Karama statement: stop the war
We demand an immediate end to the war on Gaza and the assaults on the rights of the Palestinian people.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has come at unbearable cost, each grim statistic struggling to convey the utter devastation, to husbands and wives left widowed, children left orphaned, to lives left in ruins. We extend our condolences to our partners whose friends, families, and colleagues have been killed. Our hearts go out to those who have lost homes, families, neighbors, schools, hospitals, and livelihoods.
Thousands have been killed in the assault and many more injured, most of whom are women and children. Nowhere is safe: ambulances, hospitals, schools, newsrooms, even bakeries, all have become targets.
In the context of this devastation, it is not surprising but nonetheless deeply disturbing that many states continue to provide unqualified material and political support to Israel, no matter its actions. Since the start of just this conflict, the Israeli military has referred to the people of Gaza as “animals”, they have practiced collective punishment, shutting off the supply of water, food, gas, electricity and gas to a population of over 2 million people, forcing them to survive on brackish water, while its spokespeople have repeatedly denied there is a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Israel has pounded highly-populated neighbourhoods with huge amounts of ordinance, including white phosphorus, with entire families erased entirely by a single bomb. After demanding the forced displacement of 1 million people in North Gaza, Israel bombed evacuee convoys.
The people of Gaza have been and continue to be subjected to prima facie war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, Palestinians in the West Bank too have been assaulted with deadly force by assailants acting with impunity.
We can only take from this that states and politicians who stand unwaveringly with Israel endorse its repeated violations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and the basic rights of the Palestinian people. This double standard applied by countries that claim to promote the human rights agenda is nothing new, but we must always call out the hypocrisy.
A long shadow is drawn by the deliberate dehumanisation of Palestinians, one that is not limited to our region. The hatred that leads to the brutal murder of a 6-year Palestinian-American boy in Illinois is a direct consequence of the disgraceful and inflammatory rhetoric applied to Palestinians specifically, as well as Arabs and Muslims generally.
When the population of Gaza is overwhelmingly young, it is above all children who suffer. We work with girls from Palestine, and across Africa and the Arab region. We listened as they shared their dreams and aspirations, their hopes for the future. The dreams of so many girls and boys in Gaza now lie in ashes.
Later this month, the UN Security Council and global women’s movements will consider the impact of 23 years of the women, peace and security agenda. What peace have the women and girls of Gaza known in that time?
Protection, prevention, participation, relief and recovery become meaningless jargon when considered in the context of Gaza.
Next month, civil society groups will join with governments and others to consider feminist foreign policy. It is the duty of women’s groups across the world to take these opportunities and any other to condemn the war, demand that the dignity of the Palestinian people be respected, and for there to be accountability.
We call on the international community to force an immediate end to the war. We demand that urgent humanitarian assistance be provided to the people of Gaza, and that comprehensive plans for relief and recovery for the civilian population be developed, resourced and implemented. There needs to be justice and accountability for the serious and sustained rights violations of the Palestinian people, in Gaza and across Palestine.
Human rights are universal, protection of those rights must too be universal.
For decades, the international community has failed in its duty to the Palestinian people. This conflict is only the latest evidence that the political and military approach taken has been utterly catastrophic, and completely unsustainable. We demand recognition for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and for an end to the occupation.