Jordan Times
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Queen calls for ending
Gaza blockade
AMMAN (JT) - Her Majesty Queen Rania has said that the Israeli naval attack on
the Gaza Freedom Flotilla last week came as a shock to the world.
In an article she contributed to London-based The Independent newspaper,
published yesterday and carried widely in the international media, Her Majesty
said: “The attack stunned the world because of its blatant and absurd disregard
for anything resembling international law, human rights and diplomatic norms.
Its glaring outrageousness stunned, but didn't surprise me.”
The Queen called for an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza, that has left its
1.5 million residents without a healthy water supply and in an extremely
inhumane situation.
She said: “On the flotilla were 10,000 tonnes of, not guns, but vital
humanitarian aid. The people of Gaza desperately need it to survive the 1,000
days of illegal blockade which has crippled Gaza and reduced it to a barely
functioning, open-air prison. This is aid like cement to rebuild homes, which
have lain in rubble and ruin since the monstrous attacks on Gaza last year;
school supplies and medical equipment, like water purification tablets and
wheelchairs.”
Queen Rania, an active global advocate for education and children’s rights,
expressed the urgency of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, adding that “every
day the blockade continues is another day our humanity remains under siege”.
Her Majesty also stressed the need for moderation, and the need to move away
from hardline ideology, one that Israel is using in its defence of the flotilla
attack.
The attack, she says, “cannot be viewed in isolation. It is another upshot of a
dogma long fermenting on Israel’s political landscape”, adding that, “it is a
doctrine that lives for itself and off others. It survives by tapping into the
subliminal and cognisant levels. It implants into public consciousness a set of
tenets that see Israel’s very existence as eternally under threat, to be
defended through any means (preferably through use of force to show the enemy
who’s boss). It is best served through the ?doption of an ‘us against the world’
mentality”.
The Queen voiced her frustration with the radical policies that “debar
Palestinian value and, by extension, human value”.
“What is most frustrating is Israel’s defence of its actions. By attacking
criticism as part of an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda war, Israel, yet
again, fails to understand that the problem is policy, not PR.”
Her Majesty warned that “the tides don’t turn in our region. Moderation will be
amongst the most painful casualties of continued aggression and hardline
policies, she said.
“As someone who lived through the late King Hussein’s fight for peace, until his
very last breath, and watches his son, my husband, King Abdullah, continue that
fight, it actually breaks my heart to see us moving further and further away
from peace.”
Her Majesty concluded by stressing the importance of peace and the return to
moderation on both sides by saying: “Peace. People. Moderation. I would have
thought that those were too heavy a price to pay for sustaining a hardened
stance. So, when flotillas came to break the blockade, they came to help the
people of Gaza. But, just as important, they came to break the blockade on the
Israeli mind.”