29.12.22
Editorial Note
IAM questioned in September, “Is the BDS Movement Winding Down?” It seemed so at the time. Now the Palestinian Authority is stepping up its efforts to boycott Israel.
The Meir Amit Center on Intelligence and Terrorism reported on a conference (first reported by the Palestinian Wattan TV) titled “Towards a Global Front to Combat and End Israeli Apartheid.” It took place on December 11, 2022. The Palestinian National Anti-Apartheid Committee met in Al-Bireh near Ramallah. The conference was organized by the PLO Anti-Apartheid Department, which was appointed in July 2022. The conference was coordinated with the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Justice, various NGOs, the PA human rights organization, and the BDS movement. As stated by the organizers, its objective was to unite all the groups acting against “Israeli apartheid.” Its overall aim is to merge and coordinate anti-Israeli activities.
One of the speakers was Professor Ilan Pappe. According to the Wattan report, “The historian and Professor Ilan Pappe expressed his rejection of all violations against the Palestinian people, and considered that the settlement project in Palestine is not an ordinary project. He noted that “the occupation is trying to colonize any place and get rid of the population, and this ideology does not disappear with the passage of time, but rather works to cleanse the geographical area of its inhabitants and repeat the crime of 1948. Pappe added: Unfortunately, the racism of the occupation is dealt with in a special way and is not held accountable, like other countries, despite its crimes.”
The conference is the first step in a broader Palestinian campaign to bolster the BDS movement. The Palestinian National Anti-Apartheid Committee recommended the “establishment of a united global front to combat Israeli apartheid and stressed the need to create a Palestinian, Arab and international alliances which would form the foundation for the front.” In addition, the committee voted to launch a campaign to prevent the passage of laws banning “resistance to the Zionist occupation and its racism.” It also “called for developing strategies and tactics, headed by the ‘popular resistance’, in which Palestinian organizations and sources of power would participate, wherever they were located, such as calling for the establishment of a monitoring center of representatives from the PLO, the PA foreign ministry and forces operating within Israeli Arab society.”
For those who are unfamiliar, using the words “Popular Resistance” means violence and terrorism against Israel.
In preparations, a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) delegation arrived Jordan in November 2022 to establish an Arab parliamentary coalition to “counter Israel’s apartheid.” The call was made at a meeting in Petra, bringing together Nayef Qadi, the Chairman of the Jordan Senate’s Palestine Committee; Ramzi Rabah, the PLO Executive Committee member; Sinan Shqdeeh, the head of Anti-Apartheid Committee at the Palestine Legislative Council (PLC); and, Maher Amer, the Director of the Anti-Apartheid Department of the PLO. The Jordan News Agency reported the meeting. Qadi said, “Jordan, under His Majesty King Abdullah II’s leadership, places the Palestinian cause at the forefront of its internal and external priorities, and views the issue as ‘sacred to the Jordanian people’. He noted that Jordan has a “firm and continuous” position in “support of the Palestinian cause and rights of the Palestinian people, foremost is ending Israel’s occupation, settling the conflict through the two-state solution and establishing an independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian homeland with East Jerusalem as its capital on the June 4, 1997 borders.” Qadi noted that Hashemite custodianship over Jerusalem’s holy sites is a “historical reality and a national and Islamic duty” that “cannot be abandoned, adding that pressures that Jordan has faced over more than 70 years did not affect the Kingdom’s position on national rights of the Palestinian people.” In addition, he expressed readiness to “support any ‘serious’ Palestinian move aimed to enable Palestinian people restore their legitimate rights, calling on achieving internal Palestinian unity, whose divisions affect efforts to serve the Palestinian cause.” For his part, the Palestinian delegation’s head, Rabah, said that “the Palestinian move comes at an ‘important’ stage aimed to establish an Arab parliamentary coalition to oppose Israeli apartheid.”
The new campaign plans to lean heavily on the existing BDS infrastructure in the West. The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) published on December 6, 2022, an article on the involvement of Palestinian students in US campuses titled “Education for Liberation,” The BNC stated that, in the US, “We started with 500 schools already, and we are aiming to reach 100 thousand students per year.” The BNC stated that the “Palestinian youth have disproportionately contributed to our decades-old liberation struggle.” According to the BNC, For years, “Aside from the basic curriculum, students learned from teachers, parents and each other the rich heritage of Palestinian popular resistance, including sumud (steadfastness), organizing protests and strikes, and boycotting the oppressor’s products, when feasible. It is that long heritage of rooted popular resistance, along with international anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, that eventually inspired the BDS movement in 2005. Connecting our liberation struggle not just with other justice struggles but also with the absolute need to end international complicity in Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid, the BDS movement was the clearest manifestation of a global, Palestinian-led intifada of sorts. Decolonizing our minds is at the heart of this intifada.”
