Sharon ‘creates slow death for Palestinian people’
They wait in their simple homes, without water and electricity, under siege. When they least expect it, sophisticated weapons of death and destruction will blow their homes into dust.
Members of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, people from all walks of life, horrified by the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, are standing in the line of fire, providing the only, albeit token, obstacle to the daily onslaught. Shortly before he was arrested by the Israeli militia, Salah Afifi, one of the solidarity campaign activists said: “there is no resistance here.
Children throwing stones at tanks and armoured personnel carriers, that’s about the only resistance the Israeli army ever encounter.” The Israelis meet this with tanks, APCs, Apache helicopters and semi-automatic assault rifles, Salah, an Irish/Palestinian student, has joined with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). His mother hails from Dublin.
He is a graduate of architectural engineering from Limerick University and was living with an elderly couple in Nablus. He was their only protection against eviction by rockets. This elderly couple had a son who was a Hamas suicide bomber. In retribution, the Israeli army is likely to destroy their home, an apartment, as they have done to many Palestinian families connected, indirectly or otherwise, with Hamas.
“Looking around the old city, they have destroyed everything.
The Palestinians living here have been placed under curfew, people have been picked up randomly off the streets, taken away and interrogated, tortured and dumped in remote regions many miles from their homes. These home demolitions are acts of revenge that violate international law,” Salah said.
Yesterday, he was detained by Israeli authorities, along with three other non-violent international activists from the ISM.
“Sharon has created a situation of slow death for the Palestinian population. The Israeli tactics of isolating communities in the West Bank and denying basic food to people, create a situation that is particularly threatening to children, the elderly and pregnant women,” said Dr Mustafa Barghouthi, who has been monitoring the situation.
All this force and weaponry being used against old people and children, those who haven’t been rounded up and taken away,” he said.
