Activists from the Istanbul branch of Mazlumder, a nation-wide Human Rights and solidarity organization, have called for a demonstration in the city center protesting against the Apartheid Wall. People of all ages gathered holding banners and torches and listened to speakers who addressed the demonstrators.
Below is the full text of the declaration released by the organizers.
09.11.2006
APARTHEID WALL RISES, OPPRESSION CONTINUES â¦â¦â¦
The UN has previously stated that the West Bank is not a part of Israel. Thus, according to international law, Israel does not have jurisdiction over the territory. However, for past 4 years Israel has been building the Apartheid Wall on Palestinian land. This wall is not built on the green line, but extends into Palestinian territory, protecting illegal Jewish settlements and isloating water foundations, fertile lands and underground water sources from Palestinian control.
Construction of the wall began on 16th of June 2002. It is 738 km. long and 8 meters high. It has control towers every 200 meters that is surrounded by electric wires and deep ditches. There are remote controlled guns around the wall and some areas are covered by sand so that soldiers can see if anybody walks on the path.
According to UN report, 400 thousand people have to daily pass the Wall in order to access their work places and schools. These people need the permission of the Occupation to reach these places, and are often detained arbitrarily by the Occupation. Another UN report states that the Wall might be contributing to the starvation of Palestinians’.
The planned wall is not just a simple wall.
The existence of the wall makes the “Palestine State”, that thousands of people have lost their lives for, an impossiblity. The Wall partitions areas of the Wast Bank into small tracts of land. Under these conditions, a Palestinian State will not have authority over its own terriotory, and its citizens would be denied free movement.
This means that Palestinian people are being forced to leave their homes because of danger and difficulties of daily life. “Building a wall” is the name of strategy that consists of an ethnic cleansing that is gradually and quietly being applied by Israel on the Palestinians in the occupied territories. This situation is obviously a genocide according to Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The Wall is not defensive in nature, but a tool of the Occupation. It has taken 165 thousand square meters of land. It should be noted that the UN was established to prevent states from unilaterally changing their borders.
The legitimation of international texts is the responbility of states
The Apartheid Wall is one of the most terrible human rights violation of our century. There are many protests being held in different parts of the world. We are raising our voices and declaring our solidarity with Palestinians. All human beings should be aware that “we are all responsible for a Palestine that was turned into an open air prison by the Wall and is starving because of embargos.”
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