The BNC noted that the effort to mobilize Palestinian students started five years earlier. In 2017, the BNC, partnering with the General Union of Palestinian Teachers, launched “Education for Liberation,” a strategic campaign to engage students and communities in the struggle for “freedom, justice and equality.” It was “Providing community-based training to hundreds of teachers on BDS principles, strategic nonviolent campaigning, and supporting youth initiatives, the campaign has so far impacted over 125,000 students and their wider communities. Student-led BDS campaigns have mushroomed in more than 500 schools… to mobilize wide boycotts of Israeli products and support for local products.”
The BNC has also been working with students to build “BDS Student Clubs” in leading Palestinian universities to “offer a space for education and action geared towards local campaigning and international outreach. After participating in intensive, interactive BDS workshops, BDS clubs’ members organize campus- or community-based campaigns focused on the academic, cultural and economic boycott of complicit institutions and corporations. They mobilize students, faculty and workers’ support to make their universities apartheid free, ensuring that their procurement policies and activities are in harmony with the consensus-based guidelines of the BDS movement.”
As can be seen, a new wave to boycott Israel was announced by the Palestinian Authority, described as another “intifada.” They recruit Israeli university professors such as Ilan Pappe to make it successful. IAM would provide updates on the new BDS campaign.
References:
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The conference “Towards a Global Front to Combat and End Israeli Apartheid.” Wattan TV, December 11, 2022.
Historian Ilan Pappé (Watan TV, December 11, 2022). The Meir Amit Center wrote that Prof. Pappé is “an extreme leftist who was born in Israel but lives in the UK and is part of the BDS movement”.
https://www.wattan.net/ar/video/390646.html
Google Translate
A conference was organized by the Anti-Apartheid Department of the PLO in Al-Bireh
The First National Conference against “Apartheid”… Raising awareness and unifying efforts to confront Israeli apartheid
11.12.2022 03:59 PM
Watan: Participants in the first national conference against apartheid stressed the need to build a national strategy to confront the apartheid state, develop the means and tools to be used to end the apartheid system, and achieve accountability for the apartheid state.
They recommended supporting international efforts at the grassroots and trade union levels and working to launch an international coalition against “apartheid”, in a way that strengthens the BDS movement and strengthens the circle of alliances with all Arab and international official and popular sectors to support the Palestinian cause.
This came during the first national conference against apartheid, which kicked off today, Sunday, in the city of Al-Bireh, with the participation of members of the Executive Committee of the PLO, ambassadors, consuls, representatives of diplomatic missions, thinkers, activists, and researchers.
The conference, which was organized by the Anti-Apartheid Department of the PLO, in cooperation with the NGO Network, the Palestinian Human Rights Organization, the Boycott and Divestment Movement (BDS), and the Ministry of Justice, included three sessions, on “Zionism and Apartheid,” and “ International accountability and international law, prospects for confronting the Israeli “apartheid” legally, and the “international campaign to isolate and punish Israel”.
The conference aims to enhance societal awareness of the “apartheid” system, by defining concepts, defining apartheid as a tool of Zionist colonialism, and uniting the efforts of all active institutions to oppose and confront it, in order to achieve accountability for the apartheid state.
At the opening of the conference, Ramzi Rabah, Head of the Anti-Apartheid Department in the PLO, explained that the occupation is still practicing the harshest forms of abuse against the Palestinian people.
Rabah told Watan that the conference is being held for the first time to combat apartheid amid the occupation’s expansion of its crimes. Adding: The conference responds to the growing international movement against the Israeli “apartheid”, and the occupation seeks to deport the Palestinian people by withdrawing Jerusalemite identities, confiscating lands, legalizing killing, and giving the green light to settlers to kill Palestinians.
During the opening session of the conference, Fatah deputy head Mahmoud Al-Aloul said that combating “apartheid” is one of the most important issues that we seek to address, specifically in the presence of an Israeli government that has committed all crimes against the Palestinian people. Adding: We seek to unify the Palestinian word in order to reach a deterrent mechanism for the occupation, and therefore there must be a strategy to confront “apartheid”, and the world is still practicing deafness, in front of all the crimes that are practiced against us. Pointing out that “the occupation went crazy when we went to the international courts to hold the occupation accountable for its crimes.”
