Jakarta, (IINA) - Supporters of Palestine around the world are promoting a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement to force Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian lands and stop apartheid practices against Palestinians, Antara News reported.
Backers of the BDS movement include supporters in European countries and the United States. The boycott of Israeli products and companies supporting Israel is a peaceful way of putting international pressure on Israel, which follows an apartheid policy. The BDS action follows the footsteps of the successful boycott against South African apartheid.
The most common Israeli exports include fresh fruit and vegetables such as Jaffa citrus fruits and Israeli Medjoul Dates, Ahava cosmetics, SodaStream drinks machines, and Eden Springs bottled water.
In an international conference in Jakarta, a leading Palestinian human rights activist has urged the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states to boycott Israeli products in order to end the occupation that has prolonged the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq Law in the Service of Man, an independent human rights organization in Palestine, stated that the OIC member states should issue a business regulation aiming to ensure that vendors are "clean" when it comes to dealing with occupation businesses, and to ensure that products offered are not from illegal Israeli settlements.
"Indonesia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other countries should issue domestic laws on this issue. Every country must cooperate with the International Criminal Court to impose firm sanctions", he said.
He pointed out that the Israeli Zionist regime has tightened its grip on Jerusalem, carried out ethnic cleansing, and evicted Palestinians from the city by force since the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel in 1967.
Jabarin noted that Illegal evictions, demolition of homes and expansions of the occupation in Jerusalem are daily realities that the Palestinians face under the illegal occupation of Israel.
Israel has denied a total of 120,000 Palestinians their right to return to the West Bank between 1967 to 1989. Thousands of people in Jerusalem also lost their residency cards.
He noted that Israeli authorities are now targeting children as well, 700 children, some as young as seven years old, were detained without charge in October and November.
The General Director stressed that it is time for OIC member states to sever cooperation with Israel, ban settlement products, and implement sanctions, noting that the situation would remain the same or worsen without such actions.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said that Israel has not shown any genuine commitment towards achieving peace and still continue to illegally occupy Palestine’s Capital city of East Jerusalem.
"Israel continues to commit terror attacks in the land it has occupied. This is a blatant violation of international law", the minister said in her opening address to the conference.
She stressed that the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem must be stopped because it threatens international law and order, causes tensions among countries, and creates instability in the Middle East.
The minister said that Indonesia adopted a firm stance on East Jerusalem and that this stand would not change. Indonesia will stick to its stance as per the Resolution of the UN General Assembly 67/19, which issued on November 29, 2012.
"East Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine and thus, the UN resolution on the status quo of the historical city, which is part of the final solution to the Palestine issue, must be respected", she said.
Indonesian senior diplomat Makarim Wibisono, a special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, stated in the meeting that peace in Palestine must begin with respect for human rights.
He said that the international community must continue to apply pressure on Israel to abide by human rights and international humanitarian law until East Jerusalem becomes the standing capital of an independent state of Palestine. “Amid recent violence, peace had remained a distant goal”, he affirmed.
"The victims are the Palestinian mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters for whom there is little or no recourse to justice in the face of ongoing violations", he stated.
To realize a viable Jerusalem, more efforts need to be undertaken as of now to better protect the human rights of Palestinians and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law, Wibisono noted.
The recent violence that culminated in October 2015 has caused the deaths of at least 118 Palestinians, mostly teenagers, including unarmed schoolgirls, all at the hands of Israeli military and settlers.
Israel has been enforcing a unilateral temporal division at the mosque, banning Palestinians from entering the compound during specific hours, while settlers are provided with a police escort into the Islamic holy site.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest mosque in Islam after the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet's Mosque in Madina, Saudi Arabia.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is also the second mosque to be ever built on earth and the first qibla (the direction Muslims face while praying).
AG/IINA
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.
No comments:
Post a Comment