1_March 2019, Ramallah – On the occasion of the International Women’s Day (8 March), a week-long joint campaign “My Rights, Our Power” was launched today in Palestine to raise awareness on women’s fundamental human rights. The joint effort, with participation from over 30 national and international partners from civil society organizations, media outlets, and international development agencies, targets youth, women, and men in various geographic areas in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza to promote women’s human rights in Palestine.

The campaign comes at a crucial moment when the anticipated adoption of the Family Protection Bill is at a standstill, raising concerns among national and international stakeholders about the consequences of such delay on safeguarding women’s fundamental human rights in Palestine. According to the Palestine report of the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), nearly one in five Palestinian men (17 percent) surveyed said they had perpetrated act of physical intimate partner violence against female partners, while 21 per cent of women surveyed reported having experienced such violence.

“Family violence, usually committed by a family member who has social or economic power over others in the family, causes enormous pain and suffering to all members of the family, especially the women and children,” said a spokesperson from civil society, which has vigorously initiated the development of the Family Protection Bill (FPB), and has strongly pushed its adoption since 2004.

“The violation of women’s human rights manifests in various levels and should be also understood from economic, cultural, and social aspects,” the spokesperson added, highlighting the lack of opportunities and freedom of choice, as well as limited access to justice and services that women in Palestine still experience.

The joint campaign aims to raise awareness of the general public, especially youth, women, and men on women’s fundamental rights in line with international standards and embedded in the Family Protection Bill draft endorsed by the previous Cabinet at the end of December 2018. Five key messages, addressing women’s right to a life free of violence, right to achieve justice and seek help in case of violation of such life, as well as the right to equal opportunities and right to make one’s own choices, will be distributed through various channels such as radio, social media, helpline (121), outreach activities, and on-site events. The closing event of the joint campaign will take place on 8 March in Jerusalem and will celebrate women’s achievements using TED-style talks, followed by art performances.

“My Rights, Our Power” joint campaign is part of the global International Women’s Day 2019 campaign under the theme of “Think equal, build smart, innovate for change”. The theme focuses on innovative ways in which we can advance gender equality and the empowerment of women, particularly in the areas of social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure, echoing the theme of the 63rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 63) taking place in New York on 11-22 March 2019.

The participating organizations of the “My Rights, Our Power” are (in alphabetical order): 17 Palestinian women’s organizations represented by Al-Muntada (coalition), British Consulate-General, Business Women Forum, CARE International, Consulate General of Sweden, Consulate General of Belgium, EUPOL COPPS, EU Representative Office, FAO, General Union of Palestinian Women, Government of Japan, CowaterSogema/GROW Project, International Labour Organization, Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, Ma’an TV, MIFTAH, Netherlands Representative Office, Nisaa FM, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development, Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association, Representative Office of Canada, Representative Office of Denmark, SAWA, Sawasya II, Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, Sports for Life, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Representative Office of Norway, UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNOPS, UN Women, Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, Women’s Studies Center.

For more information, please contact Eunjin Jeong at UN Women via eunjin.jeong@unwomen.org or 059 2321 308, Majd Beltaji at UNESCO via m.beltaji@unesco.org or 059 4501 506.

Mr. President,

We thank France for organizing this important meeting and extend our appreciation to the Chef de Cabinet of the Secretary General, the Executive Director of UN Women, the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security and the Secretary-General of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie for their efforts and important briefings.

The issue before us is of relevance not only for half the planet, but to all, given the role and contribution of women in the fields of peace and security and the untapped potential that could be unleashed by mainstreaming their participation. Since the adoption by consensus of resolution 1325 by this Council, a lot has happened, and yet we are still far from the goal of full and equal participation, including in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building, and from ensuring the protection and empowerment of women. Gender equality and non-discrimination remain prerequisites for the fulfilment of the purposes and principles of this organization and all of our lofty, collective commitments, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The State of Palestine welcomes the Secretary General’s report and his commitment to implementing the women and peace and security agenda, including by placing gender at the centre of his prevention platform and surge in diplomacy. We appreciate all efforts by the UN in this regard, including by UN Women, OHCHR and UNDP, notably in the field of human rights, capacity building, employment and rule of law. We urge UN bodies, notably those operating in Palestine, including the Special Representative, to intensify their engagement and collaboration with women organizations.

Mr. President,

I wish to highlight some of Palestine’s own important efforts in this regard. The Palestinian women’s movement is one of the oldest and strongest in the region and beyond, with institutional and representative structures established as early as the 19th century. Within the PLO, the General Union of Palestinian Women was among the first unions to be established. A coordination of women frameworks within PLO political parties and other organizations has also been established as the “Women’s Affairs Technical Committee” in the aftermath of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.

