> BADIL Resource Center
> For immediate release, 4-10-2000.
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Statement Issued by the
> Union of Youth Activities Centers - Palestine
> "The Jerusalem Intifada"
>
> To our great Palestinian people,
>
> The people of sacrifice, the prisoners, the injured, and the martyrs
> through the century; The people of the return, Jerusalem,
> sovereignty, self-determination, and the independent Palestinian
> state; To our scattered people in exile in the camps.
>
> Since the unjust League of Nations resolution that established the
> British mandate in Palestine in the 1920s; since the acceptance by
> the international community of the Balfour Declaration which formed
> the basis of the Mandate and obliged Britain to facilitate Jewish
> migration and settlement on our Palestinian land through imperial
> military and financial power; since that time, our people have been
> struggling day by day, our national history is full of so many
> revolutions and uprisings "intifadas", to defend the land and the
> holy sites, and to defend Palestinian existence and the right to self-
> determination.
>
> The first Jerusalem intifada took place in April 1920 in response to
> the Paris peace conference where a plan was announced to carve up the
> defeated German and Ottoman empires after the first world war. In
> 1929 the Buraq uprising came in response to Jewish racist behavior,
> followed by the revolution and general strike of 1936 against British
> connivance with Zionist plans, and then came the war of 1948. The
> 1948 war resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel on 78
> percent of the land of historical Palestine. In 1965 a modern
> revolution demanded the return of our people in exile, and in 1987
> the Intifada set the foundations for our independent state. We shall
> continue our national struggle, it will keep burning until the last
> Jerusalem intifada.
>
> Despite the time invested in negotiations and vain attempts at
> marketing solutions, these efforts have ended with more partitions of
> the homeland through the cancer of settlement expansion, the denial
> of sovereignty over our borders, water, underground resources, and
> the airspace; the prisoners remain in Israeli jails, and refugees and
> displaced Palestinians remain in exile. The obstinacy of the
> occupation has been further compounded by military power and
> superpower protection that denies Palestinians their legitimate
> rights.
>
> We must point out here the mentality of the occupation, as revealed
> in the cold-blooded behavior of Israeli soldiers who have murdered in
> front of the TV cameras from around the world, Aqel, Kayan, Fou'ad,
> and the dream of the Palestinian child from Gaza, Mohammed ad-Dura.
>
> Our great people,
> Since the last Camp David negotiations Israel has continued its
> deceptive maneuvers on the final status issues. Since that time,
> Israel has tried to show that the final status negotiations are only
> about the walls of Jerusalem and the holy sites, especially al-Aqsa
> Mosque and the Western Wall, and they have tried to convince that the
> other final status issues have already been agreed upon and so they
> are not a subject for war.
>
> As a means of continuing these deceptive measures, Sharon's visit to
> the al-Aqsa Mosque, accompanied by well-armed militia, expressing the
> position of the both the Israeli government and opposition, attempted
> to explode Palestinian priorities at the negotiation table and deny
> the historical facts and priorities, which is the land and the
> original inhabitants who are scattered in exile.
>
> In this way Israel is trying to deceive - through political and
> psychological smoke and mirrors tactics, and now through the
> massacres being committed by Israel against unarmed civilians using
> live ammunition, missiles, helicopters and tanks - and confuse the
> international community, and the Arab and Palestinian public and mix
> the cards. This method has been used by Israel since the first ship
> of Jewish immigrants reached our coast a century ago.
>
> Israel aims to exhaust our people's power, in order to impose the
> agenda at the negotiation table, and thereby jump over the foundation
> and facts of the conflict. They want us to reach the last phase of
> the negotiations exhausted, raising the white flag, and thereby try
> to negate our right of return and forgetting about the fact that the
> conflict is not only about Jerusalem. Every political and economic
> analysis of Israel concerning its role in the Middle East leads us to
> realize how much this role is connected to imperialist aims. Religion
> is used to subordinate so many other critical issues in the conflict.
>
> Our great people,
> We in the Union of Youth Activities Centers in the refugee camps in
> Palestine, fighting with our people the battle of Jerusalem to defend
> its Arab character, history and civilization, consider Jerusalem to
> be one of the treasures of religion, history, and civilization, and
> as an inseparable part of the occupied Palestinian areas according to
> international law.
>
> We are warning against the persistent arrogant mentality of Israel
> and its criminal behavior against our people in order to reach a
> solution that ends with talks about Jerusalem. This kind of a
> solution is not the key that Israel is looking for to open the door
> to a historical settlement and an end of the conflict.
>
> If Israel is the one who chose the time of this battle to fit their
> historical and religious illusions, the battle of Jerusalem is a real
> battle, and the Palestinian people who have gone through previous
> battles for the land, return, and the state, promise to God and the
> martyrs to continue forward to achieve their national rights, headed
> by the right of return, the state, and Jerusalem as the eternal
> capital of Palestine.
>
> Eternity and honor for the martyrs
>
> Jerusalem
> 2 October 2000
>
> ------------------------------------
> For further information contact: Union of Youth Activity Centers-
> Palestine Refugee Camps, tel/fax: 00972-2-5835731
> ------------------------------------
>
>
> BADIL Resource Center aims to provide a resource pool of alternative, critical and progressive information and analysis on the
> question of Palestinian refugees in our quest to achieve a just and lasting solution for exiled Palestinians based on the right
> of return.
> PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine; tel/fax. 02-2747346; email: info@badil.org; website: www.badil.org