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MEP Chris Davies

MEP ventures into Gaza Strip conflict zone

January 12, 2009

ONE of the region's MEPs has become the first British politician to enter the Gaza Strip since the start of the latest conflict.

Lib Dem Chris Davies visited a UN shelter close to the Rafah border crossing, where he claimed the daily ceasefire was punctuated by Israeli shells.

He said: "If Israeli politicians believe that the bombing and terrorising of a civilian population is going to destroy Palestinian resolve and reduce the causes of conflict, then they are profoundly mistaken.

"Words are not enough and action is needed to end the slaughter of innocent civilians."

Speaking from the Rafah border crossing Mr Davies said: "The over-riding message is that the big powers must act to enforce the latest UN resolution.

"Words are not enough and action is now needed to end the slaughter of innocent civilians. Israeli civilians have the right not to live in fear of rockets attacks from Hamas but their current offensive will not work and is killing unacceptable numbers of innocent people. Israel must stop the slaughter now and find another way to peace."

He also heard that hospital workers are reporting that the overwhelming majority of casualties in the conflict are Palestinian civilians. They are seeing few people capable of military action brought in for medical treatment.

Mr Davies was one of eight MEPs to be invited by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to be briefed on the humanitarian situation and to gather information.

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Most recent user comments 2 of 2

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Josephine, thank you for opening our eyes to the truth, may God bless you.

Sam O
14/01/2009 at 19:03

Chris Davies is right that the big powers must act to enforce the latest UN resolution (unlike their failure on many earlier UN resolutions against Israel). The invasion of Gaza has little to do with Hamas or "Israel's right to exist". The opposite is true: that Palestine's right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. There is deep-seated hatred of Palestinians in Israel. During my visits to Jerusalem I have seen Israelis spitting on Palestinians walking past.

"Plan D" of 1947-48 resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Israeli army), and massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing". At the scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon what to do with the Arabs. Ben-Gurion told him to expel them..

The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister who was promoted by Israeli propaganda as a peacemaker.

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and killing and maiming of the civilian population (50 per cent of whom are children) should not be ignored when examining the issue of rockets fired by Hamas from within Gaza.