The following statement was obtained by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network from leaders of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement behind the bars of the occupation, as a message to the global solidarity movement on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day 2022. As the attacks of the occupation escalate on Palestinians in Jerusalem and its holiest sites such as Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jenin, in al-Naqab, in Gaza, and throughout occupied Palestine — and as the Palestinian resistance continues to defend their land and fight for liberation — it is critical that the voices of Palestinian prisoners, on the front lines for liberation, be heard.
Message from the Palestinian prisoners behind occupation bars to the supporters of the Palestinian people and the forces of liberation and solidarity around the world
On Palestinian Prisoners’ Day 2022, we salute the struggles of revolutionary liberation forces and the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people everywhere around the world, and all supporters of the Palestinian resistance until liberation and return. We address you today through this message to our comrades in the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, in hopes that our voice will reach all the free people of the world.
On Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, our Palestinian people continue their valiant resistance against Zionist colonialism and its racist policies, affirming their determination to continue the struggle and resistance in all forms in order to obtain and implement their rights to life and freedom. The Palestinian masses inside Palestine and in exile and diaspora gather around the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and embrace the over 4,500 prisoners. The relationship between the prisoners and the people of Palestine is that of the blood to the body. There is not a single Palestinian family that has not been subjected to the brutality of the occupation and the experience of arrest. More than a million Palestinians have been imprisoned since the start of the occupation in 1948.
Today, on the Day of the Palestinian Prisoner, we renew our call to the revolutionary and progressive forces supporting our people globally to deepen and expand the comprehensive international boycott movement against the occupation, its institutions and its corporate and institutional supporters. The accumulating achievements of the boycott movements, especially at the political, economic and academic levels, constitute a significant accomplishment for our Palestinian struggle and sacrifices and for the struggles of peoples and forces seeking national and social liberation and justice in Palestine and the world. Today we salute the student movements in North America that have achieved more victories in boycotting the occupation in American and Canadian academic institutions and universities, among others.
On this historic day, we call for the expansion of the popular and international campaigns that are being organized in Europe against the American and Zionist arms companies, such as Elbit, that manufacture death and supply the occupation with weapons and tools of killing, destruction and war. These companies are participating in the brutal aggression against our people, especially in the Gaza Strip, the largest prison in the world, and they are partners in war crimes and the policy of assassinations, premeditated killings and siege.
We call for confronting the Zionist movement and its institutions abroad, especially the so-called “Jewish National Fund” and the Zionist organizations associated with the occupation embassies and its military, political, academic and economic institutions that support the occupation and its policy of ethnic cleansing in the Naqab, Jerusalem and throughout all of occupied Palestine.
On this day, we call for confronting the organized racist campaigns carried out by the occupying power, which target the supporters of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance around the world under the pretext of allegations of anti-Semitism. The steadfastness of our Palestinian people on the one hand, and the wide and growing participation of progressive Jewish forces in support of the Palestinian resistance on the other hand, will block the path before the racist and Zionist forces that are trying to attach the accusation of anti-Semitism to the struggle of our people and its supporters from the international progressive forces. In this context, we renew our solidarity with our comrades in the “Collectif Palestine Vaincra”, which was recently targeted in France through an unjust decision to dissolve the organization.
Our liberation struggle was and remains an integral part of the international struggle against the forces of colonialism, imperialism, Zionism and reaction. Accordingly, we salute all political prisoners in the world, the struggle of the Black liberation movement in America, the struggle of the Indigenous peoples for self-determination and liberation, and all liberation forces in the world, and we call for strengthening the relationship between these movements and all Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora.
We follow your efforts with pride, and we highly appreciate your support for the prisoners in the occupation prisons, especially the campaign of solidarity with the child prisoners, the administrative detainees and the campaigns of solidarity with sick and ill prisoners and hunger strikers, and with our valiant women prisoners in the prisons of the occupation. We value your principled position in supporting the struggle of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement for liberation, as it stands on the front lines confronting Zionist colonialism and its racist settler regime.
On the Day of the Palestinian Prisoner, we call for the widest campaign of solidarity and support for the struggling comrade Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who has been detained in French prisons since 1984.
Our freedom as prisoners in Palestine will inevitably come with the liberation of all of our people. We will defeat the prisons with the end of Zionist colonization in Palestine. Our Palestinian people, who have been fighting for liberation and return for 74 years and have been fighting colonialism for over 100 years, will be victorious despite the armed force of imperialism and Zionism.
Long live international solidarity with the Palestinian people – victory to the struggling peoples!
On Saturday, 16 April, Georges Abdallah, the Lebanese Arab Communist struggler for Palestine imprisoned in France for over 37 years despite being eligible for release since 1999, announced a one-day hunger strike in support of Sibel Balaç and Gökhan Yildirim, two political prisoners in Turkish jails. Both have been on an open-ended hunger strike — termed a “death fast” in the movement in Turkey — since 19 December and 25 December respectively.
Saturday, 16 April
Saturday, 16 April
In conclusion, he denounced the ongoing repressive attack: “Democratic freedoms are being restricted more and more: in working-class neighborhoods, in demonstrations, etc. We are also witnessing a diversion of so-called anti-terrorist laws to criminalize associations that do not please the authorities in power.”
