To: The Third Annual North American Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement

Comrades in struggle, convened groups and organizations,

Assalamu Alaikum!

On behalf of the Abnaa elBalad movement we want to congratulate you for your most important conference and give our regards to all of you for standing against the witch-hunt and all the attempts to silence the voices of justice and solidarity, thus making possible the success of this conference.

As we write this greeting, news continue to arrive about the latest massacre carried out by the Zionist racist occupation forces against our brothers in the Rafah refugee camp. There is no end and no pause in the war crimes executed by the Israeli Apartheid regime. These crimes are perpetrated by means of arms supplied by the US; they are financed by US taxpayers' money, and can go on due to the full impunity from international law that the US government gives to its Israeli henchmen. Your solidarity and action is most important to put an end to this backing, in order to stop the bloodshed, enable our Palestinian people to achieve human and national rights, make possible the return of all the Palestinian refugees, ensure our right to live free of occupation and oppression, and eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.

The Abnaa elBalad Movement, as a popular Palestinian movement inside the Palestinian territories occupied since 1948, experiences the Israeli Apartheid oppression and discrimination at all levels. Hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Palestinian refugees are regarded by the racist Israeli law as "absentees." As such they are denied the right to own their lands and houses and to go back and live in their villages. Land confiscation from the native Palestinian Arab population and the establishment of racially segregated settlements for Jews on confiscated Arab land continues in the 1948 occupied territories of the Galilee, the Triangle and the Naqab as well as in the 1967 occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This July the Israeli government announced the establishment of 30 new settlements of that kind inside the green line. It is almost impossible for Arabs to get permission to build their homes on what remains of their land, and tens of thousands of houses, including dozens of complete villages, are under imminent danger of demolition. House demolitions are now an almost daily experience all around the country. Discrimination is prevalent in all areas of life: education, health services, municipal services, etc. In the whole history of the Israeli state not a single hospital was built in Arab towns. Most jobs in Israel, whether governmental, public or private, are closed to the native Palestinian Arabs, even those with Israeli citizenship.

Political expression is suppressed, as civil activists inside the 1948 territories face detentions and interrogations. Police shot dead civilians in Arab protest demonstrations, and continues to shoot and kill with impunity "suspected" Arabs at roadblocks on both sides of the Green Line. Five leaders of the largest Arab political party, the Islamic Movement, including its head Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, and the elected Mayor of Um elFahm Dr. Suliman Aghbariya, are now in Israeli prisons, facing charges for giving humanitarian aid to the victims of occupation in the 1967 occupied territories.

Your call for divestment in the Israeli Apartheid state is the basic and most human demand, for it means calling people not to take part in this regime of war, terror and racial discrimination. Any money invested in Israel goes to pay for more killings of innocents and enhances the racist system. This campaign should be stepped up to a complete boycott of the Israeli Apartheid regime and its military, economic, cultural and all other institutions.

Your conference takes place at a most sensitive moment. The US occupation of Iraq, this Zionist-Imperialist adventurous attempt to control the Arab world and rob it of its resources by military force, proves to be bloodier with every passing day.

The much-heralded "Road Map for Peace" in Palestine is completely bankrupt and its true nature—namely an attempt to perpetuate occupation and settlements by creating a Palestinian government that will crush the resistance to the occupation—has been exposed. After 3 years of the heroic Intifada, after withstanding all the barbaric measures of oppression implemented by the Israeli army and the settlers' militias, the Palestinian resistance has now defeated the latest Israel-US attempt to drown it in the blood of a Palestinian internal war.

The Israeli racists and war criminals know no other way out of their crisis but to continue the daily massacre of Palestinians, and now threaten to expand (again) their terror campaign to Syria and Lebanon. They should be stopped. We should unite all forces to cast out this racist regime!

Boycott the Israeli Apartheid regime!

For the return of all the Palestinian refugees!

For a free democratic Palestine!

Ma’an ‘Ala edDarb – Together on the Road,

Mohamad Kana’ane,

Secretary General, Harakat Abnaa elBalad

Saturday, October 11, 2003