by The India Palestine Solidarity Forum (IPSF) & Global Campaign for Return to Palestine (GCRP)
Statement of Resolutions passed in Kathmandu at the World Social Forum 2024 (14th-19th February)
1) We call for an immediate end to the Genocidal Israeli War on Gaza, and all of historic Palestine.
2) It’s a Holocaust! Stop the Collective Punishment & Ethnic Cleansing!
Israel & the US-UK backed warmongers stand guilty of perpetrating a “Holocaust on the Palestinian nation”.
Out of a population of 2.3 million, in the course of the last 4 months, more than 36,000 lay dead, this includes 11,000 children & 9,000 women, with yet 7,000 under the rubble, and another 68,000 grievously injured. Therefore, the percentage of those either dead or maimed equal to more than 4.82% of the population. This is indeed a Holocaust!
The Israelis have targeted & destroyed residential buildings, hospitals, ambulances, health centres, schools, colleges, universities, water treatment and electric plants, the entire civilian infrastructure, with now more than 70% of the population having no shelter. This is indeed a Holocaust!!
The Israelis have murdered journalists, doctors, nurses, teachers, professors, thus targeting the pillars of society, the intellectuals.
Israel and its Western backers stand in utter violation of – The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948.
It’s indeed a Holocaust, no less!
3) Just as the German Nazis starved and tortured the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, today the Judeo-Zionist Nazis are starving and torturing the Palestinians in the Gaza Ghetto.
4) We thus support the “7th of October Gaza Ghetto 2023 Uprising” against the Judeo-Zionist Nazis, just as we supported the “Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1944”, against the German Nazis.
5) We thus call for an Immediate Ceasefire, the withdrawal of all Israeli military forces and an End to the Siege of Gaza, which is akin to a Judeo-Zionist-Nazi Concentration Camp.
6) We call for the release of all the Palestinian Political Prisoners from Israeli jails. In reality, the entire Palestinian population across historic Palestine is being held hostage and imprisoned by the Zionist occupation.
7) The entire Israeli political & military leadership must be tried for war crimes, along with those of US & UK, all of whom are complicit in the genocidal war on Gaza.
8) We demand that Israel stop targeting the Masjid al Aqsa, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and all other Islamic & Christian holy sites. The Judaisation of Jerusalem poses a threat to the ancient syncretic character of Jerusalem, all of Palestine.
9) We condemn and oppose the so-called Abraham Accords, as they are a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. All the countries that have signed these accords must immediately cancel the same.
10) We laud the role of South Africa in filing the case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel. South Africa has remained true to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid struggle and has clearly emerged as the leading nation of the Global South.
11) We call for the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
12) We support the Palestinian Right of Return (UNGA Resolution 194, 1948)
9) We support the Palestinian Right to Resist the Occupation by all means (UNGA Resolutions 3246 (1974 & 1978).
10) As per International Law, no occupying Colonial power has the Right to Defend itself. Thus, the much-repeated lie that “Israel has a Right to Defend itself”, has no basis in international law or basic human values. We therefore reject this claim. In fact, under international law, every colonial occupying power has a responsibility to protect the people in the land and nation that it occupies. Here Israel is clearly guilty of violating these basic international norms and laws with utter impunity.
10) All the Israeli Settlements & Check-Points in the West Bank must all be disbanded.
11) The Apartheid Wall that imprisons the West Bank must be dismantled immediately.
12) We reaffirm that “Zionism is Racism”. It is an ideology of Apartheid, Settler Colonialism, Ethno-Religious Supremacism & Ethnic Cleansing.
We thus call upon the nations of the world to reinstate UNGA Resolution 3379 (10th November 1975), “Determines that Zionism is a form of racism & racial discrimination”.
13) We laud the global solidarity movements that have stood in support with the Palestinian struggle for freedom over the decades.
We call upon all solidarity movements to further strengthen the BDS movement of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.
14) The solidarity movements and the people of the world have performed admirably in spreading the Palestinian narrative across the world. The Palestinian narrative dominates the social media, where the Israeli-US hegemony stand diminished and challenged. We need to keep marching, protesting and talking about Palestine and thus defeat the western hegemony over the media.
15) The US-led Western hegemony and the so-called rules-based order stands exposed for its hypocrisy and the double standards over decades of wars and neo-colonial exploitation. A new multipolar world is emerging, even as the power of the Western hegemon is in decline. This too augurs well for the liberation of Palestine, for all of West Asia, and all those nations fighting for the cause of their liberation from centuries of Western domination.
16) We stand in utter admiration at the courage and bravery of the Palestinian people, there resilience against all odds and the resistance. The Palestinian nation stands at the very vanguard of the Resistance to International Zionism and Imperialism.
The Palestinian issue is the greatest moral issue of our times and stands at the very epicentre of the geopolitical balance of power.
The world will not be free till Palestine is free. Thus, the struggle for the liberation of Palestine is the cause of every nation, all the people of the world.
Feroze Mithiborwala, Founder, National General Secretary, India Palestine Solidarity Forum
[email protected]
