Children want to live

Fifty days. Seven weeks and a day. No doubt, many wars in history had lasted longer than that, and there had been worse horrors than what happened in Gaza. "We did it in the least terrible way possible" says today the IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. Still, terrible it was.

Throughout  these fifty terrible days, it was the Coalition of Women for Peace  which assumed the task of keeping alight the flame of opposition to the war. To organize demonstration after demonstration, protest after protest – sometimes  in collaboration with others, sometimes alone or almost alone when no other partners appeared. Also last Saturday night we joined their call for a protest march in central Tel Aviv, from the Habima Square and along Ben Zion Boulevard. To the sound of drums and the chants of "The government’s lies/bring no security!", "Occupation is terror / PR will not help!", "End the killing, no more bereavement / the siege must end! "," In Gaza and Sderot / children want to live!". There was virtually no sign of the extreme right thugs who attacked protesters at the early weeks of the war. Only one tomato thrown near  the end of the protest signified their presence.

    

"In Gaza and Sderot / children want to live". This is quite a well known slogan. We have been hearing it on the streets for at least five years, every time that the southern border flared up. But never before was it so relevant and poignant. Never before those terrible fifty days had there been so many children who wanted to live, who very much wanted to live and whose lives were nevertheless cut off. The exact number is still being debated, but certainly there were more than five hundred children killed, some of them along with their parents and entire family. Thousands more of wounded children, some of whom will remain physically disabled for life, all of them will bear a trauma.

The sudden ending of the earlier ceasefire, the one which lasted five days, was  accompanied by an attempt to "liquidate" Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas' military wing – in recent months, the man which Israelis most loved to hate. " Deif had nine souls and avoided earlier attempts, but the Israeli Security Service discovered his weak point - the longing for his family, and used it to set him a lethal trap" bragged the well-known commentator known Alex Fishman on the pages of "Yedioth Ahronoth." The security services of Israel and discovered that Deif’s wife Widad and his eight month old son Ali would be in a “safe house” at  the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza - and assumed that the husband and father will be there, too. Israeli Air Force planes dropped no less than five bombs, weighing a ton each, to make sure the entire house will be destroyed and no one in it would possibly stay alive. Haggai Segal, who once served a prison term for attempting to assassinate Palestinian mayors on the West Bank and is now the editor of the right-wing “Makor Rishon” paper, congratulated the army and security services for having overcome moral scruples and taken the conscious decision to kill the mother and her child.

Two days after this affair, the four-year old Daniel Tregerman was killed when hit by a Palestinian mortar shell, while playing at his home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz near the Gaza border. His tragic death was the main topic in the Israeli news media, and on all the front pages was a photo of the smiling boy whose in his life was so suddenly cut short. Prime Minister Netanyahu said that "Hamas will pay a heavy price for this harsh terrorist attack", and the US Ambassador to Israel sent his condolences .

Hanoch Daum, a veteran columnist who lives in the West Bank settlement of Elazar, wrote, "We are going to win this war, because we sanctify Life while our enemies revere Death. Look how deeply an entire country mourned little Daniel, as if he were a family member to all of us."

One day after the death of the child Daniel Tregerman, there was a Facebook message from John Brown - the pen name of a veteran activist from Beersheba: "In the past 45 days, the IDF is on average killing every two hours  a child under the age of 15 in Gaza. In the past few hours it seems to be a bit above this average. Tanzim Judeh and her three children Ra'ad, Rawiya and   Osama were killed east of Jabalya. They were probably been directly, as the children’s bodies completely disintegrated. A bit earlier the one and half year old baby Bilal Abu Takiya was killed in the northern Gaza Strip ".

The State of Israel does not (yet?) censor Facebook, and anyone can write whatever pleases them, However, the above names have not been published in  Israeli communications media except for "Haaretz". Those who get  their information from *the* more widely circulated media outlets have never heard those names. At the beginning of the war, the B’tselem Human Rights organization tried to publish on the radio, as paid ad, the list of names and ages of Palestinian children killed in Gaza (the list was still much shorter...). The Broadcasting Authority rejected the request, and the Supreme Court upheld this decision, the judges stating that "Publication of the names of the dead children would not constitute the providing of objective information to the public - it would be a political statement."

