On Thursday 1 August, the people of the UK joined activists in Palestine and across the world to demonstrate against the Israeli Government’s plan to further ethnically cleanse 50,000 Palestinian Bedouin from their ancestral land in the Naqab desert.
The protest, outside the Israeli Embassy in London, was organised as part of a “Day of Rage” called for by Palestinian citizens of Israel in response to Israel’s so called Prawer Plan that seeks to expel native Palestinians in favour of Jewish settlements.
The demonstrators were joined by Mahmoud Sarsak, the Palestinian national footballer, illegally imprisoned without charge by Israel and who undertook a peaceful 3-month hunger strike from March to June 2012 to demand his freedom. Sarsak addressed demonstrators, stating clearly that “Prawer will not pass “.
The Prawer Plan, which passed its first reading in the Knesset on 25th June 2013, aims not only to expel over 50,000 Palestinian Bedouins but also to confiscate over 210,000 acres of land in the Naqab desert, to demolish forty villages and to confine 30% of Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab to 1% of the land. The legislation has been widely condemned by international agencies and Governments. However, no affirmative action has been taken by either to stop this war crime taking place. For more information, please click here and here.
We urge UK citizens to write to the Foreign Secretary and your local representative expressing your concern if these plans go ahead and encouraging the British Government to take affirmative action against the racial discrimination practised by the Apartheid State of Israel.
You can write to the Foreign Secretary at:
Rt. Hon. William Hague
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AH
haguew@parliament.uk
And you local MP via: www.theyworkforyou.com