62 years of occupation and resistance
Over the last 62 years, the Palestinian people have been living under brutal occupation. Millions of Palestinians have been uprooted from their families’ homes. They have been deprived of their land. They have had to flee to all neighbouring countries. Over these 62 years hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been imprisoned, tortured and exterminated both physically and psychologically in Israeli jails, while tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military occupation. For 62 years, the Palestinian people have not stopped resisting this occupation. They have not seized to fight for the conquest of national independence and freedom. For 62 years, the resistance of the Palestinian people, which continues despite the persecutions, murders, detentions and the unprecedented disasters brought on them by Israel is a shining example for all liberal peoples of the world.
Free under siege
Since January 2006, when ' Hamas ' won the most democratic elections ever in Palestine according to western independent observers, Gaza Strip, a small piece of land where they herded about 1.5 million people (children account for some 60% of the population), is experiencing complete exclusion from land, sea and air. Its inhabitants are deprived not only of freedom, but also of the most basic essential goods and services, such as food, water, and medical care.
Gaza has been converted into an open prison, the largest concentration camp in the world, because its inhabitants will not subordinate to the demands of Israel and their international protectors.
The barbaric siege of Gaza reached its peak with the military attack of Israel in December 2008, that left behind it 1419 dead (926 civilians, out of which 326 were children and 111 women), 5300 wounded (more than half of them women and children), 2114 houses completely destroyed, 3242 dwellings with irreparable damage and no longer habitable, 15,000 homes with significant damage and further to this devastated the basic infrastructure of the region (hospitals, schools, public networks).
The partisan organizations in Gaza, flesh from the flesh of the Palestinian people, resisted the invaders and they did not allow the invaders to reoccupy their land. However, after the end of combat operations, the exclusion and blockage became even harder. Building materials, the most essential item to help the Palestinian people rebuild the ruins are prohibited to be imported. Moneys sent by ' international donors ' remain frozen in certain banks. Even the food aid administered by the UN is prevented from reaching Gaza. A new, underground wall was constructed at the south end of the Strip on the border with Egypt, to prevent even the rudimentary exchange of basic necessities, conducted through the tunnel.
Solidarity among the peoples
Over the past 62 years, the UN resolutions for Palestine have had no effect. The “international community” closes its eyes to the lasting crime, which has all the characteristics of genocide. It is deaf to the cries of Palestinians, who demand their obvious right to their own land and to a free country.
The only support for Palestinian people is the solidarity among the peoples, the solidarity of ordinary people, who know what it means to live under occupation, who know what it means to fight for freedom.
Developing courageous and dynamic solidarity
In August 2008, 44 people from 13 countries, in their two Greek fishing boats managed to break the sea blockade of Gaza for the first time in 41 years. This demonstrated to the whole world that ordinary people, without war, armed with the will that feeds on the justness of their cause, with a good plan and thought through tactics may win the unjust. Since then, vessels of the Free Gaza Movement broke the sea blockade of Gaza another four times.
The success of this mission of the Free Gaza Movement inspired other projects, which broke the blockade of Gaza from the Mainland, such as Viva Palestina.
Following the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008, these missions of the Free Gaza Movement were treated with military means by Israel. Acting as pirates in the Mediterranean, defying any concept of international law and the law of the sea, the State of Israel hit “Dignity” in December 2008, threatened they would sink “Ariwna” in January 2009 and took the same vessel in June of the same year. Supporting Israel's apartheid, the Egyptian authorities banned and repressed the attempt of 1400 fighters of the Gaza Freedom March to enter Gaza and to demonstrate with their Palestinian brothers in December 2009.
All this lead to the grand peak of these tactics by the Zionist State of Israel that was the murderous attack of the fully armed naval forces against the fleet of “Liberty”, in the early morning of 31st May 2010. The result of this attack, which was held in international waters, was the murder of 9 Turkish fighters and the injury of dozens of others on the ship “Mavi Marmara”, and the arrests beatings, electric shock therapies, the humiliations, the imprisonments and eventually the expulsion of all other passengers after they looted their personal belongings.
