The Weakest Peace Broker at Annapolis

End The Raids & Deportations –
Stop Dividing Families


PAKISTAN-USA FREEDOM FORUM
2257 92nd Street
East Elmhurst, NY 11369, USA
Tel (718) 397-5027 or (718) 763-3543
Fax (718) 574-4333
E-mail: pakusaff@hotmail.com




Free Kashmir –
No Indian Army

The Weakest Peace Broker at Annapolis
For almost 60 years, the Palestinian people have been deprived of their homeland. With the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, the great majority of the Palestinian people were turned into refugees, either in the surrounding Arab countries, crowded into camps in the West Bank and Gaza, or treated as third class citizens within Israel. After 1967, Israel occupied the rest of Palestine, and still occupies the Golan Heights, which is part of Syria. Since then, Israel has built extensive settlements in the West Bank, and has built an apartheid wall cutting of the Palestinians from their most productive land. These actions are all contrary to a myriad of UN resolutions which called for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the return of the territories occupied in 1967, and the right of return of the Palestinians to their home throughout Palestine. In all its actions, Israel has had the full support of the US, which gives it $# billion a year as a watchdog for the interests of the US oil corporations in the Middle East.
With this background, the US is now trying to act as “peacemaker” between the Palestinians and Israel. But how can a country be an honest broker for peace when all its actions for 60 years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, have favored one side against the other. Who can forget the billions of dollars wasted by the infamous Henry Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” that resulted in further oppression of the Palestinian people? The US claims to stand for democracy, but when the Palestinian people democratically chose Hamas to form a government, the US refused to have anything to do with that government. In a continuing display of a double standard, the US is supporting the brutal military dictatorship of General Musharraf in Pakistan in his declaration of a state of emergency against the people. And the US government has refused to recognize the right of the people of Kashmir to choose their own future, a right recognized in UN resolutions.
Even at home, while the US government preaches democracy to countries around the world, it treats African-Americans as second-class citizens, as witnessed by its response to the victim of Hurricane Katrina, the treatment of the Jena 6, and countless victim of police brutality. It is carrying out raids on immigrant workers, deporting tens of thousands of people, separating husbands from wives and parents from children. Especially since 9-11, it has been undermining the democratic rights enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.
In these times, the people of Pakistan have been standing up all across their country as well as abroad, against the military dictatorship, for justice and democracy, and against the military interference of the superpower in their internal affairs.
In these circumstances, we call upon all academics, professors, journalists, students and workers, in the US, in Europe and throughout the world, to stand up for a just and democratic peace in the Middle East, for the right of self-determination of the peoples from Palestine to Kashmir, Chechen, Kosovo, Somalia and elsewhere. A Palestinian state that is truly sovereign must have the right to its own armed forces, to full control of its borders, to control of its resources such as electric power, to choose its own government, and to allow all Palestinians to return to their homeland.
Can the US government, which has been unable to sit down and negotiate its differences with the small country of Cuba, but instead has carried out a brutal embargo against it for 50 years, can this government be an honest broker in the Middle East?

Dr. Muhammad Shafique Mr. Shahid Comrade
President General Secretary
(917) 280-0840