A week in hell: shame on those who have chosen to abandon the Palestinians to the barbarism of Israel!

The weeks go by in occupied Palestine, each time worse than the previous ones. The one that just passed was a real hell. Hell for Palestinians and still impunity for Israeli criminals!

This week began with yet another military raid in the Jenin refugee camp where the occupying army decided to eliminate the resistance fighters who chose to take up arms against an occupier who denies all their basic rights, including that to defend themselves, and leaves them no prospect for the future. The house of a fighter was bombarded by a helicopter in the heart of a very dense neighborhood, shooting on sight, hours of terror, a new massacre: 7 dead and 90 injured. It was the first time in 20 years that Israel had bombed the Palestinian population in the West Bank. A few hours later, it was with a drone that Israel murdered four young men in their car.

A 14-year-old girl, who was filming the soldiers passing in front of her house, was shot in the head; the Jenin hospital was the target of fire from this army of assassins.

An army that shot a disabled young man in an extremely violent raid in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus; Nablus where she entered to dynamite and blow up a house in the middle of town. In three days, 17 Palestinians were murdered, including two children! An army that shoots children in their parents’ cars: after two-year-old Mohamed Tamimi who died of a bullet in the head, it is the child Khaled Malaha who lost an eye, injured Gunshot.

Who will stop this barbaric army? Who will condemn Israel for its war crimes?

The Palestinians, however, do not have to face only the army of occupation: their daily life is punctuated, day and night, not by the unbridled violence of settlers in omnipotence encouraged by the impunity guaranteed to them by a power to their boot.

In February, the world discovered with horror the pogrom of Huwara. In 48 hours, last week, 15 Palestinian villages experienced pogroms: houses, businesses and vehicles burned down, schools and mosques burned down, crops and trees burned down, inhabitants handed over to these bands of furious mad thugs. Everything is documented: the militias of armed settlers shooting at farmers, the sacking of a mosque, the burning of the school of Urif, that of an electrical transformer leaving 4 villages without electricity, delivered for some of between them to hordes of settlers.

The Israeli army, which the Geneva Convention imposes to ensure the protection of the population under occupation, has so far not lifted a finger to arrest the settlers, claiming to be unaware of their actions. Worse, it is most of the time under its protection that the settlers act. The attacks of the settlers have however taken on such a scale that the army has just communicated to denounce “attacks which contradict moral and Jewish values ​​and constitute nationalist terrorism…”. Should we cry or should we laugh?

What credibility do such statements have? the violence of the settlers is state violence in which the army is an accomplice and an actor. In the same week new powers were given to Minister Smotrich to enable him to simplify and speed up the process of colonization of the occupied territory, when thousands of constructions were announced in the colonies, when new colony outposts were installed under the protection of the army, when the colonists of the colony of Evyatar on the lands of the village of Beita were resettled, encouraged by the Minister Ben Gvir who called on them to “go up on the hills and settle there while calling for thousands of Palestinians who resist to be eliminated.

A monstrous picture to which must be added the ethnic cleansing which continues in Masafer Yatta with the announcement of the destruction of a new school, the attacks of settlers, the aggressions of the army, the ethnic cleansing which continues in Jerusalem. And, every day, throughout the occupied West Bank, very violent arrests, including of children.

Faced with such a picture, we should have witnessed a mobilization of the international community to denounce and condemn the criminals; we should have seen the great men of this world unite to arrest the assassins; we should have seen a mobilization of the so-called free world to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people.

And what did we see, hear? Nothing ! Just a deafening complicit silence!

For months and years, the AFPS has been denouncing the refusal of the President of the Republic, of the government, of the European Union to take sanctions against Israel, to force this apartheid regime to respect the right , particularly with regard to its obligations as an occupying power.

Not only does the French government persist in its refusal to punish, but it is constantly developing new relations and entering into new partnerships with the representatives of this regime of assassins, like the Minister of the Armed Forces Lecornu who dares to boast, on June 22, “of a rich meeting with his new Israeli counterpart… to strengthen our bilateral cooperation…”.

The AFPS denounces this attitude unworthy of the French government which turns a blind eye to the horrors committed against the Palestinian people. She also denounces the indecency of the policy implemented by the Minister of the Interior who, in support of the unconditional supporters of Israeli politics, tries to silence those who, in France, provide support to the Palestinian people.

The AFPS calls on the French government to take concrete, strong and visible initiatives to protect the Palestinian people against a fascist power that no longer hides its plan to eliminate them.

The national office of the AFPS, June 26, 2023