Popular conference deplores UN failure to condemn Israeli siege on Gaza

The popular conference to confront the siege held Saturday strongly denounced the UN for failing to condemn the siege, starvation and slow killing practiced by Israel against the Palestinian people, considering that the UN”s passivity proves that it is a tool exploited by the American administration and the Israeli occupation to suppress peoples” freedom.In a speech during the conference which was organized by the Palestinian center for research and studies, Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, a prominent Hamas leader, underlined that the Palestinian land is not for bargaining or sale and that no one has the right to waive the Palestinian refugees” right of return.

Dr. Zahhar reiterated his movement” readiness to go to Cairo to start serious dialogue with Fatah and the PA leadership at the invitation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. For his part, Dr. Mohamed Al-Hindi, a prominent Islamic Jihad leader, charged that the blind American support for the Israeli policy of siege and mass punishment, especially US president”s statements of empathy with the steps taken by the Israeli occupation against Gaza during his visit to the region, reaffirms that the American administration is participant in the siege and aggression against the Palestinians.

Dr. Hindi added that the dubious official Arab silence helps the Israeli occupation to be more immoderate and turns the status of siege and mass punishment to a permanent and acceptable reality.

Mohamed Al-Sakawi, a member of the labor party in Egypt, opined that the Egyptian people like other Arab peoples strongly believe that the boundaries between the Arab states are artificial borders that were the result of the Sykes-Picot agreement. Sakawi added that the Arab peoples never accept that the 1948 Palestine is bargained for the 1967 Palestine because an Arab land cannot be negotiated for another Arab land.

For his part, Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular committee against the siege, stated that the Gazans” flow into the Egyptian lands does not represent any link in the chain of breaking the siege completely but a partial breakthrough in the current crisis.At the conclusion of the conference, the conferees urged the PA leadership in Ramallah to discuss with Egypt the mechanisms to operate the Rafah crossing and the other crossings without external intervention in order to avoid starvation and popular explosion.

The conferees also called on the PA leadership to revoke the Paris economic agreement which made a loaf of bread, a drop of water and a pill of medicine and other vital needs dependent on the will of the Israeli occupation and its economy.An Israeli military officer and other Israeli security apparatuses admitted the failure of the suffocating siege imposed by the Israeli government on the Gaza Strip for about eight months to maintain Israel”s security, warning that the siege caused counterproductive results, where it increased the popularity of Hamas, not only in Gaza, but also amongst the Arab and Islamic peoples all over the world.