[van-announce] [ISM-Vancouver] Sept 9th: Vancouver PICKET: PROTEST ISRAEL MINISTER OF IMMIGRATION & ABSORPTION

[ism-van-announce-admin at ender.indymedia.org]

**Apologies for Cross Postings**

Protest Israel's Minister of Immigration and Absorption Tzipi Livni!
Support the Palestinian Right of Return!

Tuesday, September 9, 2003.  6:30 PM
3476 Oak Street at 19th Avenue, Vancouver

Endorsed by: Palestine Solidarity Group, StopWar.ca, Canada Palestine 
Association, Canada Palestine Support Network, International Solidarity 
Movement

===============================================================
STATEMENT:

SUPPORT PALESTINIAN RIGHTS BY PICKETING SEPTEMBER 9TH EVENT

Protest Israeli Minister of Immigration and Absorption!

Support the Palestinian Right of Return!

Tuesday, September 9, 2003 6:30 PM

3476 Oak Street at 19th Avenue, Vancouver

Israeli Knesset member Tzipi Livni will be coming to Vancouver to address 
the “major concerns challenging the Israeli government today” in a widely 
publicized event at the Schara Tzedeck Synagogue.

This talk by one of the top players in Ariel Sharon’s Likud government and 
former employee of notorious spy agency Mossad cannot go unanswered. Livni 
is a representative of a state enforcing a brutal 36-year-old occupation. 
Furthermore, as the Minister of Immigration and Absorption, Livni is the 
most influential current upholder of Israel’s racist and exclusionary 
immigration policies.


-PALESTINIANS ARE SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS IN THEIR OWN LANDS

Israeli immigration laws act to maintain a system of racial privilege. Under 
the Law of Return, people of Jewish origin are automatically entitled to 
settle in Israel and gain full citizenship and political rights. In 
contrast, Palestinians are continually denied the right to return to their 
ancestral lands. Palestinians are imprisoned in refugee camps and occupied 
territories, forever awaiting a solution to their undefined status. 
Palestinians living in Israel proper, so-called Israeli Arabs, also do not 
possess full citizenship rights.

Threatening to Israelis who wish to maintain political dominance, The Right 
to Return has never been on the agenda of any “peace” negotiation.


-ROAD MAP TO PEACE?

The current peace negotiation brokered by the US has shown its stark 
deficiencies from the beginning. Palestinians bear the brunt of the Road Map 
demands, which altogether call for an end to any Palestinian resistance - 
only then will Israel be willing to start speaking of Palestinian statehood 
or anything remotely resembling national rights for Palestinians.

And Sharon’s government is not even fulfilling the minimal conditions laid 
out in Phase I of the Road Map. Israel continues to build settlements and 
outposts. As Sharon and Bush speak of peace, the Israeli state today clears 
villages to erect an Apartheid Wall. Ongoing assaults in the form of 
curfews, roadblocks, house demolitions, and assassinations speak to the 
betrayal of a road map that was from the start flawed.



-LIVNI DISMISSES RIGHT OF RETURN

Livni herself has her own criticism of the Road Map, centrally its failure 
to “put an end to the entire problem once and for all.”

By this Livni means she wants any possibility of the Right of Return 
eliminated. When responding to the Road Map, Livni calls for Palestinians to 
abandon the Right of Return as a condition for forging a Palestinian state. 
On this, Livni unequivocally states:
“I do not like the term ‘right of return’ because it implies the existence 
of a right.”

Contrary to what Livni believes, The Right of Return is not a “regrettable 
position” but a brave demand for political equality in the Occupied 
territories as well as within Israel. It is a solution that finally 
addresses a history of 55 years that has steadily erased Palestinians as 
legitimate citizens of their own land.


-JOIN PALESTINE SOLIDARITY GROUP IN PICKETING LIVNI’S PRESENCE

PSG calls on all individuals and organizations that support a just solution 
to come out on September 9th and stand up for fundamental Palestinian 
rights!

-SUPPORT THE RIGHT OF RETURN! -REJECT TZIPI LIVNI AND ISRAELI APARTHEID!

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus


_______________________________________________
ISM-Van-Announce mailing list