3 June, NYC: Protest Israel’s siege of Gaza and attacks on Palestinian fishermen

Friday, 3 June
4:00 pm
G4S Offices NYC – 19 W. 44th Street
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1629184087399859/

fishers

In recent months, Israeli occupation forces’ longstanding attacks on Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Gaza have escalated dramatically. While the occupation claims to have expanded a permitted fishing zone, enforced with lethal firepower, from six to nine nautical miles, Israeli warships have “targeted Palestinian fishermen 58 times, arrested 65 fishermen – including 10 minors – in 17 separate incidents, wounded six fishermen, confiscated 22 fishing boats in 16 separate incidents, and destroyed fishing equipment in 10 separate incidents” since the start of 2016, according to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

These attacks form part of a closure, imposed by occupation forces on the Gaza Strip over decades, that escalated sharply after the democratic election of a new Palestinian government in 2006. The occupation’s draconian restrictions on the movement of people and goods, along with its repeated military onslaughts and their destruction of Palestinian industry, resources, infrastructure, and life, have pushed the local unemployment rate to 41.2%, the highest in the world. 75,000 remain displaced following Israel’s destruction of their homes, which have yet to be rebuilt, during its 2014 bombardment. Family members, patients, students, and workers are trapped, with over 25,000 having applied for rare permits to leave through the one crossing with Egypt.

Marking six years since Israeli naval commandos’ 2010 raid on the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, during which they killed ten Turkish activists, Palestinian and international groups have called for an International Week to Lift the Siege on Gaza starting May 31.

G4S, the world’s largest security company and second-biggest private employer, equips Israeli prisons and detention centers where Palestinian prisoners, including many fishermen detained off the coast of Gaza, are held and tortured, as well as the occupation forces and infrastructure – like checkpoints surrounding the Gaza Strip – routinely used to massacre Palestinians while holding millions under military rule.

Join us to answer a united appeal by Palestinian prisoners for escalated boycotts of G4S and stand with Palestinians under siege.

Demand G4S immediately terminate its contracts with Israeli prisons and detention centers, occupation and security forces and checkpoints, and that Israel free all Palestinian prisoners, including detained fishermen, and end its siege of Gaza.

Support the Palestinian people, the Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian Resistance and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.