[van-announce] Reminder: Protest Israeli Minister Tuesday, 6:30p.m.

[Derrick O'Keefe]

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

Endorsed by: StopWar Anti-war Coalition, Canada Palestine Support
Network, International Solidarity Movement, Youth Third World
Alliance, Canada Palestine Association and Fire This Time.

***

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!

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