• Campaigning of the Palestinian people for freedom and independence continues.
• Gaza remains blocked, despite Israel’s declaration that it is no longer under occupation.
• The Greek and the Palestinian people are connected through fraternity, friendship and cooperation.
• We are against any kind of foreign interference or occupation of countries.
• The solidarity of the people is not limited by borders and doesn't obey dictates by hegemonies.
We affirm our intention to develop a stable and wide solidarity movement to our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
The NETWORK OF SOLIDARITY TO THE PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE is a mature reaction to the need its title states i.e. the recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to resistance by any means and to the development of solidarity within this resistance. It is a follow-up to previous initiatives for solidarity to the Palestinian people, and hopes it will be a fresh start, on a permanent basis, with a continuous, dynamic and systematic course of action, that will overcome slack situations and negative phenomena which developed in previous initiatives of solidarity.
It was founded by the Pan-Hellenic Assembly of the initiative “A boat to Gaza”, that ended up disapproving a number of practices and policies adopted, implemented and systematically used by members of the original initiative, undermining its kinematic nature and causing it problems at a political and organisational level.
Founded on the stable ground of the efforts that crossed the whole of Greece, building on what has been achieved over the previous period and decisively shaking off all negative experience the NETWORK OF SOLIDARITY TO THE PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE decided to continue its struggle in a permanent, dynamic and systematic way.
Our goal is to spread the movement of solidarity to every corner of Greece, to achieve a permanent character for the movement, to widen the circle of people and local initiatives that will work consistently on the development and strengthening of solidarity. We urge all ’ people who feel solidarity to the struggle of the Palestinian people to establish local initiatives of solidarity in each city, to create a wide vivid and dynamic movement throughout Greece.
We turn our backs on practices and policies that do not comply with the grass-roots movement and set as a primary objective to develop solidarity to the Palestinian Resistance.
• By supporting and organizing missions that will break the siege of Gaza.
• By supporting and organizing missions throughout Palestine, and wherever the battle of brother Palestinian people is developing.
• By boycotting Israeli interests in Greece.
• By promoting awareness and informing the Greek people of the Israeli apartheid.
• By celebrating the righteousness of the struggle of the Palestinian people and by battling the Israeli propaganda.
Among us are activists who participated in the historic mission of 2008, activists who were part of the Fleet of Freedom, activists who participated in the Gaza Freedom March, people who have been involved for a long time in the solidarity movement to the Palestinian people, but also young men and women who got involved within the framework of the initiative "A boat to Gaza ' and since then became stable fighters of solidarity.
• The right of the Palestinian people to live free in their historic homeland .
• The right of the Palestinian people to resistance by any means in their struggle to liberate their homeland of the occupation and achieve independence.
• The right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and their land.
• That all conquerors leave all the Palestinian territories.
• That all settlers leave and that all Israeli settlements are destroyed in the West Bank.
• That the isolation from land air and sea of the Gaza Strip is lifted.
• That the Palestinians refugees return to their land.
• That all Palestinian political detainees (more than 11000)are released.
The NETWORK OF SOLIDARITY TO THE PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE declares:
• Its commitment to support the Palestinian Resistance in every means and way that may be adopted by the Palestinian people.
• Its belief in kinematic and direct democracy procedures with assemblies as the sovereign decision taking body. We respect the autonomy of local initiatives, assemblies and committees, we try to broaden their networking and to develope horizontal coordination for their activities. Decisions are taken by the members of assemblies within the framework of their assemblies without the need for consulting anyone and with total equality of opinion for all members.
• Its commitment to promoting people's diplomacy instead of States and global organisations diplomacy. We will not turn into a governmentally directed ' NGO '. We come together to express our solidarity to the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, since this is our outmost ideal of relentless struggle, for all people who refuse to bow to imperialism.
We discuss in directly democratic fashion, we widen the circle of solidarity, and we urge those who feel it is their duty to support the Palestinian struggle to join us by creating groups and initiatives in all cities of the country, and simultaneously we develop solidarity on a practical level by taking initiatives of action ourselves.