Action on Gaza - 5th, 8th and 15th March 2008 - London UK

EMERGENCY ACTION:
End Israel's killing of Palestinians now!
Lift the siege on Gaza!

1) Wednesday 5 March 1-2pm Parliament Square - Emergency protest.

Called by PSC, BMI, PFB, supported by Stop the War, Association of the Palestinian Community UK and Friends of Al Aqsa.

2) Saturday 8 March 4-6pm Protest opposite Downing Street

- Write, email and phone your MP, ask them to sign EDM 1099 – Gaza by Richard Burden MP
- Letter in today’s Guardian: Israel, Gaza and shattered hopes for peace http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/04/israelandthepalestinians1
- Watch a video on Youtube about the protest in Brixton last Saturday, and organise a protest locally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvuxTjsu6hU&feature=user

3) Join the global protest- Demonstrate on 15 March: Join us on the Palestine Contingent, especially as End the Siege of Gaza is one of the main demands of the demonstration.
Meeting place is in Trafalgar Square, by the PSC stall, at 11am, on the St Martins Place/South Africa house side, inside the square.

Over the last week, Israel has killed 115 Palestinians in Gaza, including 63 on Saturday alone, and 350 wounded. A third of those killed were babies and children. Palestinians in the West Bank are also being shot and killed by the Israeli army, including a 19 year old student protesting near Ramallah against Israel's assault on Gaza. The Israeli government is committing war crimes - and the British government must act now.

Rory McCarthy wrote in the Guardian on 3 March about one of the victims of Israeli fire: 'Abu Saif hurried upstairs and found, lying on the floor in the front room, Safa, aged 12 [his daughter]. There was a hole in her chest where the bullet had entered and a hole in her back where it had exited. It took her three hours to die'. He continued: 'At one point yesterday a crowd of several hundred mourners carried through the streets the body of a young infant girl, Salsabeel Abu Jalhoum, who died aged 21 months. There were many others, like Mohammed Maboheh, a boy aged 16, who was shot dead on Saturday morning while standing on his balcony in the Abed Rabbo district of Jamalia, and whose father was in intensive care last night with a bullet wound to the chest... and there were Eyad and Jacqueline Abu Shabak, brother and sister aged 16 and 17, shot dead around midnight on Friday in the front room of their home'.

Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz: 'The IDF penetrates the heart of a crowded refugee camp, kills in a terrifyingly wholesale manner, with horrible bloodshed, and Israel continues to disseminate the lie of restraint'. And Dr Mustafa Barghouti has pointed out that "Israel is killing babies, children and entire families while the world remains silent. This very silence is enabling the Israeli crimes. It must stop."

We need to send a clear message to Gordon Brown during Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons that the British government must take action to bring Israel to account. Contact your MP, write to the local and national press, and join us on Wednesday and Saturday.

Other recent press:
Haaretz: 'Restraint' is deceitful, and 'forbearance' is vain by Gideon Levy: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959643.html
Even yesterday evening, after the IDF already had killed about 50 Palestinians, at least half of them unarmed, and including quite a number of women and children, Jerusalem continued to claim, "At present there will be no major ground operation." It's incredible: The IDF penetrates the heart of a crowded refugee camp, kills in a terrifyingly wholesale manner, with horrible bloodshed, and Israel continues to disseminate the lie of restraint. Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians than have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years. Among the dead were four children and an infant. The next day Israel killed another five boys. And who is the victim? Israel. And who is cruel? The Palestinians.
Oxfam International called on the ``international community to take immediate action to stop the escalation of violence'':
                           
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=as7vFYMXDFXg&refer=home
Haaretz: 'We thought you wanted peace,' says father of slain Gaza sisters
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960235.html
Maan News: Israeli army sources: Gaza incursions not over
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=28124
Military escalation against Gaza and Israeli threats of ’holocaust’
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article326