Dear Friends
The situation in our area has become more dramatic than ever, and it is imperative that the international community in general and the European Union in particular, put their weight on the side of justice, which, as you know, is the side of peace. When we say the international community, we think of course of the US government, and of the UN Security Council, but we know what obstacles exist there. This is why we turn to you, to your own countries, where democrats have always manifested their friendship and solidarity with our people, and which you now govern with talent and creativity, and especially to the Socialist International of which we are part.
The present stalemate of the Middle-East Peace Process combined with other factors of crisis and instability in the area as a whole, today threatens world peace, and feeds extremism and violence everywhere. This impasse is the absolute responsibility of the Israeli government, which multiplies the acts of aggression and the political provocations while pretending to want to “talk”. You know it: there is nothing we desire more than a return to serious negotiation on the permanent status of the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967. But serious and genuine negotiations imply agreed upon terms of reference, and abstention from any “unilateral act liable to pre-empt or prejudice the outcome of permanent status negotiations” (wording consecrated in the assurances given to the parties on the eve of the Madrid Conference in1991, and reconfirmed in all the agreements signed since then, from the 1993 Declaration of Principles known as the “Oslo Accords” to the Wye River agreement of 1998). Thus, Israeli settlement activities, however temporarily and partially “modulated”, are not only in flagrant contradiction with international law. They also constitute a permanent violation of the formal commitments of the successive Israeli governments for nearly two decades. Any settlement activity, including “bypass” roads and the ongoing construction of the infamous Segregation and Expansion Wall, is incompatible with good faith negotiation, and empties “talking” of any genuine content. In occupied Arab East Jerusalem, settlement activities, expropriation and outright theft of Palestinian property, accompany a process which Israeli Human Rights organizations themselves define as “ethnic cleansing”. The sad experience of the regression and agony of the peace process in the course of the last ten years has taught us, the hard way, that what happens on the ground, and not the flowery speeches, is what reflects the intentions of the Israeli leaders.
On the ground, precisely, alongside this ongoing and multifaceted colonization, military aggression and occupation continue. The blockade of the Gaza Strip, where the population is not even allowed to try and rebuild what last year’s Israeli aggression destroyed, including vital infrastructures, continues. All observers agree that the famous “tunnels” are what saves the territory from a total humanitarian crisis. Extra-judicial executions, the so-called “targeted killings”, which are in fact assassinations as a policy, continue. In the West Bank, the internal blockade – the checkpoint regime – continues to make daily life intolerable for ordinary Palestinian citizens, while the occupier continues to kidnap citizens who join the more than ten thousand political prisoners today detained in Israeli jails or military prison camps.
All of this is armed violence of the most classical colonial type. In other words, this is state-terrorism. It has been now clearly established, in particular through the Goldstone report, that in the course of the Gaza war of last year, war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed. How is it that all of this, in spite of the condemnations, is allowed to go on?
Dear friends,
You know that in its last congress, our party, or, as we call it, our movement, has decided to emphasize and reinforce the option of non-violent mass resistance, such as the opposition to the construction of the Wall organized in various villages and towns of the West Bank, which gathers Palestinian protesters with international peace activists and Israeli anti-colonialists. You also know that this non-violent resistance meets with an ever-increasing Israeli brutality: demonstrators have been shot at, some lost their lives, leaders have been arrested and harassed, several foreigners have been deported, most recently a 23 year-old girl from the Czech Republic theatrically abducted from her home in Ramallah in the middle of the night, while hundreds of members of solidarity groups are denied entry to the country.
We are also determined, in the field of non-violent action, to pursue the attempts to put an end to Israel’s impunity by legal means, before national or international jurisdictions. We want the recommendations of the Goldstone report, as well as those of the ICJ ruling on the Wall, to be endorsed and acted upon by the UN Security Council. We ask the whole world to stand by us in the face of the threats and blackmail overtly formulated by Israeli officials, including the head of the General Security Services, who threatened us, a few days ago, with “a second Gaza in the West Bank” if we don’t withdraw this demand.
The Palestinian government, in parallel, has undertaken to build the “de facto” Palestinian State, its economy and its institutions, within two years, and half a year has already elapsed since then. At the term of this period, if there is still no agreement, we will proclaim statehood in the 1967 borders, and we want the international community to recognize it formally. We reiterate that if we coordinate this process with you and other actors on the international scene, even if there is still no bilateral Israeli-Palestinian agreement, it will in no way be a unilateral move, but rather a coordinated multilateral action.
Dear Comrades,
We know you are well informed about our situation, and we shall not burden you with the grim details of our people’s predicament. We also know that our own political divisions don’t make things easier, but we want to assure you that we can overcome them if we gain any sovereignty worthy of the name. After all, Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006, beyond all the technicalities, reflected first and foremost the scepticism of a large number of Palestinian public vis-à-vis a political process that has not held its promises: Seventeen years ago we promised our people the end of occupation and an independent state within five years. It is an understatement to say it has not happened. But the result of the January 2006 elections was also the effect of Israel’s decision to redeploy around the Gaza Strip and evacuate its settlers unilaterally, without any agreement with the Palestinian Authority. The illegal seizure of power by Hamas in 2007, on the other hand, is an indirect consequence of the international community’s reluctance to accept the results of the 2006 legislative elections, its refusal to deal with any national unity government and the instauration of an economic and institutional boycott. The present duality of political power in the occupied Palestinian territory thus appears as a metastasis of Israeli occupation. Our society, however, demands unity, and a fair sharing of power between the existing forces. But only a resolute stand on the part of the outside actors, and particularly on the part of the European union, and a commitment to deal positively with any Palestinian government that will reunify the two parts of the territory under the single jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, can allow public opinion (the “Street” as they say) to exert a decisive pressure upon those who want to perpetuate and exploit this division. This means we need to organize, once again, elections under occupation, which cannot happen without international involvement and supervision.
To achieve these common objectives, we need your help: your political and diplomatic support, but also your economic participation, both at the institutional level and through the involvement of the private sector. For Palestinian statehood is not only our demand. It is a global security need, and a global objective.
Dear Comrades,
Allow us to say a few words about our Socialist International. The fact that the chairman of the shrinking Israeli Labour Party, a vice-president of the SI, is at the same time the Defence minister, and one of the most hawkish members of the most extreme right-wing government in his country’s history, constitutes in our eyes a real problem. One of the side effects of this situation is the paralysis of our Middle-East Committee, and therefore the quasi-silence of our organization as a whole on the fate of our area.
Until this question finds an appropriate answer, we would suggest that the SI Presidency issue a Declaration, in the spirit of the San Domingo statement, to support our stand on negotiations, support our non-violent popular struggle and our legal claims, and pledge to support and protect the Palestinian State-On-The-Way. We are of course ready to discuss with you the detailed content of such a declaration, if you deem it possible, but this should not wait long, because the manifestation of international solidarity is the only answer to those who would push us to despair and to desperate strategies. Our people must feel that our action is not in vain, and that we are not alone.
Waiting to hear from you as soon as possible, we will remain,
Sincerely
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
COMMISSION
FATAH Ramallah, Palestine
January 27, 2010
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