End the International Double Standards - No-Fly Zone over Gaza

On the 17th March 2011 the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1973 which legitimised a no-fly zone and ‘all-necessary measures’ to protect civilians from Colonel Gaddafi’s government just weeks after pro-democracy fighters became engaged in a violent struggle with that government.

We the undersigned believe that the UN Security Council is in danger of losing all legitimacy in the face of the double-standards given its failure to protect Palestinian civilians from attacks by an occupying Israeli military force.

We applaud the struggle for freedom of expression and human rights among all the oppressed people around the world

We observe that after just weeks of conflict the UN approved military intervention to protect civilians under attack from Colonel Gaddafi’s forces for involvement in such a struggle

We also observe that the people of Palestine have been oppressed and attacked in an Israeli occupation which has endured for 64 years

We observe that whilst this occupation has taken place the people of Palestine have undergone regular and documented abuses of their human rights and faced disproportionate military activity conducted by Israeli forces.

We observe that, beginning on the 19th March, several countries have been engaged in direct military intervention against Colonel Gaddafi with the expressed aims of protecting civilians

Given this, we also observe that on the 21st and 22nd March the Israeli Air Force launched air strikes in the besieged city of Gaza. These attacks killed at least 13 Palestinians, including children, and also targeted a cement factory.

We do not believe that either children, or cement factories constitute valid military targets

We also observe that the Israeli government engaged in sustained military operations against Palestinians in Gaza during 2009. In these attacks over 1000 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians.

We observe that the United Nations condemned the human rights abuses which this military attack entailed and consider the Israeli occupation of Palestine illegal under international law

Given the above :

We observe that despite this condemnation the United States government provided over
$2.5 billion in military aid to the Israeli government in 2010 alone

We condemn the hypocrisy of the United States who simultaneously fund military strikes against civilians in Gaza and claim to be committed to protecting civilians in Libya

We demand that the United Kingdom government formally recognises the plight of the Palestinian people, including recognition of their right to statehood as set out in the 1947 partition plan agreed by the United Nations

We condemn the United Kingdom government’s tacit approval of an illegal occupation and sustained suppression of the Palestinian people’s human rights by the Israeli government

We call upon the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United Nations to table a motion calling for the immediate imposition of a no-fly zone over the city of Gaza in order to protect the right to life of Palestinian men, women and children

We call upon the United Nations Security Council to implement measures which will secure the lifting of the siege on the city of Gaza, an immediate freeze on illegal settlement building and the eventual return to statehood for the Palestinian people, within the boundaries set out by the international community in 1947

We are the international community and we utterly reject the double-standards employed by the United Nations and we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for the recognition of their basic human rights.