Palestine House

June 10, 2007 Demonstration to Break the Siege on the People of Palestine
Calling for an end to Canadian support for the Israeli Occupation
Part of the Global Days of Action Against Israeli Occupation and Apartheid

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Palestine House Statement on the 40th Anniversary of the 1967 War
Canada Must Break its Siege on the Palestinian People
End Support for the Israeli Occupation

On 29 March 2006, Canada became the first country in the world to impose a siege on the Palestinian people living in the West Bank and Gaza, which meant total political and economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority – the largest employer in these occupied Palestinian territories. The stated reason for the siege was the formation of a democratically elected government in uncontested democratic elections. Canada had been one of the states calling for democratic Palestinian elections, but was displeased with the result: the victory of Hamas.

The siege is the first time in human history that the “international community” has decided to punish a people under occupation, let alone punish them for democratically electing their leadership. The siege has had a devastating effect on the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, including:

* Palestinian Unemployment doubled since the implementation of the siege. Even before the siege, Palestinian workers faced tremendous difficulties getting to their workplaces as a result of the Israeli occupation which has divided the Palestinian territories into isolated cantons controlled by over 1000 Israeli military checkpoints. The siege has meant that Palestinians working for the Palestinian authority, i.e. the 160,000 workers who form the majority of those who are employed in the West Bank and Gaza (public employees, health sector workers, education sector workers, etc..) have not received their wages or salaries since March of 2006. These employees and their families constitute around one third (1/3) of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

* Closures – 2006 was the year of the highest number of area closures in 14 years: 238 days of closure out of 277 working days. (i.e. Palestinians were prevented from getting to work, school or hospital outside of their canton [usually their village, town or city] for 86% of the year)

* As a result, the Palestinian poverty rate has reached well over 65% of the population (i.e. 2 out of 3 Palestinians now live on less than 2 dollars a day). According to the World Food Program, more than half of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are food insecure (live with hunger and fear starvation).

* Israel maintains direct control over the Palestinian Authority budget through controlling Palestinian tax money. Since March 2006, Israel has not released this money ($600 million) to the PA, in addition to Israel calling on the world to implement this brutal siege on the Palestinian people.

* The Israeli military has detained and imprisoned many Palestinian workers at checkpoints under the pretext that these workers did not have the required permits to cross to their workplaces. This has contributed to the growth of the Palestinian political prisoner population to 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

* These effects are on top of the systematic destruction of the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza through 40 years of occupation. This occupation has involved – among other crimes - the killing, maiming and injuring of thousands of Palestinian civilians, the confiscation of over half the land of the West Bank, the destruction of over 12,000 homes, the detention and arrest of over 650,000 Palestinians, and the uprooting of over one million olive trees. The West Bank and Gaza have been reduced to a series of cantons surrounded by Israeli military installations, illegal settlements, settler-only highways, and the Apartheid Wall.

As a result of the Canadian implementation of the siege, the Canadian government and is complicit in these crimes against the people of Palestine. As such, we the undersigned call on the Government of Canada, and specifically the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade: