Statement by Palestine Youth Movement on the September 2011 Declaration of Statehood

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Sep 23, 2011 Palestine-Israel
[Palestinian Youth Network logo. Image pal-youth.org] [Palestinian Youth Network logo. Image pal-youth.org]

Statement by Palestine Youth Movement on the September 2011 Declaration of Statehood

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued in both English and Arabic by the Palestinian Youth Movement on September 22, 2011. It was recently published on pal-youth.org]

Statement on the September 2011 Declaration of Statehood

We, in the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), stand steadfastly against the proposal for Palestinian statehood recognition based on 1967 borders that is to be presented to the United Nations this September by the Palestinian official leadership. We believe and affirm that the statehood declaration only seeks the completion of the normalization process, which began with faulty peace agreements. The initiative does not recognize nor address that our people continue to live within a settler colonial regime premised on the ethnic cleansing of our land and subordination and exploitation of our people.


This declaration serves as a mechanism for rescuing the faulty peace framework and depoliticizing the struggle for Palestine by removing the struggle from its historical colonial context. The attempts to impose a false peace with the normalizing of the colonial regime has only led us to surrender increasing amounts of our land, the rights of our people, and our aspirations by delegitimizing and marginalizing our people’s struggle and deepening the fragmentation and division of our people. This declaration jeopardizes the rights and aspirations of over two-thirds of the Palestinian people who live as refugees in countries of refuge and in exile, to return to their original homes from which they were displaced in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and subsequently since then. It also jeopardizes the position of the Palestinians residing in the 1948 occupied territories who continue to resist daily against the ethnic cleansing and racial practices from inside the colonial regime. Furthermore, it corroborates and empowers its Palestinian and Arab partners to act as the gatekeepers to the occupation and the colonization of the region within a neo-colonial framework.

The foundation of this process serves as nothing more than to ensure the continuity of negotiations, economic and social normalization, and security cooperation. The state declaration will solidify falsified borders on only a sliver of historic Palestine and still does not address the most fundamental issues: Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, political prisoners, occupation, borders and resource control. We believe such a state declaration will not ensure nor promote justice and freedom for Palestinians, which inherently means there will be no sustainable peace in the region.

Additionally, this state declaration initiative is being presented to the United Nations by a Palestinian leadership that is illegitimate and has not been elected to be in a position of representation of the Palestinian people in its totality through any democratic means by its people. This proposal is a political production designed by them to hide behind their failure to represent the needs and desires of their people. By claiming to fulfill the Palestinian will for self-determination, this leadership is misusing and exploiting the resistance and sacrifices of the Palestinian people, particularly our brothers and sisters in Gaza, and even hijacking the grassroots international solidarity work, such as Boycott Divestment and Sanctions efforts and the flotilla initiatives. This proposal only serves to squander all efforts made to isolate the colonial regime and hold it accountable.

Whether the proposal for statehood recognition is accepted or not, we call on Palestinians inside our occupied homeland and in countries of refuge and exile to remain committed and convicted to the worthiness of our struggle and inspired by their rights and responsibilities to defend it. We call on the free people of the world and the Palestinian people’s allies, to truly practice solidarity with the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle by not taking a position on the state declaration but rather continuing to hold Israel accountable by means of Boycott in all forms economically, academically, and culturally, Divestment and Sanctions.

Until Return and Liberation,
International Central Council
Palestinian Youth Movement

 

 
بيان إعلان الدولة في أيلول 2011

نحن في حركة الشباب الفلسطيني، نقف بحزم ضد مقترح الاعتراف بدولة فلسطينية على حدود عام 1967 الذي سيتم عرضه على الأمم المتحدة في أيلول من قبل القيادة الفلسطينية الرسمية ، مؤكدين أن إعلان قيام الدولة يسعى فقط لإتمام عملية التطبيع التي بدأت مع اتفاقيات السلام الباطلة. حيث ان هذه المبادرة لا تعترف ولا تركز على أن شعبنا ما زال واقعا تحت احتلال استيطاني استعماري كولونيالي قائم على التطهير العرقي لأرضنا والتبعية والاستغلال لشعبنا


