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Call to Action! Week of Palestinian Struggle, 15-22 May 2020
The call for the week of action is below - but at our website, we have a list of themes for actions, scheduled events, ideas for what you can do, and a form for you to submit your endorsement. Check those out at these links:

On 15-22 May 2020 Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges all organizations, activists and movements to join us in a collective Week of Palestinian Struggle. 

On these days, we remember the Nakba, the theft of Palestinian land and the dispossession of the Palestinian people. At the same time, we celebrate, affirm and pledge to continue over 72 years of Palestinian resistance for liberation and return. 

For decades, the Palestinian people’s  movement has commemorated 15 May and the week that follows as a week of solidarity, resistance and struggle, affirming a revolution that will continue until victory. This week marks the Palestinian, Arab and international struggle for justice and liberation, a struggle that has continued for 72 years and continues every day. As the Nakba continues, the resistance continues!

Join us in a week of virtual and in-person actions to stand with the Palestinian people through 72 years of struggle confronting Zionism, imperialism and reaction and for the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea! 

Click here to endorse the week of action or send us your activities. 

We know that the Zionist ethnic cleansing project did not begin on 15 May 1948 – it was mostly completed by this point throughout 78% of historic Palestine after its launch the previous December. More than that, it was built upon decades of military escalation and European colonization in Palestine and throughout the region more broadly, particularly the British colonial mandate and its Balfour declaration. This week of struggle requires confronting the racist, imperial ideology of Zionism on which the colonial regime in Palestine has been constructed.

There are over seven million Palestinian refugees and over 13 million Palestinians in exile and diaspora. The implementation of the right of return to Palestine is a collective and individual right that is at the core of the liberation of Palestine. In recent years, the attempts to liquidate the right of return have intensified, culminating in the so-called “deal of the century.” This week of action pledges to intensify the struggle everywhere for the right to return to Palestine. 

This struggle for return and liberation has meant that Palestinians have been on the front lines fighting imperialism for over 72 years, fighting alongside comrades in Ireland, the Philippines, Turkey, South Africa, the indigenous Americas and elsewhere. This week of Palestinian struggle is also a week of struggle against imperialism, especially as the U.S. attempts to impose its “deal of the century” and liquidate the Palestinian cause. Imperialist powers use “anti-terror” laws and repressive measures to repress the struggle for Palestine within their borders as well, from the imprisonment of Georges Abdallah in France to the Holy Land Five in the US, to the targeting of Palestinian activists like Khaled Barakat in Germany for political bans.

Every victory that is achieved for people’s struggles around the world is a victory for Palestine, and every attack on those movements – such as the attempts to foment a coup in Venezuela or blockade Cuba – is also an attack on the Palestinian people. The siege on Gaza is not simply an Israeli siege but also a U.S. and European siege in which Arab reactionary regimes are complicit. During this week of action, we struggle to break the siege on Gaza, bring an end to imperialist sanctions and fight all forms of repression.

Of course, Israel is not the only racist settler colony built on dispossession of indigenous peoples and extraction of their resources; the sponsors of Zionist policy in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. We stand with all oppressed peoples and indigenous movements defending their land from the ravages of settler colonial capitalism. 

Just as the Palestinian cause is an international struggle, it is also deeply linked to the fight against imperialism throughout the Arab world and the region more broadly. Arab reactionary regimes like those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt work hand in hand with Israel and the United States to promote normalization, besiege the Palestinian people and squander an independent future for the peoples of the region – and this is reflected in their attacks on the Palestinian movement. We stand with the Arab people and the peoples of the region who continue to fight back and defend their sovereignty and their future against imperialism and reaction. 

The Palestinian Authority continues to engage in “security coordination” with the Israeli occupier on a routine basis, attacking the Palestinian resistance. This week of action stands unconditionally with the Palestinian people’s right to resist occupation and oppression and against all forms of normalization and complicity with the liquidation of Palestine. 

As we fight these attempts to normalize colonialism, the Week of Palestinian Struggle aims to intensify the boycott of Israel and the complicit corporations that profit from the oppression, dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The boycott movement and BDS campaign has faced escalated repression because it poses a material challenge to Israel and its corporate partners. During this week of action, we will expand the movement to isolate and boycott Israel.

Palestinian youth and students are fighting back against imprisonment and for the future of a liberated Palestine .Resisting suppression and imprisonment inside and outside Palestine, they fight – generation after generation until total liberation. 

