WSCF statement on Palestine
The Executive Committee of the World Student Christian Federation
April 21, 2002
Because of the recent escalation of violence in the Occupied territories of Palestine, the Executive Committee of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) stands behind its resolution from the 32nd General Assembly (Beirut 1999):
Comprehensive peace and justice, rejection of violence and achievement of development and strategic goals for the people of the Middle-East, especially youth.
To achieve peace and stability in the region, all parties concerned with the peace process, especially Israel, must fulfill its obligations through:
- The complete and unconditional implementation of United Nations Resolutions and with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, resulting in full withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied territories in Palestine, Southern Lebanon and the Syrian Golan Heights;
- And, the establishment of a Palestinian Sovereign State, including Jerusalem.
The building of cooperative and integrative relationships between the countries in the Middle East region is not possible as long as Arabs are denied the fullness of their rights. It is difficult for peace to flourish in the confiscated land, a land of wounded justice.
The Executive Committee (ExCo) of the WSCF calls on all parties involved in the present conflict to renounce violence and seek a peaceful and just resolution. In the context of asymmetrical power relations and radical disparity between the Israeli army and the Palestinian people, the ExCo of the WSCF calls on an immediate stop to extraordinarily destructive invasion by the Israeli army of the West Bank's Palestinian towns and refugee camps.
Also, the ExCo of the WSCF calls on the international community to renounce all discourses that seek to obscure the recent history that has nurtured the present conflict: the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the creation of a dispossessed people; the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza and their military occupation since1967; the invasion of 1982 with its 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinian dead and the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
The ExCo of the WSCF thus believes that no just peace will take root in the region if it does not address the real issue: Israel's refusal to accept the sovereign existence of a Palestinian people that is entitled to rights over what the present Israeli government and many of the people supporting it consider exclusively to be the land of Greater Israel, i.e. the West Bank and Gaza.
Authentic peace and security for all the people of Israel and Palestine will only become tangible when the dehumanizing occupation of the Palestinian people comes to an end and when the Palestinian people are free to live their lives with dignity.