There have been many achievements thereafter. Among them: In 2012, Palestine inaugurated a High-Level National Committee for the implementation of resolution 1325, led by the Ministry of Women Affairs in partnership with relevant Ministries and NGOs. In 2016, the State of Palestine was among the 68 countries and areas that adopted a National Action Plan on women, peace and security.

This Action Plan (2017-2019), adopted by both the Government and civil society organizations, identifies three primary objectives: 1. ensuring protection for women and girls both domestically and in the face of the Israeli occupation; 2. ensuring accountability through national and international mechanisms, with a particular focus on crimes and violations committed by the occupation; and 3. furthering women’s political participation in decision making at the national and international level. The State of Palestine also joined core IHL and human rights instruments, including CEDAW, without reservations. Women’s participation and empowerment are also important and cross-cutting objectives in the context of the National Policy Agenda (2017-2022).

We are, however, conscious that, despite all these efforts, much more work remains to be done. Only in 2009 was a women elected to the highest executive body of the PLO. Quotas are still decisive in allowing women’s election to Parliament and local councils. And while women organizations were among the strongest advocates of national reconciliation, they have been unfairly absent from reconciliation talks. The relevant legislative framework applicable in Palestine is also outdated and must be revised to ensure consistency with Palestine’s international commitments and obligations and avail women the protection and rights they are entitled to and the opportunities they deserve.

Mr. President,

The Palestinian women’s movement since its establishment over a century ago pursued the struggle on two fronts – the struggle for the independence of Palestine and the struggle for women’s rights and empowerment – a dual struggle the movement continues to pursue to this day. The Israeli occupation remains the main source of the violations of our women’s rights and their vulnerability and violence against their person. We have repeatedly called for protection of the Palestinian people, especially women and children. We have also called for accountability, a key element of resolution 1325, the first resolution to address the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women, as the only way to put an end to violations and crimes.

While Palestine stands ready to do its part to advance women rights and the role of women in the fields of peace and security, it is clear that the enjoyment of these rights in our country necessitates ending the Israeli occupation. We will thus continue to work for an end of the occupation and true progress on the path to independence, justice and peace, with the equal and full involvement of women, leading to an independent State of Palestine ensuring human rights for all its citizens without discrimination.

On the occasion of the ICC Prosecutor’s Office to Palestine, the Palestinian Women Coalition of UNSCR 1325, which consists of twelve different Palestinian women’s organisations, is urging the Prosecutor’s Office to take concrete actions towards investigating war crimes committed against Palestinians. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom remains deeply concerned with the complete impunity of Israeli war crimes and firmly supports the Coalition’s call for a just accountability mechanism for Palestinian victims. WILPF also calls on the international community to recognise and fully support Palestinian women’s organisations substantial role in paving the paths to justice, accountability and peace. Read the statement of the Palestinian Women Coalition of UNSCR 1325 below.

We, the Palestinian Women Coalition of UNSCR 1325,welcome the visit of the delegation of the ICC Prosecutor’s Office as a step in the right direction. But we are deeply disappointed that the purpose of this visit was restricted to preliminary examination, while Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes, including women, continue to suffer and urgently await justice and an end to Israel impunity.

We do not understand the decision to exclude the Gaza Strip from this visit, when Gaza has been the site of the most war crimes and where women have been most systematically impacted by Israeli collective punishment policies; a prolonged imposed siege and a severe humanitarian deterioration resulting from Israeli military aggressions .

We are further disappointed that women who have been systematically impacted, and their women’s organisations, have been excluded from the delegation’s agenda.

We call upon all future delegations of the ICC Prosecutor’s Office to include on their agenda meetings with women’s organisations and women who have experienced direct and indirect impacts of Israeli crimes.

We, the Palestinian Women Coalition of UNSCR 1325, have seen in UNSCR 1325, 2242, and other UN Resolutions a commitment to hold the Israeli perpetrators accountable for their war crimes.

We look to the ICC as the most important mechanism to end impunity for all war crimes committed, finally bringing justice for the Palestinian people. Yet, we are very concerned that the preliminary examinations will be an endless process.

Therefore, we urge, Ms. Fatou Bensouda, the Prosecutor of the ICC, to conclude the preliminary examination and move to investigations into Israeli war crimes, bringing justice to Palestinians.

