Betreff: in reaction to a HRW statement

Dear Sir,

We generally appreciate your organisation’s human rights work and commitment. However, allow us to react to one of your statements about the events in Jabalya refugee camp (see following link:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/11/22/isrlpa14652.htm ).

We suppose that your members have, like ourselves and other members of the Luxembourg NGO ’Committee for a Just Peace in the Middle East’, frequently been to the Palestinian territories and are aware of the total lack of respect shown for human rights. We find it difficult to accept your organisation’s view on the events in
Jabalya refugee camp, in the Gaza strip, where Palestinians tried

to protect a house from destruction through their physical presence. HRW labels this kind of resistance (which we consider to be non-violent ’resistance’) as ’war crimes’ and even speaks of the ’use of human shields’ in order to condemn it. We cannot accept your point of view: to our knowledge, in Jabalya nobody was forced to come to the house that the Israeli army had said that it was
going to bomb. Forcing somebody at gunpoint to protect your own presence in an ’enemy’ surrounding (i.e. ’use of a human shield’) is quite different from risking your own life in order to defend your land and your house.

In our view, the HRW statement is extremely dangerous. If, as HRW suggests, the Palestinian people are not even entitled to non- violent resistance, what do they have left? Should they just give up heir houses, their land and their human rights?

We cannot understand this viewpoint and would appreciate if you could forward this letter to your organisation’s decision-makers with a view to them providing further explanations.

Thank you.

With our best regards,

Michel Legrand
Claude Grégoire
Chairman and Vice-Chairman of ’Comité Paix Juste’,
Luxembourg, December 10th 2006

Comité pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient
55, avenue de la Liberté
L-1931-LUXEMBOURG
Grand-Duché de Luxembourg
Tél. et fax : (00-352-) 26 84 51 54
courriel: paixjuste@yahoo.com
site web: www.paixjuste.cercle.lu