I Cannot Be Silent Anymore About The Israeli Occupation Of Palestine

By Eileen Fleming
Al-Jazeerah,
March 12, 2007
AlJazeerah.Info

As a patriotic American Irish dissident, who values freedom of conscience and speech above all my inalienable rights and liberties, I frequently FAX my President and Congressional Representatives with hope to agitate and provoke them to thought.

I encourage you dear reader, to DO SOMETHING too, and offer my latest FAX to them: to you, with hope that you will be inspired to add your own thoughts and FAX them too!

March 10, 2007

Dear President Bush, Senator Martinez and Senator Nelson,

Because of "the fierce urgency of now" [Rev. M.L. King] coupled with the good news that America and Iranian envoys spoke directly to each other in Baghdad at an International Conference after 28 years of a diplomatic freeze, I, as one of we the people write you again today with renewed hope that we do indeed, "have it in our power to begin the world over again"-Tom Paine.

Tony Blair stated that 70% of the conflicts in the world can be traced back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

In solidarity with King Abdullah II, I cannot be silent either.

Government is commissioned to protect and represent we the people, and I, as one of we the people who is in solidarity with King Abdullah, cannot be silent at all!

Excerpted from Address by His Majesty King Abdullah II at a Joint Meeting of Congress, Washington, D.C. on 7 March 2007:

"This Congress knows: there are no bystanders in the 21st Century, there are no curious onlookers, there is no one who is not affected by the division and hatred that is present in our world.

"Some will say: 'This is not the core issue in the Middle East.' I come here today as your friend to tell you that this is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world.

"The security of all nations and the stability of our global economy are directly affected by the Middle East conflict. Across oceans, the conflict has estranged societies that should be friends. I meet Muslims thousands of miles away who have a deep, personal response to the suffering of the Palestinian people. They want to know how it is, that ordinary Palestinians are still without rights and without a country. They ask whether the West really means what it says about equality and respect and universal justice.

"Yes, my friends, today I must speak. I cannot be silent.

"Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession, forty years under occupation, a stop-and-go peace process, all this has left a bitter legacy of disappointment and despair, on all sides. It is time to create a new and different legacy, one that begins right now; one that can set a positive tone for the American and Middle East relationship; one that can restore hope to our region's people, to your people, and to the people of this precious world. Nothing can achieve that more effectively, nothing can assert America's moral vision more clearly, nothing can reach and teach the world's youth more directly, than your leadership in a peace process that delivers results not next year, not in five years, but this year.

"How do we get there? Not by a solution imposed by one side. A lasting peace can only be built on understanding, agreement and compromise.

"It begins with courage and vision.

"We, all of us, must take risks for peace. The Arab states recognized that reality in 2002, when we unanimously approved the Arab Peace Initiative. It puts forward a path for both sides, to achieve what people want and need: a collective peace treaty with Israel and normal relations with every Arab state, collective security guarantees for all the countries of the region, including Israel, an end to the conflict, a dream every Israeli citizen has longed for since the creation of Israel, and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, a withdrawal from Arab territories occupied since 1967, and a sovereign, viable, and independent Palestine.

"The goal must be a peace in which all sides gain. It must be anchored in security and opportunity for all."- King Abdullah, Joint Meeting of Congress on March 7, 2007

In 1961, former South African President Hendrick Verwoerd affirmed: "Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state."-Rand Daily Mail, 11/23/61

Former Israeli Minister for Education and Israeli Prize Laureate, Shulamit Aloni was quoted in Yediot Acharnot : "The US Jewish Establishment's onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp."- December 20, 2006.

On that very same day, Bishop Desmond Tutu was quoted in The Guardian: "I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about…Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice…If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land."

On November 8, 2006, this reporter attended a conference in Jerusalem, where the Anglican Reverend Naim Ateek predicted, "When I say the Holy Land I include both Israel and Palestine…There is no future in isolation or passivity. Our futures are all linked together . There is an urgent need to articulate and work with other faiths, especially Islam. Our future depends on good relations with all our brothers and sisters.

"Our relation with Israel is the most important issue for there can be no peace without justice. There can be no effective policy without ending the occupation in accordance with all UN Resolutions. The city of Jerusalem must be shared and there must be a just solution for refugees.

"Pressure on Israel must be done with nonviolent needs and the way is the way Christ taught: nonviolent and forgiving. The achievement of peace is not the end; but the beginning of reconciliation….We want to be protected by a constitution with full citizenship and nationality must be combined. Only in Israel is there a distinction between nationality and citizenship. Only good democracy can guarantee all citizens are treated equally under the same law."

President Bush, you made a noble promise in your Second Inaugural Address:

"In the long run, there is no justice without FREEDOM. There can be no human rights without LIBERTY. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we stand with you."

I beseech President Bush and Congress to uphold this promise, to focus urgent and sustained attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is inexorably linked to all key issues in the Middle East.

Two-state for two peoples will equal one peace: one piece of land that we all claim is Holy, will then be whole again, and no longer war torn.

Only an end to the forty years of occupation of Palestine will bring security to Israel. Only when both people's pain and suffering is acknowledged, when both sides are treated equally, when International Law and the UN Declaration of Human Rights becomes the gold standard that all states and nations live by, and when Israelis and Palestinians together broker a comprehensive ceasefire with all the final status issues on the table once and for all:

Jerusalem, borders, settlements and refugee rights, are fully addressed and settled, can and will there be peace in the Holy Land.

In Solidarity "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine

With HOPE,

Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor http://www.wearewideawake.org/

Author KEEP HOPE ALIVE and MEMOIRS OF A NICE IRISH- AMERICAN 'GIRL'S' LIFE IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY