Palestina Resisteix does not want the Catalan government’s official visit to the state of Israel only to be remembered for the strife caused by Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira’s refusal to join a cerimony where the Catalan flag was missing.

This cerimony was not like any protocol act and neither is Israel a country as any other.

It was a wreath-laying tribute to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ubiquitously portrayed as a fighter for peace along with Gandhi, Desmond Tutu or Martin Luther King.

In his capacity as Israeli Prime Minister Rabin led the 1993 Oslo Agreement Peace Process for which he was awarded the 1994 Peace Nobel Prize. The very fact that in 1995 he was shot just on his way back from a “Peace Rally” by a Jewish hardline zealot completes the picture that the present violence is caused by the extremists of both sides.

However there is more to the picture than meets the eyes.

Yitzhak Rabin spent his life for the furtherance of Zionism, that is the creation and expansion of a Jewish supremacist state at the expense of the native Arab Palestinian people. He joined in 1941 the Palmach commando units of the Haganah, base of the future Israeli army. In 1948 he led the Harel commando who performed the ethnic cleansing of Al Ramle and Lydda whence 50,000 civilians fled to refugee camps.

Chief of Staff Rabin resigned his army commission in 1968 and entered in Labour politics. During his service in government, Israel started the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, expropriating Palestinian land and resources while denying that the Palestinian people even existed. He is bitterly remembered by the Defense Minister who ordered the ruthless “Iron Fist” suppression campaign of the 1987 Intifadah uprising.

To that point his policies were no different to those of Begin, Shamir, Eitan or presently Sharon because it is consistent with the Zionist agenda.

Most Western politicians, businessmen and media have only retained Rabin’s later life turn to more moderate considerations and endeavour to set up a Palestinian establishment to rule over a mock state in tiny portions of Palestine. They are still infatuated for a “peace process” doomed to failure because it failed to address the core issues of the conflict: it did not enforce Israel to comply with international law and allow the Palestinians to exercise their right to self determination and return of their refugees.

It is international pressure and not neutrality and cooperation that will help towards a fair settlement and a lasting peace.

Palestina Resisteix protests against Maragall’s meeting Shimon Peres, where it has been agreed to foster technological cooperation between Catalonia and Israel through the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca. We call upon the Catalan citizenry and institutions to take an overt and unreserved support stance for the Palestinian people's cause and demand the international isolation of the state of Israel.

Palestina Resisteix also protests against Israel’s instrumentalization of the Holocaust amb blames the Catalan leaders for their involvement in an act of such orientation on May 20^th 05.

Palestina Resisteix advise the Garraf people to educate themselves on Palestinian realities and visit our website www.palestinaresisteix.org

Notes: Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira (MP) is chairman of Catalan independence party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and Pasqual Maragall is president of home-rule Catalan government.