Palestinian women have been on the front lines of struggle for over 72 years, defending the land, educating generations of strugglers and participating fully in leadership of the Palestinian struggle, political organization and armed and popular struggle. 

From inside the prisons, Palestinian prisoners stand on the front lines of confrontation for the freedom of their land and people. The imprisonment of Palestinians has always been a tool of the colonial project in Palestine, meant to maintain occupation, apartheid and oppression and criminalize the existence and resistance of Palestinians. From the martial law imposed in 1948 on the Palestinians who remained in the 78% of historic Palestine occupied at that time, to the imprisonment of 5,000 Palestinian political leaders, journalists, and freedom fighters today, the imprisonment of Palestinians and their leaders has always been part and parcel of the Nakba – and the Palestinian prisoners behind bars continue to stand at the heart of the resistance.

We salute the struggle of the workers and farmers of Palestine, fighting to defend their land and resist exploitation and oppression in all of its forms. Labor organizers are locked inside prisons and fishermen in Gaza are targeted for Israeli gunfire and assault. The popular classes of Palestine have always been the leaders of the revolution and those who have propelled the national liberation movement forward:  the farmers, the workers, the refugees in the camps. 

Join this week of action to highlight the voices and struggles of the Palestinian people, inside and outside Palestine, from Haifa, Nazareth and Safad to Gaza, Ramallah and Nablus, from Cairo, Amman and Beirut to Berlin, Brussels, Santiago and New York. 

Remember the Nakba: Long live the resistance! Victory for Palestine! 
 

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Statement for endorsement and circulation

All Palestinian, Arab and international organizations are invited to endorse the statement below, which will be reissued with all additional signatories. To add the signature of your group or youth organization, please email bayanyouth.students@gmail.com.

The statement will be re-released with all signatories attached.

Read the Arabic text online

We, the undersigned Palestinian youth and student organizations, and with us the associations, organizations and institutions that have signed this statement, call on the masses of Palestinian youth and students throughout occupied Palestine and in exile to join us in a popular initiative for the advancement and initiation of national development for the restoration of the revolutionary democratic approach for a new stage of struggle. The core of this initiative is the objectives of our Palestinian people: return, liberation, and continuing struggle to achieve all of their legitimate national goals and aspirations, no matter how long it may take.

The cause of Palestine, the sacred cause of our people, the cause of the exploited popular classes in our Arab homeland and the forces of freedom in the world, is today intended for liquidation, to be uprooted from the awareness and memory of our people and our nation. The rights of our people everywhere are subjected to all forms of distortion and confiscation. Nothing will protect this great cause from the ravages of liquidation and destruction except for the minds and arms of our people, the will of the committed, patriotic and revolutionary youth, and the steadfastness of women, workers and peasants.

Therefore, today, we call on our Palestinian people, especially the young Palestinian generations, to reject and repudiate the policies and positions represented in the approach of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his cohort, and to affirm that the leadership of the Palestinian Authority does not represent our people and is outside the ranks of our national struggle. We also call upon our great people to embody this popular will on the ground by organizing the widest, unified popular framework to overcome the disastrous phase of Oslo and all of its accompanying effects.

We invite you to participate broadly in the overthrow of the program of the so-called “Palestinian leadership,” which is based on a path of surrender and abandonment. This corrupt approach has come to its last days after over 40 years of marketing the project of a phantom state. This political class that has brought only shame and disaster to our people seeks today to convert the administrative autonomy in the occupied West Bank into the end of our liberation projects. The money of this class is mortgaged to the agents of the occupation, to “economic peace” and normalization projects. It has become imperative for our people to isolate this sector and defeat its program in the squares, streets, factories, farms, universities and schools inside and outside occupied Palestine.

And as we confront the U.S., Zionist and reactionary policies that today target the rights of our people to life and existence, in the face of the acceleration of the hostile liquidation project that aims to demolish the horizons of the national liberation project and abort all possibilities for renewal, in front of the daily brutal attack on the prisoners’ movement in the occupation prisons, and amid the confiscation of all of the natural and human rights of our people in the camps, silence becomes complicity, betrayal, a form of submission and failure.

The time has come for these leaders of surrender to depart from the Muqata’ headquarters in Ramallah and to isolate this defeated sector that holds itself close to the Zionist entity and the CIA, participating in the collective punishment of our people in Gaza, depriving the families of martyrs and prisoners of their rights, suppressing the resistance and coordinating with the occupation forces to target the fundamentals of our society, its national resistance and its youth and student vanguard.

