The EL strongly condemns the military aggression of Israel against the people of Gaza, which led to over 100 victims.
After the isolation policy conducted against the Gaza Strip, with all its consequences on civil population’s lives, after extrajudicial killings and military incursions that every time hits women and children, the Israeli army started its land operations, threatening for a real war.  
The EL respects the right of Israel to live in security. But the military aggressions are in total contradiction to basic principles of human rights and will only lead to a new spiral of war. The EL is convinced that only a political solution can guarantee a just and sustainable peace.
We express our deep solidarity with all the forces campaigning for peace and we demand from Europe to play a stronger role and to pressure Israel to restart negotiations on the bases of international law.

The Party of the European Left confirms its commitment to ending the Israeli occupation and to recognizing the right of the Palestinian people to have their own state. The solution of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict must be reached through an international conference under the auspices of the UN, involving all the concerned parties, and based on the UN resolutions to establish a sovereign and independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, recognizing the Palestinian refugees’ right to return, in accordance with UN resolution 194. We call for the dismantling of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, for the demolition of the apartheid wall, for the removal of the checkpoint, for the end of the Gaza siege, for the release of all the Palestinian prisoners – especially the Palestinian national leaders and members of Parliament.

Graziella Mascia, Rome 3rd of March 2008