An Appeal from Palestinian Intellectuals to the Intellectuals of the World

Oct 10th 2000
Ramallah
 
No one can say, I have seen, I have not heard, for the Palestinian blood is on the streets and on the television screens. And the child Mohammed Durra, like a frightened dove in his father's arms, did not escape a cold-blooded murder. There are other children and they also have names, mothers and little dreams. They were killed away from the camera.

The Palestinian soil is saturated with the blood of its martyrs, and this autumn has only seen flowers of blood. And what can the Palestinian people do, but lean on the pains of freedom: for the earth to become whole and for peace to return from its long exile away from the city of peace, to Jerusalem, besieged with guns and tanks.

The Israeli occupation has gone on far too long, and the Palestinian people have chosen the path of a peaceful settlement to implement their rights to freedom and to independence in the frame work of an independent state, on 20% of their historic homeland. But the Israeli government is still running away from the demands of peace, and resorts to its own reference instead of an international one, aiming to enforce its own racist understanding of peace which is based on a master and slave mentality, and on a blatant violation of our national and human aspirations as well as on our rights to the sacred Christian and Muslim sites in Jerusalem.

We call upon you from this enflamed land to declare your solidarity with the unarmed Palestinian people as they face the Israeli war machines, as they defend their national and human rights and the right of their children to go to school, to go towards the future, in peace. The world conjoins, busy in creating a syllabus for peace culture, can not remain neutral visa vie the atrocities and crimes committed against our people, for no one can say: I did not know, I did not see, I did not hear.

Defending our right to freedom is defending a threatened peace from falling martyr.

Redeem freedom,
Save peace.

Issued by Palestinian Intellectual's Conference