Seventy years ago, when Zionist Jews in this country had yet to create a state, they established underground movements which waged an intense struggle against  the British Mandate authorities. The most radical of these was Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel). Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir survived the years of struggle against the British and ultimately became Prime Minister of Israel. At official memorial ceremonies,  Lehi veterans still their organization’s  anthem, "Unknown Soldiers":

Unknown soldiers are we, without uniform,

Around us horror and the shadow of death.

We were all called up for life,

Death is our only discharge.

In red days of riots and bloodshed,

In the black nights of despair,

In the cities and villages shall we raise our flag,

On which are inscribed War and Conquest.

"Unknown Soldiers" has five stanzas in all. But in recent years, official ceremonies in which it is sung usually do not come up to the last and concluding one:

The tears of bereaved mothers,

And the blood of pure infants

Shall be mortar for the cadaver building blocks

Of which the edifice of the Fatherland shall be erected.

***

   

During the fifty days of “Operation Protective Edge”, the Peace Bus had travelled several times from Jerusalem to the Gaza border, on the initiative of activists calling for an end to war and bloodshed and collecting humanitarian aid for the residents of the Gaza Strip. Following what we all hope is the end of this war, they have called for a Day of Mourning to commemorate all who perished in the conflict, Israelis and Palestinians alike. The Peace Bus stopped on its ride today at four points: The IDF Square on the borderline between East and West Jerusalem, between the Jerusalem Town Hall and the Jaffa Gate of the Old City; Manger Square at the heart of Palestinian Bethlehem; The Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, and the town of Sderot on the Gaza Strip border.

https://www.facebook.com/events/678843702197246/

"Wearing modest black clothes to express mourning, we light candles and lay down olive branches, flowers, basil and henna powder (a Muslim custom in commemorating slain children). Across the country we create symbolic memorial sites in memory of the people on both sides, who perished as victims of the prolonged and destructive conflict. We hold a Moment of Silence. Those who want to utter a prayer, while others just listen to the whisper of the wind. We express shock and pain at the war and hope to create a common future of peace. We read out the names of the children who were killed and their lives shattered (hundreds of Palestinian children and a single Israeli child). It is not enough to state the numbers - we must read out the names behind these numbers. We speak out, loud and clear: No more war! We are all human, we all suffer!”

   

The Emperor is naked

At 10.30 pm the website of the Palestinian news agency Ma’an bore an ominous headline: “Ceasefire falls apart in final hours, with no renewal in sight; Palestinian negotiators charge Israel has refused to accede to Palestinian requests”. So, the opposing negotiating teams – which had not met face to face, but sat in adjoining rooms with Egyptians passing messages to and fro - left Cairo. Even before the end of the of 72-hour ceasefire three rockets were shot from Gaza at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and intercepted in the air by Iron Dome. Israeli ground forces were moved closer to the Gaza border, and commanders made dire threats of “a new ground invasion of Gaza – far deeper than the previous one”.

A friend from Luxembourg wrote “I just communicated with my friend in Gaza, they are already in such a desperate situation. Do you think there is still a chance to prevent a new round of bombing?”  I wrote back “It does not look good but we still have an hour until the ceasefire expiry, on Midnight Middle East  time. That would be 11pm in Luxembourg”.  She wrote: “I cross my fingers”.

And then, forty minutes before Midnight came the reprieve. After all, the cease-fire had been extended for 72 hours, which was immediately amended to 120 hours, a full five days. There was still a brief raid by the Israeli Air Force on nine targets in the Gaza Strip to retaliate for these three rockets at 10pm, but the targets were “chosen with surgical precision in order to avoid casualties” (if only they had done that earlier). And then things calmed down, and the ceasefire went into effect. At least for the next five days, the arena would be occupied by the wrangling of diplomats and politicians – Israelis with Palestinians and Egyptians and Americans and Europeans, and also Israelis with Israelis and Palestinians with Palestinians.

Precisely what did happen behind the scenes in these tense last hours? Commentator Yossi Melman today compared it to the Chicken Game made famous by a James Dean film, where two drivers drive towards each other on a collision course and one must swerve to avoid a mutually destructive collision.

So who did swerve?

Already a week ago Melman used Hollywood imagery in order to explain the Cairo talks: “The Head of Egyptian Intelligence is making to the Hamas leaders a Godfather-style offer”, he wrote, “an ‘offer which can’t be refused’: first you have to accept immediately and unconditionally a 72-hour ceasefire and come to Cairo, then we talk about everything else”.

