Big Turn-out for Popular Resistance Conference
Villages of Popular Resistance meet to discuss way forward
Palestine Solidarity Project
21st July, 2011
In March, 2011, a group of representatives from popular committees from the Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Nablus districts came together with one idea: to create a conference that highlighted to coordinated popular resistance in Palestine. All active communities, including Beit Ommar, Ni'lin, Bil'in, Budrus, Iraq Burin, Al Ma'asara, Nabi Saleh, At Tuwani, Yatta, and other areas who had popular committees were invited to a large meeting to discuss creating a body of grassroots organizers to put together a conference that was geared towards Palestinians about the popular resistance. While conferences are nothing new to Palestine, and Bil'in holds a highly successful international conference on popular resistance every year, the impetus for this conference had a new angle–to bring together activists from around the West Bank, Jerusalem, (and Gaza by phone) to present to each other, discuss, and plan different aspects of the growing popular resistance. The final organizing body consisted of representatives of the popular committees from Budrus, Ni'lin, Deir Qaddis, Nabi Saleh, Iraq Burin, Burin, Awarta, Jerusalem, Al Ma'asara, Al Walaja, Beit Ommar, Beit Ula, Sourif, Hebron, Yatta (Susya and Tuwane) and Gaza City.
In order to fully represent the goals of the conference, which were to bring together activists engaging in similar activities and actions together, and to present to a wider Palestinian audience the full breadth of the popular resistance, the conference was held over three days in three villages:
Day one was held in Beit Ommar, a village of 17,000 in the Hebron District, which included speakers such as:
1) Mohammed Elias, from the National Committee for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
2) Ayed Morrar, coordinator from the popular committee of Budrus on behalf of the popular committees
3) Khawla Abu Mrir, head of the Yatta popular committee and women's rights organizer
3) Nash'et Luheidi (Representative of Gaza popular resistance committees, by phone)
4) Bekah Wolf, from Palestine Solidarity Project on behalf of the Palestine solidarity movement.
The day also included interactive panel discussions with question and answer sessions such as the one on Palestinian Unity, its role in the popular resistance, and the entitlement of a Palestinian State with: Aziz Dwiek (Head of Hamas in the West Bank), Naim Morrar (on behalf of the popular resistance), Tawfiq Atirawi (Central Committee Memeber, Fateh) and moderated by reporter Mohamed Al Leham.
Day 2 was held in Ni'lin, population 5,000, who have maintained a dteadfast popular resistance to the Apartheid Wall for over 3 years and have incurred heavy casualties including hundreds of arrests and 5 people killed during their demonstrations. Their day focused on Palestinian prisoners.
Day 3 was held in Budrus, the popular struggle's greatest success story, who, in 2004 managed to remove the Apartheid Wall from nearly all of their land through sheer popular resistance, without going through the Israeli court system. Speakers included Abdelrahim Meloueh (2nd in command, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Qais AbdelKarim (2nd in command, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Dr. Jamal Mhessein (Fateh Central Committee Member), Ziad Al Arda (2nd in command, Arab Liberation Front) and Azmi Shyoukhi, on behalf of the popular resistance committees speaking on a panel moderated by Bashir Tamimi of the Nabi Saleh popular committee. The conference ended in a demonstration on Budrus's liberated land, and made its way to the Apartheid Wall, where it was met by the usual hail of tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets.
Over 1000 Palestinians participated in the conference over the three days, including representatives from places ranging from Qibya to Nablus city, along with a handful of international and Israeli supporters. In the end, a final statement and recommendations were composed, a translated draft of which can be found below.
The organizing body has begun to discuss new ways to coordinate efforts, especially regarding the current plan of the Palestinian Authority to go to the UN for state-recognition in September. Over all, an exciting conference, most importantly for who was brought together to make it happen!
