THE Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) denounces the current naked aggression of warmongering Israel against the Palestinian people of Gaza.

The relentless bombardment of the Palestinian people’s homes, schools, public utilities and residential communities continues. The hourly news releases and television footage report the grim tale of the Israeli carnage against innocent civilians, including children. Israel’s excuse is that it is acting against rocket attacks from Gaza against Israeli occupied towns nearby.

In this regard GAWU quotes from a relevant dispatch “it’s incomprehensible that a region such as the Gaza Strip, so rich with history, so saturated with defiance, can be reduced to a few blurbs, sound bites and reductionist assumptions, convenient but deceptive, vacant of any relevant meaning, or even true analytical value.

The fact is that there is more to the Gaza Strip than 1.5 million hungry Palestinians, who are supposedly paying the price for Hamas’s militancy, or Israel’s ‘collective punishment’, whichever way the media decide to brand the problem.

More importantly, Gaza’s existence since time immemorial must not be juxtaposed by its proximity to Israel, failure or success in ‘providing’ a tiny Israeli town – itself built on conquered land that was seen only 60 years ago as part of the Gaza Province – with its need for security. It’s this very expectation that made the killing and wounding of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza a price worth paying, in the callous eyes of many.”

“Now Gaza is undergoing another phase of hardship and defiance. Its modern conquerors are as unpitying as its ancient ones. True, Gaza is ailing, but standing, people resourceful and durable as ever, defiant as they have always been, and hell-bent on surviving, for that’s what Gazans do best.”

To GAWU it certainly seems that Israel had decided – with the quiet, tacit consent and collaboration of its main international ally – “to wipe GAZA Strip off Earth’s Face”, the latest toll from Israel’s bombardment is reported to be: over 400 people killed; over 180 Hamas activists killed; over 2,100 people have been wounded, many of whom are civilians and children and complete families, and, the bombings are continuing at this time.

In one of the recent raids over the past days, a senior Hamas official Nizar Rayyan, his ten (10) children and four (4) others were among the casualties when a single one-tonne bomb dropped from an Israeli jet targeted Rayyan’s home. This blatant and nakedly aggressive act by the Israelis will worsen the explosive situation in the Middle East.

It seems that it is only a start. Israel prepares to continue the military actions despite numerous protests from the international community, expectedly; a ground operation in the Gaza Strip may start in the next few days. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that her country had no choice. “We do what we have to do to protect our citizens,” Livni said.

The Gaza Strip is not going to surrender. Israel and those behind its actions will not succeed in their objectives.

GAWU joins with other peoples and organisations worldwide in extending its unconditional solidarity to the Palestinian people and particularly the victims of Israel warlike actions and calls on the international community to work with urgency to ensure an immediate cessation of hostilities and to sanction this clear violation of international laws and crime. GAWU is despondent with the response of the USA whose economic and military assistance has sustained Israel in the past.

In extending our solidarity to the Palestinian people’s just cause, GAWU, simultaneously, calls for an end to the intrigues, wars and sordid schemes that are nurturing endless instability and destruction and carnage in the troubled region of the Middle East.

As we in Guyana struggle to fight off the devastating forces of nature with its destructive rains, floods and disease, so too the Palestinians of Gaza are prepared to fight off the man-made attacks of Israel.

The right of all peoples to exist in that portion of the Middle East does not include the right of Israel to invade territory to which the Palestinians have more legitimate rights than the crusading occupiers who are Israelis.

GAWU condemns Israel and its supporters and insists on an, immediate end to its murderous atrocities against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.
GUYANA AGRICULTURAL AND GENERAL WORKERS UNION (GAWU)