Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
17 July
UK GREEN LIGHT TO ISRAELI MASSACRES
On this day in 2014, Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, expanding Operation Protective Edge. When they withdrew, over 2,200 Palestinians were dead and over 10,000 wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled. Foreign Minister William Hague lamented “the terrible human cost, to both sides...Israel has a right to defend itself against indiscriminate attacks. [The UK wanted] a permanent end to rocket attacks and all other forms of violence” - from Palestinians.
بريطانيا تعطي الضوء الأخضر للمجازر الإسرائيلية ضد الفلسطينيين
17 يوليو
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2014 ، دخلت القوات البرية الإسرائيلية غزة لتوسيع عملية الحافة الواقية. عندما انسحبوا ، كان أكثر من 2200 فلسطيني قد لقي مصرعهم وأصيب أكثر من 10000 ، منهم 3374 طفلاً ، واكثر من 1000 معاق بشكل دائم. أعرب وزير الخارجية ويليام هيغ عن أسفه "التكلفة البشرية الفظيعة لكلا الجانبين ... لإسرائيل الحق في الدفاع عن نفسها ضد الهجمات العشوائية. [أرادت المملكة المتحدة] وضع نهاية دائمة للهجمات الصاروخية وجميع أشكال العنف الأخرى "- من الفلسطينيين".
On a single day - August 1st - now known as Black Friday, Israel launched what Amnesty called "an unrelenting onslaught against civilians" in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. From Aug. 1 to 4, the Israeli military massacred at least 135 civilians, including 75 children.
"The hospital and nearby streets came under relentless Israeli fire throughout the day," leading to the deaths of doctors and patients, the rights group recalled. Israeli drones also bombed Palestinian ambulances.
"There is strong evidence they committed war crimes," Amnesty said, referring to Israeli forces. The rights group noted that the Israeli military bombarded the heavily populated Palestinian area "in attacks which were indiscriminate and disproportionate."
So long as the governments of the world engage in arms trade with Israel, Israel has no incentive to relinquish its unlawful use of force and its illegal colonies in the OPT. This is why four Nobel Peacelaureates – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mairead Maguire and Rigoberta Menchú – together with the former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the OPT, Richard Falk, have accused the USA and the European Union of complicity in Israel’s crimes and have backed the call for an international military embargo against Israel.
To the current Conservative government, the Balfour Declaration is a moment of national pride. In 2017, then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson showed off the desk at which Arthur Balfour signed this document to Benjamin Netanyahu. Johnson then treated the visiting Israeli prime minister to a celebratory dinner marking the declaration’s centenary. Neither politician made the acknowledgement that historian and Israeli expatriate Ilan Pappé has done: that Lord Balfour was in fact one of the most antisemitic British politicians of the 20th century, persecuting eastern European Jewish people arriving in the UK through the Aliens Act 1905.
The tools which Britain used to suppress Palestinian revolt in the 1930s have been “inherited” by Israel and are widely implemented today, as Palestinian barrister Salma Karmi-Ayyoub recently outlined. These tools include house demolitions imposed as collective punishment to curfews and administrative detention (imprisonment without trial). And in 2019, Britain supplies more arms to Israel than ever before. Campaign Against Arms Trade figures expose that the UK issued £364m worth of licences for military equipment and technology to export to Israel between 2014 and 2018.
When human rights activist and lecturer Adie Mormech took direct action in the UK, occupying the roof of Elbit Systems, a company which produces 85 per cent of all drones used by the Israeli army, he wondered if he was standing on the very building which made the weapons which killed his friends in Gaza.
2-minute video: Israel exterminates entire familes