Tuesday January 13, 2009
Jewish European MP slams Israeli aggression
RAFAH (Egypt): David Hammerstein from the European Parliament is Jewish and on Sunday, he was part of an eight member team of European parliamentarians to cross into Gaza for about 90 minutes to observe the situation on the ground.
“Obviously, this has been very emotional for me. My heart is broken. I love Israel, but I love life and humanity more,” said Hammerstein, who lost 14 family members in the Holocaust.
“What Israel is doing is stupid and suicidal for its future in the Middle East. If you cause so much hatred, you will reap lots of pain,” he said after his brief visit to Gaza.
He said the Palestinians in Gaza were so happy to see the group and to know they had not been forgotten by the international community.
“They kept touching us, shaking our hands and hugging us. It drove me to tears.
“They are such beautiful people. We saw so many little children there, two, three, four-year-olds, on the streets and they are so beautiful,” he said, adding that there were many destroyed buildings and roads, with rubbish strewn all over and people with hardly anything to eat and no clean drinking water.
This is the first representation from the European Parliament to enter Gaza since the start of the conflict.
Hammerstein chastised the European Union (EU) which he said should “stop acting like an NGO paying for what Israel breaks”.
He said the group of parliamentarians planned to push for a resolution on Gaza tomorrow, asking for an immediate ceasefire and urging EU countries to make Israel comply with international humanitarian laws.
Hammerstein said closing Gaza to journalists stopped the world from seeing what was really going on there and allowed Israel to do what it liked with impunity.
“It’s a disgrace. We want the border opened and the blockade to end,” he said.
The Gaza strip, which is only 45km long and between six and 12km wide, is wed–ged between Israel and Egypt, with its borders fen–ced up. With the border crossings to both Israel and Egypt closed, 1.5 million Pales–tinian are trapped inside the narrow tract of land and cannot escape the bombings.
Luisa Morgantini, vice-president of the European Parliament and who led the delegation, said Palestine was like a second home to her because she had been coming here many times in the last 25 years.
“I felt I wanted to stay in there with them. There are so many women and children there and they have a lot of dignity.
“There is nothing in the shelter to eat and the women are queuing to get food for the kids.
“The people of Gaza can’t pay the price for Israel’s arrogance or Hamas firing rockets into Israel.
“We want the massacre to stop,” she said.
Morgantini said she also felt guilty and responsible that after so many years of Israel and Palestine tensions and fighting, “we (the world) have still not been able to solve the problem”.
The group was allowed to enter Gaza during the day’s three-hour ceasefire period. But even before the group left Gaza, the Israeli F-16s were already racing across the skies and shelling areas in this tiny strip of land.
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