Nouvelles de nos amis luxembourgeois et de leurs activités militantes

Chères amies, chers amis,

Veuillez trouver ci-attaché le Pal-News Lux n° 3, nouvelles des actions et événements organisés ces deux derniers mois par le Comité ou auxquels le CPJPO a participés, à destination de nos amis et contacts en Palestine et Israël, mais aussi d’organisations pour la Palestine et de contacts de pays voisins ou de certains pays européens.

Nous vous en souhaitons bonne lecture, ainsi qu’une bonne semaine.

Eliane ALGRAIN et Michel LEGRAND

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Dear friends,

Please, find here attached our Pal-News Lux n° 3, with news on actions and events organised the last two months by our committee or to which we participated, for our friends and contacts in Palestine and Israel, but also for organisations for Palestine and contacts in several european countries.

Have a good week,
In solidarity,

Eliane ALGRAIN & Michel LEGRAND

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Comité pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient
55, avenue de la Liberté
L-1931-LUXEMBOURG
Tél (00352)691 819306
Fax (00352)44743515
courriel : paixjuste@yahoo.com
site web : www.paixjuste.lu

To our friends in Palestine...
To our friends in Israel...
... struggling against occupation, for justice and peace in/between Israel and

Our exhibition « Retours de Palestine » (Come back from Palestine) remained visible from June 21th to August 15th in the Petrusse valley under a big tent, in the frame of Movimiento Latino’s Festival.
More contacts & discuss-ions about Palestine…

On july 18th, several members of the CPJPO participated to a symposium on interreligious and intercultural dialogue.

The president of CPJPO made a speach on the social and political conditions of dialogue, applied to the israelo-palestin-ian conflict.
An important event, 30th and 31st of august, was the UN Conference of Civil Society in support of the Palestinian people in the european parliament, Bruxelles. Two members of CPJO participated actively to the conferences and to the various workshops.

The theme of the Conference was « Civil society and parliamentaries working together for peace in the Middle East ». On the basis of renewed analyses of the ever worsening situation in Palestine, of the regional and international context and of various illustrative experiences in several european and non european countries, it became clearer for most of the participants that the main priorities should be (a) political lobbying (national, european, international) and (b) marking 2008 as a year to commemorate Palestinian dispossession and expulsion, and a year committed to reversing those 60-year-old losses.

That educational and campaigning work would begin on November 29, 2007 and include May 15, 2008, as a day of global mobilisation to commemorate the Nakba and that continuing dispossession and denial of Palestinian rights. The third prioriy (c), for most of the participants, should be to begin, continue or reinforce the « Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions » campaign, wherever it is possible.

From 14th to 16th of september, there was in Luxembourg an important and huge ecological trade fair (« Oeko-foire »). This year, the main theme of our stand was « Water in Palestine : which issues ? ». Thanks to a very pedagogical exhibition of our french friends of AFPS, we could show the links between land, water and israeli colonialism and occupation, and that one of the main objectives of the occupation is to control water. To the visitors, we distributed also a basic document explaining why to boycott israeli products.

On september 17th, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Israel was invited in the huge Philharmony theater of Luxembourg.

We decided to be present at that event. We prepared and distributed to the numerous participants (and to israeli members of the orchestra) a double-face flyer : on the one face, we copied the text of a speach on peace pronounced by Daniel Barenboim in the Cultural Centre of Ramallah on august 21st 2005 at the moment of a concert with his famous West-Eastern Divan Orchestra ; on the other face, we proposed a text welcoming the musicians and the participants, recalling the links between music and peace, but also pointing out the numerous ways Israel is daily violating the rights and the dignity of the Palestinians, thus opposing to peace. Finally, we were calling musicians and participants to express their solidarity with Palestinians fighting peacefully for their rights and dignity and Israelis opposing to the policy of their governement and involved in actions against the occupation, all forms of colonialism and for a just peace between the two people.
After that event, we had a convivial meeting with two members of our Committee just coming back from Palestine, after a stay of 6 months in the area of Jenin, for one of them, and many contacts with people in Nablus. They described the complexe relations between Fatah’s and Hamas’ people, the deterioration of the people daily life under the violent israeli occupation, the difficulties of the civil organisations (palestinian and foreign) to do their work…

On Tuesday, september 18th, we hold a stand in the frame of the Voluntary Work Day. As, in our Committee, we work only on a voluntary basis, it is important to be present at such an event, to show the people interested in voluntary work, that there are possibilities to work for peace also in the Middle East, also in Israel and Palestine.
Since several years, Luxembourg is celebrating an « International Day for Peace ». The main goal of that day is to promote a society and a community life inspired by non violence and peace ideals. For the 3rd time, our Committee participated to that celebration, on 21/09/07, with 12 other organisations. As usual, we hold our stand, with an emphasis on the settlements and the wall as important obstacles to peace and showing the israeli and palestinian peaceful actions against the wall and the occupation ; we distributed a flyer « No Peace without Justice » enunciating the main requirements for a just peace in the israelo-palestinian conflict.

On saturday september 22nd, a member of our Committee (former ambassador from Luxembourg to Japan and Denmark and representative of Luxembourg near the Nato) published a hard-hitting article in an important daily news of Luxembourg with the provocative title « It is urgent to bomb Israel ». The intention was to draw the attention of the readers on the unbalanced policy of the « international community » towards Israel and towards Iran, after the martial declarations of Bernard Kouchner, the french Minister of Foreign Affairs, about the nuclear programma of Iran. The article pointed out the nuclear status of Israel and the refusal of Israel to subscribe to the non-proliferation treaty. Nevertheless, the USA, France and the other members of the Securtity Council are trying to impose new sanctions against Iran but remain quite silencious about the nuclear development of Israel and about the policy Israel is daily carrying out in Palestine.

On 28/09/07, two members participated in Lille (France), at the « café citoyen » (Citizen Café), to an evening on the thema : « Review of the situation in Palestine and of the pers-pectives for supporting the palestinian people » with JF Larosière, president of AFPS/Nord-Pas de Calais .

At the end of september, after we were informed that Israel decided to consider Gaza as an « hostile entity » and to possibly suspend distribution of water, electriciy and 1st necessity goods to the palestinian population, we wrote, as many other organisations and people, a protest letter to the ambassador of Israel in Begium and Luxembourg. We expressed our total disapproval of that decision, of its foreseeable consequences, of its dimension of collective punishment, condemned by the international law, and morally reprehensible. We insisted on the « war crime » aspect of that behaviour of Israel, on its practice of state terrorrism in the face of the world, and requested that the ambassador inform the israeli government of our protest.

On september 25th, we had the first meeting of our Committee. We defined the two main priorities of the next 10 months : (a) to continue and developp our political lobbying, and (b) to organize, as and with other organisations here in Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Germany… various and successive events, from now until may, about the Naqba, to remember the palestinian dispossession and expulsion, and to committ ourselves to reversing those 60-year-old losses.