Press Releases
A Call to Our Resilient People
Issued by the Global Palestinian Refugee and IDP Network
Boycotting the European Union Festival in Beit Jala: A Victory for the Martyrs and Prisoners, Our People's Struggle, and Resistance.
In victory for our martyrs, dignity for our prisoners, adherence to our right to resist, respect for our people's struggle and their sacrifices, and pride in our culture and national values, the Global Palestinian Refugee and IDP Network (GPRN), a network comprising 42 Palestinian patriotic organizations, calls on Palestinian civil society and our free and honorable people to boycott the so-called ‘Beit Jala International Peace Festival’. This call for boycott is based on our unequivocal rejection of the content, funding, and timing of this festival.
This festival bears the title of peace, while ignoring the Israeli crimes against our people in Jenin, Nablus, Aqabat Jabr, Gaza, and all of Palestine. At a time when Palestinians are being killed, the suffering of prisoners intensifies, and the blockade on Gaza tightens, this festival is funded by the European Union (EU), which considers six Palestinian resistance factions as terrorist entities (Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front - General Command, and the Palestinian Liberation Army - MFA) and our people's struggle as terrorism under the misleading slogan of peace.
Furthermore, this festival conceals the fact that the EU has imposed, in addition to the condition of condemning resistance in exchange for funding, a review of the songs and lyrics, slogans, symbols, and statements to be presented at the festival to ensure that they "do not contain calls for violence and terrorist expressions," according to the EU! By exploiting money for vile political purposes, large sums will be disbursed to participants and vendors, as the goal is to undermine national awareness. Thus, the EU fully aligns with the policies of erasing Palestinian national awareness and Israeli colonial assimilation. Furthermore, the EU seeks, through those organizations and bodies eager for grants at any cost, to force us to renounce our national values and culture in exchange for their money!
The GPRN has previously warned that the donor community, especially the EU, has recently intensified their campaigns to portray themselves as supporters of the Palestinian people while imposing nationally rejected political and security conditions in exchange for their money. For them, what is required is an image to exploit for deceiving the world and tarnishing awareness, like the image of the EU representative who came to Bethlehem a year and a half ago under the pretext of supporting the Palestine Marathon, exploiting Palestinian children to raise the flags of the Ukraine and the EU while refusing to take a photo with the Palestinian flag under the pretext of neutrality!! The EU, incapable of condemning Israeli crimes, settles for calling on Israel to exercise restraint while at the same time, imposes on our organizations the condemnation of our resistance, factions, fighters, martyrs and wounded, and prisoners in exchange for their money. Due to this the EU should not be praised or promoted.
Therefore, the members of the GPRN, declare that we are not against cultural activities and events, and are ready to organize and hold a national-international festival in Beit Jala itself in support of our values and resistance, free of the support of the EU and similar donor institutions that undermine our people's struggle. We call, again, on the organizing entity (Beit Jala Municipality) to cancel the festival and uphold our national values, noble resistance, and honorable martyrs and prisoners. We call on the EU and other donors that impose the condition of condemning resistance as terrorism to withdraw their conditions or withdraw from our country!
We also call on the national, civil, governmental, and private institutions and companies, and the Palestinian people to boycott this festival, either by withdrawing financial support for the festival, refraining from participating in its events, or simply refraining from attending.
Furthermore, we call on Palestinian national factions to renew and strengthen their rejection of politically conditional funding, as announced three years ago, to halt the decline and fall of those donors complicit with the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime.
Return is our right and our will... and resistance is our right until we return.
