World Social Forum
Free Palestine
November 2012 - Porto Alegre - Brazil
Reference Document
(Approved by the Palestinian National
Committee for the WSF)
The Palestinian people extend their gratitude
and appreciation to the World Social Forum and all social movements
participating in the special forum on Palestine, which will be held at the end
of this year. We particularly thank Brazil, its government and its
institutions, for hosting this forum, which we regard as a crucial and
extraordinary landmark in a process that will widen support for our people’s
struggle to exercise our inalienable rights: the right of return,
self-determination, and an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Despite the passage of more than six decades
since the Nakba, the systematic ethnic cleansing of a majority of the
Palestinian people in 1948, the Palestinian cause is still a global issue
inspiring people of conscience and social movements around the world. Effective
solidarity with the Palestinian people and its inalienable rights -- especially
the right of return of refugees to their homes and the right to
self-determination -- is today stronger than ever, reinforcing the struggle of
the Palestinian people, under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, for freedom and justice, in accordance with international law and
universal principles of human rights, both pillars of the World Social Forum.
For the Palestinian people to exercise its
inalienable right to self-determination (including refugees’ return), effective
pressure needs to be applied on Israel to fully comply with international law
through:
·
Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in
1967 and the dismantling of the apartheid wall
·
Ending its apartheid regime (conforming to the UN definition of the
crime of apartheid) and the recognition of the fundamental right of Palestinian
citizens of Israel to full equality
·
Recognizing the rights of the Palestinian refugees to return to their
homes and properties from which they were displaced, as stipulated in UN
Resolution 194 and other relevant UN resolutions
The organization of the World Social Forum
Free Palestine is an expression of the unity of international social movements
-- fighting against imperialism, neo-liberalism and racial discrimination in
all its forms -- in considering the just struggle for the Palestinian rights an
integral part of the international struggle to develop political, social and
economic alternatives that enhance justice, equality and sovereignty of the
peoples on the basis of social-economic justice, human dignity and democracy.
The "World Social Forum Free Palestine"
is a global public space and distinguished gathering for international civil
society that aims to:
a.
Highlight, strengthen and deepen the global movement in solidarity with
the Palestinian people's rights
b.
Develop mechanisms for effective global action in support of the
struggle of the Palestinian people to exercise its inalienable rights, foremost
among them the right of return and self-determination, and to enforce
international law and human rights.
c.
Provide an open space for debate, dialogue, developing strategies and
planning for effective and sustainable campaigns in solidarity with the
Palestinian people, and to hold the Israeli occupation accountable,
illegitimate, and subject to sanctions.
After 65 years of the hegemonic powers’
partition of Palestine and their complicity in the systematic ethnic cleansing
that the Palestinians were subjected to since November 1947, Brazil hosts this
year a new kind of global forums aimed at strengthening the peoples’ struggle
for rights and justice where most governments have failed to protect either.
The world social forum meets in Brazil in
light of stormy changes in the Arab region, in what has become known as “the
Arab Spring,” where people struggle for social justice, democracy and freedoms.
In this context, the forces of Western hegemony, especially the United States,
have striven to abort or contain the Arab popular revolutions in order to keep
the area under their domination. This intervention, which sometimes takes a
military form, poses serious challenges to the Arab revolutions in their quest
to maintain their emancipatory and democratic identity and path towards
achieving their declared goals. It is certain that the fall of the dictatorial
regimes, which were the hotbeds of Arab complicity with the US-Israeli agenda,
has had a major impact on undermining Israel’s impunity and in reviving the
centrality of the Palestinian cause in the Arab world, thus promoting the cause
globally, given the strategic importance of the Arab region.
In light of these changes and the positions
and issues adopted by the First National Meeting of Solidarity with the
Palestinian people in Brazil, the Palestinian National Committee of the WSF
calls on all organizations, movements and networks to join this historic forum
as an expression of solidarity with the rights of the Palestinian people and
with our struggle to develop mechanisms to hold Israel accountable for its
crimes and violations of international law. We also call on the WSF and social movements
around the world to intensify their grassroots struggles and their pressure to
affect real changes in official policies through:
1)
Defending the right of the Palestinian people to resist Israel’s
occupation and apartheid in order to realize the right of return and exercise
self-determination, including the establishment of an independent, sovereign
national state, in accordance with UN resolutions.
2)
Strengthening and expanding involvement in the global, Palestinian-led
campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel as one of
the most important forms of solidarity with our people and their rights; BDS
encompasses boycotts of and divestments from Israeli and international
companies that are complicit in Israeli violations of international law, as
well as academic and cultural boycotts of Israeli institutions that are
partners in occupation and apartheid.
