BY MARK MCKELVEY
m.mckelvey@ulsterherald.com
A LOCAL man has spoken of his concern for friends in Palestine after looking on in horror as news reports portrayed the death and devastation being inflicted in the war-torn Middle East region over the past week.
Eddie Molly, 24, from Pomeroy, spent three weeks in the West Bank during the summer of 2006 making a documentary film on how physical structures, such as blockade walls and roads, affected the politics in the region and the daily lives and struggles of the Palestinian people. Eddie made the trip while a politics and philosophy student in Glasgow University, where he had been involved with the Palestine solidarity campaign.
Eddie explained, "The Palestinians are fantastic people. I was in the West bank before the blockade of Gaza just after Hamas was elected into government. There was some friction between Fatah and Hamas at that time and we got caught up in a strike in Ramala.
"We were staying with Palestinian people, and they were willing to give us everything they had. Their generosity was amazing. All they wanted was for people to come and see what is going on. They feel that if people knew the extent of their suffering and what they go through the world leaders would not let it happen.
He continued, "I have friends that I made in Palestine but it has been very difficult to be able to get in contact with them at the moment. Although most of the strikes have been in Gaza, there are people being killed in the West Bank and that isn't being covered as much in the media.
"It is totally indefensible that the state of Israel is allowed to continue perpetrating this aggression onto the Palestinian people. They are destroying schools and hospitals. This strike has been six months in the planning and for the past three months the Israeli government has not allowed any medical supplies to go to the hospitals. So while the Israelis are bombing Gaza, people are being turned away from hospital because they do not have the capabilities to treat them because the Israelis have manufactured this situation."
He concluded, "The Irish government and all of Europe should be saying this is totally unacceptable and make public their disgust at what is going on in Palestine."
Meanwhile, the Most Revd Alan Harper, OBE, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland and Cardinal Seán Brady, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, together called upon the authorities in both Israel and Gaza immediately to disengage and cease all hostilities to enable a permanent ceasefire to be negotiated.
"Only when violence has ceased will it be possible to begin to negotiate a peace that will last," they said.
