Howie Hawkins Calls for UN Peacekeepers to Protect Palestinians
Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for US Senate from New York, faulted Hillary Clinton, his Democratic-Working Families Party opponent, for turning a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinians during her six years in office. Hawkins said that an international peacekeeping force should be deployed to end the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories and its latest military attacks in the Gaza strip.
Several dozen Palestinians have been killed in the latest military action. Israeli troops recently opened fire on women in Beit Hanoun who went to a mosque that is under siege.
"The US government and politicians like Hillary Clinton bear responsibility for the killings and sufferings of the Palestinian people, both in the most recent attacks of the Israeli government in Gaza and for the decades of the illegal occupation of these lands. The occupied territories have become little more than a prison camp for Palestinian civilians. The US has supported Israel while it systematically deprived residents in Gaza of access to their means of survival, including food, water, and electricity. It is the US government that provides the economic and military aid and the political support that enable these atrocities to occur," noted Hawkins.
"How many more innocent civilians must be killed with American tax dollars before the Democrats and Republicans say enough is enough?" asked Hawkins. Hawkins noted that even the Bush administration, with its doctrine of pre-emptive war, has refrained from an "October Surprise" in the form of new military action against Iran or North Korea in the days before the mid-term elections because it is well aware of how the Iraq war has hurt the Republicans' chances in the coming election. "But since Israeli military operations invariably receive unconditional support from both major American parties," Hawkins said, "Israel feels free to launch a major military assault in the closing days of the American election."
The United States has been the principal country blocking implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), which require Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Israel had been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance for almost 30 years, and since 1985 has received about $3 billion in military and economic aid each year. Approximately 17% of all U.S. foreign aid is earmarked for Israel. American military financing comprises 20% of Israel's defense budget.
"Ultimately, peace can only be achieved through negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships. But peace cannot come under the oppression of a military occupation. The United States must unequivocally state that Israel cannot expect continued US military and economic aid so long as Israel's military occupation of the Palestinian territories continues. Palestinian people are being deprived of the most elementary human rights, and are subjected to a never-ending process whose intended outcome appears to be their complete dispossession and expulsion from their homeland," noted Hawkins.
"Clinton has no sympathy or understanding for the suffering of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in her unconditional support for Israel's destruction of their economic infrastructure. She speaks as if Israeli seizures of land, one-third of the Palestinian parliament, and some 10,000 Palestinians, its extra judicial imprisonment, torture, and execution of Palestinians, its separation wall on the West Bank, and its repeated military assaults in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories over the years had never happened. Such willful ignorance does not serve the cause of peace," stated Hawkins.
Source