Photo credit: Mostafa Ghroz
No Peace without Liberation!
The Palestinian Youth Movement Rejects Trump’s “Deal of the Century”
Originally circulated February 5, 2020
We, the Palestinian Youth Movement, unequivocally reject Trump’s “Deal of the Century.” The so-called “peace process” is simply a guise to extend and consolidate the Zionist colonial project that seeks to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine and besiege any remaining Palestinians. It does not come as a surprise to us. The plan, announced by Trump and Netanyahu as the ultimate “peace” solution, only reaffirms the reality that already plagues our people and our land: the entrenchment of Zionist settlements, the occupation and annexation of Palestinian land, and the continued captivity of Palestinians. We are being sold a state on a tiny fraction of our land. We are being told to trade in our Right of Return for scraps of our beloved homeland. But we maintain: Palestine is not for sale and never will be.
The Deal of the Century was not drafted yesterday. It is the culmination of a century of imperial and colonial attempts to conquer the land, decades of relentless U.S. political and financial backing of the Zionist state, and years of explicit and outright assaults on our people in our homeland, in the refugee camps, and in exile. Trump has expedited the longstanding intentions of the U.S. by cutting funding to UNRWA, moving the Zionist embassy to Al Quds, and recognizing Zionist sovereignty over the Golan Heights. These political and material tactics of repression in Palestine and in the region coincide with the repression of our organizing and communities here in North America, including heightened surveillance, the criminalization of BDS campaigning and student activism for Palestine, and the deportation of community leaders. This domestic agenda works in concert with the Deal of the Century to tighten the chokehold on our people in Palestine and in exile.
We understand this “Deal of the Century” the same way we understand the 1917 Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration, the 1947 UN Partition Plan, and the 1993Oslo Accords: artificial impositions that have repeatedly attempted to squash our people’s self-determination and eliminate our right to our lands, resources, and peoplehood. This latest scheme for colonial land grab is no exception. As we witnessed with the Oslo Accords, any concessions facilitated by the U.S. government — which has endorsed and funded Zionist colonization for decades — will always be to the detriment of Palestinian self-determination. U.S. involvement is only driven by its interest in asserting power and control over the region, at the continued expense of its rightful inhabitants. The U.S. aims, ultimately, to dissolve the Palestinian national movement, silence our claims to the land and our right to return, and demonize those struggling alongside us for liberation.
The Deal of the Century builds on the detrimental impacts of the Oslo Accords, which liquidated our transnational liberation movement into a neoliberal, state-making project with our colonizer. The Deal of the Century aims to cement this liquidation by offering us a state with superficial Palestinian autonomy within non-contiguous borders and the denial of our people’s Right of Return. We know that such a solution is no solution at all; if we have learned anything from Oslo, it is that diplomacy by the terms of our colonizers will never bring about Palestinian self-determination. And if we have learned anything from the global struggles of oppressed peoples, it is that real change can only come from popular, democratic organizing by and for the people.
While our struggle for liberation parallels and intersects with the struggles of the peoples of South Africa, this is about more than apartheid. Palestinian bantustans, discriminatory roads and walls, disparate access to resources, and military occupation are but tactics of a larger settler-colonial project. An over-reliance on the apartheid framework normalizes the basis of the Zionist state because it suggests that our self-determination is predicated on our colonizer granting us equal rights within the state’s framework. The Deal of the Century does follow apartheid’s logic of “separate but equal” but in order to cement the Zionist settler-colonial state. It is the state project and its contours as a whole that we reject. We wish to make it clear that it is not a different “blueprint” or the granting of partial legal rights that we seek, but rather, the fall of the wall, the full right of return, and an end to the settler-colonization of our homeland.
Our self-determination is predicated on nothing less than the return of all exiled Palestinians, autonomy over our land and resources, and the right to self-governance. The Palestinian struggle is a de/anti-colonial struggle against a settler-colonial project that is fueled by the U.S. and normalized by Arab regimes — including the UAE, Oman, and Bahrain, whose collaboration we reject with equal vigor.
Our people will continue to resist until the land that is rightfully ours belongs to us once more and until we have realized our right to return. Our history and our present conditions strengthen our resolve towards these goals. Palestinians universally oppose the Deal of the Century, and any attempt at implementation will be met with popular resistance, including in the diaspora. Now, more than ever, is the moment to organize across borders and unite our communities globally. We call on our people to continue resisting until the total liberation of our lands and the return of refugees. We call on the people of colluding Arab countries to oppose their countries’ support of the deal. We call on all allies to the Palestinian struggle to join us.
Until Return and Liberation,
The Palestinian Youth Movement
#StealoftheCentury
#No4DealoftheCentury
#FromtheRivertotheSea
