A violent approach to violence will not bring peace
Photo by hosny salah from Pixabay
We repudiate the warmongering policies of governments. We, the people, want to live in peace.
The only way out is the methodology of active non-violence.
Militiamen of the Hamas terrorist group attacked civilian and military targets in Israeli territory, killing hundreds of people and causing panic among the population.
The Israeli government's response, also terrorist, was swift, including the bombing of defenseless populations, causing hundreds of civilian victims and sowing destruction and horror in Gaza. The Israeli authorities have taken the opportunity for un harsh revenge by threatening a long and bloody war until what they call a final solution.
It must be stressed that two million Palestinians have been living in Gaza for several decades in a dramatic and cruel situation brought about by the Western powers. Locked and blockaded in a "ghetto" built by the State of Israel which subjects them to complete humiliation, unable to leave and enter the territory, unable to receive the materials necessary to build the infrastructures they need, without the medicines necessary for their hospitals or access to the energy sources they require. The Palestinians are besieged and subjugated by the military might of the Israeli army, which periodically bombs the cities and villages, causing thousands of deaths among the population. They are subjected to a policy that can only be described as one of extermination, which sometimes progresses slowly but sometimes explodes, causing thousands of victims.
An inhumane policy that flouts all UN resolutions and violates the fundamental rights of the Palestinians with the complicity of the United States and the European Union. Hamas's strategy, which claims to seek the liberation of the Palestinians, only drags them into dead-end situations that turn Gazans into bargaining chips. Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, fear among a large part of the Israeli population is spreading in the face of the forced mobilization towards war and combat.
In a painful paradox, leaders appear who end up being pawns in a crazed game of interests, geostrategic or group-based, in which human lives or the suffering of populations are irrelevant. For some time now, any attempt to seek a non-violent solution through dialogue has been dynamited, leaving the people without hope of a peaceful solution that would make possible a dignified coexistence between the two peoples.
With the future closed, thousands of young people now see violence as the only way to transform their situation. Belief in the supposed "necessity" or "inevitability" of violence as a means of conflict resolution empowers the violent. How is this spiral of maddening violence to be stopped when those responsible for the massacre issue proclamations calling for revenge and disproportionate violence, masking it in the "right to self-defense"? The internationalization of the conflict and the nuclear danger on the near horizon brings us all to a clear crossroads.
This conflict has responsible parties. Since the creation of the state of Israel, the United States has been setting the conditions and driving the occupation of the territory in order to control the oil-rich Middle East. Even if it means the extermination of an entire people.
The immediate response to the terrorist attack by Hamas (a group supported since its creation by the Israeli government at the behest of the United States to undermine the power of the Palestine Liberation Organisation) is to send arms.
The United States exports 79% of the world's armaments. Moreover, its military budget spending continues to increase and outstrips that of the other arms powers.
Invade, plunder, kill. And sell arms. In short, to wage war. Continuously.
In these circumstances, our hopes are not in the conscience of the current leaders, but in the voice of the people and of those who manage to make themselves heard by sending a message in favor of stopping the escalation of violence despite the pressure of governments and the media that promote irresponsible warmongering.
Our proposals are:
1. Immediately stop all forms of violence
2. Immediate withdrawal of all foreign military forces from the area.
3. All UN-backed resolutions must be implemented immediately. Set up the table of dialogue to arrive at the only nonviolent solution: two peoples, two states.
4. The fulfilment of human rights for all peoples, the demand to live in peace and the creation of conditions of cooperation for joint development.
It is urgent to stop this escalation of violence and destruction, since a violent approach to violence will not bring peace.
Therefore, from The Community for Human Development, we encourage all people with a humanist and non-violent sensibility to join and/or continue to work for the establishment of active non-violence in all areas, personal and social, in which they have the possibility to act.