3)
Holding world states, collectively and individually, responsible for the
international protection of Palestinian refugees in their respective
territories, until they can exercise their UN-sanctioned right to return to
their homes of origin, and compelling Israel to recognize the right of return
and reparations for refugees, to enable its enforcement, and to stop its policy
of ongoing ethnic cleansing against Palestinians on both sides of the
"Green Line"
4)
Defending the rights of our people in occupied Jerusalem and countering
what a UN official termed "a strategy of Judaisation" which is
manifested in land expropriation, systematic expulsion of Palestinians from
their neighborhoods, violation of freedom of worship, relentless attacks on
Christian and Islamic holy sites, and distortion of history, among other crimes
5)
Intensifying the struggle to lift the Israeli siege -- in all its forms
-- imposed on our people in the occupied Gaza Strip and considering solidarity
with Gaza a high priority; this calls for determined campaigns of solidarity
with our people in Gaza and for holding Israel legally accountable before
international tribunals
6)
Upholding the inalienable rights of Palestinians with Israeli
citizenship as part of the indigenous people of Palestine, with sovereignty
over their land, and supporting their struggle to end Israeli apartheid with
all its racist laws and regulations, realize their national and civic rights,
whether individual or collective, and counter Israel’s systematic policies of
ethnic cleansing, land expropriation, house demolitions, especially in the
Naqab (Negev), and racial discrimination in education, health and
infrastructure projects
7)
Supporting and strengthening the struggle for the release of Palestinian
prisoners and detainees who are
languishing in Israeli prisons for their involvement in the Palestinian
national liberation struggle and recognizing their status as prisoners of war
and freedom fighters. In this context, we emphasize the need to secure the
immediate and unconditional release, as a matter of top priority, of sick,
elderly, child and women prisoners as well as administrative detainees, and the
release of 27 parliamentarians who were kidnapped by the occupation authorities
in clear violation of international law, as well as banning and criminalizing
the policy of solitary confinement and administrative detention.
8)
Pressuring world governments to fulfill their legal obligations, as
stipulated in the decision of the International Court of Justice against
Israel’s wall that is illegally built on occupied Palestinian territory, by
applying pressure, in turn, on the Israeli government to dismantle the
"wall of shame," which is expected to reach about 800 km in length,
and which has inflicted grave injustice and a new wave of ethnic cleansing on
the Palestinian people, and urging them to reject and condemn the US
administration’s use of its Veto at the UNSC against stopping the Israeli
colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
9)
Upholding the right of the Palestinian people to sovereignty over its
natural resources (especially land and water) and to food sovereignty, to
ensure the return to peasants, workers, fishermen and Bedouin communities of
the lands and rights that Israel has deprived them of
10)
Making the WSF Free Palestine a platform for building BDS strategies
against Israel and in particular for ending free trade agreements between
Israel and other countries or groups of countries (such as the European Union,
Mercosur, etc.), given Israel’s violations of international law and its regime
of oppression against the Palestinian people which constitutes occupation,
colonization and apartheid. FTAs allow Israel to normalize its oppression and
to export products of its colonies that are illegally built on Arab and
Palestinian territories in Gaza, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and
the Golan Heights
11)
Campaigning for a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, including
the cessation of contracts for the purchase of weapons, equipment, and military
services of all kinds (especially aircraft and unmanned vehicles and security
systems) which Israel exports and depends on their revenues to sustain its
occupation and oppression of our people; moreover, military trade with Israel
feeds the US military industry which profits from killing thousands and
oppressing millions of people around the world
12)
In parallel with pressure to bring about Israel's compliance with
international law, supporting and promoting cooperation for the implementation
of realistic economic, social, cultural and athletic development projects for
the Palestinians, and providing financial and material support to improve
living and work conditions and therefore enhance the steadfastness of the
Palestinians in the face of Israeli attempts to uproot them
13)
Recognizing and supporting the struggle of anti-Zionist Jews everywhere,
particularly those who stand on principle with the Palestinian people against
Israel’s occupation and apartheid, by supporting their progressive and
democratic political and social forces that are subjected to repression due to
their anti-colonial stance and advocacy and defense of the inalienable rights
of the Palestinian people
14)
Supporting Palestinian popular resistance against the Israeli occupation
and oppression as a leading form of resistance that can contribute to changing
the balance of local and international power to the benefit of our people, and
promoting visits by international solidarity groups to occupied Palestine.
15)
Activating the role of the media in exposing Israel’s colonial and
racist policies and practices and launching effective public information
campaigns for this purpose
The application of the aforementioned
political, legal and ethical principles would effectively contribute to ending
Israel’s impunity and enhancing its accountability for all the crimes it has
committed against our people. This, in turn, would provide the Palestinian
people with the highest forms of tangible, effective and sustainable support so
as to achieve all our internationally-recognized rights, especially the right
of return, self-determination, independence and national sovereignty.
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