FINAL STATEMENT
Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine
The Palestine Popular Resistance Conference was organized by popular national resistance committees, grassroots activists against settlements, apartheid and the Annexation Wall and in coordination with official and civil society institutions in three locations for three days: thefirst day was held in Beit Ommar – Hebron district on 16/7/2011, the second day, 17/7/2011, in Ni'lin – Ramallah district, and the third day, 18/7/2011 in Budrus—Ramallah District. Participation consisted of a substantial audience of the local communities, Governors of Ramallah and Al Bireh and Hebron districts, the Minister of State concerning Settlement and Annexation Wall Affairs, leaders of the Central Committee, the PLO and national and Islamic movements, in order to make a comprehensive assessment of the Palestinian political, social and struggle reality and study and adopt the means of enhancing the popular resistance which suffer from the low percentage of participation, especially in light of the ferocity of the escalation of the Zionist attacks against human beings, trees and stone; an attack which is in a race against time in pursuit of imposing facts on the ground under the illusion that these facts can revoke a right or prove it invalid. This conference comes at this particular time to mobilize the state of struggle of the Palestinian people and to develop mechanisms to enhance their steadfastness on their land in order to implement the Palestinian national will on the ground and to implement the entitlement of the Palestinian state on the ground. To implement this goal, the Conference stressed the need to activate the movement of popular resistance in order to reach the required level and through the development of mechanisms of action committed by all of the active Popular, National and official Resistance Committees, where the Conference recorded its reservations on the performance of these committees and organizations, which did not live up to the required level until now. The conference addressed ways and means to activate the role of boycott committees including boycotting Israeli goods, normalization with the Israeli enemy, as well as the boycott of the Israeli labor market, particularly in settlements built on land occupied in 1967, to say the least, and in this context, the Conference called for the need to find alternatives for Palestinian workers who work within these settlements, also called on Congress to prohibit and criminalize investments in economic projects, both within the Israeli settlements, or at any spot on our Palestinian land. In a related context, the conference called for the need to prosecute those who are involved in land diversion and those who sold land to the Israeli occupation in front of Palestinian courts to be punished for their crimes as per the Palestinian law. With regard to the entitlement of the Palestinian state, The Conference commended the role of the Palestinian leadership led by President Abu Mazen, who is touring the world, east and west to prepare for this entitlement and called for the need to move forward towards the declaration of the state without paying attention to the suspicious attempts of the U.S. administration and its agents in the world who are trying to distract the world through lies and deception.
The conference welcomed the role of international solidarity activists who have made sacrifices to support our cause and our people's just demands for freedom and liberation from the Israeli occupation. The conference welcomed the steadfastness of our brave freedom prisoners in the prisons of the Israeli occupation and called for a popular rallying around their cause and their just demands, also paid tribute to our steadfast people in the Gaza Strip under the weight of the bombing and the unjust siege.
The conference reviewed the areas of victory and success recorded by our people in positions of confrontation and defiance of the Zionist tampering mechanisms extended from AlAsawiyah, Iraq Burin, Burin, Budrus, Kharbatha, Beit Liqia, Beit Duqqu, Ni'lin through to the last stop in Bil'in, which forced the Israeli Supreme High Court to issue an advisory opinion to divert the route of the annexation wall to regain part of its confiscated territory.
The conference welcomed the Palestinian women participating in the popular resistance side by side with men, and called to pay women more attention and to activate their role because without them we cannot reap a full victory. In a review of the notes of the conference over the three days, the conference confirms the following recommendations which can change the situation on the ground and improve the popular resistance all the way to defeat the occupation in any spot that witnesses popular resistance, and make the Israeli occupation groan under the weight of the Palestinian people's will. The conference has decided that the Preparation Committee of the Palestine Popular Resistance conference is a High Follow-Up committee for coordination between all the popular committees and to follow-up the implementation of the Conference decisions until the building of a national referential body before September.
1 – The conference called the official and popular institutions for an extended meeting to
discuss the current situation and develop mechanisms to unify the terms of Popular
Resistance.
2 – Calling on the Palestinian leadership to move forward in raising the issue of State
declaration in the Security Council and all international forums, and not paying any attention to the attempts of deception practiced by the agents of America and Israel in the world.
3 – Called the leadership to communicate with all Palestinian people in all places, support
their steadfastness on their land, the creation of alternative projects to compensate for the boycott of Israeli products and labor.
4 – Calling the legislature to enact laws criminalizing economic investment in the Israeli
settlements, as well as to enact laws that criminalize those selling or facilitating the selling of Palestinian land to the enemy and sue them in front of Palestinian courts.
5 – Support the steadfastness of our brave prisoners by all the available means to release them.
6 – Calling the leadership attention to Palestinian women, especially in the Palestinian rural areas and provide all the capabilities that enable women to exercise their required national role.7 – Call all national and Islamic movements to organize internal conferences to study these recommendations and to develop mechanisms to stimulate their members to participate in the resistance activities and the development of new resistance methods and locations.
8 – Call all national and Islamic movements, especially Fatah and Hamas to be devoted to national unity on the ground through the popular cohesion to resist the occupation and its settlements.
9 – Call the government to adopt development projects in any liberated part to protect, in the same context, the Conference emphasized on the recommendations of the Popular
Conference to support the resistance held in late 2009 by setting up a project on the land in Budrus village liberated in 2004 by popular resistance.
10 – The conference adopted a proposal to work on organizing a comprehensive popular
conference to set the basis and rules of the popular resistance to serve all national issues, which are concentrated mainly on creating new models of resistance and supporting the cause of prisoners.
--
Free Palestine