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PSA STATEMENT : ‘US STEAL OF THE CENTURY’

The Palestine Solidarity Alliance condemns the ill devised Middle Eastern plan coined as the ‘Deal of the Century’. This deal has been contrived by the US with apartheid Israel and we categorically state does not include the will, support and participation of the Palestinian people. The entire plan is fraudulent and outrightly rejected by all Palestinian stakeholders.

The deal contravenes international law including important United Nations resolutions regarding the non- alteration status of Jerusalem.

In part UN Security resolution 2334 reads: Condemning all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions;

The United Nations has outrightly rejected the ‘deal of the century’ and reiterated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved based on UN Resolutions and international law.

In the words of Noukat Erakat, Palestinian-American human rights lawyer, “Palestinians have not been demanding a state. Palestinians have been demanding freedom, dignity, equality. They want the right to belong to their homes, to cultivate their land, to teach their children, to pass on traditions, to speak their language. This is what Palestinians are fighting for, not a plot of land that they can have their flag over and pretend is a state. This is not a game. This is about life and death and freedom.”   

The PSA had previously delivered to the United States Consulate in Sandton, South Africa on 15 May 2018, a detailed legal memorandum together with its demands concerning the international law position on the holy city of Jerusalem which clearly outlines the process for resolution of the final status of Jerusalem. Any unilateral attempts to circumvent these international resolutions in altering the status of the holy city constitutes a grave violation of the international law process.

The Trump-Netanyahu deal is another criminal step to rob the Palestinians of the shrinking territory they have left. It aims to legitimise Israel’s latest land grab and to hoodwink the international community.

Apartheid Israel gets the green light to expand its borders by the stroke of a pen as a gift from the American President. The duo connives to legitimise Israel’s conquest of the Golan Heights and incorporation of the illegal West Bank settlements and Jordan Valley through annexation, with Jerusalem as its capital, flouting international law and United Nations resolutions.

The deal further aims to legally indemnify any criminal responsibility borne by the United States in aiding and abetting apartheid Israel in the atrocious wars inflicted in the Gaza strip during the last decade perpetrated by the IDF. This position is completely unacceptable as both actors of state terror have carefully planned and orchestrated colonial annexation, whilst Israel practises grand apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. Effectively, perpetrators of these crimes against humanity would be indemnified from any criminal prosecution whatsoever, without any hope of recourse for justice to Palestinian victims.

As in 1948 the Palestinians have not been consulted. According to the cynical politicking of two disgraced politicians facing corruption charges, Palestinians are coerced if they refuse to accept the deal, they will end up with nothing. Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner proclaims: If the Palestinians reject this generous offer, they show they are the Spoilers, “unfit to have a state of their own.”

This statement of colonial racism befits Zionist intentions from inception, when Theodore Herzl stated at the creation of a Jewish homeland the “penniless Palestinians” would be driven out of the land reserved by God for his people. Over a century ago this played into the hands of imperialist Britain, France and their ilk. Today, under US hegemony client states Egypt, the UAE among others sing the treacherous tune, “give the proposals a chance”.

No Palestinian patriot will ever do so. They demonstrate as the world looks on, that they reject this ‘steal of the century’ with the contempt it deserves.

We, South Africans, along with the rest of humanity, stand by our Palestinian brethren. We call upon the South African Government and the international community to intervene. This ultimate annexation would leave the indigenous Palestinian people, without land or rights. The culmination of a brutal colonisation catastrophe (Nakba) of 72 years.

We would have rejected with the same contempt as the Palestinians do any such attempt to deprive us of our land and rights. We struggled using all methods possible, utilising genuine negotiations supported by mass mobilisation and international solidarity to attain a free and democratic South Africa. We never buckled when the apartheid regime and its supporters attempted to coerce us into accepting their nefarious schemes based on the Bantustan fraud. These schemes aimed to make credible their robbery of our land and to sanctify white racist supremacy. It is imperative that our government and people stand with the Palestinians at this critical juncture in history.

We join in solidarity with the Palestinian People and international community, to halt in its tracks the Trump-Netanyahu fraud. The heroic Palestinian People will continue to meet repression with in-dominatable resistance.

We can only do what Palestinians once did for us: To offer our unstinting solidarity and support through the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) and Lawfare mechanisms led by Palestinian civil society and the international community to isolate Apartheid Israel and demand the United States immediately retract its US foreign policy position and become a worthy state actor in respecting universal human rights and international law.

 

Issued by:

Attorney Ziyaad Ebrahim Patel

Palestine Solidarity Alliance

(+27)83 309 5238

and

Nazim Adam

PSA  National Co-ordinator

(+27) 82 336 6711

palestinesa@gmail.com

 

 

 

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