PEACE LINES MESSAGERIES DE LA PAIX www.peacelines.org peacelines@gmail.com

Newsletter n° 122

December 23, 2023

To all our friends in the Nobel community, worldwide, One year ago, on December 21, 2021, our main source of inspiration, as far as non-violent resistance goes, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, passed away. Always the first on a Nobel Call for peace and common sense, against terror. Let this not deter us or diminish us. In this hour of horror we remember that the smallest lights shine brighter in the deepest darkness. Let this call be one of them.

NOBEL CALL FOR THE RELEASE OF HOSTAGES AND FOR A DURABLE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES

Because we are human beings, and human beings are not bargaining chips,

Because we are horrified by the carnages and pogroms of October 7 in the name of « armed resistance »,

We express our ultimate and universal condemnation concerning all acts of bloody savagery allegedly for the sake of a « war of liberation ». No political or religous speech, whatsoever, can ever legitimate the massacre of innocents, the murder of a child, the rape of a woman, the kidnapping of elderly people in their home.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages detained in Gaza. Prisoners of war can be exchanged. Abducted civilians are not prisoners of war.

Gaza civilians also are hostages in this horrendous chaos.

For a durable cessation of hostilities, we support a permanent end to all attack tunnels and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

When partisan minds speak of « resisting occupation with all means and methods » as a « sacred right »*, we strongly object that kidnapping elderly civilians in their home is by no means part of a liberation struggle. Neither is the parading of young women seized as trophies.

• Article 25 of Hamas Charter (2017)

Why we look forward to a total demilitarization in Gaza : after a 40-year terror campaign that left over 800 killed, half of them civilians, « ETA has decided to declare an end to its historical cycle and its role. ETA has completely dissolved all its structures. » It abandoned its armed campaign in 2011. Their ultimate statement is that, although « this decision does not bring an end to the conflict between the Basque homeland and Spain and France », the full dissolution was enacted in 2018, and included apologizing to its victims and their families.

« Let’s not repeat our mistakes.

  Let’s not let our problems fester.

  Doing so would only give rise to new problems. »

Likewise, 2007 was the end of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning first launched in September 1997. The IRA then pledged to use « exclusively peaceful means ». « All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms… to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible. » The IRA conclusion was :

« We are conscious that many people suffered in the conflict.

There is a compelling imperative on all sides to build a just and lasting peace. »

There is no other way in Gaza and the whole of Palestine.

When Hamas won the 2006 elections, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel declared in Davos that Hamas should be accepted, as long as it renounced its goal of destroying Israel. « Forgiveness will be, » he added, « the next step, but first they must renounce the policy and ideology of destroying a neighbor state. » He concluded with the « hope the international community will prevail and tell Hamas to change ». We may be another year, or ten years, from a just and lasting peace, but there is no alternative to demilitarization, as it happened in Ireland and the Basque homeland, if we don’t want to witness the horrendous cycle of October 7 and the bombings that ensue. There must be a human way out of this abhorent insanity.