Even as the representatives of the governments of US and Israel were celebrating the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem on 14th May, about a100 km to the south, in Gaza, Israeli forces brutally opened fire on thousands of Palestinians who had gathered in protest at the Israel-Gaza border. According to media reports, the Israeli forces used live ammunition in a cold and calculated manner, designed to inflict maximum damage to the Palestinian people. More than 60 Palestinians have been reported dead and nearly 3000 wounded. Men, women and children have also been wounded by rubber bullets and children have died by tear gas asphyxiation. Medical personnel trying to attend to the victims have been specially targeted by the Israeli forces. Hundreds of people are reported to have attended the funerals of those who died in the attack.
It may be noted that May 15 this year marks the 70th anniversary of Al Nakba (the catastrophe). On 15th May, 1948 the Zionist state of Israel was established on the basis of the dispossession and mass expulsion of the Palestinian people. The occasion is marked each year by the Great March of Return, when thousands of Palestinians converge near the Gaza border, demanding the return of their homeland. The provocative act of inauguration of the US embassy in Jerusalem and the inhuman firing upon unarmed Palestinian people at the Gaza border by the Israeli defence forces was cynically timed to coincide with the anniversary of this day that marks the historical injustice to the Palestinian people. It was intended to send the message that the Israeli Zionists, backed by the US imperialists, will continue to defend their illegal occupation of the Palestinian people’s homeland, with the force of arms.
Communist Ghadar Party condemns the brutal violence unleashed by the Israeli Defence Forces against the Palestinian people.
The decision of the US to open its embassy in Jerusalem is a deliberate move designed to provoke the Palestinian people and to inflame tensions across West Asia. While the representatives of the US state hailed the inauguration of the US embassy in Jerusalem and the Israeli Prime Minister justified the attack by the Israeli forces as “self-defence”, the firing upon Palestinians by the Israeli defence forces has been widely condemned in the UN and other international fora, as well as by the governments and people of many countries around the world. A resolution that several member States in the UN attempted to pass, condemning the May 14-15 firing by Israel, has been vetoed by the US.
The State of Israel was created through armed aggression, massacres, ethnic cleansing and cruel displacement of nearly 750,000 Palestinian people from their homeland.
At the end of the World War I, the League of Nations handed over Palestine to the British imperialists as part of the redivision of the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. At the end of the World War II, the United Nations called for the partition of Palestine to create two states — Israel and Palestine. Jerusalem was to have the special status of a ‘separated body’ administered by the UN.
The Israeli occupation of the city of Jerusalem is illegal. Immediately following the creation of the state of Israel on 14th May, 1948, Israel launched the savage ‘ten month war’ against the Palestinian people, occupied the West part of the city of Jerusalem as well as vast areas belonging to the Palestinian people. Lakhs of Palestinians were thrown out of their homeland and turned into refugees. The remaining Palestinian territories as well as the east of Jerusalem were incorporated into the Kingdom of Jordan.
In the June 1967 ‘Six Day War’, Israel captured and annexed the east zone of Jerusalem, as also the West Bank. In 1980, it introduced and passed a law declaring Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. This law was declared void by the UN Resolution 478. Officially, the UN does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, which is home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions. Tel Aviv remains Israel’s internationally accepted capital, but the seat of the country’s government is at Jerusalem. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem.
Israel, with the full backing of US imperialism, continues to follow a brutal anti Palestinian anti-Arab policy and denies the Palestinian people the right to their own homeland. US imperialism, in pursuit of its strategic aim of domination of West Asia, has armed the Israeli state to its teeth to serve as its strategic ally in West Asia. Together they have ensured that the Palestinian people are denied their national rights. The opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem accompanied by the firing upon Palestinians by the Israeli defence forces is yet another statement of the open support by the US for Israel’s policy of genocide and illegal occupation of the Palestinian homeland.
Freedom-loving people around the world must continue to step up their opposition to the illegal occupation and annexation of the Palestinian people’s homeland, their forcible displacement and the brutal terror unleashed upon them by the Israeli state and its US imperialist backers.