Statement on the Freedom Fighter and Liberated Prisoner Omar Nayef Zayed

Statement on the Freedom Fighter and Liberated Prisoner Omar Nayef Zayed

Statement on the Freedom Fighter and Liberated Prisoner Omar Nayef Zayed

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement (in English and Arabic, below) by the Campaign in Solidarity with the Struggler Omar Nayef Zayed, was issued by Palestinian organizers inside and outside occupied Palestine, demanding the freedom of, and an end to extradition proceedings against, Omar Nayef Zayed, a Palestinian community leader and former prisoner who is now facing threats of arrest by the Bulgarian state due to the pursuit of the Israeli occupation. Click here to take action to defend Omar.]

Omar Nayef Zayed, a Palestinian Arab citizen, was born in Jenin, Palestine in 1963; liberated from the prisons of the occupation in 1990; living in Bulgaria for over 21 years; has been seeking refuge in the Palestinian embassy in Sofia for approximately one week. He has been forced to seek refuge, to protect himself and his family, because the Bulgarian authorities are attempting to arrest and extradite him to the occupation state, under the pretext of the criminal extradition agreement of the Council of Europe, to which the Zionist state is a party.

Omar Zayed, the struggler, refuses to surrender to the Bulgarian authorities for the following reasons:

First, because he refuses to deal with his case as a criminal or civil matter or an individual issue; it is a national and collective concern, and first and foremost a political matter and a political issue. He was arrested in 1986 and charged with legitimate resistance to the Israeli occupation, which is a natural right guaranteed under international law.

Second, because the sentence issued against him by the Israeli occupation military court is no longer valid, due to various bilateral agreements between the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Israeli state, beginning with the Oslo accords in 1993 and subsequent agreements; his sentence is obsolete and no longer valid for extradition.

Third, the struggler Zayed spent over three years in Israeli jails, from 1986 to 1990, and was subject upon his capture by the Israeli military to torture, oppression and deprivation. He conducted an open hunger strike for 40 days in the occupation prisons, which caused him to be transferred to hospital for treatment, and he suffers the physical effects of his experience to the present day.

Fourth, since his arrival in Bulgaria 21 years ago, Omar Zayed has built a life: married, with two sons and a daughter, respected Bulgarian laws, and never faced any criminal or other issues in Bulgaria.

The liberated prisoner Omar Zayed has repeatedly and consistently declared that he is a struggler for the freedom of the Palestinian people and their national and human cause. His decision to refuse to surrender himself to the local authorities is undertaken as part of his responsibility and national duty to reject the Zionist occupation and its racist and unjust laws, and to confront all attacks against the Palestinian people, its liberated prisoners, and its strugglers, whether in occupied Palestine, in Europe, or anywhere in the world.

Campaign of Solidarity with Omar Nayef Zayed

26 December 2015

Click here to take action to defend Omar.

بيان حول المناضل والاسير المحرر عمر نايف زايد

المواطن العربي الفلسطيني، عمر نايف زايد، مواليد مدينة جنين الفلسطينية المحتلة عام 1963  والأسير المُحرر من سجون الاحتلال عام 1990، المقيم في بلغاريا منذ ما يزيد عن 21 عاماً، لجأ إلى السفارة الفلسطينية في صوفيا قبل نحو اسبوع ، بسبب ما يتعرض له من تضييق وملاحقة أمنية غير مبررة على يد السلطات البلغارية وذلك بهدف اعتقاله وتسليمه إلى دولة الاحتلال، و بذريعة الاتفاقيات الجنائية الموقعة بين الاتحاد الأوروبي والكيان الصهيوني.

يرفض المناضل زايد تسليم نفسه للسلطات البلغارية للأسباب التالية:

أولاً: لأنه يرفض التعامل مع قضيته على أساس جنائي، أو فردي، أو مدني، بل هي قضية وطنية وسياسية أولاً وأخيراً. لقد جرى اعتقاله في العام 1986 بسبب مقاومته المشروعة للاحتلال الاسرائيلي، وهذا حق طبيعي، كفلته كل الشرائع الانسانية والقوانين الدولية.

ثانياً: لقد سقطت الأحكام الصادرة بحقه، من قبل الاحتلال والمحاكم الاسرائيلية التي اتخذتها، خاصة مع بدء تنفيذ الاتفاقيات الثنائية بين قيادة منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية ودولة الاحتلال الاسرائيلي في العام 1993 وبالتالي، فإن هذه الأحكام أصبحت لاغية وقد تقادمت.

ثالثاً: لقد قضى المناضل زايد في سجون الاحتلال أكثر من 3 سنوات.  تعرض خلالها إلى أبشع انواع التعذيب والقهر والحرمان. منذ العام 1986 وحتى العام 1990، كما أنه خاض إضراباً مفتوحاً عن الطعام لمدة 40 يوماً في سجون الاحتلال، نقل على أثره إلى مستشفى للعلاج وخرج بأمراض مزمنة يعاني منها حتى هذا اليوم.

رابعاً: منذ وصوله إلى بلغاريا قبل 21 سنة، بنى المناضل عمر زايد حياة جديدة وتزوج وأنجب ولدين وبنتاً، وهو يحترم القوانين البلغارية، ولا يوجد لديه أية قضايا جنائية أو غيرها في هذا البلد.

 

إن الأسير المُحرر عمر زايد أعلن مراراً أنه يعتبر نفسه واحداً من بين أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني يعتز ويفخر بانتمائه الوطني والانساني إلى هذا الشعب المناضل. لقد اتخذ قراره برفض تسليم نفسه إلى السلطات المحلية ليس لإثارة مسألة شخصية بقدر ما هي مسؤوليته التي يفرضها الواجب الوطني في رفض الاحتلال الصهيوني وقوانينه العنصرية الجائرة، ومن أجل مواجهة كل سياسة تستهدف شعبنا وأسراه المُحررين ومناضليه، سواء في فلسطين المحتلة أو في اوروبا وحول العالم. 


حملة التضامن مع المناضل عمر نايف زايد  

 

26- 12- 2015

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[This article was first published on Samidoun.net]

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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