We have paid the price of non-accountability and impunity of Israeli war crimes for too long. “Delaying justice is justice denied.”

Palestinian Women Coalition of UNSCR 1325: The General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW), the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC), Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development (PWWSD), MIFTAH, Filastinyat, Women Media and Development (TAM), Women Stu Dies Center, Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WACLAC), the National, YWCA of Palestine, Center for Women’s Legal Research and Consulting (CWLRC), the Culture and Free thought Association(CWLRC) and Women’s Affairs Center (GWAC).

Occupied Palestine

October 11, 2016

I am not really certain when we started labeling what happened to our people and our country, following the establishment of the state of Israel, as "Al- Nakba". But this is not really the important point. What is important, from my perspective as a Palestinian, is that there is a need to understand what happened to us in and around 1948; and why it happened the way it did; and what should we do to circumvent Al-Nakba from persisting into our future.

As it has been characterized officially, Al-Nakba, or "the catastrophe", is a short-hand euphemism for the disaster that befell the Palestinian people and society in historical Palestine, in and around 1948, when Israel declared itself to be an independent country. Thus, we started equating and associating the "independence" of Israel, or the 15th of May of every year since 1948, with our "catastrophe". By doing so, we reduced the evil that was willfully perpetrated against us, as a people and a society, to a commemorative date on our annual calendar; where our enemies celebrate and we mourn.

Al-Nakba should not be viewed as a "catastrophe" in the same sense as those sudden upheavals, destruction, etc, caused by inexplicable natural disasters, massive earthquakes, flooding, tornadoes, or an unexpected attack by meteorites from outer space. I want to argue here for the need to widen our conception of Al-Nakba, and to think of it as a disastrous process, whose seeds were consciously planted at least since the beginning of the last century, and whose clear targets were our displacement and alienation from our indigenous land, and our supplanting by Jewish-Zionist colonists being hurled at us from other parts of the world.

My call for re-focusing our conceptualization of, what was termed Al-Nakba, is certainly not to deny, or undermine, the evil that was perpetrated and impacted an entire society, history and territory. Al-Nakba stands as a critical marker in the life of at least three generations of Palestinians since 1947-1948; and it will be indelible in the minds of future Palestinian generations. It is, no doubt, a violent severance and interruption of the Palestinians from their past: from their familiarity with their daily surroundings, their immediate environment, and their natural connection with their milieu. It is a process that led to the cleansing (i.e., killing and expulsion) of at least 86% of the indigenous Palestinian population that lived in the area that became Israel; and the erasure of at least 531 of their villages and towns, with the explicit goal of creating an exclusive Jewish state in the same area. Al-Nakba is an ongoing process of "memoricide" (to use Ilan Pappe's term)-the wiping out of individual and collective memory, in the hope that it cannot be rekindled.

Al-Nakba Process: Agencies and Targets

From the above perspective, and according to all available serious historical analyses, Al-Nakba was not a sudden happening that came from nowhere. What happened in 1947-1948 was a culmination of a colonial settler process, whose aim was (and continues to be) to dislodge the indigenous Arab population of Palestine and replace them with Zionist Jewish settlers from other countries. These settlers and their descendents spearheaded a systematic process, which started in the early twenties of the last century, of cleansing the land from its Palestinian population, and transforming it to become an extension of the globalized capitalist center. The process is continuing today, with the direct and indirect sanctioning of the US, Europe and a multitude of their client states and non-state agencies.

In order to arrive at a clear and deep understanding of this broad process, I propose to look at "Al-Nakba Process" on two levels: the phases of its development, and its targets. In terms of the phases, we can delineate three, somewhat overlapping, phases: (1) The Planning/Designing phase, (2) The Implementation phase, and (3) The Completion phase. Embedded in these phases, I would highlight three clear targets: (1) People, (2) Land, and (3) Institutions.