The defeat of the Oslo project and the isolation of Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies are more achievable and realistic than ever, despite all of the capacities and resources that the forces hostile to the Palestinian people use to support the leadership of the Authority. However, the crucial element in this lengthy historical battle is the role of the popular masses and their ability to generate the revolutionary approach from the grassroots and bring it into the light, from the depths of our history and our militant legacies of struggle and from the womb of our Palestinian societies in every popular community, every neighborhood, camp, city and village.

We call on all Palestinian resistance forces, with their various political and intellectual currents and paths, to end the state of disintegration and fragmentation by forming a unified national front. This will be a support and sustenance for our people everywhere, and it sword and shield will protect our people as they continue on their historical road of great sacrifice and struggle in order to obtain their rights and break their chains, achieving our collective and complete liberation from the clutches of Zionism.

We call on you to broad popular engagement and to intensify popular national activities during the Week of Palestinian Struggle, May 15-22, 2020, as our first stage in announcing a new phase of struggle under the slogan: Palestine Day – the Day of Return and Liberation. Let history bear witness to the crime, the ongoing Nakba that has continued since 1947-48 and, at the same time, testifies to the ongoing Palestinian resistance that continues until victory, despite all of the sacrifices and lengthy years of struggle.

No to the path of surrender and liquidation! No to the project of the “self-rule government” and “administrative autonomy!”

Yes to the path of return and liberation. Yes to the resistance and intifada until victory!

To add the signature of your group or organization, please email bayanyouth.students@gmail.com.

Initial Signatories:

  • Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
  • HIRAK: Palestinian Youth Mobilization – Germany
  • Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)
  • “Sada” Movement – Jerusalem- occupied Palestine 
  • Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition / North America
  • Palestinian Arab Cultural Center Rio Grande de Sol, Brazil المركز الثقافي العربي- الفلسطيني/ ساو بولو، البرازيل 
  • Unione Democratica Arabo-Palestinese (UDAP)- Italy  الاتحاد الديمقراطي العربي الفلسطيني- إيطاليا 
  • Democratic Palestine Committees Brazil لجان فلسطين الديموقراطية- البرازيل
  • مركز النّقب للأنشطة الشبابيّة – ِAl Naqab Center for Youth Activities
  • Palestinian Chess Forum- Shatila refugee camp الملتقى الفلسطيني للشطرنج- مخيم شاتيلا
  • AlKarama-Palestinian Women Movement in Spain حركة نساء فلسطين الكرامة في إسبانيا
  • Centro Cultural e Politico Al JaniahBrazil  مركز الجانية الثقافي والسياسيالبرازيل
  • Brazilian Arab Palestinian Society – Corumba Brazil 
  • Students for Justice in Palestine at John Jay College 
  • Students for Justice in Palestine at Butler University
  • GUPS SFSU
  • Within Our Lifetime – United for Palestine
  • Canada Palestine Association
  • Palestinian Student Association at Wilfrid Laurier University/ Canada
  • Palestine Solidarity Collective at York University
  • Palestine Solidarity Group at University of Windsor
  • Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at McMaster University
  • Midwest Students for Justice in Palestine
  • Handala Coalition of Michigan
  • Palestinian Cultural Club – Beirut / Lebanon
  • Palestinian Arab Cultural Club Lebanon 
 
 
Join the Samidoun Webinar for the Week of Palestinian Struggle on May 16: with Khaled Barakat! 

Saturday, 16 May
10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern/7 pm central Europe/8 pm Palestine
Register online: https://bit.ly/liberatepalestine
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/252840772507550/

Join Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network for the Week of Palestinian Struggle, 15-22 May 2020!

On Saturday, 16 May, join us for a webinar with Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat on the illegitimacy of Israel and the defense of Palestine, Liberate Palestine: From the River to the Sea.

Register online to join us on ZOOM: https://bit.ly/liberatepalestine Event will also be livestreamed on the Samidoun facebook page at https://facebook.com/SamidounPrisonerSolidarity

 
More News and Actions around the world for Palestinian freedom:
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Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network has chapters and affiliates in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Palestine and Lebanon and we work with groups around the world. Would you like to form a local chapter or become an affiliate? Contact us at samidoun@samidoun.net.
 
 
 
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