Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is reproducing below the statement of the Philippines-Palestine Friendship Association on Jerusalem and the Trump Declaration that aims to legitimize the colonization of Jerusalem and all of Palestine – and which has sparked a powerful response from the Palestinian people, Arab movements and supporters of justice around the world.
We also express our solidarity with the people of the Philippines in their struggle against imperialism and exploitation, and in particular with the popular movements of the Philippines which are being subjected to arrests, extrajudicial killing and extensive repression, escalating shortly after Philippine President Duterte’s meeting with Trump, along with threatening proclamations attacking the Left and people’s movements. Stop the US war machine, from Palestine to the Philippines!
U.S. Imperialism and Zionist Israel Hands off Jerusalem!
10 Dec 2017
MANILA – The Philippines-Palestine Friendship Association strongly condemns US President Donald Trump’s declaration recognizing Jerusalem as capital of the apartheid settler state of Israel. In the same vein, we denounce the attempt of President Rodrigo Duterte to follow his imperialist master and move the Philippine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, ignoring international warnings, Trump announced that the US was formally recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and would begin the process of moving its embassy to Jerusalem. The international community has never recognized Israel’s claim to the entire city.
Trump and Duterte’s plan to construct their respective embassies in Jerusalem is a blatant display of their total disregard for peoples’ rights and international humanitarian laws.
Following US declaration, Israeli forces have already killed 4 Palestinians, including 2 civilians, and wounded 259 others, including 32 children and 4 women in Gaza Strip and West Bank. In a blatant display of mockery of international humanitarian law, Israeli forces obstructed medical crews by targeting ambulances with rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters.
Trump’s imperial declaration comes at a time when thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem are being imprisoned and countless more dislocated and face settler violence in an ethnic cleansing project that has gone on with impunity for 70 long years. The declaration also coincides with the 100th year of the Balfour Declaration and recalls the time when British imperialist power promised historic Palestine to the Zionist movement against the wishes of the Palestinian indigenous peoples.
US imperialism and Israel attempt to erase the Palestinian history of Jerusalem is the height of the Zionist policy of occupation, apartheid, and land grabbing in Palestine. This move exposes the lie of any so-called “peace process” under US auspices and the reality of US imperialism as the main partner of Zionism in carrying out the colonization of Palestine.
Trump’s declaration further increases the already tensed atmosphere in the region. This is not surprising since US imperialism is driven to provoke wars to carve up territories and markets to boost its military industrial complex and to plunder resources to prop up its crisis-ridden economy.
Duterte, by aping his imperialist sponsor Trump becomes complicit in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. His slated visit to Israel and expression of interest to follow Trump and move the Philippine embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem are all part of the Zionist effort to normalize Israel’s colonial domination over Palestine and to whitewash the gross human rights violations and crimes that go along with it.
Israel stands guilty too in the brutal killing spree happening in the Philippines under Pres. Duterte. Israel supplies the weapons to Philippines for Duterte’s brutal anti-insurgency and anti-drugs campaign that has seen tens of thousands of innocent and poor civilians dead.
President Duterte is now in league with fascist figureheads Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu as the world’s most notorious war criminals. They are the enemy of the Filipino and Palestinian peoples. We will fiercely resist their reign of terror.
STAND WITH PALESTINE! HANDS OFF JERUSALEM, THE CAPITAL OF PALESTINE!
US IMPERIALISM AND ISRAELI ZIONISM ARE TERRORISM!
DUTERTE, LAPDOG OF IMPERIALISM AND ZIONISM!
