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Ithaca Release on Middle East Crisis
Howie Hawkins Calls for United Nations to Enforce a Cease Fire and End Israel's Military Occupation of Palestinian Territories |
For immediate release: July 18, 2006
For more information:
Howie Hawkins, (315) 425-1019, howie@hawkinsforsenate.net
Sander Hicks, (347) 446-4461 sander@voxpopnet.net
Sally Kim, (518) 451-9469, green_sallyk@yahoo.com
Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for US Senate for New York, said today that the US government should use its leadership to effect an immediate cease-fire in the Middle East. He condemned the Bush administration’s unconditional support for Israel’s military attacks on the civilian populations in Gaza and Lebanon.
Hawkins also criticized Hezbollah for its provocative incursion into Israel. "While Hezbollah had a legitimate grievance with Israel for breaking a previously agreed to prisoner exchange, Hezbollah had to know that trying to resolve it by taking military action against Israel could drag all of Lebanon into the devastating military assault by Israel in response that we now see," Hawkins said.
Hawkins criticized Israel for its attacks in violations of international law as collective punishment on the civilian population in Lebanon and for trying to turn Lebanon once again into an Israeli proxy war with Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.
Hawkins also said that an international peacekeeping force should be deployed to end the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories and its operations in Gaza and Lebanon and to stop attacks against Israel by Palestinian forces and Hezbollah. The United States has been the principal country blocking implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), which require Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
Hawkins said that the massive and largely unconditional US military and economic to Israel aid fuels the conflict with Palestine. Israel had been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance for almost 30 years, and since 1985 has received about $3 billion in military and economic aid each year. Approximately 17% of all U.S. foreign aid is earmarked for Israel. American military financing comprises 20% of Israel’s defense budget.
"Ultimately, peace can only be achieved through negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships. But peace cannot come under the oppression of a military occupation. The occupied territories have become little more than a prison camp for Palestinian civilians and now Israel is depriving residents of access to their means of survival, including food, water, and electricity. The United States must unequivocally state that Israel cannot expect continued US military and economic aid so long as Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories continues. Palestinian people are being deprived of the most elementary human rights, and are subjected to a never-ending process whose intended outcome appears to be their complete dispossession and expulsion from their homeland," noted Hawkins.
Hawkins said the US should also immediately recognize the democratically elected Palestinian government and restore funding. Hawkins said that any long term settlements of the conflict needed to address key issues in Palestine such as economic development and access to water supplies. Hawkins also called for the establishment of a nuclear free zone in the Middle East, including both Israel and Iran. The US should provide leadership by taking unilateral steps to disarm its massive nuclear arsenal and stop using nuclear weapons in the Middle East as a threat against those countries we disagree with (e.g., Iran).
Hawkins also condemned Hillary Clinton’s unconditional support for Israel’s policies. Yesterday, Clinton supported Israel taking “whatever steps are necessary” in its military offensives in Lebanon and Gaza, calling the seizure of three Israeli soldiers by Hamas and Hezbollah “unwarranted, unprovoked.”
“Clinton has no sympathy or understanding for the suffering of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in her unconditional support for Israel’s destruction of their economic infrastructure. She speaks as if Israeli seizures of land, one-third of the Palestinian parliament, and some 10,000 Palestinians, its extra judicial imprisonment, torture, and execution of Palestinians, and its repeated military assaults in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories over the years had never happened. Such willful ignorance does not serve the cause of peace,” stated Hawkins.
In a November 2005 visit to a section of separation wall being built around Jerusalem, Clinton said, "This is not against the Palestinian people. This is against the terrorists." In a December 11, 2005 speech at Yeshiva University, Hillary Clinton called Israel, "not only our ally; it is a beacon of what democracy can and should mean...If the people of the Middle East are not sure what democracy means, let them look to Israel."
Hawkins said, “States that confer rights based on religion, whether Jewish or Islamic, are inherently discriminatory and undemocratic. US support for Israel’s policies of discrimination against native Muslim and Christian Palestinians, as well as its long-time covert support for Islamic fundamentalist movements as a counterweight to secular Arab nationalist movements, is one of the root causes of conflict and violence in the Middle East.”
Hawkins said it was time for the American government to stop supporting Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans as a proxy against secular, nationalist, leftist social movements in order to keep those countries weak and dominated by the US. US support for reactionary regimes like Saudi Arabia and Islamist movements is suppressing movements for democracy and human rights throughout these regions. “This support exposes the hypocrisy of the supposed US ‘war on terror.’ The US is propping up a terrorist enemy to keep the region destabilized and justify US military occupation,” stated Hawkins.
It was the US which toppled the democratic secular government in Iran in 1953 when it was the most democratic in the Middle East in order to install the authoritarian Shah and insure the access of American companies to Iran’s oil supplies and the suppression of the Iranian Left. Islamic fundamentalists filled the vacuum for a political opposition and eventually overthrew the US-backed Shah to install the fundamentalist Islamic regime there. The US also provided support to the Islamic fundamentalists who became Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan as part of the proxy war against the Soviet Union initiated by President Carter and continued by President Reagan.
"The current Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon come immediately after the Hamas and Fatah factions of the Palestinian leadership jointly put forth a peace proposal that implicitly recognized Israel, one of the alleged key demands of both the American and Israeli governments. This unfortunately repeats a familiar pattern of disruption of the peace process by the Israeli leadership at key moments," Hawkins added.
According to the State Department’s Human Rights Report, in 2004 "76 Israeli civilians and four foreigners were killed as a result of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel and the occupied territories, and 41 members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were killed in clashes with Palestinian militants. During the same period, more than 800 Palestinians were killed during Israeli military operations in the occupied territories."
In the second Intifada, the IDF has adopted aggressive new tactics to combat Palestinian terrorism, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, extrajudicial executions, and home demolitions. International groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, have documented Israel’s use of “disproportionate, excessive, and lethal force."
A former Marine who organized opposition to the Vietnam War, Hawkins is challenging incumbent Hillary Clinton’s hawkish policies toward Israel/Palestine, Iraq, and Iran. Hawkins is running with a "Peace Slate" of Green Party candidates in New York, including Malachy McCourt for Governor, Alison Duncan for Lt. Governor, Rachel Treichler for Attorney General, and Julia Willebrand for Comptroller.
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 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
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