Mohammed Iqnaibi, Delegate of the WFTU and Adviser on Palestine Arab Affairs attended the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People under the title: “Challenges and opportunities in the new reality of the State under the occupation” held in Rome on 27-28 February 2013 and addressed the following speech:
Allow me in the beginning to convey the greetings of the Secretariat and members of the World Federation of Trade Unions to those in charge and the participants in this Seminar and thank you for your efforts in the assistance to the Palestinian people under the difficult circumstances and developments caused by of the continued occupation.
The most serious danger faced by the Palestinian people under the occupation is the occupation itself which after the seizure by force of arms to the Palestinian territories 65 years ago and the uprooting of Palestinians from their land and deprived and expelled from their homeland, the occupation make sure to use all means and weapons in its continuing attack against all economic, political, social and cultural sectors in order to starve and break the resistance and the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and the destruction of their national identity.
That occupation is practicing the organized terrorism and the ugliest crimes on daily basis against Palestinian people, the land owner, by the assassinations and killings, capture and arrests, siege and attacks on holy sites and attempts to Judaize Jerusalem and change its demographic composition and its religious, political and cultural character and isolate it from the Palestinian body. The confiscation of land for the expansion and construction of settlements and the building of the racial segregation wall that separates cities and villages, homes and farms from each other and turning it into scattered pieces. The complete takeover of the sources of energy, water and looting of natural resources granted by the Palestinian land for their children and depriving them of using them to meet their humanitarian needs and their economic and agricultural development.
The occupation is also destroying public institutions and industrial facilities and imposes absolute control over the crossings and ports, borders and impede the communication of Palestinians between each other and with the outside world. It imposes restrictions on freedom of movement and the movement of goods and impose unjust and total siege on the Gaza Strip in order to starve and kill its people and prevent them from treatment and from the simplest ways of human life.
All these continuous crimes and practices where the occupation spend all its energies, its art and its skills on a daily basis are considered the most serious obstacles and the biggest challenges faced by the Palestinian people in its earnest and sincere attempts in order to build its State institutions and its development favored by its geographical location, its natural and climate resources and its civilization.
In order to promote the real development, first, occupation must demise as well as its negative impact, the freedom from dependence and correlation and absolute subordination to the Israeli economy. To the fulfillment of the international community and donor countries by their obligations and not getting busy by other plans and crises at the expense of the Palestinian crisis. To begin implementing projects, development and productivity programs, and create jobs to reduce unemployment and poverty which became the highest in the world. To maintain the viability of the Palestinian economy and protect it from the collapse and the paralysis, to enable Palestine to get the independence to develop its economy and financial business and does not remain at the mercy of the occupation or somebody else so it can open the horizons for economic national integration and benefit from building equal and independent Arab and international economic cooperative relations without restrictions imposed according to the mood, interests and plans of the occupying power.
Although the disappointment of the Palestinian people from the absence of the international reference, the intransigence and the rejection by the Israelis for 65 years in the completion or achieving a just settlement that ensure its rights to liberty and dignity, it looks eagerly to you and all of us in the international community to stand with the right and straightforward positions and take concrete, effective and strict actions to compel Israel to international laws and norms. The respect for human rights and the will of the people for freedom, independence, rejection of slavery and the exploitation of Man by Man. To force it to release prisoners, stop the settling and the removal of settlements and the apartheid wall. To end the unjust siege on the Gaza Strip and the implementation of international resolutions to withdraw from the occupied Arab territories and the return of refugees to their homes. To ensure the right of the Palestinian people to establish its independent State with Jerusalem as a capital.
We, in the WFTU, we declare our solidarity and our frankly standing beside the Palestinian people’s struggle and the prisoners movement in their battle of dignity and freedom in the face of the wild occupier executioner. We hold the Israeli government to be directly responsible for the serious deterioration in the health and lives of all the prisoners, especially the hunger strikers where some of them have passed seven months strike. We consider the young martyrdom Arafat Jaradat, died several days ago in the prisons of the occupation, as a result of severe torture as confirmed by forensic as a conclusive evidence of the ugly face of Israel and its systematic crimes against the prisoners, their physical and psychological torture and its disregard for their lives.
We call upon the United Nations, the international community, the European Union and the human rights organizations to assume their full responsibilities and to send an International Commission of Inquiry to identify the circumstances, the tragedy and the suffering of the prisoners and hold Israel accountable for the crimes perpetrated against them.