What did happen in the action-packed week between the Godfather commentary and the Chicken Game? A short recapitulation: Hamas representatives came to Cairo, to hold indirect negotiations with the Israelis; they were informed by the Egyptians at the very outset that the issue of a seaport and airport in Gaza was off the agenda and would not be discussed; they made an angry retort, accusing the Egyptians of being “Netanyahu’s stooges”; they refused to renew the first 72-hour ceasefire, let it break off and engaged in several days of renewed exchange of rockets and bombings; after three days of this they consented to a new 72-hours ceasefire; they went back to Cairo – whereupon the Egyptians came up with a new offer, namely that the issue of a Gaza seaport and airport will be on the agenda within a month.

A month is a long time in Middle Eastern politics, and Israeli governments have wriggled out of obligations far more specific and explicit than this. Still, there is some difference between “Out of the question!” and “Let’s talk about it next month”. Enough, it seems, to make even perennially suspicious Hamas  decide to give this diplomatic track another try and spare the people of Gaza the horror of  a new round of bombings. At least for five days.

And more had happened in the past two weeks – especially in the international arena. The images of death and destruction from Gaza were seen on TV around the world and made a profound impression, and even the horrors emanating from north Iraq failed to overshadow them (as Netanyhau may have hoped). On November 9 there was the world-wide series of demonstrations in solidarity with the Gazans. In particular, the one in London drew a crowd of 150,000 – one of the largest demonstrations on any issue which the British capital saw in recent  years. Israeli exporters were alarmed to hear that European supermarkets no longer wanted to have Israeli fruit on their shelves, since the sight of it angered many customers. Moreover, the European Union informed Israeli dairy producers that as of September 1, dairy products originated at settlements in the Occupied Territories would be altogether denied entry to the European market. The Spanish government declared an arms embargo on Israel, which the British threatening a similar step should the fighting in Gaza resume. Then came the disclosure in the Wall Street Journal  that the Obama Administration had stopped a shipment of appropriately named Hellfire missiles to Israel, apparently out of anger at the Israeli military using American arms in the killing of Gazan civilians.

http://youtu.be/pNXBnCfq0_I

Then, there was the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva deciding to set up an investigation of Israel’s deeds in Gaza, similar to the Goldstone Commission which investigated the Cast Lead Operation of 2009 and which caused Israel great damage on the international arena. Being engaged on a full-fledged campaign to de-legitimize in advance the UN investigation, can Netanyahu afford to restart a full-fledged military assault in Gaza, inevitably entailing further mass destruction and killings? By all sober calculation, he does not really have such an option, whatever dire threats are made by generals and  hawkish ministers.

But  Netanyahu also has no real option of just letting the war in Gaza taper off inconclusively, with desultory shooting going on in the border region. Such an outcome would be intolerable to the inhabitants of southern Israel, who had suffered considerable hardships in the past month – much less than the inhabitants of Gaza, to be sure, but much more then the inhabitants of central Israel. At the moment idolized by the country’s mass media, inhabitants of the South are in a position to exact a prohibitive political prize from Netanyahu.

On the day after the ceasefire was extended by five days, inhabitants of the South streamed  into Tel Aviv to hold a mass rally in the Rabin Square. It was far from a peace-oriented event. Speakers – mayors and local politicians from various towns in the South - demanded that Netanyahu “Solve the problem once and for all, put an end to the shooting and restore calm to the border area, either by military means or by diplomacy”. Had the government sent the army into an all-out campaign to conquer Gaza, these might have become the most vocal of cheer-leaders. But should the military option be taken definitely off the table and a comprehensive political solution for Gaza substituted, some of the same people might lend it their support.

On August 10, Yediot Aharonot published very prominently a letter written by Tomer Bar Gil, a child from Kibbutz Nirim on the Gaza border:

My name is Tomer and I am ten and a half years old.