إن هذا الإعلان هو بمثابة آلية إنقاذ لعملية السلام الباطلة و تجريد النضال من أجل فلسطين من إطاره السياسي و اخراجه من سياقه الاستعماري التاريخي. كما أن محاولات فرض السلام الزائف و التطبيع مع النظام الاستعماري قد أدت بنا إلى التنازل المستمر عن أراضينا و حقوق شعبنا و تطلعاتنا وذلك من خلال نزع الشرعية وتهميش نضال شعبنا وتعميق تجزئتة وانقسامه. هذا الإعلان يعرضّ حقوق وتطلعات أكثر من ثلثي الشعب الفلسطيني الذي يعيش حالة لجوء في دول الشتات أو في المنافي للخطر المتمثل بإلغاء حقهم بالعودة إلى ديارهم الأصلية التي هجروا منها في نكبة عام 1948 و في وقت لاحق منذ ذلك الحين. كما انه أيضا يهدد موقف الفلسطينيين المقيمين في الأراضي المحتلة عام 1948 اللذين ما زالوا يقاومون يوميا ضد التطهير العرقي والممارسات العنصرية من داخل النظام الاستعماري. وعلاوة على ذلك، فإنه يعزز و يمكن شركاءه الفلسطينيين والعرب ليكونوا بمثابة حراس للاحتلال والاستعمار في المنطقة ضمن إطار استعماري جديد


إن إعلان الدولة ما هو إلا ضمان استمرار لنهج المفاوضات والتطبيع الاقتصادي والاجتماعي، والتنسيق الأمني. كما أنه سيرسخ الحدود المزيفة على جزء من فلسطين التاريخية دون معالجة القضايا الأساسية: القدس، المستوطنات، اللاجئين، الأسرى والاحتلال، والحدود والسيطرة على الموارد. ونحن نؤمن أن مثل هذا الإعلان لن يضمن العدالة والحرية لشعبنا الفلسطيني مما يعني انه لن يكون هناك سلام مستدام في المنطقة


بالإضافة إلى ذلك، يتم تقديم هذه المبادرة لإعلان الدولة إلى الأمم المتحدة من قبل قيادة فلسطينية غير شرع ة ي و لم يتم انتخابها من خلال وسائل ديمقراطية من قبل شعبها لتكون في موقع تمثيل للشعب الفلسطيني بمجمله. هذا الاقتراح هو نتاج سياسي صمم منهم بقصد الاختباء وراء فشلهم في التمثيل لتطلعات ورغبات شعبهم و من خلال إدعائهم تحقيق الإرادة الفلسطينية الشعبية في تقرير المصير حيث ان هذه القيادة تقوم باستغلال و أستخدام مقاومة وتضحيات الشعب الفلسطيني، وخاصة إخواننا وأخواتنا في غزة، و اختطاف قواعد أعمال التضامن الدولي، مثل جهود حملة المقاطعة وسحب الاستثمارات والعقوبات ومبادرات الأسطول البحري هذا الاقتراح لا يؤدي إلا إلى تشتيت جميع الجهود المبذولة لعزل النظام الاستعماري ومحاسبته.

إذا سواء تم قبول اقتراح إقامة الدولة أم لا، فإننا ندعو الفلسطينيين داخل وطننا المحتل و في أماكن اللجوء والمنافى أن يبقوا ملتزمون و مؤمنون بأحقية وعدالة قضية فلسطين و النضال من أجلها ملهمين بحقوقهم ومسؤولياتهم للدفاع عنها. وندعو جميع أحرار العالم وحلفاء الشعب الفلسطيني لممارسة التضامن الفعلي مع النضال الفلسطيني ضد الاستعمار من خلال عدم اتخاذ موقف من اعلان الدولة و الاستمرار في محاسبة إسرائيل عن طريق المقاطعة بكافة أشكالها الإقتصادية و الأكاديمية والثقافية وسحب الاستثمارات وفرض العقوبات عليها

حتى العودة و التحرير
المجلس المركزي الدولي
حركة
الشباب الفلسطيني
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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