Badil: Aktionen fuer das Recht auf Rueckkehr am 16.9.2000

[L.WILLMS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Luko Willms)]

## Nachricht vom 16.09.00 weitergeleitet durch Lueko Willms
## Original-Nachrichen-ID: 7lyqIv0mwIB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
## Ursprung : /CL/NAHOST/PALAESTINA
## Ersteller: L.WILLMS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-------- Zur Information und Dokumentation
-------- Weiterleitung aus "BADIL Resource Center" Verteiler
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 BADIL Resource Center
 For immediate release, 16-9-2000.
 -----------------------------------------------

15 - 16 July, 2000:
Right-of Return Rallies in Palestine:

"NO PEACE without our RIGHT OF RETURN!" -
WE WILL NEVER FORGET the VICITMS OF SABRA and SHATILLA!"
This was the message conveyed by more than 4,000 refugees and
internally displaced Palestinians in three Right-of-Return Marches
organized in historical Palestine on 15-16 September in coordination
with similar rallies and marches held by the Palestinian diaspora in
Lebanon, Europe and the United States.

In Haifa, more than 800 internally displaced Palestinians,
representatives of Palestinian political parties, NGOs and
Palestinian MKs marched on Friday, 15 July from the city center
towards Haifa's historical Arab neighborhoods, whose houses - home to
many Palestinian refugees - have remained expropriated by Israel
until today.

On Saturday, 16 July some 3,000 Palestinian refugees in the 1967
Israeli occupied West Bank held two Right-of-Return Marches in Balata
Camp, Nablus and in Bethlehem. The marches organized by popular
refugee organizations, were joined by Palestinian parliamentarians
(PLC), representatives of political parties, public institutions and
NGOs.

The Right-of-Return March in Bethlehem, organized by refugee
organizations in the southern West Bank refugee camps (al-Fawwar, al-
Arroub, Deheishe, Aida, Beit Jibrin/Azza), moved northward on the
Jerusalem-Hebron road. Starting at the memorial of the Palestinian
martyrs of the Intifada in Deheishe camp, some 1,000 demonstrators -
including numerous children - carried black flags and signs reminding
of the 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut and
signs stating the refugees' demand to return to their original homes
and properties.

Upon their arrival at Aida refugee camp, the demonstrators gathered
in a rally on the border of the camp, right next to the newly-opened
Bethlehem Intercontinental Hotel. Camp children read out letters
received from children of Shatilla camp Beirut, a greeting address
sent by Aidoun-Syria, and the statement of the Right-of-Return Rally
in the Southern West Bank. The rally was closed with a short ceremony
in which the new "Memorial for the Victims of the Massacres at Sabra
and Shatilla and the Palestinian Exile", established in Aida Camp on
a plot provided by the Islamic Waqf, was presented to the public.

For further information contact:
NATIONAL COMMITTEE for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally
Displaced in Israel: Suleiman Fahmawi, spokesperson, tel. 050-267679;
ameer@xxxxxxxxxxx (via Ittijah Association);
BADIL and BADIL Friends Forum: info@xxxxxxxxx


Attached: Statement by the Right-of-Return Rally, Southern West Bank.
----------------------------------------------

"NO PEACE without THE RIGHT OF RETURN!"

Everything has been in motion in the camps of the Palestinian exile,
from the early times of the house, the carob, and the beauty of
Palestine, through fifty years of massacres and patience, until the
moment of the angry decision, when we raise the key of return as the
symbol of blood, fire and determination. Our identity will not be
diffused by strangers and aggressors who came with their
misconceptions, killing and settlements. Our memory will not be
buried by normalization and half-solutions that represent nothing but
loss and defeat. The Palestinian refugee camp continues to  remember
everything; it knows everything; it is moved by its martyrs and its
tales. The land talks with the camp, and the skies call out for it.

Today the camp is flourishing in the garden of blood, which has grown
thorns for the throats of the killers. Here is Sabra, ready to
implement the prophecy of the martyrs, who have returned with the
stone and the gun; there is Shatilla, rising from the darkness to
expose the criminals who stole the moon from its sky - and it will
never forgive.

The camp will decide in the battlefield and at the negotiation table,
in the United Nations, and in the arena of the new world order. It is
the source of war and peace. The camp says: "The blood of our martyrs
is not for sale, neither for compensation funds nor for the charity
of donor countries. We will never be deceived by the slogans calling
for coexistence and resettlement, and by solutions which, in the name
of so-called realism, accept our humiliation by the arrogance of
force and war." The camp also says: "We do not know any solution but
the return of our children to the homeland of their dreams and their
ancestors, to their land and their olive trees. The future is for
us," says the camp, "for the generations who have not forgotten the
names of their villages and have remained tied to their soil, which
is still waiting there in historical Palestine.

The camp does not hate a peace that does not surrender the national
cause, and a peace that will not tear apart its people by means of
restricted family reunification schemes. A fair and comprehensive
peace does not plant a settlement on land, which is waiting for its
children to return, the keys to their homes in its hand, and homes,
graves and songs in its chest. A fair peace does not leave the
killers of Sabra and Shatilla, Deir Yassin, Kufr Qassem, al-Dawayma
and al-Tantoura without judgment by an international tribunal, in
which fifty years of alienation, hunger, displacement and death on
the wires of the borders will serve as witness.

The camp will decide - and it is warning of the consequences of a
final solution of the conflict, which will not guarantee its
historical right to return to the original homeland. This right,
legitimate and sacred, accompanied by human anger will bring to fall
all formulas and calculations that do not respect the human right to
live on one's own land, in one's own home, freely and without
restrictions and enslavement. The camp knows the future, and it can
read the message of the refugees' stones and the dreams of their
children.

Statement issued by Refugee Institutions and Popular Refugee
Initiatives -
Southern West Bank, Palestine
Right-of-Return March, September 16, 2000.
--------------------------------------------





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@xxxxxxxxx; website: www.badil.org
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Lueko Willms                                     http://www.mlwerke.de
/--------- L.WILLMS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --

"Das Volk, das ein anderes Volk unterjocht, schmiedet seine eigenen
Ketten."                         - Karl Marx           (1. Januar 1870)