Judeo-Christian Peace Processes For The Killing Of Muslim Palestinians

In the early hours of Tuesday, January 15th 2008, the Israeli occupation army in Palestine killed sixteen Palestinians and injured about fifty others, some critically. Once again, it was just another incursion with fighters, helicopters, tanks, armoured bulldozers and snipers in the city of Gaza, which is under an international blockade.

This army did not confront another one in the battlefield, it did not face an army hiding in trenches, guarded by anti-aircraft batteries and equipped with state of the art weapons. It attacked, as it usually does, civilians living under occupation - people who should enjoy special protection according to Geneva Conventions. These people were in the streets of their hometown, Gaza, one of the most populated cities in the world, defenceless. Half Gaza’s inhabitants are under the age of 15.

Beyond the area where the victims’ families live, this crime against humanity is not an issue. Crimes like this have been committed so many times by Israel, and then pardoned and forgotten so fast by its allies in Europe and the United States, that each crime quickly covers the one preceding it: today’s overwrites that of the 14th, which hid that of the 13th, which erased that of the 12th.

Sixteen Palestinians died today, half a dozen yesterday, a similar amount in the previous days. 4,000 have died since September 2000 - many under age. More than 25,000 have been injured - many crippled for life. More than 11,000 are held prisoner - many uncharged and held without trial. More than 6,000 houses have been demolished in the Gaza Strip - another gross violation of Geneva Conventions.

This procession of death and pain is unparalleled, both for its duration (more than 60 years) and for the complicity of the international community. UN consent and active support by some member states acting individually, have been known since 1991 all over the world as “the peace process”. [Read the report]