I live in Kibbutz Nirim, less than two kilometers from the Gaza border. For a month, during the war, I was staying with my uncle and aunt ​​in the North. Three days ago we were told that we could go back to Nirim because the shooting from Gaza had stopped. I was very happy to go home, to my own room, to my games and books. But on the next morning the 72-hour ceasefire ended and there was a Code Red alarm,  and then another alarm, and also mortar shells fell without the alarm sounding. Then I felt we have been told in vain that we can come back to live here, but in fact we have been brought back into an unsafe place. I try to convince my young brother to come out and play football, but he is afraid a missile would fall. Even the steps of my father at home are frightening because they sound like explosions, and I get frightened when a dog is barking, because they sense the Code Red alarms and start barking already before people hear the alarm.

I think we can’t go on like this. On the one hand our life is in danger, on the other hand you can’t just leave your home and run away all the time.

I don’t want this condition to continue. I know that it can be solved and I want the solution to happen already. I am angry with the government for not making a peace agreement with the Palestinians and only attacking them. This is bad for all of us. I want the world to help us make peace with the Palestinians, because then we and they will have a better life.

“(…) The procession went on, when suddenly a little child said "But the Emperor is naked, he hasn't got anything on". And the child’s father said: “Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?". And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't got anything on. A child says he is naked." Finally, the whole town was crying “He hasn't got anything on, the Emperor is naked, the Emperor is naked!". The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So he walked on, more proudly than ever.” (Hans Christian Andersen, April 7, 1837).  

"Solidarity with the South and with Gaza"  
 sign at Tel Aviv anti-war demo, Aug. 9

Tomer with his sister Ella, standing in front of 

a protective wall (photo Yediot Ahronot)

How dare they

So, the ceasefire was not renewed, and the war goes on. For how long?

Last night was very restless. Once every hour or two we got up to listen to the radio and look up Israeli and Palestinian and international news websites. There were many rumors and speculations and few pieces of hard news, but past midnight it had become clear that the negotiations in Cairo had collapsed. Or perhaps they had  never been real talks, but rather a  joint Israeli-Egyptian effort to impose terms  which Gazans in general and Hamas leaders in particular found completely unacceptable.  And now the government of Israel declares that it will not negotiate under fire, that the fire must cease in order to make it possible to talk the conditions under which the fire may cease.

Israelis were rather flabbergasted, having been reasonably certain that Operation Protective Edge was over.  More than half of all Israelis consider it to have ended with a draw. With this draw having included 64 dead soldiers, the public did not seem too sanguine about wanting it to continue. Dozens of newspaper articles summed up the military and political and economic and psychological aspects of the war. Economists concluded that war expenses could be covered without major dislocation, if there is no further crisis. The mass circulation papers were preparing to have a few more days of the “Love Our Boys in Uniform” campaign – and after the weekend  the normal staple of gossip and scandals was going to resume. So how dare the  Palestinians, who had already taken such a terrible beating, overturn everything and decide that the war is not over yet?

A few days ago former Knesset Member Yehuda Ben Meir - once an outspoken hawk and nowadays a rather mainstream commentator - made an effort to convince Israel’s citizens that they had indeed won the war: “After a month of fighting, Hamas agreed to a 72-hour cease-fire without preconditions; that is, it accepted the original Egyptian diktat – first a cease-fire and only then a discussion on the sides’ demands. The very fact Hamas has agreed to one without getting anything in advance – completely contradicting its stance for about three weeks – is tantamount to a harsh defeat. This isn’t the running of a white flag up a pole, but it’s definitely the raising of one, at least to half-mast”.

Three days later these words turned out to be, at the very least, premature. Rather than a white flag to half-mast, Israel finds itself facing a Hamas determined to go on fighting and holding up a battle flag inscribed with the words “The Port of Gaza”.

Upon their arrival in Cairo, the Palestinians had been informed by Egyptian security chiefs – speaking on behalf of Netanyahu – that the very issue of opening Gaza’s sea port (and airport) is “not on the agenda”. Netanyahu did offer some easing on the movement of goods from Israel into Gaza, some increase in the distance which Gazan fishing boats may move from shore before being intercepted by Israeli gunboats. In short – a bit of improvement in the prison conditions under which a million and eight hundred thousand Gazans are held, but by no means any change in the basic situation of their being held imprisoned by the two closely colluding warders, Israeli and Egyptian, who control all their access to the outside world.

It seems that Gazans would have to fight – and fight hard – in order to gain an open sea port, by which they could start building up their own direct relations and contacts in the wider world and break free of Israel and Egypt alike. A true War of Independence, though no one uses the term. And so, the war is once again escalating, as I write this.

