides in finding ways of solving the conflict and bringing
about a peaceful solution. Society for Threatened Peoples'
demands repeat the suggestions formulated by Jewish intellectuals
in Germany.
Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the Human Rights Council to: