Nabil Boukili, parliamentarian from the Party of Labor of Belgium (PTB), attended the conference, where he affirmed his party’s position regarding support for the Palestinian struggle since the party launched a petition signed by more than 38. 370 people to date, calling on Israel to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people. https://www.ptb.be/sanctions-israel
Nabil Boukili, who previously urged the Belgian Federal Parliament to take a strict stance on the policies of occupation and Zionist colonialism (https://m.facebook.com/ptbbelgique/posts/10158556126749386) spoke at the conference in the need for sanctions against Israel and that “it is time for the European Union and the Belgian authorities to stop supporting Israel’s colonization policy. Starting with the end of all economic missions, the closure of trade representations and in Israel and an immediate embargo on all products related to the settlements”.
In the debate, Naji El Khatib addressed the need to link this solidarity with a political perspective taking into account the comprehensive claims of the Palestinian people throughout historic Palestine and not just in the territories occupied in 1967, which implies abandonment of the moribund two-state solution and to favor an international solidarity based on the political proposal of a single democratic state for all of Palestine.
Naji El Katib presented the position of the “Secular Palestine Association” on this issue of international solidarity, and in particular European solidarity with Palestine.
He considered that European aid to the PA is aid for the continuation of colonization and against true peace; and that the two-state solution, impractical but dear to European politics, consists in giving Israel more time to definitively accomplish its colonial project over all of historic Palestine.
European and international material support for the authority of Ramallah went hand in hand to perpetuate Oslo and the false declarations it engendered, such as the peace process, endless and aimless negotiations.
This support will continue to relieve Europe of its moral responsibility towards the question of justice in Palestine.
This financial support is one of the most dangerous factors behind this stagnant and capitular Palestinian situation.
To continue the false discourse on peace, negotiation and the two-state solution means the perpetuation of the illusion, the illusion of peace, as the Zionist colonizer completed his project throughout Palestine. It is a source of fear because it relieves Europeans from their real duty.
The Israeli colonialist has long since killed the two-state solution, and this fact needs to be recognized and the usual rhetoric, vocabularies and paradigms must be changed.
Terminologies such as “Independence”, “Palestinian national state”, “occupation” must be abandoned and replaced by “liberation” of historic Palestine from a racist apartheid system: a step towards the emergence of a secular Palestine. for all its inhabitants without distinction of race, religion or nationality.
The European chanceries and the PA can continue the verbal discourse of two states, a solution which is false in the eyes of the Palestinian youth in the territories of the West Bank and Gaza: 93% consider that the Oslo process is dead, 72% consider that the one-state solution is the only solution (Badil Paper N ° 27, October 12, 2021)
According to another survey and in the general population,
46% support the two-state solution while 53% oppose the idea of the two-state solution.
76% say the chances of establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel over the next five years are slim or very low. (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research October 27, 2021).
We want European policy to match the realities on the ground by leaving the diplomacy of lies that benefits the Israeli colonization of Palestine.
New Type of Solidarity with Palestine
The Palestinian question and solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people in the European and American West is now experiencing a qualitative leap and more momentum and strength. This is not due to a magic wand or the product of a “sudden awakening of consciousness” by the Zionist-controlled Western media, but rather because of the development of the Palestinian struggle through the Al-Aqsa uprising throughout historic Palestine. The effective and notable participation of the Palestinian community in “Israel” in this struggle. The tenacity of the Gaza resistance against Israeli attacks and the beginning of the mini-intifada in the West Bank. The unprecedented outpouring of solidarity with the struggle of Palestinian political prisoners and especially with women prisoners like Isra Ja’abis. And finally, with the strong participation of the Palestinian diaspora during these events.
This is why there is an urgent need to undertake a critical revision of the relationship between Palestine and the solidarity movements so that this solidarity can rise to the new challenges in order to build a solid foundation for a new solidarity. We need to reconsider the struggle for Palestine, all of Palestine, and not just one part of Palestine as the chimerical and illusory program of the Palestinian state on the scale of the Oslo Accords, which will infringe, at best, no more than an autonomy of a ” bantustan ” under occupation, the price of which is the sacrifice of the entire Palestinian national cause.
The new revival of Palestinian hopes and aspirations throughout historic Palestine as well as in the Diaspora and the new restoration of the unity of the Palestinian people must be reflected in the construction of a comprehensive strategy of struggle articulated around an agenda for all Palestinians, and this agenda cannot be the same as the “two-state solution,” which marginalizes 65% of the Palestinian people By granting the Zionist colonial state more than 85% of the land in historic Palestine.