Al-Aloul pointed out to Watan that the importance of the conference lies in the fact that it is held to combat “apartheid” and the unprecedented occupation practices of arrest and killing, confiscation of freedoms and lands, and displacement in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem.
“We are here to answer several questions, the first of which is how to fight apartheid, and how to enhance societal awareness of the apartheid system,” said Muhammad Baraka, head of the Supreme Follow-up Committee for the Arab Masses.
Baraka added, in his interview with Watan, that humanity believes that it ended the “apartheid” file when it fought it in South Africa, but that Israel is still practicing this policy against the Palestinian people, and it must be shed light on it. Stressing the need for the conference to clarify the actual steps to combat “apartheid”.
Rima Nazzal, a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Women’s Union, told Watan, “At this stage in which we are witnessing the steadfastness of the Israeli fascist right of the government, we need to discuss all the measures that are being taken, and the issues that we will face, in order to develop a strategy for struggle and resistance, benefiting from the international report.”
She added, “I think that the conference serves to raise awareness among the Palestinian society and the elites about the manifestations of apartheid that we are witnessing.”
The historian and Professor Ilan Pappe expressed his rejection of all violations against the Palestinian people, and considered that the settlement project in Palestine is not an ordinary project. Adding: The occupation is trying to colonize any place and get rid of the population, and this ideology does not disappear with the passage of time, but rather works to cleanse the geographical area of its inhabitants and repeat the crime of 1948.
Pappe added: Unfortunately, the racism of the occupation is dealt with in a special way and is not held accountable, like other countries, despite its crimes.
For his part, South African Ambassador Sean Benfeldt said that the Palestinian struggle is still continuing, and no solution has been reached to the Palestinian issue. Adding: We noticed during the celebration on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian Player, that the demands are still not fulfilled and justice does not exist, so the Palestinian people must be redressed and this injustice must stop, and we continue our support for the two-state solution and we will intensify efforts to achieve this.
In his interview with Watan, Benfeldt indicated that this conference is important, with all these indications that seem to have deep repercussions in Palestine and the Palestinian future. Expressing his belief that “the more we relate to the future and discuss it, the better it will be.”
He said: In the state of South Africa, we are committed to the two-state solution on the borders of the 67 lands, East Jerusalem as the capital, and the return of the refugees.
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Overview
On December 11, 2022 the Palestinian National Anti-Apartheid Committee met for the
first time. It was organized by the PLO anti-apartheid department, appointed in July 2022
and chaired by Ramzi Rabah, a senior member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (DFLP).1 The meeting was held in coordination with the Palestinian Authority (PA)
ministry of justice, various NGOs, the PA human rights organization and the BDS movement.2
Its objective, as stated by the organizers, was to unite all the groups acting against what they
claimed was “Israeli apartheid.” So far it is unclear what prompted the establishment of the
department at this time but apparently its overall objective is to merge and coordinate anti-
Israeli activities.
The meeting was attended by several PA government ministers and members of the PLO’s
Executive Committee, as well as diplomats serving in the PA, Israeli Arab representatives, and
Palestinian and Israeli academics.
The committee recommended the establishment of a “united global front” to combat
“Israeli apartheid” and stressed the need to create Palestinian, Arab and international
alliances which would form the foundation for the front. In addition, they voted to launch
a campaign to prevent the passage of laws banning “resistance to the Zionist occupation and
its racism.” They also called for developing strategies and tactics, headed by the “popular
resistance” [popular terrorism], in which Palestinian organizations and sources of power
would participate, wherever they were located, such as calling for the establishment of a
monitoring center of representatives from the PLO, the PA foreign ministry and forces
operating within Israeli Arab society.
The Palestinians have often claimed that Israel conducts a “policy of apartheid” for the
Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria, comparing themselves to the non-while
population in South Africa. According to the Rome Accords of 2002, apartheid is considered a
1 See the Appendix for the department and its employees.
2 Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement.
The Palestinian committee to “fight apartheid”
and slander Israel meets for the first time to
discuss policy
December 18, 2022
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crime. The Palestinians base their claim on international human rights organizations such as
Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem, which often issue reports claiming the
measures used by Israel in the PA territories are “apartheid” (Wafa, March 14, 2022).
