Excerpts from:
The Appeal of the Palestinian People announced by Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darweesh
We, the people born on this land, promised with the message of peace and freedom to defend the first meanings of the human beings and about the steadfastness of the green olive tree; we are the ones stabbed in the night of fifty years of occupation and displacement; the wounded in the deep veins;
We announce our loud presence in time and place, despite the tempests that tried to uproot us from the land in which we were the first to exist; we did not descend any myth; we were born in the broad day light of history.
As we stand today facing our open wounds after half a century of Nakbah and resistance with hearts full of pain from the past tragedies; we look forward today towards a future full of hope in the victory of freedom and justice after our victory against the project of eliminating the name and map of Palestine.
We stand with full awesome in front of the eyes of martyrs who sacrifice their lives to protect our lands and national identity and sovereignty; we listen today to the hearts of mothers who suffered exile and the bitterness of loosing their sons; we stare in the eyes of our prisoners in occupation cells awaiting the dawn of freedom. We can see on the horizon three generations of Palestinians who were born in the Diaspora and refugee camps; we are also inspired by heroism of simple people who created the miracle of survival on a land that has been always the target for invaders across history. We also mark the anniversary of martyrs of the Arab nation who sacrificed their blood to the bleeding heart to the Palestinian Arabs.
With the strength of survival steadfastness and resistance, with the truth of the Palestinian fact and the truth of existence we frustrated the classical Zionist slogan saying “Land without people” to people without a land.
The fact that they transformed us into an oppressed minority in our homeland and refugees and dividing our lands did not succeed in eliminating our national Arab characteristics; it could not change the awareness of Palestinians Arab on the importance of their unity. The refugee camps where transformed from a permanent Diaspora project to a source of change in the Arab world where it started the sparks of resistance and revolution against occupation. The PLO was the culmination of this movement, representing the Palestinian people and transforming the refugees issue into national liberation issue.
Along with the rifle we held the olive branch, we fought to achieve our national right in liberation and independence, paving a secure way towards real peace, creating appropriate atmosphere for voluntary coexistence between Israelis and Arabs in the land of Palestine.
Based upon our faith in peace as a higher humanitarian value and a National interest, we have to distinguish between the borders of our historical homeland and the borders of our international recognized rights in establishing our independent state on a part of Palestine next to the state of Israel which was established in connection with establishing a Palestinian state as well.
The honest and frank recognition of political and ethical responsibility of the crime committed by the Zionist project against us and what followed in terms of political ramifications recognizes without any doubt our existence on the land of our historical and our right to exercise sovereignty on our independent state.
Al-Nakba fell on us while the international community was watching with collaboration of the super powers which are called upon to assume its ethical responsibility by elevating the level of support to the Palestinian people and their national authority politically morally and physically, so that they achieve their national rights and to salvage the hope for peace.
The awaking of the world conscious should not be selective. If Europe found the solution of the Jewish question through repenting its big crime against its Jewish citizens with unlimited support to Israel, they should share in assuming responsibly of creating the other question, the Palestinian question. No tragedy can justify the creation of another tragedy, we have no responsibility about the big tragedy committed by Europe against Jews. If it is deemed as an ethical duty to accept the Jewish version about the Holocaust as is without getting into debates into the statistical aspect of the crime, we have the right to demand from the sons of the victims to recognize the status of Palestinian victims and their right to life, salvation and independence.
It is high time that the international conscious gathers enough courage to distinguish between the victim and aggressor, and reconsider the double standard policy towards the survivors and the dead. It is high time to stop highlighting the Israeli reality to a sacred level, trying to avoid criticizing its policies because this situation will encourage further intransigence and evasion of peace dues.
We will not give up we will not loose hope in real peace along with implementing justice. 50 years of Nakba were not merely crying over past memories; the past has not really gone completely and the future has not arrived yet and the present is still open to struggle; the past years have witnessed popular stories about resistance and mobilizing energies to eliminate the traces of Nakbah in order to provide our future generation with a dignified free life in their homeland.
We, who did not give up our rights in the struggle to be a free nation in a free homeland we have achieved victory against the project to expel us from history; we forced the occupier to withdraw from dear parts of our land under the strikes of the Intifada which has become a source of inspiration to the oppressed and the angry people; we, who offered ourselves to freedom and peace, will not yield, the spirit of resistance inside us will not fade. We have been here since the start; we will remain here forever. Jerusalem will remain the lighthouse of our spirits and the capital of our homeland forever.