The
Palestine That We Are
Struggling For
By Jamal Juma’*
30 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Last
Tuesday’s demonstrations, which brought thousands onto the streets
of Ramallah, Hebron, Tulkarem, Nablus and Gaza in defiance of the Palestinian
Authority’s attempt to silence the peoples’ voice, represented
a crucial moment for Palestine.
Our demonstration, which
was supported by the Popular Committees of the Refugee Camps and over
one hundred and fifty civil society organisations and representatives,
called for the upholding of the fundamental principles of our struggle:
the right of the refugees to return, the right to Jerusalem as the Palestinian
capital, and the right to our land. We were refusing the recognition
of Israel as a Jewish state, as this would legitimize the Zionist ideology
of colonialism, racism and ethnic cleansing, and effectively exonerate
Israel from the crimes of the Nakba, waiving the right of return. Such
recognition would justify and reinforce the Israeli system of apartheid
against Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The Palestine that we are
fighting for is one which upholds the fundamental principles of our
national rights and equality, and which respects the democratic right
of the people to express their views in protest on the streets. The
Authority has shown that they do not share this vision. On Tuesday they
attempted to prevent the people from asserting their rights, first by
banning demonstrations and then by attacking us with tear gas, batons
and military jeeps.
The departure of the occupation
from our land and the right of the refugees to return is non-negotiable,
as is the question of Jerusalem. For the oppressed and occupied, ongoing
struggle and resistance using all necessary means is not only our right,
it is our obligation in front of all those that have sacrificed before
us and the future generation that has the right to live in freedom.
It is our only tool to ensure that “negotiations” talk about
how to achieve our rights and not how to abandon them step by step.
Yet for the first time in the sixty years of our struggle, those who
claim to represent us at a national level are no longer talking about
resistance to the attacks of the occupiers. Instead, they are disingenuously
opening up negotiations relying on the US, the Occupation’s most
ardent backer, to act as an “honest broker”.
Tuesday’s actions were
important in themselves as an expression of the voices raised against
Annapolis, but also because by defying the ban on demonstrations, the
popular committees, representatives of civil society and political parties
threw down a powerful challenge to the Palestinian leadership: as the
pressure for normalisation grows, so the grassroots anti-normalization
movement is growing. In the last month, the One Voice initiative, an
attempt to coerce Palestinians into denying their own rights while recognising
their occupiers, was defeated by grassroots activists. Last week, Ramallah
hosted a conference strategizing to beat the Occupation through boycott,
divestment and sanctions. Palestinians from within the green line voiced
their powerful opposition to recognition of a Jewish state on their
lands in a unanimous decision made by the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee,
the senior representative body of ’48 Palestinians. The demonstrations
on Tuesday were not an isolated protest; they were part of a wide popular
movement against concessions on basic principles, and against an apparent
acceptance on the part of the Palestinian leadership of the isolation
of Palestinians within the Green Line, Palestinians in Gaza and the
West Bank and in the diaspora from each other. At the Cyprus conference
in October, Palestinians from the ‘48 lands called Palestinians
from all over their homeland and the diaspora together to build unified
strategies and follow up mechanisms, as a powerful counterpoint to Israeli
Bantustanization.
In Annapolis, the Authority
did not raise the issue of Palestinians within the Green Line, nor the
right of return, nor the criminal siege of Gaza. The Wall caging Palestinians
in the West Bank into ghettos was not on the agenda. Those appointed
to rule the West Bank Bantustans showed that they were not even representing
the Palestinians there when they brutally repressed our protests. In
this so-called ‘peace process’, only a tiny portion of Palestinians
are represented: they are laying the ground for an outcome that the
Palestinian people cannot and will not accept.
The so-called ‘peace
process’ demands not only that the Authority clamp down on armed
resistance: it is also becoming clear that it will require the repression
of all of us who reject the abandonment of our rights. The Palestinian
people that are confronting the Israeli Occupation day after day have
not been consulted or informed about the negotiations: they only are
to feel the batons when they disagree and call out for their rights.
Tuesday was a testing ground whether the Authority will be able to make
the Palestinian people swallow a second Oslo, further compromising our
rights.
The gulf between the Authority
and the Palestinian people is becoming increasingly obvious. Indeed
the whole range of Palestinian political and social forces joined in
condemning the repression on Tuesday. The choice for the Authority is
clear: either to go along with the dictates of the US and the Occupation;
or to radically alter their course, to return to the people and remember
that they are leaders of the Palestinian national struggle. The grassroots
movement against normalisation with the occupiers will continue to grow.
Resistance will continue as the Palestinian people assert their fundamental
rights.
*Coordinators of the Palestinian
grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign –
www.stopthewall.org
For further reading see:
PA represses popular protest
demanding Palestinian rights and against Annapolis
(http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1568.shtml)
Declaration of Principles
and National Rights, November 2007
(http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1564.shtml)
First Palestinian Conference
for the Boycott of Israel (BDS)
(http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1562.shtml)
Palestinians reject the Bantu
state – Once Voice concert in Jericho cancelled
(http://stopthewall.org/analysisandfeatures/1538.shtml)
Final Statement of the Palestinian
Civil Society Conference,
Cyprus, 16–18 October 2007: "Toward the Establishment of
a Palestinian Civil Society Defragmentation Strategy"
(http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/1549.shtml)
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