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class="header"> <b><small><small><small><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/30/palestinian-women-from-occupied-east-jerusalem-calling-for-protection/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/30/palestinian-women-from-occupied-east-jerusalem-calling-for-protection/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/30/palestinian-women-from-occupied-east-jerusalem-calling-for-protection/</a></a></small></small></small></b><br>
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<span class="post_date" title="2015-10-30">October 30, 2015</span><br>
<h1 id="reader-title">Palestinian Women from Occupied East
Jerusalem Calling for Protection</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/jeruwom0329/"
rel="nofollow">Jerusalemite Women's Coalition</a></span></div>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Jerusalemite Women’s Coalition /Al-tajamo’ Al-nasawiy
Almaqdasy.</p>
<p><em>The Coalition includes a group of Women NGOs and
Jerusalemite feminists from all segments of society</em>.</p>
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