**International Appeal**
June 5 is the UN Sponsored World Environment Day
Palestine Calls: This is Not a Day of Celebration!
This year's World Environment Day theme is "Give Earth a Chance", in a day that the United Nations calls "one of the
principle vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances
political attention and action." Though a call to "stimulate" action and change on behalf of the earth is
needed?demanded!?Palestinians and others around the world are concerned that such a day may in fact shift
attention from the greatest causes of environmental destruction, and instead focus on short-term, unsustainable,
brightly-colored projects that are not real solutions.
For Palestinians, there is no need of an annual reminder of their connection to the earth or of how connected their
fate is to their surroundings. For in just over 50 years, Palestinians have found themselves dispossessed of the
majority of Palestine. Entire villages, as parts of eco-systems, have been raised off the ground. Flaura and fauna have
been permanently destroyed.
For Palestinians, June 5 is not a day of celebration, but the Naksa day, the anniversary of Israel's occupation of the
West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip in the year 1967. After the 1948 catastrophe, 1967 is Palestine's
second date of tragic commemoration. Today, June 5, 2002, the 35th Naksa Day, Palestinians find themselves facing
a seemingly unprecedented level of aggression and brutality under the hands of the occupation.
There will be no celebration this year by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza on behalf of their environment. On
the contrary, not a day goes by without thousands witnessing land confiscation, land raising and trees uprooted by the
Israeli Occupation. The past two years, the Second Palestinian Intifada, has seen a massive escalation of what
was already the tragic devastation of land and life in Palestine. During these past two years, close to 500,000
olive & fruit trees have been uprooted and 32,846 dunums of land bulldozed or burned by the Israeli military.
In addition, 36 new settlements have been established, with others continuing to expand throughout the
West Bank and Gaza.
This is in addition to the deaths and injuries of the past two years, which number 1,882 and 20,041
respectively. It is estimated that 2,000 of the injured are handicapped. Not a day has gone by without a death.
There will be no campaigns in the West Bank and Gaza this day or the next, not because Palestinians do not want to
mobilize, and to resist the destruction; but, because the consequences of demonstrating, of planting trees, of
protecting land, is often death by sniper. Sadly, for those eager to do something on this day, even to sit in a meeting or
organize a seminar, the over 120 Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which divide the Palestinian
areas into 220 separate clusters or cantons means that any movement beyond a few square kilometers around ones
home is, well, no chance?
There will be no awards, not just because of the restriction of movement, but because one of those individuals who
would have received an award has been martyred, the other is mourning the loss of the area that was once a nature
reserve but was destroyed in one short afternoon by military bulldozers, the other is a refugee in an Arab country not
allowed to return home or to attend the ceremony.
And as for the next generation, the environmental education Palestinian children get is the trash that piles outside
their bedroom window because 35 years of occupation offered no basic infrastructure or because the nearest dumping
site is on the other side of the checkpoint; or because of the health and sanitation problems they face due to the nearby
settlement's ability to cut the water supply to their village. In fact, their living environment is overwhelmed by the
continued fears that the F-16 that hovered over their heads just two weeks ago will return, and they continue to wet
their beds each night awaiting the imminent danger.
The hanoun flower, the sheep and the goat, the air, and the sound of the pigeons are often the only escape
Palestinians have in a world where land and life are often made into cynical slogans that deal with nothing of what is
really destroying our Earth.
The Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON), representing over 20 Palestinian NGOs dealing with the
various facets of the environment and representing the majority of Palestinian environmental NGOs in the West Bank
and Gaza, is calling on people today, World Environment Day, to write to the UN demanding that it answer to the needs
of Planet Earth, including that it cease its silence in regards to Palestine.
Write to:
Mr. Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General
sg@un.org
ecu@un.org
Mr. Klaus Toepfer, United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director
klaus.toepfer@unep.org
Mr. Tore J. Brevik, United Nations Environment Programme Spokesman
tore.brevik@unep.org