The Planning/Designing Phase

This is recognized to have begun with the holding of the first Zionist Congress in 1897. The idea of establishing a Jewish National Fund (JNF), with the goal of acquiring Arab-owned lands in Palestine (and the region), for exclusive Jewish use, was proposed during that first Zionist Congress, over hundred years ago. The idea of JNF was formally approved in 1901, and was registered as a company in Britain in 1907, with the explicit objective of acquiring lands and immovable properties "in Palestine, Syria, and in any other parts of Turkey and the Sinai Peninsula". It was later stipulated that the land acquired by JNF, irrespective of the means, and held by it, are "the inalienable property of the Jewish people, and only Jewish labor could be employed in the settlements." (Lesch). Subsequently, a British Commission concluded that "the land has been extra-territorialized. It ceases to be land from which the [Palestinian] Arab can gain any advantage now or in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or cultivate it, but he is deprived forever from employment on that land " (Lesch) . In May 1954, and through an official memorandum from the Israeli government, the JNF was subsumed formally as a company within Israel. The signed Memorandum kept the objectives, as they were in the original registration, but identified the JNF's activities "in the State of Israel and in any area under its jurisdiction, for the purpose of settling Jews on these lands and properties." Furthermore, the JNF was recognized as one of the arms of the World Zionist Movement. (Abu Ras). It is estimated today that 13% (or about 2.5 million dunums) of the land area in Israel is held by the JNF; the majority of which are lands belonging to Palestinian refugees; lands which were taken over as a result of the ethnic cleansing process.

Thus, it is obvious that the Jewish National Fund has been the paramount Zionist agency of Al-Nakba-as the Zionist arm of the colonization of Palestine.

Establishing for Al-Nakba of Palestine followed a dual track: political- diplomatic and economic. The colonial settler process was codified (or formalized) in 1917 by the British Balfour Declaration, when the British Government committed itself to "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." With the conclusion of WWI and the establishment of the League of Nations, Great Britain was designated by the League of Nations as the Mandatory power for Palestine in 1923. The preamble to the British Mandate incorporated the Balfour Declaration, with minor adjustments (Mallison in Abu-Lughod, 61).

This means that the western powers, which emerged victorious from the WWI, and established the League of Nations (and similarly, later on, the United Nations, following WWII), were committed to the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, and to its enforcement. In other words, the League of Nations, the British Mandate, and the United Nations were paramount political-diplomatic-economic agencies of Al-Nakba.

To solidify Zionist control over the land and other critical economic resources, prominent Jewish businessmen were given monopolistic concessions by the British Government, immediately following the imposition of the Mandate, in the twenties and thirties of the last century, in spite of the fact that "in each case the concession was contested by other serious claimants" (Lesch). Thus, the Zionist enterprise was allowed to control critical natural resources (e.g., Palestine Electricity Company, the development of minerals in the Dead Sea, the Palestine Land Development Company, etc), in preparation for Al-Nakba.

In the meantime, the system of Jewish-Zionist education was separated from that of the prevalent system of the indigenous population; and became fully centralized under the exclusive control of the Zionist Movement, to which it allocated about 40% of its budget. The objective was clearly to inculcate the mythical claim of Zionism in the new generations of settlers; to strengthen the Zionist colonial control of the land; and to prepare for a separate hegemonic Jewish presence in Palestine.

I am maintaining here that had Zionism not been a settler colonial movement, with the objective to establish an exclusivist "Jewish national home" in Palestine, and had it not received the political, economic, and military support of the major Western powers who emerged victorious from the two world wars, this whole process, most likely, would not have culminated in Al-Nakba. The recurrent insistence on dividing the land, to allow for a hegemonic and an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine, against the explicit will of its indigenous population, which, sadly, persists until this writing, is the direct prelude for Al-Nakba.

Any serious review of the machinations and deliberations, in the context of the U.N. and hegemonic Western powers, which sought to operationalize the "Balfour Declaration", leading to the creation of Israel, would have to conclude that the division of Palestine (regardless of the land area allotted to each group) was a sure recipe for cleansing the indigenous population living in that area, i.e., a sure recipe for Al-Nakba. If we are to reflect on the idea of partitioning Palestine, in order to accommodate Zionist aspirations, and Western capitalist plans, as early as 1937, as suggested by the Peel Commission, we see no serious effort invested in the UN context to avert Al-Nakba. Palestinian society then, as it is now, was completely exposed and vulnerable to external forces, as well as to the control of internal agents of those forces. Its internal social, economic and cultural structure lacked the required immunity to withstand those forces. Thus, a new Zionist-Jewish state was established in 1948 on a decimated indigenous, rural society, called Palestine.

The persistent push of the imperialist and capitalist centers then, and their client states, taking the cue from the Zionist movement, was for physically partitioning Palestine, to create a separate state for the Jews; it was never for establishing a just and democratic society in all of Palestine. This could have been possible to adopt then, had this been the goal. But this was never the plan of the Zionist movement; nor was it the intention of the Balfour Declaration, thirty years earlier; nor did it harmonize with the objective of creating a paramount Jewish colonization agency (the Jewish National Fund), nearly 46 years earlier.

