One week in July

Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, 31 July 2007
(Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia)

".....It is the ordinary people who are suffering nearly every human rights violation imaginable at the hands of Israel's army, the fanatical Jewish settlers and Israel's policy makers and spin doctors who have never seen the Palestinians as human beings. The world media fail to report Israel's crimes although it is absolutely clear that Israel has breached and continuous to breach international law. For the Palestinians living this cold and brutal reality, Israel's true intentions are very apparent. If Olmert has indeed had a change of heart, then a bona fide way of showing that would be to immediately commit to a timeline and begin easing the restrictions on movement as he has promised Abbas and to stop all settlement building and expansion as he falsely claims has been done. There is little cause for hope, though, if the last fourteen years of peace games are anything to go by. Yielding absolutely nothing for the Palestinians, these peace games have only resulted in Palestinians losing even more of their land to Israel and suffer more bloodshed and destitution at the hands of Israel's minions. With nothing being said about Israel's violations during last week of July by those talking peace, that is reason enough to worry that the welfare of all Palestinians is not what is priority in the minds of those negotiating this so-called peace."