***

On the second night of the 72-hour ceasefire, we were walking along a side street in a city which had emerged without a scratch from a month of war, thanks to the Israeli technological ingenuity and the American taxpayers’ money which had gone into Iron Dome. There was suddenly piteous mewing. A stray kitten was crying his heart out, under a parked car. About a month old, the time when mother cats stop caring for their children and they have to take care of themselves. Not all of them survive. There was an all-night shop nearby which sold milk, and the sympathetic young attendant provided a small plastic bowl which we placed as near the kitten as we could.

When coming home half an hour later, there was waiting on the computer a harrowing report published in the Christian Science Monitor and sent by an American friend. A detailed eyewitness report of what happened in the neighborhood of Khuzaa between July 21 and 25. The unimaginable gulf separating the two sides of this terribly unequal war.

“Faten Qdeih and her six children had fled Israeli shelling of their home. Her seven-year-old son Anas dashed outside in fear just as another strike landed. Qdeih followed him and found his lifeless body. (…)  A group gathered, and men took off their shirts and shoes to avoid being mistaken for militants. The men  raised white cloths and yelled “peaceful!” as they walked. “We were not expecting to get out alive”. (…) Wael Abu Erjala says he'll be haunted by a boy, dying in the street and calling for help. “I was carrying my aunt so I couldn't go to him… I don't think I'll ever sleep after what I saw.”

Are we going to have more of this in the coming days? On this first day after the resumption of fighting, “only” five Gazans were killed, a far cry from the three-digit death toll which characterized the days of last week – which is no guarantee of anything. But possibly, the outcry at the terrible things broadcast from Gaza to TV viewers worldwide, though not in Israel(!), might have some deterrent effect on the political and military decision makers. Also the firm words of the UN Secretary-General, and the incipient moves towards war-crimes charges. 

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2014/0805/In-this-Gaza-neighborhood-a-possible-Israeli-war-crime-video

CHANGE DIRECTION - NO TO THE WAY OF WAR
Change direction – move towards peace!

The next round of fighting can be prevented.

No to the way of wars - we must have a political solution!

Mass rally – Saturday, August 9, 2014, at 8.00 pm, Rabin Square, Tel Aviv.

On Saturday, Israel’s Peace Camp will rally at the Rabin Square.

After an agonizing month of war and death, in face of mounting waves of incitement and hatred which increasingly tear up the Israeli society, we stand up to demonstrate for peace and for democracy.
The next round of fighting can be prevented. It is far from inevitable that we continue the descent into an abyss of ever more cruel wars, of extreme hatred and the destruction of our neighbors and of ourselves.

There is another way: an immediate dialogue with the Palestinians – for a fair peace and for the reconstruction and opening of Gaza; a determined joint stand of Jews and Arabs against racism; a struggle for a future of Life.

Only a political solution of two states, Israel and Palestine side by side, will ensure independence, justice, security and hope for all who live in this land.

On Saturday night we will stand together – Jews and Arabs, residents of the South and of the whole country. Together we will call for an end to the cycle of bloodshed. The next war can and must be prevented, Israeli society should be healed.

Mass rally – Saturday, August 9, 2014, at 8.00 pm, Rabin Square

Organizations sponsoring this rally include: Meretz, Hadash, Peace Now, Combatants for Peace, Gush Shalom, Peace NGOs Forum, Young Labor in Tel Aviv and many others.

Transportation: Be'er Sheba Merakaz Ha'Morim near the University - 18.00 Contact: Immanuel 054-6480024 Jerusalem: Gan Ha'Paamon 18.15, Binyaney Ha'umma 18.30 Contact: Neta 054-4792073 Haifa Migdal Hanevi'im, Hadar (Al Middan Theatre) 17.45 Contact: Eyal 054-7843210

Now - Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Physical and mental tunnels

On Wednesday afternoon I went into our neighborhood pizzeria and noticed that their TV was no longer tuned to the non­stop 24­hour war channel. Rather, there was a non­Israeli music channel featuring a Spanish guitar player. That evening came the news that the army had presented to the Inner Cabinet a detailed plan for the complete conquest of the Gaza Strip, forecasting months of fighting and hundreds – possibly thousands – of dead Israeli soldiers. Even the outspoken cabinet war hawks Lieberman and Bennet shied away from supporting that plan.

