[News] Palestinian Women from Occupied East Jerusalem Calling for Protection

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/30/palestinian-women-from-occupied-east-jerusalem-calling-for-protection/*

October 30, 2015


  Palestinian Women from Occupied East Jerusalem Calling for Protection

by Jerusalemite Women's Coalition 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/author/jeruwom0329/>

We women of occupied East Jerusalem call for immediate protection as we 
witness and suffer the widespread and serious violations of Palestinian 
human rights, including physical attacks and injuries, severe 
psychological threats, and persecution by the Israeli settler-colonial 
state and settler entities.

We urge the international community to act and defend the rights of 
Palestinian children, women, and men, including the right to a safe life 
amidst the constant attacks, excessive and indiscriminate use of force 
used by the Israeli oppressive apparatus, acts of violence and daily 
terror committed by Israeli Jewish civilians, including settlers. This 
brutality is intimidating our lives, provoking our youth, willfully 
causing death and bodily and psychological harm, and disabling and 
injuring of our community members.

We, a group of Palestinian women, mothers, sisters, daughters and 
youth—and in the name of the “Jerusalemite Women’s Coalition”—call upon 
the international community to protect our families, community, and 
children. We are calling for the protection of our bodily safety and 
security when in our homes, walking in our neighborhood, reaching 
schools, clinics, work places, and worships venues.

We are calling for protection, for we feel displaced even at home, as 
the Israeli soldiers, armed settlers, border patrol, and police invade 
our homes, attack our families, strip-search our bodies, and terrorize 
us all.

We women of occupied East Jerusalem feel as if we are orphans, without 
any protection from the Palestinian Authority or the international 
community, as the Israeli state terrorizes our homes, educational 
institutions, and public spaces. The state’s imposition of collective 
punishment and sanctions invade not only our physical spaces and bodies, 
but also our psyches. We live in a state of fear and horror, not knowing 
how to face the omnipotent power of the highly technologized settler 
colonial entity, and militarized Israeli state that regularly executes 
Palestinians in the streets. Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem 
have been abandoned, subject to the discriminatory policies of a violent 
state and its security and police apparatus.

The current political violence and the lack of any protection, as the 
Israeli security apparatus is protecting Jews only, jeopardizes women’s 
safety and her economic, social, psychological, and bodily rights, as 
well as children’s and men’s safety and security. We call for 
protection, and the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 
on women, peace, and security, and urge human rights defenders to 
protect our community from the Israeli machinery of oppression. Our 
children must be allowed to reach their schools in peace, and our 
parents and elderly must be able to reach their work places, health 
institutions and welfare services with safety. We request that we are 
able to walk in the streets without fearing the attacks of the Israeli 
security apparatus and its armed settlers.

We are calling for the protection of women and girls, who are 
particularly vulnerable to various forms of state violence and mass 
atrocities. The economic strangulation of Palestinians by the Israeli 
settler-colonial powers, that have thus far resulted in the total 
dependency on the Israeli entity, further traps the lives of 
Palestinians. The feminization of poverty and the economic strangulation 
of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem enslave Palestinians. The 
feminization of slavery in the colony is apparent when watching 
Palestinian women turn into domestic workers humiliated, controlled, and 
oppressed in Israeli public and private entities.

We are aware that humanitarian law attempts to challenge the inherent 
inhumanity of wars and colonial criminality by requiring international 
actors to protect civilians. International humanitarian law suggests 
moral boundaries of the exercise of power in situations of mass 
violence. International humanitarian law’s main object is primarily to 
protect and aid victims of violence.

We, the women of occupied East Jerusalem, are politically orphaned. We 
are victims without protection, as the Palestinian Authority has no 
right to protect us in our city, and the Israeli state treats us as 
terrorists that should be humiliated, attacked, violated, and 
controlled. The guerrilla state style tactics used in occupied East 
Jerusalem, be it the attacks on Palestinians in the streets, the beating 
of the young and old, the attacks on children going to and from school, 
the invasion of violent settlers to our neighborhoods and homes, the 
control of our life, water, cell phones, internet, mobility, health, 
economy, and accessibility to other resources, have situated us in human 
cages—segregated, restrained by Israeli laws and security theology, 
unable to know what to anticipate and what will come next.

Having to endure all the above difficulties, which have been escalated 
by Israeli cabinet resolutions and otherwise ignored due to global 
amnesia, WE ARE CALLING FOR PROTECTION AND URGENT ACTIONS TO PREVENT 
FURTHER AGONIES, UPROOTING, DEMONIZATION, AND SUFFERING.

Jerusalemite Women’s Coalition /Al-tajamo’ Al-nasawiy Almaqdasy.

/The Coalition includes a group of Women NGOs and Jerusalemite feminists 
from all segments of society/.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20151030/f2b2d300/attachment.htm>