In this context, a new international solidarity must emerge. A new form of solidarity based on a new political agenda.
The old solidarities based on the slogans of ” Ending the occupation “, ” Supporting independent Palestine “, ” Building the Palestinian state “, are all outdated. In fact, these slogans were inoperative on the ground because of the Israeli refusal of the idea of any Palestinian entity within Palestine, which must be completely Judaized by the acts of colonization. This refusal was accompanied by Western Euro-American complicity with Israel’s plans. 28 years of futile negotiations were enough for Israel to accomplish its plans for annexation, expulsion of Palestinians from their lands and homes, and increasing the number of settlers and settlements.
Under the aegis of the so-called peace process, all of Palestine was threatened with extinction as a land and as a people struggling for their basic rights.
Thus, the new international solidarity with Palestine must shed the old one based on the two-state solution and move on to a new one:
- 1. Solidarity against the ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel throughout Palestine, i.e. from Umm al-Araqib in the Negev, to Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley ;
- 2. Solidarity against Israeli policies of racial discrimination and apartheid throughout Palestine, from the Galilee to the Negev;
- 3. Solidarity with the right of return of all Palestinian refugees since the 1948 catastrophe and 1967 occupation;
- 4. solidarity through the practice of boycotting the racist entity of colonial apartheid (BDS);
5. Finally, the expression of solidarity with the ancient Palestinian proposal on the establishment of a single state as a democratic and secular state for all its inhabitants, a state in which the Palestinian is freed from his colonizer and the Israeli Jew is freed from the Zionist ideology, which stole the Jewish religion as a prelude to the colonization of Palestine.
In fact, Zionist ideology began with the colonization of Jewish consciousness to make it a malleable tool for the movement to colonize Palestine and expel its people.
In France, as in many other European countries, these new goals of solidarity still clash with the classic solidarity based on visions of the two-state solution, adulated by the French socialist as well as communist left. This social democratic and communist left may agree with some points of the necessary new solidarity such as BDS and against ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination, but this acceptance will serve their slogan of establishing the impossible Palestinian state.
The adulation of the spirit of Oslo by the European communist and social democratic parties may essentially express their secret support for the state of Israel. By defending the surreal idea of the Palestinian state, they are in effect defending Israel (Israel’s right to exist within secure borders alongside a Palestinian state).
This old solidarity based on the two-state solution also serves the official policy of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, on which its very existence depends.
Finally, it can be said that the old solidarities do not care about the diversity of the Palestinian political scene and the plurality of its political theses, which do not correspond to the official policy of this so-called Palestinian Authority, the authority that serves Israel’s apartheid state, its occupation of Palestinian land, its settlement plans and the security of its settlers.
In contrast to these official forces of the old left loyal to the Two-State program, there are small left forces of the radical left, the Greens, and various youth forces that seem open to a new Palestinian discourse:
This is a Palestinian discourse calling for a comprehensive solution that takes into account the fate of the Jewish masses in a just and equitable solution and that allows Palestinians as well as Israeli Jews to find a lasting solution for both sides.
The new Palestinian discourse on the solution based on a single democratic and secular state that does not discriminate against its citizens according to their different religious, national, linguistic and gender affiliations has become audible, and this would transform the Palestinian cause into a symbol of justice: justice of coexistence between communities and nationalities, justice in the distribution and sharing of wealth, justice of workers’ rights before financial capital, gender justice, women’s rights, rights for ethnic and sexual minorities, etc.
Here, we see that current Palestinian achievements (not the victories that Hamas tries to forcefully persuade us of) are what could pave the way for an offensive Palestinian discourse in the international arena at this auspicious moment:
- 1. A discourse that exposes the racist, reactionary and colonial nature of the Zionist project,
- 2. A discourse that exposes the mythical and fabrication nature of the Zionist narrative and its alleged ” divine ” rights in Palestine,
- 3. A claim affirming the right of return to Palestinian refugees as part of inalienable human rights,
- 4. A discourse that is not subject to ideological terrorism and the familiar Western blackmail about “Israel’s right to exist.”
This desired offensive discourse will present us with a new form of solidarity :
Solidarity based on replacing the obsession with “statehood” with the right to resistance to build tomorrow’s Palestine as a homeland and as a state for all its inhabitants and refugees, in an atmosphere of peaceful coexistence under the rule of law and citizenship, without discrimination based on religion, nationality, language, sexuality or gender.
The Palestine of tomorrow will be purged of Zionism, chauvinistic nationalism and racism.
New Solidarity Conference Brussels