For the PA, libeling and slandering Israel around the world and in the UN is an important
component of its “popular resistance” strategy. It is a useful tool in the political, propaganda
and lawfare campaign it wages against Israel and a way of exerting pressure not only on Israel
but on the rest of the world and UN agencies. So far, the PA has made use mainly of the
claims raised by human rights organizations against Israel. Establishing a PLO department
dedicated to “apartheid” is perhaps a sign that the PA intends to institutionalize and
expand its activities and to coordinate activities and groups to unify their policies and
the tone of their public statements.
The Palestinian National Anti-Apartheid
Committee
The meeting in al-Bireh and its objectives
On December 11, 2022, the PLO’s anti-apartheid department held a meeting in al-Bireh,
attended by the representatives from the PA’s ministry of justice, NGOs, the PA human rights
organization and the BDS movement.
Present were members of the PLO’s Executive Committee, and PA government ministers
including Muhammad al-Shalaldeh, the minister of justice, and Mai al-Kayla, the minister of
health. Also in attendance were foreign ambassadors, consuls and representatives, among
them Khalil Atiya, deputy speaker of the Arab Parliament and a member of the Jordanian
House of Representatives; the South African representative to the PA; Arab Israelis such as
Muhammad Barake, chairman of the Israeli Arab Monitoring Committee; Palestinian and
Israeli academics, among them Prof. Ilan Pappé (an extreme leftist who was born in Israel but
lives in the UK and is part of the BDS movement).
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The meeting in al-Bireh (Watan TV, December 11, 2022).
The day-long meeting was divided into three sessions: the Zionist movement and
apartheid; international responsibility, international law and horizons for lawfare and
confrontation with “Israeli apartheid;” and the international campaign to isolate and punish
Israel. According to Ramzi Rabah, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and head
of the PLO’s anti-apartheid department, the objectives of the meeting were to establish an
international coalition that would work to “end apartheid,” operate in the international arena
through political channels and with human rights organizations and civilian society, and to
increase awareness of Israel’s [alleged] “apartheid regime” as one of the tools used by the
“colonialist Zionist occupation.” He stressed that the objective of the meeting was to
strengthen the currently-needed collaboration with all local, regional and international antiapartheid
institutions because of the formation of an extremist right-wing government in
Israel (Wafa, December 11, 2022).
Right: The South African representative to the PA speaks at the meeting. Left: Extreme leftist
historian Ilan Pappé (Watan TV, December 11, 2022).
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PA minister of health Mai al-Kayla (Watan TV, December 11, 2022).
Recommendations
The meeting voted on a number of recommendations, including the following (Watan TV,
December 11, 2022; Ma’an, December 12, 2022).
The creation of Palestinian, Arab and international alliances which would form the
foundation for the global front against “Israeli apartheid.”
Launching campaigns to prevent the passing of laws banning “resistance” to “the
Israeli occupation and its racism” [anti-terrorism laws].
Developing strategies and tactics in which Palestinian organizations and sources of
power would participate, wherever they were located, led by the “popular resistance”
[popular terrorism].
Establishing of a monitoring center composed of representatives from the PLO, the
PA foreign ministry and forces operating within Israeli Arab society. The center would
monitor the actions of Israel’s “apartheid regime,” document them and establish a
digital archive to preserve them.
Establishing an international coalition of legal institutions and human rights
organizations to lobby against Israel and persecute it in international and legal forums.
Establishing an official and Palestinian, Arab and international campaign to
determine that “the racist, fascist political parties that constitute the government of
the apartheid country” are “terrorist organizations.”
Positions of the meeting’s participants
The speakers at the meeting were harshly critical of what they termed were Israel’s
“criminal, racist policies,” and stated the need to fight them in various arenas. Many
expressed concerns over the future Israeli government:
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Deputy Fatah chairman Mahmoud al-‘Aloul stated the need to confront “Israel’s
crimes and fascist regime” through “popular resistance” [popular terrorism], by
increasing global diplomatic efforts in the various UN agencies and by using lawfare to
universally isolate Israel (“the occupation”) and its racism. He claimed the “new
extreme right government” brought great danger with it, as was already evident in the
demands issued by new ministers to give them additional authority, such as the Galilee
and Negev portfolios. He stated it obligated them to prepare for a confrontation with
Israel. As to Israel’s [alleged] “apartheid,” he listed such things as building new roads
for the settlers, stealing water, keeping the bodies of shaheeds and Israel’s treatment
of [Palestinian] prisoners in its jails (Wafa, December 11, 2022).
