Palestinian Land Day to be marked in Dublin, focusing on Veolia complicity with Israeli Apartheid

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Monday March 29, 2010 13:59 by Freda H & Kev - IPSC

On the evening of Tuesday 30th March the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) in Dublin will commemorate Palestinian Land Day by holding a solidarity vigil outside the GPO on O'Connell Street from 5 - 7pm.

This year we will be marking the continued Palestinian resistance to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing and land theft operations in Palestine. We ask you to join us for a couple of hours to stand in solidarity with the residents of Sheikh Jarrah, Bil'in, Nil'in, Neve Tirtze, Iraq Bourin, ‘Awarta (the latter two villages saw the murder of 4 Palestinian youths by the Israeli army in the last week) and the many other towns and villages resisting colonisation by the Israeli State.

Land Day, March 30th, is an annual day of commemoration for Palestinians for the events of that date in 1976 when, in response to the Israeli government's announcement of a plan to expropriate thousands of dunams of land for "security and settlement purposes", a general strike and marches were organised in Palestinian towns in Israel from the Galilee to the Negev. In the ensuing confrontations with the Israeli army and police, six Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed, about one hundred were wounded, and hundreds of others arrested. It is commemorated every year by Palestinians and their supporters around the world.

IPSC Spokesperson Freda Hughes said, "Over 30 years after the events which inspired the Land Day protests, it is appalling to see that Israeli theft of Palestinian land continues unabated and unchecked by the international community. Benjamin Nethanyahu's government has announced the Israeli state’s intention to expand illegal settlements around Jerusalem. This year we intend to highlight the role of Veolia, the operators of the Dublin LUAS, in entrenching Israeli Apartheid through their involvement in the running of the Jerusalem Light Rail system and other illegal projects in occupied Palestine.”

Ms. Hughes continued, "We recently held a demonstration at the LUAS stop at St. Stephen's Green as Veolia's tramline in the West Bank is enabling illegal colonial settlement construction. On 12th April there is a motion before Dublin City Council asking the City Manager not to sign or renew any further contracts with Veolia until such time as they cease their involvement in Jerusalem's Apartheid Rail system and in the illegal Tovlan landfill in the West Bank. This could not be better timed, and we hope that Dublin City Council, like Galway and Sligo councils before it, passes this motion and takes a stance for peace and against complicity with Israeli Apartheid."

Ms. Hughes concluded, "This tramline, like their infamous bus route on route 443 in the West Bank is likely to be an Israeli settler-only transport system, built on Palestinian land. Such projects along with ongoing house demolitions, settlement construction and annexation of Palestinian land not only cement a growing Apartheid system in the West Bank, they make the prospect of peace ever more distant."

Full details of the motion and Veolia's operations in illegally occupied Palestine can be found here: http://www.ipsc.ie/veolia

ENDS

For further information:

Dr. Fintan Lane, IPSC Media Officer: 087 125 8325
Freda Hughes, IPSC Spokesperson: XXX