So, it looked like the tide was turning and that the State of Israel has come up against the limitations of its mighty power. The atmosphere seemed to be improving a bit, with some fissures in the "war mania consensus", and such staunch mainstream commentators as Nahum Barne’a and former Mossad Director Efraim Halevy started to change their tune a bit.

The maverick Ari Shavit tried to analyze seriously how the past month affected us. The unexpected fighting abilities exhibited by Hamas, which had spent years preparing for this war, have broken up the complacency in which Israel had lived in the past decade. Feeling secure in overwhelming military superiority, Israeli society had shrugged off Kerry’s feeble attempts of peace­making, confident of an ability to “manage the conflict” without solving it. Israel was to go on indefinitely as “a villa in the jungle”, a prosperous high­tech enclave splendidly self­isolated from the stormy region all around. But it was a wafer­thin false security, as evident by how easily it was shattered and replaced by a deep­seated anxiety.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.608082

The success of Iron Dome in deflecting the missiles shot from Gaza, making it

possible for life to outwardly continue as normal in the cities of central Israel, was far from making Israelis feel truly secure. The panic around the Hamas cross-border tunnels was understandable for inhabitants of a kibbutz two kilometers from the Gaza border: “They could at any moment burst out of the earth and kill us all!”.  From Tel­-Avivans the same outcry probably refers to issues far deeper and profounder than physical tunnels dug in the sandy soil of the Gaza border zone.

Israel might count itself lucky that the war with Iran, towards which Netanyahu was pushing for years (and on preparing for which he spent a great deal of money) is (hopefully!) not going to happen. It might have been an even more rude and painful wakeup call.

Yesterday night I went to bed hoping that the tide was truly turning, that a UN/US brokered 72­hour ceasefire would be the beginning of long­overdue negotiations, with our side woken up from the illusion of omnipower and ready to talk rather than dictate. This morning had seen a new rude awakening, the Gaza avalanche not stopped but gathering an even greater destructive momentum. The prime minister’s nightmare has come true – once again an Israeli soldier is in the hands of Hamas.

Tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers had been introduced into the Hamas’ home ground of the Gaza Strip, and Hamas managed – as they announced in advance they would – to use the opportunity and capture one of them (“kidnap” as official Israeli statements put it). Until now, Israeli society had

been extremely sensitive to soldiers held in captivity, and ready to pay very high prices in order to get them back. Would that still hold with regard to Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin?

Who has broken the ceasefire? During the night, Israeli forces had advanced into the Rafah area so as to create a fait accompli before the 8.00 ceasefire deadline and take possession of several square kilometers of ground they had not held before. Strictly, that would not be considered a ceasefire violation, though it would not exactly be an act in good faith. (Good faith is in extremely short supply on either side to this conflict...) Israeli forces then proceeded to uncover and prepare to destroy a Hamas tunnel discovered in this same area. And then, apparently, the tunnel disgorged Hamas fighters who killed two soldiers and captured one and carried him with them back deep into the earth.

Did all this happen at 7.00 before the ceasefire was to enter into effect, or at 9.30 when it was supposed to be in force? Did the ceasefire terms entitle Israeli forces to go on blowing up tunnels in the areas of Gaza presently under their direct control? Did the ceasefire terms entitle Hamas fighters presently inside these tunnels to do something about the possibility of the tunnels and themselves being blown up? Did the ceasefire terms refer at all to these complicated issues? Diplomats might long argue about all this, and a Professor of International Law might eventually set it as an interesting thorny problem to his students. To thirty-five Palestinian inhabitants of the Rafah area, killed in the immediate massive Israeli retaliation, all this would no longer make any difference.

The madness goes on.

***

Demonstration: 

Saturday, 2nd of August. 20:00, Habima Theater Square, Tel Aviv

We continue to call for an immediate cease fire, putting an end to the war and bloodshed, while simultaneously seeking a political solution

Stop the attack on Gaza!

War does not lead to security, it merely claims more and more causalities.

Say yes to a political solution that will make possible a secure life for both people.

*** There will be assigned stewards. Please follow their instructions as for the location of the protest, the conduct during the protest and the dispersal***

We ask that all participants will avoid any violent conduct.

Coalition of Women for Peace & The Da'am Workers’ Party

Lighting candles at the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, 

in memory of all Palestinians and Israelis killed in the Gaza War.