|
This is an appeal from Beit Sahour municipality asking all
partners, friends and peace loving people to protest the latest
illegal developments at the Bethlehem ‘border crossing.’
“READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS AND THEN OBEY – HAVE A NICE DAY”
This is the first instruction you receive from the welcome sign
at the new ‘Bethlehem border crossing’. The only problem with
this is that Bethlehem lies deep inside Palestinian territory.
Under International law, the land and people on both sides of
this checkpoint belong to Palestine.
If anyone wishes to cross from Bethlehem to East Jerusalem (also
in internationally recognized Palestine) then they must now go
through a ‘gate’ in the 8 meter high concrete ‘security barrier’
and then through a passport control building, including several
personal checks and scans, and then they are finally allowed to
proceed if they have a permit for entering Jerusalem.
What this amounts to is that the people of the Bethlehem District
must now endure humiliating searches, often involving strip
searches, on land inside their own territory. It hardly needs to
be stated that this is a gross breach of international law and
not in the interests of peace.
Furthermore, Bethlehem as a city depends upon tourism and
pilgrimages for its economic survival. As all foreign visitors
must endure the same treatment as the local population at this
new crossing, we are sure that this will have a further
devastating impact upon the economy of our city. This is simply
one more stage in the plan to strangle Bethlehem city and
collapse its economy.
It took only a few months for the Israeli military to construct
this new breach of our human rights, once again demonstrating the
over-whelming force with which they govern the lives of the
Palestinian people. As long as they continue to arbitrarily take
such measures against us, we see little hope that we will achieve
a Palestinian State with peace and justice.
We call upon all of our friends and partners to protest to their
embassies and governments the actions which Israel is
unilaterally taking around our city. We make this appeal because
we need your support to stop this new injustice.
Hani Al-Hayek
Mayor of Beit Sahour
More Press Releases
|
