About the San Diego Coalition for Justice in Palestine

Shared Positions of CJP:

The individuals and groups that make up CJP agree on the following shared positions:

1. The war on Gaza that started on December 27 2008 has been one of the bloodiest episodes in recent military history. More than 1300 Palestinians have been killed and more than 6,000 have been injured in 23 days of unrelenting bombing. Most of the victims were civilians, including more than four hundred (400) children. The Israeli bombardment of Gaza's infrastructure, electricity grid, houses, schools, roads, hospitals, mosques, and markets has resulted in what the UN calls a human disaster.

2. This war was the latest stage in a long list of attacks by Israel on the Palestinian people, including an 19-month siege that has strangled Gaza and destroyed its economy, resulting in what analysts agree has been a forced “de-development” of Gaza.

3. As is evident in the writings of Israeli generals in the Israeli press, the Israeli military has opted to conduct an all-out war in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, knowing full well that civilian casualties will be very high. For example, Amos Harel wrote an article on January 7 in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz explaining that the Israeli massacre at the UNRWA school was "deliberate policy" and not accidental based on his analysis of the writings of several Israeli generals.

4. The Israeli military strategy has resulted in committing several war crimes, including the explicit targeting of children (the first attack was carried out in "shock and awe" fashion in mid day, exactly when the schools of Gaza ended their first shift and hundreds of thousands of children were leaving their schools to go back home). Numerous war crimes are being documented and a case is being prepared to be presented to the International court at The Hague to hold Israeli generals and politicians accountable for their war crimes.

5. None of the massacres that were committed in Gaza would have been possible without an explicit green light from the White House and continuing US funding of the Israeli occupation. The US has provided Israel with the most sophisticated weapons, including F-16 fighter jets, Apache attack helicopters, radar systems, chemical weapons, and direct help with Israel's nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration was thus a partner in the war crimes committed in Gaza. This is the direct reason why we strongly protest against these crimes in the US. The media sometimes tries to ask "why pick on Israel when there are so many other despots in the world". The answer is this: the US government does not give any of these other despots $3 Billion of mostly military aid; only Israel receives this kind of aid. Thus, it is our duty as US citizens to demand that our tax dollars not be used to kill innocent Palestinian civilians. It is our moral obligation to do so.

6. The Bush administration launched an illegal war against Iraq in 2003, killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians and thousands of American soldiers in the process. Most of Iraq has been destroyed and the human tragedy of millions of Iraqi refugees continues. It is without saying that this war-driven administration would not only support but push for an illegal war by the Israeli military in an effort to eliminate any opposition to the US-Israeli plan of dominating and subjugating the entire Middle East by force. The 2006 war on Lebanon was one episode in that bloody strategy, and the current war on Gaza is another. It is now our hope that the Obama administration will reverse at least some of the most egregious militarist policies of the Bush administration.

7. Israel has been illegally occupying Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem for 40 years, in defiance to international law and numerous UN Security Council resolutions. Even though the Israeli military and settlers were pulled out of Gaza in 2005, the military occupation didn't end because Israel completely blockaded Gaza from the land, the sea and the air, transforming Gaza into the world's largest open air concentration camp. And since 2005, Israel has tried all kinds of tactics to choke off the people of Gaza, including collective punishment, shutting off water and electricity, preventing any aid to reach Gaza from the sea, and continuing air attacks that have killed more than 850 Palestinians in the past 3 years before this current war. Most of these have been civilians.

8. The United Nations Charter and international law recognize the right of a people under foreign occupation to resist this occupation by all means, in accordance with principles that protect innocent civilians.

9. This war cannot be blamed on Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions. Israel and the US refused to accept the results of the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, which Hamas won, and instead chose to try to destroy the Hamas government. The roots of the recent war go back to that effort to topple a democratically elected government. They have left Hamas no choice but to resist. The more recent cause of this war lies in the Israeli violation of the truce on Nov 4th 2008 when the Israeli military chose to fire missiles into Gaza killing several Palestinians in spite of Hamas abiding by the truce for 6 months.

10. It is ironic that the rockets that Hamas and other resistance fighters have been launching are directed at locations from which the refugees that make up the majority of the population of Gaza come. These refugees were forced out of their homes in Asdood (now Israeli Ashdod), Asqalan (now Israeli Ashkelon) and other cities in 1948. In total, more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees who were expelled from these areas and other areas of Palestine settled in the Gaza strip in 1948. They and their descendants make up the majority of the population of Gaza. This story is completely omitted from US media coverage that has tried to portray Hamas and other factions as irrational terrorists targeting innocent Israelis for no reason. Providing historical context to the Palestinian resistance is crucial to understanding it.

11. In the short term any solution must include an immediate lifting of the illegal blockade on Gaza and opening all crossings into Gaza from Egypt and Israel to enable supplies and commercial products to enter Gaza in addition to humanitarian aid. It is crucial to "reboot" the economy in Gaza. In the longer term, any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be founded on recognition of the basic human, political and national rights of the Palestinian people everywhere in the world, including the right of self-determination and the right of return to their homes.