GAMAG EUROPE: Dialogue and peace between Palestinians and Israelis and respect for Human Rights

GE condemns the attacks by both sides against the civilian population, denounces international passivity in the face of Israel’s failure to comply with international law and regrets deaths of journalists and the high cost of the conflict for women and girls

• UPDATE 2024: As of March 06, the CPJ has documented the killings of at least 95 journalists during the conflict: 90 Palestinians, 2 Israelis and 3 Lebanese

15-10-2023

In the face of the serious and bloody conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel, GAMAG Europe (GE, the European section of the Global Alliance on Media and Gender) advocates for dialogue, peace and respect for Human Rights, including the right of citizens to a truthful information about the facts and their historical context, that must renounce to any warlike rhetoric and propaganda.

We strongly condemn the attacks against the civilian population by Hamas and the Israeli army, whose tragic toll of civilian victims is constantly increasing. And, as journalism and academic professionals, we regret that the conflict has claimed the lives of at least eleven journalists in its first week: nine Palestinians in Gaza, an Israeli in a Jewish kibbutz attacked by Hamas and a Reuters video reporter dead in an Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon. This provisional assessment has been carried out by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which regularly updates the names of the victims on its website https://cpj.org and details the sources of their information. The organization emphasizes that “all parties must recognize that journalists are civilians and take measures to guarantee their safety.”

As an organization that defends gender equality, we highlight the terrible cost that armed conflicts have for women and girls, not only as direct victims of violence, but also in multiple areas of their daily lives. In the case of education, for example, United Nations data confirms that girls are 90% less likely than boys to access it in conflict zones.

For Palestinian women in Israel and the occupied territories, the situation was already critical before this latest explosion of violence, because, as Amnesty International has denounced, they had to endure situations of authentic apartheid by Israel, such as the separation of their families or restrictions on freedom of movement. Furthermore, against the backdrop of failed peace agreements in the Middle East, we support the presence of women at the negotiating tables. According to UN Women, the probability that a peace agreement will be maintained for at least 15 years increases by 35% if women participate in all stages. In fact, Jewish, Muslim and Christian women have been leading a peace movement for several years that led them to walk together in the “March of Hope.”

From our commitment to dialogue, peace and respect for Human Rights, GAMAG Europe denounces international passivity in the face of Israel’s systematic failure to comply with international law (AI recalls that “it has only fully complied with 0.5% of the resolutions on human rights that “It has only fully complied with 0.5% of the resolutions on Human Rights that affect it”) and its relentless repression against the Palestinian people: destruction of homes; water, light and food blockages; bombings and other collective reprisals; territorial annexations and construction of new colonies; raising walls and military sieges… A strategy that can only lead to radicalization on the Palestinian side. As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote a few days ago, “more than seven decades of abuses, and again the worst is yet to come. The threats to ‘flatten Gaza’ only prove one thing: we have learned nothing.” Because, he warned, it is “impossible to imprison two million people without expecting a cruel price”.