[News] Palestinian students claim right "to participate in shaping of our destiny"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Palestinian students claim right "to participate in shaping of our destiny"

Press Release, General Union of Palestinian Students, 27 January 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11754.shtml

The following statement was issued on 27 January 2011 by students 
engaged in a sit-in protest at the London office of the Palestine 
Liberation Organization delegation to the United Kingdom:

We, Palestinian youth of the General Union of Palestinian Students, 
gather here today in honor of the integral part our union has played 
in the struggle for liberation. Since its official foundation more 
than five decades ago, GUPS has been at the forefront of mobilizing 
our people and regenerating our commitment to Palestine, especially 
in times of national danger and depletion. We are at the office of 
the Palestine Liberation Organization delegation to the United 
Kingdom in order to reassert our inalienable rights, and today we 
claim our right to democratically participate in the shaping of our 
destiny. We begin a national initiative to campaign for direct 
elections to the Palestinian National Council on the clear 
understanding that only a reformed national representative 
institution, that includes the will of all Palestinians, those 
struggling in the homeland and those struggling in exile, can create 
a representative Palestinian platform, and restore the PLO as the 
sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

In the spirit of national unity that brings us here today, we remind 
Palestinian youth everywhere of the National Reconciliation Document 
of the Prisoners of 2006, issued from the Occupier's prisons from the 
leaders of all political parties. Its second point of national unity 
urgently calls for the reactivation of the PLO through its democratic 
mechanisms, enfranchising all Palestinians, the millions of refugees 
in exile, and those inside. We are all Palestinian citizens, we all 
have the right to vote. We declare here that we insist upon this 
right to form our national institutions.

We announce, in the spirit of national unity that brought us here, 
and with the aim of leaving behind factionalism in order to liberate 
our homeland and return to our homes:

1.The call for direct elections to the Palestinian National Council, 
the parliamentary body that gives authority to and creates the 
political platform, strategies and policies, for the Palestine 
Liberation Organization, to be held one year from this day, in January 2011.

2. The inclusion of all our people wherever they now live -- in the 
homeland, the shatat [diaspora], in the prisons and the camps of 
refuge in that election.

3. That this new representative body, reflective of all sectors of 
our people, reform and reactivate the PLO institutions so that they 
embody the will of the Palestinian people as a whole, in accordance 
with the principle of direct elections.

We urge all Palestinians at this critical moment to join our call for 
representation, and to take up our historic responsibility in the 
struggle for liberation, only on the basis of popular sovereignty. We 
begin the campaign through our national institutions and our 
associations, in the spirit of our united love of our homeland and 
the principles that bind us, to restore our PLO as the legitimate 
voice of the Palestinian people.



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