June 5 was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the June 1967 war, a war with which a new stage began in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since that time, a heavy toll in bloodshed was levied upon the peoples of the region. Many thousands have paid with their lives for the ongoing occupation, and the cruel acts of oppression carried out over the years as part of it regardless of the party holding power in Israel - but always with the backing to that occupation of American Imperialism.

June 5 also marked the twentieth anniversary to the Lebanon War, initiated and conducted by Israel's present Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and which also took a toll of thousands of victims.

On June 5 this year, we could see how little do the citizens of Israel derive any security from the ongoing occupation and acts of aggression in the Occupied Territories, occupation and oppression which have grown to unprecedented dimensions in the past year. It was on this day that seventeen innocent Israelis were killed, themselves victims of the occupation, in the latest of the suicide bombings. Such acts of desperation (which we condemn) are perpetrated by Palestinians who had seen thousands of their brothers and sisters killed by the occupation authorities. This, in addition to the tens of thousands wounded Palestinians, and to the extreme hardships imposed on the entire population, including poverty, want, mistreatment, deprivation of livelihood, and extreme travel restrictions.

On June 5 this year, there was another criminal attack on the offices of Yasser Arafat in Gaza, in the course of which his life was seriously threatened. This is another crime, which could drag the whole region into an unprecedented whirlwind of bloodshed!

On June 5, we have seen again how deep racism has penetrated into Israeli life. It was exactly on this day that the Knesset adopted the racist decision to discriminate against Arab children in the granting of child allowances, by means of restoring the criteria of "army families" as determining the height of the allowance. While Israeli politicians frequently condemn such racists as Haider in Austria and Le Pen in France, the same politicians do not flinch from the kind of outright racist measures which these two notorious leaders would never have dared sponsor in their countries.

On June 5 we again saw what a heavy economic price the Israeli workers, employees and the poor pay for the ongoing occupation. It was on this day that the Knesset approved a series of unprecedented economic decrees hurting the poorest sectors of society. Hundreds of thousands of families were thereby deprived of the most basic means of living, including food and medicines. On the same day we also heard of an all-time high number of unemployed, a "record" which the government seemingly intends to "break" again and again. The government is in fact using the deteriorating security situation as pretext under which already-prepared decrees are approved, aimed at abolishing the very basic social rights.

Since the war of June 1967, all governments of Israel are trying to liquidate the Palestinian problem by using brute force. Again and again they subscribe to the doctrine that what was not achieved by force will be achieved by even more force. Under this doctrine, the Sharon-Peres Government perpetrated in the Occupied Territories the most widespread acts of aggression undertaken since June 1967. But as in the past, also now the military means will prove of no avail. Despite all its losses and difficulties, the Palestinian people are more than ever determined to go on struggling for an end to the occupation and for the creation of its own independent state.

On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the occupation we raise our voices in a loud and clear call for: