MLN joins the Palestinian solidarity movement throughout the world in its call for the imposition of an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. The ceasefire should be accompanied immediately by measures to ensure there is uninterrupted flow of water, electricity, food and medicines to the people of Gaza.
MLN supports the exchange of all the prisoners held by Israel without charge or trial, as well as other political prisoners as a first step for reigniting an international intervention aimed at bringing an end to the siege on Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank and the discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
MLN endorses the position of those who insisted on contextualizing historically – stretching back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration – and morally the 7 October operation of the Hamas.
This historical context stretches back to 1948, when Israel ethnically cleansed Palestine, expelled half of its population and demolished half of its villages.
That year is when the Gaza Strip, a rectangle that served as huge refugee camps to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians expelled from central and south Palestine, was created by Israel. The settlements attacked in the Hamas operation were built on the ruins of some of those villages.
It is not incidental that a third generation of these refugees in Gaza lived for 15 years under inhuman siege. In four separate wars they have been exposed to heavy and brutal heavy bombardments from the air, the land and sea – killing thousands of them, wounding many more and traumatizing a whole population.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine has never ceased and is now continuing in the Gaza Strip. In the last two years, Israeli forces and colonisers protected by them, have killed Palestinians daily. Many of those killed were teenagers. At the same time, the al-Aqsa Mosque has been constantly invaded and the siege of Gaza – a deliberate campaign of effectively strangulating nearly two million Palestinians in the biggest prison on earth – has continued unchecked.
The truth is the Palestinian Authority is unable to protect the Palestinians, the world is indifferent and even the Arab and Muslim worlds do not interfere in the ongoing catastrophe.
Israel’s revengeful policy has gone beyond retaliation. If there is an ‘end-game’ it is motivated by a wish to ethnically cleanse both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank – and to impose further draconian restrictions on the Palestinian minority.
This conflict has never been between equal sides. As of today, more Palestinians have been uprooted in Gaza than during the 1948 Nakba, with the number of dead in this month’s various massacres exceeding those killed in the Nakba.
The world was silent about the ethnic cleansing of 1948; but today most states are constitutionally independent and exercise a degree of sovereignty. This silence has ever since then encouraged Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
The world cannot be silent once more. The Arab states, the Muslim world, and the global south, remained colonised in some continents – with many remaining so. Today colonisation is receding, with widespread recognition of the advantages of international law and human rights – including the right of self-determination.
We call upon the governments of the free world to take a firm stance, to put pressure on Israel to stop this long-standing incremental genocide.