Mahmoud al-‘Aloul speaks at the meeting (Wafa Facebook page, December 11, 2022).
Sanan Shaqdih,3 chairman of the Palestinian National Council’s anti-apartheid
committee, speaking via Zoom, stated the need to appoint Arab, international and
regional committees, and to form a broad international coalition of organizations,
political parties and countries which supported the rights of the Palestinians (Wafa,
December 11, 2022).
Khalil Atiya, deputy speaker of the Arab Parliament and a member of the
Jordanian House of Representatives, called the meeting an opportunity to unite efforts to
deal with all aspects of the “apartheid Israeli regime.” He said establishing the PLO’s antiapartheid
department was a strategy in the fight to expose “Israel’s crimes” and the
first step towards ending the occupation and the establishment of an independent
3 A Palestinian-America. In reports issued in 2014 and 2015 he was representatives as the coordinator of
the coalition of organizations boycotting Israel in the United States, and in reports from December
2022 as a member of the PLO’s Central Council.
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Palestinian state. He said the position of the Jordanian House of Representatives was to do
everything it could to support the Palestinians (Wafa, December 11, 2022).
Some of the participants presented position papers expressing the opinions of the groups
they represented (Wafa, December 11, 2022).
Muhammad al-Shalaldeh, the PA minister of justice, presented a position paper
entitled “International laws and UN resolutions related to the fight against apartheid,
the demands for implementing them and forcing Israel to obey them” as the main
avenues of the legal campaign. He said the International Convention on the
Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (ICSPCA) of 1973, the Rome
Accords,4 and Article 7 of the ICC convention all strongly condemn the crime of
apartheid. He stressed the need to prove the crime of apartheid to prosecute Israel
in the ICC, and called for complaints to be presented to the ICC’s chief prosecutor and
to the European human rights court, and claims of war crimes to be made to the legal
systems in European countries whose laws allow was criminals to be prosecuted.
Shawan Jabarin, director of the al-Haqq institute, presented a position paper
entitled “Apparatuses for using reports from international organizations to prosecute
the Israeli apartheid state,” which stated the importance of creating a unified, focused
Palestinian discourse on the issue.
Mahmoud Nawajaa, the general coordinator of the Palestinian BDS national
committee (BNC), presented a position paper entitled “The strategy of the
international campaign to boycott the colonial apartheid state,” which stated that
along with local and international partners, they were waging a campaign to exert
pressure on the UN to investigate “Israel’s crimes.” He added that in 2020 they had
called on the international community to commit itself to ending the apartheid regime
and demanded support for efforts to revitalize the UN’s anti-apartheid committee.
Muhammad Aboushi, chairman of the Palestinian NGO network’s board of
directors, presented a position paper entitled “The role of international institutions
and aid committees in enlisting energy [sic] for the fight against racism,” which stated
that local NGOs were operating to defend the Palestinians’ legitimate rights and that
the villages which were damaged by settlers had to be provided with services such as
paving roads, waging campaigns for support and documenting Israel’s crimes, etc.
4 The Rome Accords signed on July 17, 1998, established the International Criminal Court (ICC).
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Ramzi Awda, general secretary of the international campaign to combat Israel’s
occupation and apartheid, presented a position paper entitled “The elements of the
strategy of the national campaign to confront apartheid,” which stated legal strategies,
such as presenting anti-Israeli suits in international courts; media strategies
[propaganda] to increase public awareness of the “apartheid regime” and combat it;
and a strategy for swaying world public opinion by creating knowledge [sic] and
convincing international academics of the seriousness of the regime.
Husam Arafat, deputy head of the PLO’s department of human rights and civilian
society, presented a position paper entitled “Launching a national coalition against
the racist occupation,” which stated that increased social awareness of apartheid as a
tool of the colonial occupation was an urgent, necessary task at the Palestinian, Arab,
regional and international levels. He said what was needed was to construct a national
strategy to confront Israel (“the apartheid state”) by exploiting the international trend
to condemn apartheid; to develop means and tools for use in the campaign to end and
prosecute apartheid; to strengthen and expand the circle of coalitions and alliances
with official and popular Arab and international sectors which supported the
Palestinian cause in order to exert pressure on the UN and Security Council to revive
the anti-apartheid committee and to implement the UN resolutions relating to the
Palestinian cause. To undertake such actions he recommended establishing an
international coalition against Israel racism.
