Press Releases

On May 24, Kairos Palestine and BADIL Resource Center hosted a webinar to launch their new joint publication and advocacy tool entitled Palestinian Christians: The Forcible Displacement and Dispossession… Continues. This paper, which serves as an updated and expanded upon version of their initial joint report from 2012, summarizes and analyzes the 7 primary policies of the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime, including (1) denial of residency; (2) land confiscation, denial of use, and discriminatory planning; (3) denial of access to natural resources and services; (4) imposition of a permit regime; (5) fragmentation, segregation and isolation; (6) suppression of resistance; and (7) denial of reparations. The report maps out how these policies culminate in Israel’s overarching strategy to create a coercive environment and facilitate the ongoing forcible displacement of Palestinians and the denial of the Palestinian self-determination. Crucially, the joint report provides a particular focus on both the how these policies and practices impact the Palestinian Christian community as well as on the role and responsibility of the international Christian community.

As part of the launch, four expert speakers reflected on major themes related to the paper to an audience of 100 participants, who joined from all across the globe. Professor Nur Masalha, a Palestinian historian and academic, spoke about the historical context and roots of the Nakba. Importantly, he debunked the myth that the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was a consequence of fighting, and he instead demonstrated how the leadership of the Zionist movement was already speaking of and planning the transfer of Palestinians in the 1930s.

Following Professor Masalha’s framing, Reverend Dr. Munther Isaac presented on the present-day situation of Palestinian Christians in Mandatory Palestine, ultimately stressing the inseparability of Palestinian Christians from their Palestinian Muslim brethren in spite of continuing attempts from the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime and its allies to fragment the population along religious lines.

Ms. Francesca Albanese, the current UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, shared findings from her first report, which highlights the ongoing denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, a peremptory norm of international law. Indeed, Ms. Albanese reminded the audience that the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination has been denied since the creation of the Mandate system following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.

In closing, Mr. Saif Kassis introduced the new joint paper from BADIL and Kairos Palestine and expounded upon its main arguments. Following a summary of its key points, Mr. Kassis showed how the only viable solution to ending the ongoing Nakba and realizing the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people lies in a three-tiered decolonization framework. This framework requires dismantling the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime, remedying and reversing the impacts of the regime’s policies, and developing a new rights-based political structure that guarantees human rights for all and integrates mechanisms for reconciliation and justice.

75 years of the Ongoing Nakba demand our immediate attention and action to dismantle the colonial-apartheid regime and its structures of domination and subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Please share this timely document widely with your communities, faith-based and otherwise, to educate yourself about the policies of colonization, apartheid, and forcible displacement that Palestinians face, and to learn what you can do to support the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to return and self-determination.