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ICNP Call to
Action, Launch of Nakba-60 Campaign
29 November 2007
60 Years since the UN Palestine Partition Plan
30th UN Day Affirming the Inalienable Rights of the
Palestinian People
Call to Action for the Nakba-60 Campaign
International Coordinating Committee on Palestine (ICNP)
On 29
November 1947 the United Nations recommended the
partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state
despite the fact that the UN itself had found that such
a step “may well run counter” to the principle of
self-determination.[1] The UN Partition Plan (UNGAR 181)
was never fully implemented. However, it set the stage
for the 1948 war in which Israel was unilaterally
established as a Jewish state by ethnically cleansing
over three-quarters of the Palestinian people,
confiscating their lands and barring them from return;
this war is remembered by Palestinians as the Nakba
(catastrophe). Since then, Israeli policies and
practices remain in violation of international law,
including the Fourth Geneva Convention and the
International Convention on the Suppression and
Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.
In 1974 the United Nations affirmed (UNGAR 3236) that
Palestinians as a nation hold a set of inalienable
rights: the right to self-determination without external
interference; the right to national independence and
sovereignty; and the right of Palestinians to return to
the homes and properties from which they have been
displaced and uprooted. In 1977, the United Nations
declared 29 November as the Day of Solidarity with the
Palestinian People.
Today, the State of Israel claims legitimacy based on
the 1947 UN Partition Plan although it continues to
violate international law and has failed to respect key
UN requirements regarding borders, return of refugees,
and protection of minority rights. Israel’s military
expulsions destroyed Palestine's pre-1948 Arab
civilization.
Today Israel continues to deny refugees’ right to
return, and to discriminate against its Palestinian
citizens. Israel effectively controls the entirety of
historic Palestine. 40 years into Israel's military
occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and
almost 60 years into the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, we
reaffirm the inalienable rights of the Palestinian
people. We reiterate Palestinian and global civil
society’s 2005 calls to pressure Israel’s apartheid
regime through a campaign of boycotts, divestment and
sanctions (BDS) until these rights are achieved.
We commit ourselves, to make 2008 a year of raising
awareness of the Palestinian Nakba and support of
Palestinian refugees' right of return. We will join
Palestinian communities inside Israel, in exile and the
Occupied Palestinian Territory in mobilizing for a year
of educational and campaigning work beginning on
November 29, 2007. May 15, 2008 will be a day of global
mobilization to commemorate the Nakba, and the
continuing dispossession and denial of Palestinian
rights.
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[1] UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), Report
to the General Assembly, 3 September 1947 (A/364); see,
for example, paragraph 176 |