Statements: Right of Return:Rallies, 15 - 17 September

Statements: Right of Return:Rallies, 15 - 17 September

LONDON
Trafalgar Square Right of Return Rally
Speech by Dr. Tikva Honig-Parnass (excerpts) Co-Editor of Between the Lines (former editor of News From Within) My generation was raised in pre 1948 Palestine on the colonialist ideology of the Zionist labor movement and passed through an indoctrination process which resulted in the dehumanization of Palestinians and ourselves as well. Blatant racism, combined with total commitment to the mission of establishing an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine, had trained us well to take up the challenge set forth in the '48 war.

We were prepared by then to commit the crime of the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland with cruelty and indifference, while at the same time claiming adherence to the values of socialism and fraternity between nations. I was eyewitness to the "cleansing" of the Har Tuv area (South West Jerusalem) by a battalion of the Palmach - the Zionist Labor elite army.

 The long conveys of villagers from Beit Jibrin, Zakariyya, Beit Natif, and Beit Itab [now in Deheishe, 'Aida and 'Azza camps] who were escaping to save their lives, did not stir any feelings of mercy or compassion in our by then obstinate, hardened hearts. Nor did the scene of starving children and women, begging the soldiers to let them return to their homes (only a few days after they were forced to leave them) raise any human reaction among us. We under-stood well that the Zionist vision of a Jewish state necessitat-ed the expulsion of the Palestinian people.

 In the proposed final solution of the Labor govern-ment, now headed by Barak, there is no recogni-tion of the Right of Return, precisely because this solution is designed to liquidate the refugee question - which is the essence of the Palestinian national question. The final settlement thus aims to complete the unfinished task of Zionism. Namely, to prevent the liberation and unification of the Palestinian People in their homeland, disintegrate the refugees throughout the diaspora and remove the national question from the topic of discussion, and indeed from world consciousness.

What is known as the "Israeli Peace Camp", consists of the ideological successors of the generation that committed the Nakba, and who now comprises the new bourgeois class that supports this final solution objecting fiercely to recognizing the Right of Return. Now they are using their support of a client Palestinian state as a pretext for their "generosity" in accepting an "historic compromise" which will put an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

However, the internal contradictions which underlie this solut-ion as well as any other which ignores the Palest-inian refugees' right to return to their lands in their homeland is doomed to fail. The tens of thousands who have been responding to the call of the Al 'Awda movement, including a group of anti-Zionist Jews, demonstrates that the forces of resistance to the American-Zionist scheme may indeed increase to threaten the apartheid reality in Palestine and the aspired "stability" throughout the entire region.

UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the Right of Return (Concluding Observations/Comments) 04/12/98. E/C.12/1/ Add.27.
13. The Committee notes with concern that the Law of Return, which permits any Jew from anywhere in the World to immigrate and thereby virtually automatically enjoy residence and obtain citizenship in Israel, discriminates against Palestinians in the diaspora upon whom the Government of Israel has imposed restrictive requirements that make it almost impossible to return to their land of birth.
36. In order to ensure the respect for article 1(2) of the Covenant and to ensure the equality of treatment and non-discrimination, the Committee strongly recommends a review of re-entry policies for Palestinians who wish to re-establish domicile in their homeland, with a view to bring such policies to a level comparable to the Law of Return as applied to Jews.

Speech by Arjan El Fassed (excerpts)
al-Awda - Right of Return Coalition
"They stripped me of everything; except a heart, a conscience and a tongue," these are the words written down by famous Palestinian poet Tawfiq Zayad. Today, we are here to break the  silence and to show our hearts, our conscience and our tongues. Nothing will be able to shake our will and determination to return home. It is a right bequeathed from generation to generation. It is a right that we are reminded of daily from the walls of the refugee camps scattered though Palestine and the Diaspora. It is a right for which many martyrs have died and it is a right preserved in the rusting keys and documents that prove to the world that the land and homes belong to its owners.

Finally, it is a right that has been enshrined in international law and human rights standards. Today, we break the silence and we let Clinton, Barak, and Arafat know that whatever they agree upon or whatever they sign, there won't be peace without our return. The right of Palestinian refugees to return home is a personal and collective right that cannot be cancelled - whatever the balance of power, whoever signs.

 There is always a strength that can be created out of dignity, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and that if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can overcome. Today is not the only day we make our voices heard, we will continue to make our voices heard until the day we are allowed back to our homes. When people get incensed by injustice, surprises appear. There have been surprises before in Vietnam, India and South Africa. Indeed, it is our turn to do the surprising. There is much we can all do.

We hold the past, the present and the future and we will do whatever is necessary to achieve our return and determine our own future. We owe it to our ancestors and our children. Проекты домов http://z500.com.ua/doma/tag-dachi/tag-odnoetazhnie.html в Киеве We will return home. PEACE NOW Position on the Right of Return Excerpts from IMRA Interview by Aaron Lerner, 29 August 2000 We don't support a right of return. What we say and what we believe is that the Palestinians clearly have the right to a law of return, such as we have, in the Palestinian state and we would assume and hope that the refugee issue be resolved within the confines of the Palestinian state, with the possibility of some family reunifications for refugees in Israel.

But we are a Zionist movement and do not support the idea of the return of the refugees to Israel. I think it is very clear why.  There is no way that Israel under any govern-ment is going to take back a million or two million or three million Palestinian refugees. We won't do it. We want to remain a Jewish state and it's not going to happen. 

Speech by Afif Safieh (excerpts)
Palestinian General Delegate to the United Kingdom and the Holy See The Israeli political establishment inflicted on us Palestinians four types of denials. First came the denial of our mere existence. Then followed the denial of our rights, all this always accompanied by the denial of our sufferings and the denial of their moral and historical responsibility for this suffering.

Dear friends, these four denials are equally as disturbing, as outrageous, as revolting and as nauseating as other denials that have legitimately provoked indignation and revulsion. […] There is no need for comparisons and histor-ical analogies. No one people have a monopoly on human suffering and every ethnic tragedy stands on its own. If I were a Jew or a Gypsy, the Holocaust would be the most atrocious event in history.

If I were a Black American, it would be Slavery and Apartheid. If I were a Native Ameri-can it would be the discovering of the New World by European explorers and settlers that resulted in near total extermination. If I were an Armen-ian, it would be the Ottoman massacres. If I was a Palestinian, and I happen to be one, it would be the Nakba, the outcome of a deliberate early version of a Milosovich-style policy of ethnic cleansing.

WE happen to believe that the "Never Again", that pledge of humanity after two world wars also applies to us Palestinians. The Germans have apologized and reapologized to the Jews. King Juan Carlos has apologized for the Spanish Inquisition. Her Majesty the Queen of England has apologized to the Aborigines of Australia. We do believe that somebody, one day, hopefully soon, owes us also historical apologies.

Dear friends, we are gathered here today to remind the world that the question of Palestinian refugees never was nor ever will be a mere question of resettlement somewhere in the periphery of their homeland, sometimes cruelly only at a walking distance from their homes. Any peace that will not result in the exercise of the free voluntary volition of each individual refugee of his or her right of return will neither have legitimacy nor will it have viability and durability.