GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/
Press Release: 21/5/2001

This press conference was held at the wake of Israel's attack on targets in the heavily populated cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarem, and Gaza on Friday May 18th, 2001, using US-supplied F16 fighter aircrafts.

Following is the joint statement issued at the conference:

A JUST PEACE: THE ONLY WAY OUT
A JOINT PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI APPEAL TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Israel's use on Friday of F-16 warplanes for the first time since the 1967
War against targets in the heavily populated cities of Ramallah, Nablus,
Tulkarem, and Gaza signals a dangerous escalation of the conflict to which
the world cannot be indifferent. Israel's massive attacks on Friday and
Saturday represent a concerted attempt to break Palestinian resistance to
an unjust and imposed "peace," to use its powerful military arsenal to
browbeat the Palestinians into submission, and specifically to cause the
collapse of the Palestinian Authority. Behind the rhetoric of
self-defense, of blaming the Palestinians for the violence, lies an
absolute refusal to abandon its occupation, and in particular its steadily
expanding settlements. While we deplore the loss of innocent life in the
attack on the Netanya shopping center, an act immediately condemned by the
Palestinian Authority as well, this is no way justifies the Israel
government's attempt to cast its military campaign against the Palestinian
people as mere "reaction." There is no symmetry here, no proportional or
sensible link. The Israeli government presents its actions as
"self-defense," as though there were no occupation.

Seven months of attacks with Apache helicopters, tanks, missiles and
troops culminated (but did not end) in Friday's attacks on Palestinian
cities with US-supplied F-16 warplanes. Add to this the destruction of
hundreds of homes over the past seven months, the uprooting of thousands
of fruit trees and the clearing of hundreds of acres of farm land, the
wholesale attacks on the Palestinian infrastructure and the killing of
more than 500 civilians, many of them children, and the claim of mere
"reaction" collapses. So, too, does the illusion of symmetry.

Israeli policy, initiated by Ehud Barak and escalated by Ariel Sharon,
highlights the futility of trying to impose an inadequate solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict by force. There is only one way out: through
a just peace based on an end to the Israeli Occupation, the emergence of a
viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state and the resolution of the
refugee issue in accordance with UN Resolution 194. Despite the current
polarization of our peoples, we believe that the overwhelming majorities
in both our societies desire a genuine peace.

We, representatives of Palestinian and Israeli human rights and peace
organizations, call on the international community:

• To end the Israeli government's escalation of military force
  against the Palestinian people, to lift the multiple siege on Palestinian
  towns and villages, to put an end to Israel's policy of political
  assassinations, extra judicial killings and abduction of targeted
  Palestinian political figures and activists, to stop the destruction of
  human lives, to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes and to stop the
  uprooting of trees and confiscation of land.
• To take immediate and concrete steps in providing international
  protection to the Palestinian people;
• To oppose Israeli attempts to strengthen its Occupation,
  including settlement activities, as called for by the Egyptian-Jordanian
  initiative and the Mitchell Commission;
• To hold Israel accountable according to the principles of
  international humanitarian law and UN Resolutions; and
• To ensure that any peace settlement be based on a complete
  Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, including east
  Jerusalem, and conformity with United Nations Resolutions 242, 338 and
  194, and the 'land-for-peace' equation, formally adopted in Washington DC
  in 1993.

Only a just peace will free both our peoples from the tragic loss of life
this weekend has brought us.

[signed]
Palestinian & Israeli organizations

Hanan Ashrawi, MIFTAH
Uri Avneri, Gush Shalom
Khader Sheqirat, LAW
Leah Tsemel, Attorney
Jeff Halper, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions