WASHINGTON DC Lafayette Park Right of Return Rally

Speech by Naseer Aruri (excerpts)
Trans-Arab Institute - TARI
We have come here to deliver a message to the people of the United States, to the President of the United States, and to the Congress of the United States: Let the Palestinians Return! […] We also came here as a diverse group- Arabs, Jews, Americans, Afro-Americans, males and females, united and actuated by a conviction that it is not enough to recognize the connection between peace and the right of return, peace and the refugees.

We have to remind ourselves, and remind others, that the refugees are not only the 3.7 million who are registered with UNRWA and cattered in about 60 camps in four Arab countries. The refugees and the right of return include the entire Palestinian diaspora, which constitutes 67.7% of the 8 million Palestinians in the world - nearly 5 and a half million people in all. Refugees, lest we forget, also include those thousands who live in the area on which the Jewish state was set up in 1948. They are internal refugees. They can see their land, but can't live on it or make use of it. They are what Israel refers to as "presentabsentees".

The linguistic gimmickry in Israel seems to have no bounds. There are also unrecognized villages in Israel today, and their inhabitants qualify for the status of refugees. And let us not forget, that even as we speak, new refugees are being created. Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing in and around Jerusalem has been ongoing since 1967, and not only in 1948.

 Let us not ever lose sight of the need to work together. We are together today in ways we haven't seen for a long, long time. We have a new grassroots movement, which we must nourish. This rally cannot be an end in itself. Let this rally be a RENEWAL and a RE-ENERGIZER.

Let it be an energizer for our collective efforts to expose the charade, and to ring the bells of return and to ring and ring until we return. The important thing about a right of return demonstration is that it should be inclusive of ALL issues having to do with Palestine […] The essence is the LAND (Al-Ard), and the land needs to be nourished by the other THREE - WUJOUD (Presence), SUMOUD (Steadfastness), AWDA (Return). And in this regard, let me conclude with two lines from a poem by a dear friend - the late Rashed Hussein: "Ana al-Ard (I am the land), La tahrimani al-Mater (do not deny me the rain).

 Speech by Allegra Pacheco (excerpts)
Israeli lawyer and activist For the past seven years, I have struggled with the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territorie s defending them in the Israeli Supreme Court and military courts - attempting to stop their torture, release them from Israeli prisons, prevent their homes from demolition and their land from confiscation. And I have found in my work that more than 3/4 of the Palestinian prisoners comes from Palestinian refugee camps and more than 1/ 2 interrogated and tortured by the Israeli security authorities were refugees.

It is the Palestinian refugee, who until today continues to struggle for Palestinian dignity and liberation and who unlike others has and never will compromise on return to Palestine.  I am here to say that there is a solution to the refugee issue - And it isn't Oslo. And it isn't an international fund or family reunification of 50,000 out of five million refugees. And it isn't return to today's ghetto of Gaza or a West Bank bantustan.

The solution is Awda, complete and unrestricted return to Palestine, all of it from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. When I say this, my Israeli Jewish colleagues respond, "But if they all return, We will lose our Jewish majority and our Jewish character of the state."

And others say to me, "If they come back to here, where will I live?" And I respond quite simply, I say, that the answer is democracy and equality. Today, ethnically based or race-based states are a thing of the past. From Bosnia, to South Africa, and even our Jim Crow Southern states we have all seen how these types of regimes foster divisions, hatred, violence and endless suffering for men, women, and children. And you and I have seen such suffering in Israel/ Palestine because of these state-sponsoreddivisions. It is time to put an end to this.

Today in Israel/Palestine, we are not facing peace but apartheid. I appeal to all of you to call this bluff once and for all and demand true justice, real peace and in the spirit of the civil rights movement's march on Washington, equal rights for all. My friends, I am talking about the call for the establishment of a democratic secular republic in all of historical Palestine - from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. A republic where citizenship will be based on residency and not in accordance with religious or ethnic affiliation. A republic where rights will be accorded equally to all citizens no matter his/her background. […] This my friends is the only solution for the Palestinian refugee.