List of Demands by Youth of March 15 in Dar'a, Syria

[Map of Dir`a. Image from unknown archive.] [Map of Dir`a. Image from unknown archive.]

List of Demands by Youth of March 15 in Dar'a, Syria

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[This statement was originally issued in Arabic by Dir`a`s Youth of March 15. The English translation was made available by The Angry Arab News Service.]

Leadership of the Glorious Revolution of the Youth of 15 March, Diraa – Syria

To the Syrian people;  to the descendants of Salih al-Ali, Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, Ibrahim Hananou; to all the free people of Syria in all the provinces of Syria; to all the sons of the proud Arab tribes; to the Kurdish brothers; and to all the sects and nationalities with whom we share life on the land of this nation.

We promise you to continue our revolution until this criminal regime which kills its sons in cold blood is brought down. We hope all the brothers will come out tomorrow God willing in million-person demonstrations and announce civil disobedience and refusal to go to work centers and to join your brethren in this glorious revolution and to support your brethren in the province of Diraa, Latakia, Homs, az-Zabdani, Douma, Daria, al-Kiswa, Damascus, at-Tal, and the rest of the provinces revolting until the regime is brought down and the goals of the revolution are achieved which are:

· Bringing the regime down
· Cancellation of the emergency law
· Permission to form parties
· Dissolving the parliament and the government
· Revise the constitution to be consistent with democracy and civil rule
· Define the presidential term and the number of terms
· Immediate presidential and parliamentary elections
· Raise salaries and set a minimum wage
· Find immediate work opportunities
· Get rid of corruption and bribes and deliver up corrupt individuals for trial
· Clean judiciary and accountability for corrupt judges
· Lowering taxes and fees
· Getting rid of the pre-planned sectarianism in the circles of authority
· The mission of the Army and Armed forces is to protect the borders of the nation and not to repress citizens
· Deliver up for trial all of those who participated in killing or ordering the opening of fire on demonstrators in the 15 March revolution
· Freeing the prisoners of conscience and political prisoners and everyone arrested in the peaceful demonstrations
· Return of the displaced to Syria
· Freedom of opinion and expression and to establish forums
· Freedom of the press and the Internet
· Right of citizenship to everyone
· Distribution of returns from oil and communications to the people equally
· Permitting judicial authority to be completely independent

Our demands are complete and not open to division or procrastination…We won’t wait for promises or delays in their implementation…We won’t be satisfied with the application of a part of them while another part is studied and ignored…We will continue to rise up until we have extracted our freedoms with our own hands…Our revolution is peaceful…Our people are one…One nation..

If you cannot go out, stage a sit in at home and don’t go to work.

We say the Fatiha [opening chapter of the Qur’an] on the souls of the martyrs.

We rely on God Almighty.

Diraa - Syria

 

نحن قيادة شباب ثورة 15 اذار المجيدة درعا - سوريا

الى الشعب السوري الى احفاد صالح العلي واحفاد سلطان باشا الاطرش واحفاد ابراهيم هنانو والى كافة احرار سوريا في جميع المحافظات السورية ,الى جميع ابناء العشائر العربية الابية , الى الاخوة الاكراد والى كافة الطوائف والقوميات التي نتشارك معها العيش على ارض هذا الوطن .

نعاهدكم على ان تستمر ثورتنا الى ان يتم اسقاط هذا النظام المجرم الذي قتل ابنائنا بدم بارد , ونرجوا من جميع الاخوة الخروج من يوم غد باذن الله بمظاهرات مليونيه واعلان العصيان المدني وعدم الذهاب الى مراكز العمل والانظمام الى اخوتكم في هذه الثوره المجيده ونصرة اخوانكم في محافظة درعا واللاذقية وحمص والزبداني ودوما وداريا والكسوة ودمشق والتل وباقي المحافظات الثائرة حتى يتم اسقاط النظام وتحقيق اهداف الثورة وهي :

- اسقاط النظام
 إلغاء قانون الطوارئ -
 السماح بإنشاء الأحزاب -
 حل مجلس الشعب والحكومة -
 تعديل الدستور ليواكب الديمقراطية والمدنية -
 تحديد فترة بقاء الرئيس في السلطة وعددها -
 انتخابات رئاسية وتشريعية فورية -
 رفع الرواتب ووضع حد أدنى للاجور -
 إيجاد فرص عمل فورية -
 القضاء على الفساد والرشاوي وتسليم المفسدين للمحاكمة -
 نزاهة القضاء ومحاسبة القضاة الفاسدين -
 تخفيض الضرائب والرسوم -
 إلغاء التمييز المذهبي والطائفي الممنهج في السلطة -
 مهام الجيش والقوات المسلحة حماية حدود الوطن وليس قمع المواطن -
 تسليم كل من شارك بقتل أو أمر بإطلاق النار على المتظاهرين في ثورة 15 آذار للمحاكمة -
 إطلاق سراح معتقلي الرأي والسياسيين وكل من اعتقل في المظاهرات السلمية -
 عودة المهجرين إلى سورية -
 حرية الرأي والتعبير وإنشاء المنتديات -
 حرية الإعلام والإنترنت -
 حق المواطنة للجميع -
 توزيع العائدات النفطية وعائدات الاتصالات على افراد الشعب بالتساوي -
 منح السلطة القضائية استقلالية تامة -

مطالبنا كاملة غير قابلة للتجزئة أو المماطلة .. لن ننتظر وعوداً ولا تاجيلاً لتطبيقها ..
لن نرضى بتطبيق جزء منها وجزء يبقى قيد الدراسة والتجاهل ..
سنبقى منتفضين حتى ننتزع حريتنا بإيدينا .. ثورتنا سلمية ..
شعب واحد ..
وطن واحد..

ان لم تستطع الخروج اعتصم وانت بالمنزل ولا تذهب الى العمل

الفاتحة على ارواح الشهداء

اننا متوكلين على الله سبحانه وتعالى ثم عليكم
درعا - سوريا

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412