Statement of the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement
On the 34th anniversary of the great Palestinian Intifada of 1987
* We will confront the Zionist project and all forces that suppressed the Intifada and squandered its achievements
* Together, towards the unity of the Palestinian women’s, workers’ and student movement everywhere
* We call for active participation in organizing the National Conference for Palestinian Students in 2022
* We call to organize the Week of Palestinian Struggle: Nakba and Continuing Resistance in May 2022
Our Palestinian Arab people recall the 34th anniversary of the outbreak of the great popular Intifada that erupted on December 8, 1987 at the heart of the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, following the deliberate running over of Palestinians by a Zionist truck driver, killing a number of Palestinians. The martyred Palestinian workers sparked our Palestinian people to rise, renew themselves and rebel to confront Zionist occupation and its ongoing crimes. These crimes have not stopped for one moment since colonialism and Zionism established themselves in Palestine in 1917, and later established the racist Zionist entity after the displacement of our people and uprooting them from their homeland in 1948.
The “uprising of the stones” in 1987, which lasted for about six years continuously, was one of the longest popular revolutions in human history, led by a disarmed people held under the yoke of racist settler colonialism. This became a massive and comprehensive popular uprising in which all sectors of the Palestinian masses participated, inside and outside Palestine, overturned the scales and equations and defeating the tyranny and war machine of the occupier. The Intifada announced to the world that in occupied Palestine, a revolutionary people were unbroken, moving forward with a clear will in their uprising until freedom and victory.
In this great popular uprising, stones, Molotov cocktails and slogans on the walls were turned into fighting tools and weapons in the hands of young men, young women and children confronting the Zionist occupier, armed with all kinds of advanced U.S. weaponry. Poems, folk songs and revolutionary chants were transformed into bursts of life that renewed the fire and flame of the Intifada, forcing the Zionist project into an existential crisis that threatened to bring down the pillars of its artificial racist entity.
Despite the crimes of the occupation army and the settler hordes, including killings, arrests, repression, the “iron fist” policy, the policy of breaking the bones of young people, closure of universities, targeting workers and farmers, imposing siege and curfew and invading cities, villages and camps, despite all of the attacks of the occupation and the Zionist colonizers, our struggling Palestinian people were able through their popular and militant unity to impose their will through popular initiative and push the Zionist project into a historical crisis in which all of its false masks were exposed and its weaknesses were in full view.
The international media documented images of the occupation soldiers chasing children and youth and breaking the bones of Palestinians. The true picture of the Palestinian national liberation movement became clear as the Intifada entered every home, city and capital of the world, including the word itself — Intifada — which entered dictionaries and languages throughout the world, the liberation movement of our people becoming an example respected by the people of the world. In fact, peoples in struggle everywhere have been inspired by the revolutionary example of steadfastness, resistance and confrontation against imperialism, fascism, racism and oppression displayed in the Intifada.
In this great popular uprising, the student movement, the women’s movement and the labor movement advanced the ranks of their revolutionary volunteer work. They were truly the pillars of the popular revolution and the main nerve and backbone of the uprising, the guarantor of its continuity, permanence and escalation. The masses of our people in occupied Palestine 1948 and in diaspora and exile were the Palestinian lungs from which breathed the flame of the national struggle, translating the slogans “towards providing all of the factors and needs for steadfastness and continuity” and “towards supporting the popular uprising with fire,” in various fields of confrontation and struggle.
The banner of the popular uprising continued to rise, day after day, month after month, shining and transcending despite the wounds, until the U.S. and Zionist projects aimed to end it. The uprising was subject to a political assassination when the reactionary Arab regimes broke its back and the policies of surrender and submission of the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization extinguished its fire and light through entering the corridors of negotiations and liquidation, in the Madrid Conference of October 1991 and the subsequent signing of the devastating Oslo Accords in Washington, DC, in 1993. These policies and the ensuing catastrophic results not only squandered the achievements of the Intifada and constituted a poisonous stab in the back, but also established a state of siege in which the Palestinian people continue to live today, confronting, almost alone, all of the projects of liquidation and destruction.
We in the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement today salute the martyrs and the sacrifices of our people throughout all of their revolutions and popular and armed uprisings throughout their history of struggle confronting Zionist colonialism. Inspired by the lessons of this great uprising in 1987, we salute our steadfast people in Palestine and in exile and diaspora and we remind ourselves and others that the popular struggles in Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah, Dheisheh, Beita and others, the uprising of May 2021, which spread to Haifa, Nazareth, Umm al-Fahm and the Naqab, the victory of the will of our heroic prisoners to seize their freedom through the Freedom Tunnel and the escalation of Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip: All of these are indicators and proof of the continuation of the flame of our national liberation struggle, despite all obstacles and difficulties.
We also call on all organizations, forces, associations and individuals participating in the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (Masar Badil) to begin preparing to organize the Week of Palestinian Struggle: Ongoing Nakba and Continuing Resistance in mid-May 2022, to raise the right to return and the rights of Palestinian refugees from a political slogan to a direct area of struggle in multiple levels and arenas.
We also salute the vanguard of the student movement and the popular struggle in Jordan, which has risen up in rejection of economic agreements and normalization projects with the Zionist occupiers. We especially salute our Palestinian students imprisoned in the occupation jails and we renew our pledge to the steadfast students in Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine ’48, the refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon, and all of the Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora.
Palestinian students everywhere:
Today, on the anniversary of the great, heroic popular Intifada, we address you with a special appeal, affirming the decision of our founding conference. We urge you to build bridges of cohesion, solidarity and unity and work together to unify student efforts in order to organize and hold the National Conference for Palestinian students in 2022, and awaken the determination of the Palestinian and Arab student movement and the restoration of its revolutionary and internationalist position, the development of its social, scientific, cultural and unionized role. We must strengthen the unity of our Palestinian people on the path to achieving their goals and aspirations to return, liberation and the exercise of our right of self-determination over the entire land of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Long live the memory of the great popular Intifada of 1987!
Long live the struggle of our Palestinian people everywhere!
Together towards the unity of our student, labor and women’s movement… We shall return and be victorious
Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, 8 December 2021