Image: Samidoun España activist Jaldia Abubakra — capture from video “Masar Badil on the March in Madrid”
“The history of the world is always weak people fighting strong people. Of weak people who have a correct case fighting strong people who use their strength to exploit the weak.” — Ghassan Kanafani
Masar Badil, Conference of the Alternative Palestinian Path: Towards a new revolutionary commitment, was held in Madrid on Oct. 30, 2021 across four days (and simultaneously in Beirut and Sao Paulo). To understand the political position the conference adopted, read the Madrid Declaration: Issued by the Conference on the Alternative Palestinian Revolutionary Path in Madrid, Spain.
If you believe in Palestinian liberation and return and the exercise of our people’s right to self-determination on their entire national soil on the path to building a democratic, participatory human society, and building the institutions of this democratic Palestine, as a society and as a state, then Masar Badil is the movement for you.
What does this burgeoning movement aim to achieve? Among other things, its objectives are to defend the rights of the Palestinian people, to build bridges of joint action between the homeland and the diaspora on the road to strengthening the unity of the Palestinian national movement as one unified liberation movement, and to build an Arab front against colonialism and Zionism and its local enablers:
… we call upon the Palestinian resistance forces, the various national and popular bodies, the youth, student and feminist movements, the boycott and anti-normalization committees and all the masses of our struggling people in the occupied homeland and throughout the Diaspora to unite nationally to establish a united Palestinian national front to resist racist Zionist settler colonialism in all of Palestine, to confront the Zionist movement and its allies in the world, and to work to break all the cycles of siege by developing the ability of our Palestinian people to restore and liberate their institutions, and to strengthen the position and role of the Palestinian liberation movement and its active presence in the Arab and international arenas.
Our conference considers the Palestine Liberation Organization to be a confiscated and hijacked institution, whose decision-making is dominated by a corrupt class sector, acting as agents of Zionist colonialism, and a weak leadership lacking revolutionary, popular or legal legitimacy. On this basis, we consider that the Organization and its leadership, in their current form, do not represent us and cannot represent the struggles and rights of our people.
The conference therefore calls on all popular forces, associations and organizations affiliated with the Alternative Palestinian Revolutionary Path Movement to escalate the pace of mass struggle inside and outside occupied Palestine and to confront the “self-rule administration” liquidation project on the road to isolating and overthrowing it.
Conference organizers recently released the final documents (in several languages) adopted by the Madrid conference and the conferences of the Masar in Beirut and Sao Paulo as well as the following short video, highlighting the launch of the Masar movement:
What’s notable about this movement is that it is driven by youth, a new generation for a new Palestinian dawn. It’s a movement for the thousands of highly qualified and creative Palestinian youths, wherever they are planted, who are poised to play a major role in forming the Palestinian revolution’s future, and, in the words of Geroge Habash (al-Hakim), “the future of our Palestinian masses, the future of Palestine, the region and the world.”
Image: Capture from the video “Masar Badil on the March in Madrid”. Arabic subtitles in the above are translations of the narrative voice of Ghassan Kanafani speaking in English (interview by Richard Carleton, Beirut, 1970) and saying: “The history of the world is always weak people fighting strong people. Of weak people who have a correct case fighting strong people who use their strength to exploit the weak.”
Related:
Masar Badil and the elephant in the room (Nov. 1, 2021)
Masar Badil: How to make an alternative revolutionary path a reality (Oct. 30, 2021)
Masar Badil Means Standing Strong (Oct. 29, 2021)
Understanding that the only recourse for Palestinians is continued revolt
There is no escape for Israel from growing Palestinian power (Oct 22, 2021)
We are not afraid, but clearly they are
A Giant Leap for Palestine? Stay Tuned! (Oct 15, 2021)
Celebrating the path of resistance for the Palestinian people
____________________
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
