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Al-Awda PRRC urges action to confront Israeli annexation: Join the Day of Rage July 1

Cartoon: Carlos Latuff

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, calls upon all Palestinians and supporters of justice in Palestine in the United States and around the world to join in the global efforts for a Day of Rage on July 1st, 2020 to confront the U.S.-Israeli efforts to liquidate the Palestinian cause and people. 

Join us to take action and organize demonstrations across the U.S. on and before July 1st – and pledge to protect the land from the impending annexation of the Jordan Valley and the Zionist application of sovereignty over illegal “Israeli” colonies in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Al-Awda PRRC condemns and rejects in strongest terms – the illegitimate, settler-colonial state of Israel’s declared plans to usurp up to 60% of occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. This threatened annexation is a further declaration of genocide against the Palestinian people, as it is designed to block indigenous Palestinians from accessing the most fertile, agricultural land in the West Bank as well as their water aquifers and the space for natural population growth. 

This additional theft of Palestinian land is designed to further confine the indigenous people of Palestine – the majority of people on the land situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea – with access to and ownership of less than 10% of their own land. On the other hand, the Israeli colonial project will be squatting on 90% of Palestine. 

Besieged Palestinians will be further forced to live on disconnected parcels of land, deprived of access and control of basic natural resources. This comes in addition, of course, to the ongoing denial of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees, the majority of the Palestinian population, who have been denied this right for over 72 years. Enough is enough! 

We urge the Palestinian community and all friends of Palestine to take action prior to July 1 in a series of protests, actions, and efforts that make clear that annexation will not pass. Despite 72 years of genocide, ethnic cleansing and dispossession, Palestine lives and the Palestinian people will continue to defeat all efforts to liquidate our cause and our rights. 

Take Action! 

Historical Context: Maximum Land with No Palestinians 

Since its inception, the Zionist project has been focused on the ethnic cleansing of our land by violently removing the Palestinian people through expulsion, massacres, expropriation, and colonization.  At the same time, it constructs illegal Jewish-only (often White European) colonies through violence and theft of Palestinian land – both inside and outside the so-called ‘Green Line’.

In fact, Israel has never geographically declared its boundaries, since to do so would limit its ever-encroaching colonial project of turning occupied land into a racially-cleansed homeland by force and apartheid laws. 

For 72 years Palestinian refugees have been denied their internationally recognized, fundamental, individual and collective right to return to the land from which they were expelled, in an attempt to cement the forced dispossession of the Palestinian people starting in 1947-48.

While the details of the proposed annexation remain vague, the new Zionist “unity government” was cemented on the expressed intention to illegally annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, as well as the strategic and fertile Jordan Valley. 

This is a further attempt to legitimize the illegitimate: Israel’s existing policies of forcible expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian population, home demolitions and evictions, and already unprecedented levels of state-sanctioned settler violence against Palestinians. Annexation means Israel’s illegal, immoral, and racist 19th Century campaign of colonization, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid become officially formalized – with international complicity and US taxpayers fronting the bill. 

Cartoon: Carlos Latuff

Accountability: The struggle is not for Palestinians alone. 

The U.S. Congress is obliged under international law to end its ongoing complicity and funding of Israeli colonization in Palestine. It is also illegal according to US law under the Foreign Assistance Act, and the Arms Export Control Act among countless other US, human rights and international laws. Instead, the US is pushing through a bill that would send the Israeli military even more money. Last month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced S. 3176, a bill that actually rewards the Zionist state for its war crimes by pledging to cement in place at least $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel annually, an amount that could not be reduced. Of course, the U.S. administration under Donald Trump has announced its full support for the escalating attacks on Palestinian rights pursued by the Israeli regime.

What can we do when those that are responsible for upholding and enforcing these laws, are the same ones that are culpable of violating them? Amidst the global uprising against White supremacy, racism, and the consequences of European domination and the tremendous leadership shown by the Black liberation movement, we say: it is time for the people to also rise up against the Zionist colonial project! 

Al-Awda PRRC joins Palestinians worldwide and Palestine solidarity organizers taking to the streets in the uprising and mass mobilizations against anti-Black racism. We demand the defunding and dismantling of U.S. police alongside the defunding and dismantling of Zionist colonialism and racist Israeli apartheid. Confronting Israeli annexation plans is part of this worldwide resistance to imperialism, colonialism, and racism. We also know that the U.S. is not alone in its complicity: Israel’s ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity are backed by other imperialist powers, not to mention the complicity and escalating normalization by reactionary Arab regimes. 

Throughout history, it is the people who make a change. It is no small achievement that for a century Palestinians have resisted and survived Zionist efforts to destroy their communities physically and wipe them from the pages of history. As long as Palestinians continue to resist in every arena and by all means, building on true international solidarity, their rights can never be extinguished. It is from such a basis of independent and indigenous strength, not from the elusive promises of great power or the non-existent benevolence of a usurping occupier, that justice and liberation can be achieved.

Once again, we urge you to join us in the global Day of Rage on July 1 – and in an ongoing series of actions to confront these colonialist attacks on the rights and very existence of the indigenous Palestinian people. 

Take Action! 

Email us at info@al-awda.org to find out how you can get involved with Al-Awda, and or join/start a Chapter in your area!

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