[News] Palestinian Youth Movement - Statement on the September 2011 Declaration of Statehood

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Statement on the September 2011
Declaration of Statehood

E-mail: pym at pal-youth.org, Web: www.pal-youth.org

We, in the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), stand steadfastly 
against the proposal for Palestinian statehood recognition based on 
1967 borders that is to be presented to the United Nations this 
September by the Palestinian official leadership. We believe and 
affirm that the statehood declaration only seeks the completion of 
the normalization process, which began with faulty peace agreements. 
The initiative does not recognize nor address that our people 
continue to live within a settler colonial regime premised on the 
ethnic cleansing of our land and subordination and exploitation of our people.

This declaration serves as a mechanism for rescuing the faulty peace 
framework and depoliticizing the struggle for Palestine by removing 
the struggle from its historical colonial context. The attempts to 
impose a false peace with the normalizing of the colonial regime has 
only led us to surrender increasing amounts of our land, the rights 
of our people, and our aspirations by delegitimizing and 
marginalizing our people's struggle and deepening the fragmentation 
and division of our people. This declaration jeopardizes the rights 
and aspirations of over two-thirds of the Palestinian people who live 
as refugees in countries of refuge and in exile, to return to their 
original homes from which they were displaced in the 1948 Nakba 
(Catastrophe) and subsequently since then. It also jeopardizes the 
position of the Palestinians residing in the 1948 occupied 
territories who continue to resist daily against the ethnic cleansing 
and racial practices from inside the colonial regime. Furthermore, it 
corroborates and empowers its Palestinian and Arab partners to act as 
the gatekeepers to the occupation and the colonization of the region 
within a neo-colonial framework.

The foundation of this process serves as nothing more than to ensure 
the continuity of negotiations, economic and social normalization, 
and security cooperation. The state declaration will solidify 
falsified borders on only a sliver of historic Palestine and still 
does not address the most fundamental issues: Jerusalem, settlements, 
refugees, political prisoners, occupation, borders and resource 
control. We believe such a state declaration will not ensure nor 
promote justice and freedom for Palestinians, which inherently means 
there will be no sustainable peace in the region.

Additionally, this state declaration initiative is being presented to 
the United Nations by a Palestinian leadership that is illegitimate 
and has not been elected to be in a position of representation of the 
Palestinian people in its totality  through any democratic means by 
its people. This proposal is a political production designed by them 
to hide behind their failure to represent the needs and desires of 
their people. By claiming to fulfill the Palestinian will for 
self-determination, this leadership is misusing and exploiting the 
resistance and sacrifices of the Palestinian people, particularly our 
brothers and sisters in Gaza, and even hijacking the grassroots 
international solidarity work, such as Boycott Divestment and 
Sanctions efforts and the flotilla initiatives. This proposal only 
serves to squander all efforts made to isolate the colonial regime 
and hold it accountable.

Whether the proposal for statehood recognition is accepted or not, we 
call on Palestinians inside our occupied homeland and in countries of 
refuge and exile to remain committed and convicted to the worthiness 
of our struggle and inspired by their rights and responsibilities to 
defend it. We call on the free people of the world and the 
Palestinian people's allies, to truly practice solidarity with the 
Palestinian anti-colonial struggle by  not taking a position on the 
state declaration but rather continuing to hold Israel accountable by 
means of Boycott in all forms economically, academically, and 
culturally, Divestment and Sanctions.

Until Return and Liberation,
International Central Council
Palestinian Youth Movement



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