As Palestinian people and communities in exile and diaspora and the broad movement for the liberation of Palestine are preparing to march on the 75th commemoration of the continuing Nakba, their sisters and brothers in Palestine are confronting the crimes of the settler-colonial Zionist entity, “Israel.” The occupation regime is waging a war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and the prisoners in Zionist jails, and engaging in a bloody policy of assassinations targeting Palestinian leaders and commanders. Yet, the Palestinian people, in the homeland and in diaspora are united against their enemy and unified around the heroic resistance defending Palestine.
While these are days of challenges and hardship, they are also days of pride, dignity and the glory of Palestinian steadfastness.
The Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, also recognizes that today marks the anniversary of the Unity Intifada/the Battle of Seif al-Quds two years ago. On this anniversary, the heroic Palestinian resistance are once again bravely entering another battle, and writing another immortal page in the history of the liberation struggle. Today, the Palestinian resistance is at the forefront of the battle against imperialism, Zionism and reaction.
Palestinians today are demonstrating unity inside and outside Palestine, and this is also paving the road to unity on the Arab and international levels, for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea and the right to return of all Palestinian refugees. This unity can only be completed when it is a Palestinian, Arab and international unity forming the popular incubator of the Palestinian resistance. This is the time to uphold the true principles that have driven Palestinians to struggle to defend their land and people for over 75 years. The Palestinian popular classes are rising and liberating their voice, showing their readiness to rise again to liberate their cause as a necessary step towards the liberation of their land: in the armed resistance, in the prisons, in the refugee camps.
As our movement is struggling for a unified Palestinian liberation front through a series of dialogues and engagement with the Palestinian and Arab forces of resistance, we know that this must be an international front as well. It is time to cast aside all illusions about a so-called “two-state solution” and the futile path of negotiations in the so-called “peace process.” Instead, it is time to stand, based on principles, and support the Palestinian people’s resistance for liberation and return and to end, once and for all, the Zionist colonial regime in Palestine.
The Palestinian armed resistance are currently engaged in a major battle responding to the crimes of the occupation forces: assassination, siege, colonialism, the attacks on Jerusalem, racism, exploitation, oppression. Palestinians across Palestine, from the river to the sea, are suffering daily from these colonial policies.
At the same time, our people in exile and diaspora are being deprived of their basic rights in Lebanon, in Jordan and in the so-called “democracies” of the Western imperialist core, who have been acting as the baton of “Israel” to threaten the solidarity movement, ban events and demonstrations and suppress freedom of expression and the right to organize, as we have seen in Berlin, Germany. Palestinians in exile and diaspora confront organized smear campaigns run hand in hand with the embassies of the occupation regime targeting Palestinian activists and their allies and supporters, from New York to London to Paris and Berlin. This comes hand in hand with the smear campaigns and attempted criminalization of the Palestinian prisoners, which is extended by attacking their defenders, such as the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
Our movement was established to confront and present an alternative to the 30 years of liquidationism targeting the Palestinian cause through the “Oslo Accords” and the path of futile negotiations. The Palestinian popular and working classes have had their voice confiscated through this process for the past 30 years in order to serve the interests of a comprador sector that has maintained a monopoly over Palestinian institutions while claiming that they are the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This class has been supported by the European Union in order to liquidate the Palestinian people’s rights.
However, this 30 years has also been a time of rebuilding the resistance and developing its strength, a strength that we see in practice today, as the true path forward, rather than the path of illusions, consistent with the Palestinian people’s revolutionary heritage of uprisings since 1917.
Our movement has also been established to confront normalization on official and popular levels. Our call to boycott and isolate the Zionist regime and its extensions worldwide is an important mechanism to support the Palestinian people’s resistance and not an alternative to that resistance. Our movement is also clear that the Palestinian cause is an anti-imperialist cause that confronts the imperial policies of siege, sanctions, and targeting of peoples, from Iran to Venezuela, from Lebanon to Cuba to Zimbabwe and beyond.
Today, we salute the Palestinian people in the refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon who are still fighting and remain at the front of return. Today we salute our Palestinian communities in the Arab world, Europe, North America, Latin America and everywhere, especially the young generation that has been leading the mobilization and developing qualitative steps forward in the Palestinian struggle. Today, we salute the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and the almost 5,000 prisoners resisting behind bars, including Walid Daqqah, Ahmad Sa’adat, Musaab Shtayyeh, Israa Jaabis and Ahmad Manasra, for justice and true freedom. We salute the prisoners of the Palestinian struggle in imperialist jails, Georges Abdallah in France and the prisoners of the Holy Land Foundation in U.S. jails. We call upon all of our comrades, friends and allies to support the international campaign to free the remains of the Palestinian martyrs, including the most recent martyr of the prisoners’ struggle, Sheikh Khader Adnan.
Today, the Palestinian liberation movement is rising, and it is not alone. It is part of a broad camp of resistance, of people fighting injustice, imperialism and oppression globally. Palestinians are proud to be on the front line of that battle and that their flags and kuffiyehs are international symbols of resistance to colonialism. With every march, every demonstration, every battle of the resistance, and every victory, whether small or large, the day of liberation grows closer.
The march will continue for a liberated Palestine!