We
are here looking at the root causes of war. War is violence, war
is death and war is loss and I would like to honour all of those
who are suffering or who have died, with one minute of silence.
Thank you.
It
is difficult to welcome you here because we were not meant to
be here but rather, we were supposed to be in East Jerusalem,
and East Jerusalem was supposed to be part of a whole new entity,
and none of the violence that we have heard about , read about,
seen on our screens, should have occurred.. The fact that we are
here is a witnessing to the fact that what we have done has not
been sufficient to change the way many of the institutions that
govern us work. And those institutions are institutions for whom
war has benefits, whether it is in the board room or whether it
is because of narrow national interests, not only in the Middle
East but in over forty countries in the world, war is the reality.
WILPF
has been very active in the Middle East more than in any other
region since the 1920's when we started being very concerned about
the Balfour Declaration, but in the last year we have been abnormally
silent. We have not made declarations, we have not made statements,
we are baffled, we feel there is something else that needs to
be done. We hope that these two days and these two weeks will
help us reinvent or create a way in which we can be more effective.
WILPF's
goal is to bring together women from different philosophical and
political beliefs, united in their determination to abolish the
causes and the delegitimise war. That is the essence of what we
are about. And in the many missions, statements, visits, that
we have made we have been constant in asking very specific things.
I am talking about the Middle East but I am also talking about
all the other military interventions, we asked for respect for
international law, conventions and UN resolutions and agreements,
the establishment of zones free from weapons of mass destruction,
including nuclear weapons, strong regulation of the arms trade
and plans for eliminating the arms trade, an end to all injustices,
because those are fundamentally the causes of conflicts, the creation
of just and fair policies and institutions that ensure a fair
distribution of wealth, and the creation of vibrant and dynamic
communities where the basic needs of food, lodging health, education
are not to be fought over, they are granted.
We
have made those demands to institutions that for whatever reasons
have become less and less powerful. Our own governments are more
and more enthralled by corporations, and the UN has in many ways
has been weakened, and weakened by the way we use it and talk
about it. So we need to reenergise those institutions so that
our demands find a counterpart. Today is a time of reflection,
of learning, a time for us to clear the path for a compassionate,
intelligent, purposeful creativity that takes advantage of all
the information that we have been given to move forward.
A
booklet is available that I feel has to be purchased, because
it has in a very few pages, what seems to be some of the most
essential analysis of what the Middle East conflcit is, and the
author of this wonderful report, and the updated introduction
is Paul Berthoud who has worked for over thirty years within the
United Nations and for many years on the Middle East.
