In Solidarity with Palestine

On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, I am reminded of the story of a friend from Palestine. It is one story and one tragedy in a multitude of similar stories and uncountable tragedies, that is Palestine.

Hers was the story of her parents. Two people who decided to give their two daughters a better life by protecting them from Israeli guns and aggression in the only way they knew how, to leave their home in Nablus and become refugees in a neighboring Arab country. On the day of their exodus, her father could not accept leaving the land of his ancestors to make room for European, Russian or American Jews who, with every new step they took on a land that was not theirs, trampled over the many lives that once lived there, lives forever lost under the dust and dirt of foreign shoes. So he decided to stay. He made no promises to follow his family and they did not stand at gates or stare through windows awaiting his arrival. After all, they were Palestinians, they understood that with the creation of the State of Israel, things, especially families, fall apart. My friend often said that as brave as her mother was to leave, her father was brave to stay. Her parents were never united again, though they remained married for forty-three years, until the death of her father. Her mother has still not returned to Palestine, but my friend has. With a new passport in hand, she travelled to Palestine, to her old family home to collect a few of her father’s possessions and to pay her respects to a man she never knew.       

It is not only because of these kinds of stories and struggles that we stand up in solidarity with the Palestinian people, but we do it to remind the international community of its obligations toward the Palestinian people.

On 29 November in 1947, the United Nations (UN) adopted a resolution, which came to be known as the partition resolution and provided for the establishment in Palestine of a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State” with Jerusalem as an international city. I prefer to call that famous UN resolution 181, the resolution of dispossession because we all know what has happened since. Only one state, Israel, has come into being, and it has come into being through the systematic dispossession, oppression and occupation of the Palestinian people.The Palestinian people are yet to fully exercise their inalienable right to self-determination, their right to independence and sovereignty, their right to return to their homes from which they have been dispossessed and their right to absolute statehood.

Recognizing the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people, the UN in 1977, thirty years later, adopted a further resolution to observe, 29 November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people and called on the international community, governments and civil society to do likewise.

In observance of this day- amongst the many messages of support, the many political rallies and human rights demonstrations that will be held, the many cultural events and exhibitions that will be attended, and even the twitter feeds and facebook updates, let us remember the Palestinian mothers, who work tirelessly to raise their children, and Palestinian fathers who make the ultimate sacrifice, their families, all in the name of freedom and dignity.