RIGHTS: Caritas Criticises Int’l Silence on Palestinian Suffering

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Sep 23 2002 (IPS) - A global conspiracy of silence is covering up the “massacre of the Palestinian people” by Israel, Claudette Habesch, the secretary-general of Caritas Jerusalem, complained Monday in Spain.

“The Jew who comes from Georgia, for example, is a citizen of Jerusalem, while my family and I, who live in the land where we were born, and whose ancestors have lived in the city for hundreds of years, are not citizens but residents,” said Habesch, a Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem.

The activist told reporters in Madrid that she had even lost her home. “I have the keys and the legal documents showing that it is mine. But Jewish settlers, who took it for nothing, are living there now, and I no longer have any rights” over my own home.

Habesch visited the capital of Spain to report on the situation in the Palestinian territories, seek support for humanitarian initiatives in that region, and ask for greater efforts towards achieving peace and the coexistence of Palestinian and Israeli states, with safe borders for both.

The activist with Caritas, a Catholic humanitarian organisation, also reported on the problems of malnutrition in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

She pointed out that 9.3 percent of the population of those two Palestinian territories suffered acute malnutrition and 13.2 percent chronic malnutrition. In addition, 19.7 percent of children between the ages of six months and five years and 10.8 percent of women aged 15 to 49 suffer anemia.

Those statistics come from a report financed by the United Nations and carried out by Al Quds, an Arab university in Jerusalem, with technical assistance from the John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

According to official figures, 81 percent of the inhabitants of the Palestinian territories have incomes of less than a dollar a day – the international gauge of extreme poverty – said Habesch, who criticised the mainstream media for failing to pay equal attention to all of the victims of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

She noted that little to nothing is said of the appalling living conditions of Palestinians – the near total collapse of economic activity, soaring unemployment, generalised lack of basic products, and lack of access to essential services like health care and education.

“We must not forget that Palestinians are subject to a permanent curfew, and that even children as young as four or five are shot and killed if they venture out on the streets,” she said.

The activist told of the recent case of a pregnant Palestinian woman whose husband was driving her to the hospital to give birth when the car was stopped at one of the numerous Israeli army checkpoints.

The soldiers refused to let the car through, despite the desperate pleas of both husband and wife. The woman gave birth in the vehicle, and both she and the baby died, due to complications like severe hemorrhaging.

“Virtually no media outlet reported the incident,” Habesch underlined.

The international community “tolerates the massacre of the Palestinian people, and fails to enforce United Nations resolutions,” while in the UN Security Council, the United States vetoed an initiative to send UN observers to the area, she said.

Israel refuses to pull out of the West Bank because of the underground aquifers there, said Habesch, who added that water would be the cause of future wars in the region.

“In the Gaza Strip there are more than one million Palestinians and 3,000 Israeli settlers. But 80 percent of the water is consumed by the Israelis, and 20 percent by the Palestinians,” she said.

“Israel has diverted the course of rivers that supplied the Gaza Strip, and although Palestinians do not have enough water to drink, the lawns of the Israelis are watered and their swimming pools are full,” she added.

“It is up to Israel, which has the economic might and the military supremacy, to make dialogue and understanding possible,” argued Habesch.

The first steps in that direction must be a military withdrawal by Israel and an end to its occupation of the Palestinian territories, she said. But the stance taken by the international community is vital to bringing that about, she stressed.

Caritas Jerusalem is part of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 154 Catholic humanitarian aid organisations active in 198 countries and territories. Caritas is presently involved in humanitarian efforts assisting 20,000 Muslim, Christian Arab and Jewish families in Israel and the Palestinian territories.