The Conference “Resisting Imperialist War and Plunder” held in Frankfurt, Germany, by ILPS (International League of Peoples’ Struggle) on the 12th of June, analysed the wars of aggression led by the US in the last years and the Israeli onslaught against the Palestinian people in the context of the “New Middle East Project” proposed by the US administration as the strategic basis for its attempt to control the Middle East.
Speakers from Palestine, Iraq and Turkey described not only the realities of oppression and occupation in their countries, but highlighted, as well, the strategies employed by their own representatives and the US-Israeli led imperialist powers. Speakers from Greece and the Philippines provided further insight into the current global political situation.
Palestine, being a core issue to understand Middle East politics, was represented by Sharif Omar, of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. In his speech he showed how the new phase of Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine, which corresponds to the construction of the Apartheid Wall, is daily destroying more and more Palestinian lives and lands. “With this Crime against Humanity, Israel wants to get rid of any idea of a Palestinian independent state and, in fact, the Palestinian people and its aspirations as such.” Further, he pointed out that the occupation of Iraq and the construction of the Wall, along with all other Israeli projects and practises implemented in the last years aimed at massacring and expelling the Palestinian population while annexing their lands, are part of the same design to dominate and redesign the Middle East.
The importance given by the participants of the Conference to the struggle against the Apartheid Wall in Palestine as part of the resistance to imperialism was reflected by the decision to support the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and to join international solidarity efforts by launching a Campaign against the Apartheid Wall as ILPS.
The Conference further focused on the upcoming NATO summit in Istanbul which will outline the military projects of the Atlantic Alliance against the peoples in the Middle East. The conference looked at the historical role of the military pact, its crisis of identity after the fall of the Soviet Union and its redefinition in the context of the “global war on terror” launched by the West, whose disastrous effects on the people of the world with every day more evident. The conference is supporting and has invited everyone to join “Resistanbul 2004” – a series of conferences, debates and cultural events to be held in Istanbul in the days leading up to the NATO summit from the 26th to the 28th of June. These events are planned to assert the existence of world wide popular resistance against the “New Middle East Project” currently destroying the Middle East today.
More information:
International League of Peoplesâ Struggle
www.ilps-news.com
Restistanbul 2004
www.resistanbul.org
www.stopthenato.org