Implementation and Completion Phase

I shall not dwell in much detail under this section, because it is well documented, and it had been discussed by a number of historians, Palestinian and non-Palestinian, since the fifties of the last century; and documented and analyzed lately in a most comprehensive way by historian Ilan Pappe, in his fine book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).

In a snapshot form, early cleansing operations started in December 1947. At the time, the Palestinians constituted two-thirds of the population (when they were nearly 90% of the population of Palestine at the beginning of the British Mandate in 1923). At the beginning of the cleansing operations, Palestinians owned about 97% of the land. As a result of the ethnic cleansing operations, 531 Palestinian villages were erased; more than 86% of the indigenous Palestinian population was destroyed, expelled, or became displaced. Thus only 14-15% of the indigenous Palestinian population (about 130,000 ­ 150,000) remained in their homeland, while the rest became displaced and homeless refugees.

While the Palestinian population remaining on their own indigenous land (in Israel) number today about 1.3 million, their land robbery continues, through government legislations. In 1967, the Israeli Knesset passed the "Law of Agricultural Settlement" that "prohibited the sub-letting of the Jewish-owned land of the JNF to non-Jews the law furthermore ensured that water quotas set aside for the JNF lands could not be transferred to non-JNF lands." (Pappe, 222). The Palestinian minority in Israel, which constitutes now about 18% "has been forced to make do with just three percent of the land." It is estimated that 70% of the land belonging to the Palestinians in Israel "has been either confiscated or made inaccessible to them." (Pappe, 223).

How do we circumvent Al-Nakba from persisting into our future?

Based on the above, I am convinced that Al-Nakba process will persist recurring in the Palestinian future unless and until we, and all the forces in the world that do not want to see a recurring Nakba, embark unequivocally on the following steps:

1. Stop thinking and acting for the partitioning of historical Palestine, as a pretext to find a solution for the current unjust situation, resulting from the process of the last hundred years.

2. Work towards the dismemberment of the exclusivist, racist Zionist-Jewish-Israeli state, in favor of a democratic, non-hegemonic state, for all the inhabitants of historical Palestine.

3. Highlight the historical evil perpetrated against the Palestinian people, and work globally towards forcing the World Zionist Movement and the State of Israel to acknowledge their direct responsibility for perpetrating this historical evil, and for taking real measures to rectify it.

Khalil Nakhleh is a Palestinian anthropologist, independent development and educational consultant and writer. His latest two books are: The Myth of Palestinian Development (2004), and (co-authored with Tafeeda Jirbawi) Empowering Future Generations (2008). He is the editor of a forthcoming book, The Future of the Palestinian Minority in Israel. Dr. Nakhleh resides in Ramallah, and may be reached at abusama@palnet.com. (This article was published by CounterPunch.org)

“Strategies to end the Israeli Occupation”

First, let me start with the assumption that you are here because you believe that injustice has been done against the Palestinian people, and you are committed to do something about it.

To be fair to your commitment, and to help move the discussion forward, I shall focus in this presentation, not on the analysis and dissection of the current political situation, and why we are at this impassable point in our struggle, but on elements of a strategy that could break this engulfing vicious cycle in which we find ourselves. Today, in the age of lightening electronic communications and unhindered information, there is more and more accessible, reliable and critical information, and more and more insightful and daring analyses to which one could return. So you, as well as I, can easily retrieve that information, if interested.

However, the back side of the readily available huge body of information and analyses lies in the difficulty of discernment and discrimination between real and fictitious issues, primary and secondary, marginal and essential, official and people, etc. Constantly, we need to keep reminding ourselves of the real issue of the struggle, as if we have to keep peeling off the artificial layers that were piled on it to meet the interests of the different parties.

The main issue

The main issue of the struggle, as I see it, is that a colonial-settler movement—Zionism— has been embarking for nearly a century on ethnically cleansing the land of Palestine of its native population, by various coercive and illegal means, combining military, economic, legal, psychological, and environmental. This resulted in the forceful transformation of the native population of Palestine into: groups of dispersed refugees outside their land; groups of internally displaced persons on their land; groups who have been relegated to a status of second class citizens, unwelcome foreigners in their home land (the Palestinian communities in Israel); and groups who have been subjected to a prolonged and relentless military and economic occupation by Israel for nearly 40 years (the Palestinian communities in the West Bank of the Jordan River, East Jerusalem and Gaza). This comprehensive view ought to help us set the actual parameters of the struggle in which we have been engaged over half a century, and strategies for how to proceed.

