A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, il Cantiere #23: Solidarity beyond borders - Peace and self-determination for the people of the Middle East - Alfio Nicotra, National Co-President Un Ponte Per. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On the map of the Middle East the conflict is spreading like an oil 
stain. Those who thought that the war would stop in Gaza - a territory 
now reduced to rubble - and the West Bank must think again. ---- The 
domino effect is there for all to see. In Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and 
Yemen there is fighting in several places even though, like tightrope 
walkers, the little bit of diplomacy that survives the new dogma of war 
as a natural resolution of crises is keeping the most instincts in 
check. incendiary. But the rope is so tense that it risks, sooner rather 
than later, breaking.

The Palestinian question, considered dead and buried before October 7, 
has forcefully returned to the agenda. All the architecture built for a 
peace without Palestinians, the so-called "Abraham's Peace" between 
Israel and the Gulf petrocracies, has been shattered. Just as the idea 
cultivated for almost three decades by Tel Aviv was shattered - from the 
assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the hands of a 
Zionist extremist onwards - of an Israeli security based on the most 
technologically advanced security technologies, on muscular strength of 
the fourth strongest army in the world and on the apartheid legislation 
with which it was intended to neutralize any desire for revolt of the 
Palestinian people.

Of course, on 7 October Hamas and its allies were guilty of crimes 
against humanity by indiscriminately targeting civilians, but no fight 
against terrorism can legitimize the destruction of 80% of the buildings 
in Gaza, the deportation of 2.3 million Palestinians, the systematic 
attack on everything that, under international law, should enjoy 
protection and should be excluded from war operations (hospitals, 
schools, churches, mosques, headquarters of NGOs or humanitarian 
organizations, refugee camps, etc.).

The silence and complicity of our Government and those of the European 
Union in the face of the massacre of civilians produced every day by the 
IDF (the Israeli armed forces) is not just fearfulness towards the 
Netanyahu government: it is a real promissory note in white given to 
Israel which hides an objective racist undertone. Would we have ever 
allowed the London government to raze the Catholic neighborhoods of 
Belfast in the name of the IRA's war on terrorism? Or should the 
government of Madrid, in order to strike the ETA militants, displace the 
population of San Sebastian in the Basque country by military force?

The blaming of all the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip for having voted 
for Hamas in 2006 is unacceptable from every point of view. The dignity 
of the international community was safeguarded only by the initiative of 
the South African government (later followed by a dozen countries) to 
denounce Israel to The Hague for violation of the genocide treaty. UN 
Secretary General Gutierrez - more than a hundred workers from United 
Nations agencies were killed in the field by Israeli bombings - tried to 
invoke the ceasefire as an indispensable precondition but was blocked by 
the right of veto unexpectedly used by the Use to protect Israel.

In this context, the ejaculation on "two peoples, two states" repeated 
like a psalm by our rulers to save their consciences now appears 
useless. This is not only because the territories on which, according to 
the Oslo agreements, the Palestinian state was supposed to arise have in 
fact been eaten up by the new colonies, but also because of the failure 
of the idea of the "Nation State" which in the Middle East meant the 
creation of states invented by 'high by the colonial powers. Since the 
collapse of the Ottoman Empire, confessional states, pure ethnically or 
by religious affiliation, have often been the cause of civil and power 
wars that have bloodied the whole area.

The idea of a plurinational, multiethnic and plural space also on the 
religious side, in which all citizens have equal rights and equal 
duties, is appearing among several Arab and even Israeli intellectuals. 
The idea of coexistence, of overcoming the borders that are now 
increasingly closed between peoples, the construction of an inclusive 
confederalism that is being tested in the experience of the North East 
in Syria, demonstrate that it is not just a utopia grown from Abdullah's 
intuition Ocalan, but something concrete as well as a great hope for the 
entire Middle East.

If a meter of ice does not form in a single night, then we also have the 
duty to remember when the powerful of the earth decided that the world 
had to embark on the path of new wars and genocides.

The watershed for us at Un Ponte Per is January 17, 1991, when with the 
"Desert Storm" operation it was decided to unleash a global war against 
Iraq, wiping out the hopes of peace that had opened up following the 
fall of the Wall of Berlin and the end of the balance of terror between 
East and West.