Taysir Khaled, head of the PLO’s national office to “defend and the land and
resist” the settlements,5 presented a position paper entitled “The colonialism of the
settlements lays the foundations for an apartheid Israel,” which stated that through
the settlements, Israel was constructing an apartheid regime in the Palestinian
territories which was similar to some aspects to the apartheid regime in South Africa,
for example, discrimination in the allotment of water resources, in infrastructure
programs, the destruction of Palestinian buildings and assets, restrictions on freedom
of movement, discrimination in the legal system, etc. He called for the establishment
of an international coalition and the end of the evasions of Karim Khan, the ICC’s
5 The PLO’s national office to defend and the land and “resist” the settlements is a department
established in 1996 on the initiative of Taysir Khaled, a former member of the PLO’s Executive
Committee and a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s political bureau. Its
office is located in Nablus.
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chief prosecutor, regarding initiating a criminal investigation of Israel (website of the
PLO’s national office to defend and the land and “resist” the settlements, December 12,
2022).
Appendix
The PLO’s department of anti-discrimination and apartheid
The PLO’s department of anti-discrimination and apartheid was established in July 2022. It
is headed by Ramzi Rabah, a senior member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (DFLP). According to Rabah, the department was established by the PLO’s
Executive Committee and is responsible for publicizing “Israel’s crimes” locally and
internationally, especially regarding the “apartheid regime” Israel continues to consolidate in
Judea and Samaria and “historical Palestine” [the Arabs living in Israel] (Dunia al-Watan, July
5, 2022).
The department’s logo (department Facebook page, November 27, 2022).
Since its founding, the department has worked to create connections and to coordinate
with all relevant local and international groups, including the various popular and civilian
organizations, solidarity movements, human rights organizations and boycott committees.
Its objective is to construct a broad international coalition that will exert pressure on
international organizations and the international community to punish Israel for its [alleged]
“crimes” and formulate a combined legal and media [propaganda] plan of action. One of the
department’s first steps was taken on July 4, 2022, when Ramzi Rabah met in PLO
headquarters in Ramallah with a delegation from the BDS secretariat to discuss increased
collaboration and coordination (Dunia al-Watan, July 5, 2022).
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The department is headed by Ramzi Rabah Farid (at birth named Farid Boutros Maroun
Sarwa) (al-Hadath, March 22, 2021; website of the Palestinian Central Election Committee,
2006). He is 71 or 72 years old, Christian and a member of the DFLP’s Central Committee. In
February 2022 he was appointed by the PLO’s Central Council to the Executive Committee,
replacing Taysir Khaled, who died (Wafa, February 7, 2022).
In an interview he claimed his family came from Biram in the Upper Galilee.6 He said he
began his activities in Lebanon in 1966, and in 1969 joined the ranks of the DFLP, and was one
of the organization’s founders in Lebanon. In the 1970s he filled various roles in the
organization in south Lebanon. After the PLO left Lebanon he remained behind with all the
DFLP leaders. From there he went to Syria and between 1992 and 1996 was in charge of the
DFLP’s Syrian branch. Until 1998 he was in charge of the organization’s branches abroad. At
the end of 1998 he went to the Gaza Strip and had various leadership functions until 2010.
From the Gaza Strip he went to Judea and Samaria where he had a role in the popular
organizations (NPA website, April 14, 2022).
Ramzi Rabah, interviewed during the meeting in al-Bireh (Watan TV, December 11,2022).
Other department members:
Dr. Maher Amer: department general manager (Petra, November 24, 2022; PLO
website, December 9, 2022). He is a DFLP member (Dunia al-Watan, March 10, 2022).
According to his Facebook page, he studied at al-Najah University in Nablus.
6 Biram was a Maronite village whose residents were displaced during the War of Independence and
not permitted to return.
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Dr. Maher Amer (right) in Brussels at the meeting which founded the European-Palestinian
Initiative against Apartheid and the Settlements (Dr. Maher Amer’s Facebook page, June 10,
2022).
Shadi Zahed: head of the department’s public relations unit (Petra, November 24,
2022). According to his Facebook page, he studied at al-Najah University in Nablus.
Shadi Zahed (his Facebook page, May 28, 2022).
