Committee to End Gaza Sanctions blasts Palestine Authority
The Committee to End Gaza Sanctions has criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for imposing sanctions they charge support Israel’s embargo and oppression of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.
Here is the statement the Committee issued Monday morning following massive protests held in Ramallah on Sunday, June 11, 2018:
Declaration #1: The Campaign to Lift Palestinian Authority Sanctions on Gaza
Gaza faces a brutal Israeli blockade, killings, and bombings that aim to break its political will and struggle for freedom. Under these circumstances, the illegal sanctions enforced on Gaza by the Palestinian Authority (PA) are only further besieging the people of Gaza and its steadfastness in the face of the Israeli war against it.
We, from all parts of Palestine, view the continued restrictions enforced by the PA on our resilient country men and women in Gaza as merely a tactic to drain our people from their steadfastness against the Israeli Occupation’s plans that aims to bring Gaza to its knees and end our national cause.
These sanctions, ordered by President Abbas, are an act of complicity with the enemy in the besiegement of Gaza and the further asphyxiation of its people’s resistance to injustice. With over 47% civilians in Gaza suffering from food insecurity, and over 11,000 injured since the Great Return March, it is unconscionable that the PA would further add to the Israeli blockade by limiting the amount of medicine reaching the Ministry of Health, refusing to pay wages to over 62,000 of its own employees, and financially suffocating hundreds of thousands of families.
These sanctions are daggers placed in the heart of our cause and our unity. This is a dagger which accentuates division and political and social rift. Such acts on behalf of the PA towards Gaza are further widening the internal political split between the two ruling parties of the West Bank and Gaza. We see that all parties have a role to play in defending the rights of our people in Gaza, especially in the face of an extremist Zionist regime and a US administration that continues to push its interests globally.
We see that the job of any Palestinian political liberation movement is to reinforce the resistance and steadfastness of the people and help it confront and struggle against Israeli and international plans that wish to disintegrate the Palestinian cause, including our political aspirations to be united as a people with a single fate, collective identity, and struggle.
Believing in the unity of our steadfast people, we ask you to join the campaign calling for ending the Palestinian Authority’s sanction on Gaza, led by President Abbas in violation of Palestine’s constitutional law, international norms, and the decisions of the Palestinian National Council.
Our campaign’s objectives are as follows:
1) Ending all sanctions imposed by the PA on Gaza without delay.
2) Ensuring the unity of our people in our political fate, between Gaza, West Bank and Palestinians living in 1948 lands.
3) This campaign is only a first step in the long lasting struggle of our people and a way to regain our national unity on the bases of a collective liberation struggle.
4) We demand an end to political polarization and internal political splits within the Palestinian political and social fabric.
5) We reject the political differences and internal political division between Fateh and Hamas, as it is being used as an excuse to embed sanctions on our people in Gaza. We view the imposed sanctions as a tool to divide us even more.
6) We call on all free people across the globe to stand with Gaza and support its just demands, calling for an end to the Israeli imposed blockade on Gaza and all sanctions.
From Palestine, all of Palestine, a salute to Gaza. To contact the organizers email: liftsanctionsgaza@gmail.com.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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