The narration of the latest attacks in Gaza should not deprive Palestinians of their dignity and right to resist, they say
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – A group of prominent writers and artists led by Arundhati Roy and Nayantara Sahgal have backed Palestinians to fight against Israeli government saying rockets fired from Gaza against Israel are part of a resistance which is supported by international law.
“Palestinians in Gaza fired rockets at Israel. The rockets did not start or define the brutality that followed. The rockets came as part of a resistance — backed by international law — of an illegal occupation,” the statement has been quoted by The Hindu as saying.
The collective of prominent people accused Israeli government of killing Palestinian children and blamed Israeli settlers for illegally trying to snatch Palestinian land.
The collective urged the Egyptian Air Force to provide a ‘no-fly zone’ above the Gaza strip and criticized the Arabs for the lack of political will to protect the Palestinians.
The group, consisting of some of the leading artists, authors and actors, drew attention to the UN General Assembly resolution 1514 of 1960 that supported the decolonisation process.
“In early May, Israel attempted to illegally evict Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah (Jerusalem). This eviction is part of the ‘continuous nakba’, as the Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury puts it. These families had settled in this part of Jerusalem when they had been expelled by the Israelis from their homes, and now they were to be expelled again,” the statement declared.
The ongoing attacks in East Jerusalem and Gaza by Israeli government were fuelled by efforts of Jewish settlers to build housing units in Sheikh Jarrah part of Jerusalem. This was resisted by local Palestinians, which led to Israeli forces using force against Palestinian protesters. Apart from the disturbed neighbourhood of Jerusalem, similar Arab-Israeli fights have spread to other Israeli cities like Lod, Haifa and Beersheba.
The collective, which includes actors Ratna Pathak Shah and Naseeruddin Shah, novelist Githa Hariharan and economist Prabhat Patnaik, said narration of the latest attacks in Gaza should not deprive Palestinians of their “dignity and right to resist”.
