Global Resistance: End The Nakba Now!

Above photo: Musa Al-Shaer.

The PI declaration of solidarity with the people of Palestine.

NOTE: Samidoun is tracking the list of actions in support of Palestinians in its Global Calendar of Resistance.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges all Palestinian, Arab and international supporters of Palestine to escalate their organizing and struggle to confront massacres and ethnic cleansing and support Palestinian resistance! There are currently 119 martyrs in Gaza, while the entire land of Palestine is rising, from the river to the sea, from Haifa to al-Lydd, from Gaza to Rafah, from Ramallah to Nablus, Umm al-Fahm, Yaffa, and, of course, Palestine’s capital, Jerusalem, confronting the most brutal violence of the colonizer with steadfastness, struggle, and a revolutionary promise of a liberated future.

Everywhere, Palestinians in exile and diaspora are also rising, taking the streets, and organizing, to build the struggle for liberation, and people of conscience around the world stand with them, filling the streets of the globe with thousands and millions to confront Zionism and imperialism, and stand firmly and clearly with the Palestinian people, their resistance, return and liberation, from the river to the sea.

In this moment, it is particularly important to highlight our unconditional support for the Palestinian people and their right to resist. It is now and has always been the resistance of the Palestinian people, through all forms of struggle, that defends Palestine from colonization. Our solidarity must affirm Palestinian resistance, Palestinian return, and Palestinian liberation, throughout the entire land of occupied Palestine. 

Join us in action in Madrid, in Berlin, in New York, in Vancouver, in Frankfurt, in Los Angeles, in Toronto, in Toulouse, in Gothenburg, in Athens, and so many other cities in the coming days. (The List below will be constantly updated – our Global Calendar – please share the link with your friends and comrades!) Your action to support the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance, for return to Palestine and liberation from the river to the sea is more important than ever — to honor the martyrs, to stop ethnic cleansing, and to stand with Palestine in 73 years of struggle. 

Palestine is under siege. Since Monday, Israeli airstrikes have hammered Gaza without relief, decimating homes, workplaces and media offices. As of Thursday, Israel had killed over 109 Palestinians, including 27 children, as the number of wounded soared to 580. A ground invasion is now underway.

Earlier in the week, Israel launched a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing in occupied East Jerusalem, instituting a plan to forcibly evict some 2,000 Palestinians from the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Bustan. As residents rose up to defend their lives, livelihoods, and homes, the Israeli state responded with brutality, attacking the Palestinian people in the streets and in their places of worship.

The violent dispossession of the Palestinian people is not new. In 1948, when the state of Israel was first established, Zionist militias forced some 750,000 Palestinians from towns, villages and cities, robbing them of their homes and belongings in the process. This is remembered as the “Nakba” — Arabic for catastrophe.

But the Nakba never ended. Since 1948, the people of Palestine have lost more than 85% of their land to Israel. The militarisation of the Israeli state has now confined them to a series of open-air prisons, in which the Israeli state routinely rehearses its cruel technologies of war — poisoning the soil, contaminating the water, and terrorising the people.

Now, as Israeli bombs rain down on Gaza, shocking videos shared around the world are revealing yet another atrocity. With chants of “Death to Arabs!”, ultra-nationalists are roaming the streets of occupied territories, terrorising Palestinians in their homes and ransacking their shops, leaving trails of broken glass in their wake.

Western leaders and the international press have been quick to call for an end to the “conflict”, urging calm on “both sides”, while invoking Israel’s right to “self-defence”. These grotesque acts of equivocation only serve to minimise the campaign of terror perpetrated by the Israeli state — and to fortify its monopoly on violence.

Israel’s intentions are plain: to beat the Palestinian people into submission, and to clear them from their land forever. “Israel is not preparing for a ceasefire,” Benny Gantz, Israel’s Minister of Defense, said in an ominous statement. “There is currently no end date for the operation. Only when we achieve complete quiet can we talk about calm.”

Let us be clear: there can be no equivalence between oppressor and oppressed, between colonizer and colonised. Israel is a nuclear-armed state, whose military is powered by $3.8 billion in annual grants from the US government. The Palestinians, blockaded on all sides by walls and turrets, have few means to defend their rights in the face of Israel’s machinery of war.

We know that the will of the Palestinian people cannot be cowed by threats and violence. The people of the world have time and again borne witness to Palestinian resistance rising in defence of communities and holy sites, homes and land. We salute this resistance and, knowing that Palestinian freedom is intimately tied to our own, uphold the Palestinian right to defence and liberatory struggle.

Now, as Israel lays siege to Palestinian homes, the solidarity and vigilance of the world have never been more urgent.

We, members of the Progressive International, call on the world’s progressive forces to march in their millions for Palestinian lives, Palestinian dignity and Palestinian liberation. The time has come to end the Nakba, boycott the apartheid regime, divest from its war machine, and sanction the perpetrators of its crimes.