===============================================================https://petra.gov.jo/Include/InnerPage.jsp?ID=46562&lang=en&name=en_news
Jordan News Agency
Palestinian delegation calls on launching parliamentary coalition against Israel’s apartheid
Amman, Nov. 23 (Petra)-A Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) delegation on Wednesday called on establishing an Arab parliamentary coalition to counter Israel’s apartheid.
The call was made at a meeting which brought together Chairman of the Senate’s Palestine Committee, Nayef Qadi, with PLO Executive Committee member, Ramzi Rabah, head of Anti-Apartheid Committee at Palestine Legislative Council (PLC), Sinan Shqdeeh, and Director of the Anti-Apartheid Department, Maher Amer.
Qadi said Jordan, under His Majesty King Abdullah II’s leadership, places the Palestinian cause at the forefront of its internal and external priorities, and views the issue as “sacred to the Jordanian people”.
Jordan has a “firm and continuous” position in support of the Palestinian cause and rights of the Palestinian people, foremost is ending Israel’s occupation, settling the conflict through the two-state solution and establishing an independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian homeland with East Jerusalem as its capital on the June 4, 1997 borders, he said.
Qadi noted Hashemite custodianship over Jerusalem’s holy sites is a “historical reality and a national and Islamic duty” that cannot be abandoned, adding that pressures that Jordan has faced over more than 70 years did not affect the Kingdom’s position on national rights of the Palestinian people.
In addition, he expressed readiness to support any “serious” Palestinian move aimed to enable Palestinian people restore their legitimate rights, calling on achieving internal Palestinian unity, whose divisions affect efforts to serve the Palestinian cause.
For his part, Palestinian delegation’s head, Rabah, said the Palestinian move comes at an “important” stage aimed to establish an Arab parliamentary coalition to oppose Israeli apartheid.
//Petra// AG
23/11/2022 15:35:14
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https://bdsmovement.net/news/education-for-liberation
Education for Liberation
December 6, 2022
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
/
We started with 500 schools already, and we are aiming to reach 100 thousand students per year.
Palestinian youth have disproportionately contributed to our decades-old liberation struggle. Their role reached an unprecedented height during the intifada that broke out in 1987 against military occupation and settler-colonial oppression. Soon after, and as part of its relentless attack on Palestinian education Israel gradually shut down all Palestinian universities and schools in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Colonizing Palestinian minds with hopelessness was Israel’s main objective.
Palestinian educators and students, however, insisted on the right to education by devising alternative “underground” learning spaces – in homes, in mosques and churches, in community centers’ basements – in an inspiring wave of mass defiance of the occupation’s brutal repression. Aside from the basic curriculum, students learned from teachers, parents and each other the rich heritage of Palestinian popular resistance, including sumud (steadfastness), organizing protests and strikes, and boycotting the oppressor’s products, when feasible.
It is that long heritage of rooted popular resistance, along with international anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles, that eventually inspired the BDS movement in 2005. Connecting our liberation struggle not just with other justice struggles but also with the absolute need to end international complicity in Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid, the BDS movement was the clearest manifestation of a global, Palestinian-led intifada of sorts.
Decolonizing our minds is at the heart of this intifada. In 2017, in partnership with the General Union of Palestinian Teachers, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) launched Education for Liberation, a strategic campaign to effectively engage school students and communities in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality.
Providing community-based training to hundreds of teachers on BDS principles, strategic nonviolent campaigning, and supporting youth initiatives, the campaign has so far impacted over 125,000 students and their wider communities. Student-led BDS campaigns have mushroomed in more than 500 schools, creatively using art, poetry, dabke (folk dance), music, theater, film and other media to mobilize wide boycotts of Israeli products and support for local products.
We have also been working with committed college students to build “BDS Student Clubs” in leading Palestinian universities to offer a space for education and action geared towards local campaigning and international outreach.
After participating in intensive, interactive BDS workshops, BDS clubs’ members organize campus- or community-based campaigns focused on the academic, cultural and economic boycott of complicit institutions and corporations. They mobilize students, faculty and workers’ support to make their universities apartheid free, ensuring that their procurement policies and activities are in harmony with the consensus-based guidelines of the BDS movement.
We are under no illusion about what more horrors await our people with the rise of overt fascism to Israel’s power. Yet we believe in our people’s, particularly our youth’s, unshakable resolve to resist all oppression and to intensify the struggle for our inherent, inalienable rights. We also believe that your meaningful solidarity is indispensable for this struggle to prevail.
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