Thus, it should be emphasized that:

• This is not a religious struggle, or a struggle between 2 religiously-based opposing ideologies;
• This is not a struggle between those who believe that Israeli citizens have a right to exist in an independent state, abiding by international conventions and agreements, free from oppression and persecution, and those who don’t;
• This is not merely a struggle to find temporary arrangements for how to end military occupation, or minimize its deleterious effects on the Palestinian population under occupation, that started in 1967;
• Contrary to public opinion and perception, this is not just a struggle to gain freedom for the Palestinians from Israeli occupation, however limited and truncated, and to achieve independent living, however curtailed, over limited areas of historical Palestine;
• But this is, and ought to be, a struggle against the structure that allows and condones the occupation and suppression of the other; a structure whose basis is a system of apartheid and an ideology of exclusion; a structure that is nurtured by an insatiable ideology and practice of ethnic cleansing and population transfer, in order to achieve “Jewish purity” in the land of Palestine.

To respond to this grave and threatening challenge, I propose what may be the elements of a strategy, for your reflection and discussion:

1. I am proposing the launching of people’s strategy. The purpose of this strategy is not merely to end the present military occupation of parts of Palestine, but to work against the prevalent structure of occupation, seeking the dismantlement of its apartheid, exclusionary ideology, that is premised on ethnic cleansing and population transfer of non-Jews.

2. To achieve this goal, I see 2 levels of struggle: an internal level centered in the land of Palestine/Israel, and an external level centered in different locales in the rest of the world, focusing on areas where Jewish presence is high and politically involved in what happens in our region, and specifically, but not exclusively, in the USA. At this level, Americans who are opposed to the structure of Israeli occupation in Palestine are urged to coalesce with like-minded Jews in that country. They then, individuals and groups, become the external nucleus that spearheads the dismantlement of the apartheid structure of occupation.

3. The “internal level” is to set the tone of the struggle, and to reverse it from its current, inert, “reactive” mode to a genuine “proactive” mode. The internal level should set the agenda and its tone for the rest of the world. It should be the primary and critical level.

4. At the internal level: there ought to be a purposeful coalition of all internal forces who are committed to stand genuinely against the structure and ideology of occupation, which are premised on ethnic cleansing and population transfer, and the abhorrent and racist, so called, “demographic formula”.

5. This coalition should not be exclusionary; it should include all committed forces to this approach: Israeli Jews, Muslim Palestinians, Christian Palestinians, secular Israelis, secular Palestinians, etc.

6. The uniting platform of this coalition should have a clear and unambiguous commitment against the Israeli structure and ideology of occupation, and should work to dismantle it. This must be so, if we are seeking a just and sustained resolution to this historical conflict, irrespective of how politically unpopular these concepts are, or how unacceptable they are to the ears of the so-called “international community”, who has been usurped successfully by the US, under the threat of brute power and economic sanctions.

7. I propose that this “coalition of the committed” should discard and reject the often repeated slogan of 2 – state solution, which has become inane, redundant, unrealizable, and totally undermined by internationally sanctioned Israeli apartheid policies. I propose, further, that this 2-state objective should be rejected because it is unjust, unresponsive to people’s need for freedom, independent living, and their right for unfettered development, and because it legitimizes historical and ongoing stealing of the lands of indigenous Palestinian communities.

8. I propose, furthermore, that the so called 2-state solution should be discarded and rejected, because it maintains existing racist and oppressive policies, and is premised on the concepts of exclusion, population transfer, ethnic cleansing, ghettoization of local communities, and artificial separation of the people—all the people—in the land of Palestine/Israel.

9. I propose that this “coalition of the committed” should struggle to transform the present land of Palestine/Israel into a democratic, just domain, where the people of the area—all the people—can live free, independent, and equal, and are allowed to exercise all their rights. Then, let the people chose what to call this domain. Once we achieve this, we would have succeeded in liberating our minds!

1. This is a people’s strategy that defies current official positions on all sides, undermines them, and seeks to transform them in harmony with people’s aspirations and needs.

2. This approach exposes the redundant, superfluous and hollow official claims and negotiation premises that have been circulating over the last 15 years, and shows how barren and impractical they are.

3. People’s strategy can be, and would likely be undermined, coerced and interrupted by adversary official power; therefore we should expect it to be a prolonged struggle with little, if any, immediate results. On the other hand, such people’s strategy can turn into a powerful driving force, coalescing people, hitherto un-coalesced, and liberating their minds.

4. Such people’s strategy can generate new, innovative and sustainable lines of power and commitment.

Thank you for being engaged.
Ramallah, Palestine
November 2006