It was the choice to clear the war into international relations - among 
other things for the first time broadcast live on television almost as 
if it were a colossal war game - that poisoned the following decades. 
From the planning of the war, from his attempt to make it "drinkable" 
for public opinion - humanitarian wars, for democracy, to prevent 
genocide, etc. - to the new strategic concept of NATO which converted 
the Western alliance into a sort of global gendarmerie at the service of 
the richest countries to move towards the marginalization of the UN and 
the replacement of international law with the law of the strongest. It 
is from this womb that the current international insecurity was born, 
the wells of hatred were filled, fanaticism and sectarian tendencies 
were seen growing: Al Qaeda and Daesh (ISIS) are daughters of this 
breeding ground.

Between 2001 and 2021, global military spending doubled, making the 
world even more insecure. Among other things, these are rapidly updated 
data, pushed up by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and by the fact that 
thousands of unprecedented missile and artillery warheads have poured 
into Gaza. The request to all NATO countries, including Italy, to bring 
military spending to 2 percent of GDP as soon as possible is destined 
not only to bring social policies to their knees but also to unleash a 
new and excessive global arms race.

This "world disorder" based on the green light for wars and weapons is 
obviously at the service of an increasingly unjust world. Since 2020, 
the five richest men in the world (Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff 
Bezos, Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett) have more than doubled their 
fortunes - from $405 billion to $869 billion - at a rate of $14 million 
per year. 'now, while 5 billion poorer people have seen their condition 
overall unchanged if not worsened.

According to the recent Oxfam report , at current rates, within a decade 
we could have the first trillionaire in the history of humanity, but it 
will take over two centuries (230 years) to put a real limit on poverty. 
For  nearly 800 million workers   in  52 countries,   wages have not 
kept  pace with inflation . The  related wage bill   saw a  decline in 
real terms of 1.5 trillion dollars   in the  two-year period 2021-2022 , 
a  loss equivalent to almost a monthly salary   for each worker.

This is why for international solidarity workers - not surprisingly 
criminalized by the political class and mainstream media - moving in 
this context means working to counter this trend towards global 
injustice. It means first of all seeing in the civil societies of the 
Middle Eastern countries in which Un Ponte Per operates, the 
protagonists of their redemption, emerging from a charitable approach 
which too often becomes the other side of the coin of neocolonialism. 
Over the years we have created educational, health, humanitarian, 
cultural, dialogue and social cohesion projects which you can view on 
the web page www.unponteper.it.

 Over time, Un Ponte Per's intervention has changed, adapting to 
changes in the contexts in which we operate, always maintaining the same 
objective: promoting peace and human rights and preventing new 
conflicts. Equally unchanged is the commitment to ensuring the quality 
of its projects, paying particular attention to the support and 
self-determination of the populations and communities involved, to the 
valorisation of the partnership, to the respect of subjectivities and 
above all to the political and social demands of the people and 
organizations we collaborate with. Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq were 
crossed, for example, by a mobilization of boys and girls who took to 
the streets (in Iraq for very long months and at the cost of hundreds of 
victims) to contest the corruption of the parties in power, the 
sectarian division of society, ask for dissolution of private and 
religious militias, stop the destruction of the environment carried out 
by multinationals (think of the extractive policies that are poisoning 
entire territories), ask for the right to strike and the right to 
education for everyone. Young societies - half the population is under 
20 years of age - which, as in the case of Iraq, have grown up never 
knowing true peace.

In Syria we operate in the territories liberated from ISIS and the Assad 
regime with our partner, the Kurdish/Syrian Red Crescent, and with the 
local administrations of "democratic confederalism". We have always 
placed at the heart of our initiative the role of women, their 
emancipation and direct protagonism as a revolutionary engine of change 
in society. "Woman, life and freedom" is not only an extraordinary 
slogan that challenges patriarchal society but it is a real political 
program.

From these struggles we learn, aware that bridges are made to be 
crossed in both directions and that solidarity does not have just one 
meaning. In a world where humanity seems to be lost - as Vittorio 
Arrigoni wrote from Gaza - remaining human alongside those who struggle 
is easier and more instructive.

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