Jerusalem Youth Forum Calls for Protection
We as Jerusalemite Youth Forum, call upon the international community to provide immediate international protection for the Palestinian people, who are exposed in their everyday life to attacks by the Israeli occupation forces, attacking and affecting all Palestinian citizens, especially in the cities of Jerusalem and Hebron.
These attacks are being oppressive and racist, violating the basics of human rights, the dignity and the security of individual citizens; breaching the international conventions, treaties, and the international humanitarian law.
Since the beginning of the Zionist occupation, the violations against the Palestinian People have been continuous and successive: arbitrary arrests, apartheid separation barriers between Palestinian villages and towns, torture and land grab…etc. Yet, and since early October 2015, the Israeli acts and violations have leveled up even further and Palestinians are currently witnessing death and are executed in every new day, especially in light of the recent racists laws allowing Israeli settlers and civilians to posses weapons in the illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land. These weapons together with the IOF weapons are used for random killings and executions against Palestinian Civilians in the streets, and the use of internationally forbidden weapons, bullets and Gaz, targeting the upper parts of the victims’ bodies: aiming for executions or permanent disabilities.
Capital punishment continues also to be practiced against the Palestinians through demolishing the homes of the victims, displacing their families, withdrawal of their residency rights, attacking the grieved families’ houses during condolences, taking over the martyrs’ bodies, provoking, insulting, beating and attacking youth and children, detaining minors and using torture and intimidation against them. In addition to the ;breaking into schools, universities, hospitals and attacking ambulances, blockading roads and separating the cities and streets from their surroundings. All these measures produce physical and psychological damage to children.
We believe that the Israeli violations and attacks is the realization of a systematic ethnic cleansing Israeli policy against the Palestinians; by creating a state of terror and intimidation among Palestinian community members, targeting every young man, every woman, each child, woman and man, in addition to the elderly, until everyone of us feels he or she is the next victim of these attacks.
We reaffirm our request for international intervention and the imposition of immediate protection to Palestinian civilians especially in the cities of Jerusalem and Hebron; we witness the continuous aggressions and targeting of schools and university students, the prosecution of youngsters in their livelihoods, and the targeting of educational institutions, homes and all the details of our daily lives; which reveal clearly the systematical Zionist plan in evacuating the city of its population, and the deprivation and attack on the basics of a decent livelihood, which is a right for every individual in the world.
We, as JYF, are calling for protection to stop the violations that we as Palestinians are exposed to, the violations that endangers the lives of youth and children in particular who are surrounded by constant risk, with no considerations for the freedom of life, as neither the rights of learning and education are maintained nor the rights to freedom of movement are ensured. The right to live in peace and security is being executed in the streets. The majority of the martyrs, the wounded and the detainees were school and university students who have not committed any fault apart from their insistence on the practice of their daily routine lives, despite all the drawbacks and daily attacks against them.
We need this international protection, in light of our response to an unmerciful occupation that does not take into account our rights as human individuals nor our right to live, but it uses excessive force in all its’ actions and attacks and further kills, executes and destroys without impunity, in the absence of a clear role for a local authority to protect us, and the absence of any international laws imposed on our behalf. Yet horror and fear are spread throughout the country.
Based on this, we call on the international community to adopt the right to protect us and assume its responsibility towards our people through the provision of international protection, and work to stop these violations and crimes against us as individuals and as civilians who seek access to live decently. This is guaranteed by international humanitarian law which provides protection to civilians in areas of political violence, and which refuses the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people as this law states ” it is not allowed to endanger the civilian people and all those who are no longer taking part in the fighting to the risk of attacks, they must be protected and maintained.” The law also states the rejection of collective punishment practiced on us in that it “shall not hold families and local communities responsible for the acts or be punished for actions they did not personally commit.”
Therefore we reiterate our right to human dignity and a decent life and our right to move freely and safely, and for access to treatment, and well being and livelihood, and our right to education and access to schools and universities without arrest or harassment or execution or sexual harassment, and a feeling of security at our homes and our schools without a permanent threat of raid, arrest and unexplained vandalism.
Because we believe that our female and male youth, children have the right to live in dignity away from the injustice of the occupation, because they represent the future makers we believe in their right to obtain the opportunity to live freely as in the case of other young people the world. Therefore, we insist on our request to provide immediate international protection.
“Al-Muntada Al-Shababi Al-Maqdisy/The Jerusalemite Youth Forum,” is a coalition of Community-Based NGO’s and Youth institutions from all segments of society. The YWCA of Jerusalem is a member, and the host, of this Forum,