In May this year a unique coalition of bodies and individuals, named the Convivencia Alliance in the UK, publicised a new and exciting declaration. This cross-faithed and international alliance affirms its unequivocal commitment for the decolonisation of Palestine. It described clearly that decolonisation could only be achieved through dismantling of the regime of privileges enjoyed by the Jewish citizens of Israel and by respecting the basic human and civil rights of the Palestinians wherever they are. The statement declared clearly that the people who live in historic Palestine today and the Palestinian refugees would be the ones who would shape the future of the decolonised country.This is a call for one state solution based on the principles of the 1948 Universal declaration of human rights as well as on the vision put forward by the PLO in its 1968 charter.
The initiative was triggered in response previous abortive “peace initiatives”originating mainly in Israel and the USA, culminating with the infamous “Abraham Accord”. Like the other peace initiatives, the accord is part of the normalisation agenda fomented by Israel and the US, designed to separate the Palestinians from the rest of the Arab world. The Convivencia Alliance deemed the accord as a dangerous development, aiming to freeze the situation in Palestine, denying Palestinians rights and perpetuating the colonisation of Palestine.
As it names indicates, the Convivencia Alliance is inspired by periods in history dating back to the Golden Age of Andalucía through long periods of genuine co-existence in Ottoman Palestine. Inspiration from the interfaith past fused with universal humanist view on the future is the basis for a profound and successful decolonization in historical Palestine.
To understand further with the two of the initiators of this incredible document click on the YouTube channel
THIS IS A TRANSCRIPTION OF THE WEBINAR:
HASSANAL: So, everyone welcome to the webinar Convivencia: towards a just coexistence. Thank you for joining us today on this important topic and especially a discussion that will shape the future of how we understand a meaningful coexistence, especially an age of turbulence and also an age of what seems to be constant conflict. But within the Palestinian context itself, I think it is an important discussion as well that we are going to have today about what it means for coexistence in this contemporary time. So I’m not going to take too much of your time as I will be passing on the floor to our moderator to Lisa Perez. So I wanted to introduce Lisa, she is a presentation sister currently working in Goa, India and she has spent some years in Palestine working with the Christian peacemakers team in Hebron, Al khalil and on her return after a holiday with a family she was denied entry into Israel, Tel Aviv airport and clearly this has shaped quite a bit about her perceptions about what Israel is like as a state. And she is also now a member of the Indo-Palestinian Solidarity Network and with that I would like to pass a floor to Lisa. Lisa, you can take the floor and conduct the session.
LISA: So welcome everybody to this webinar today which has been organized by the Movement for the Liberation from Nakba. MLN is a coalition of organizations and individuals from Southeast Asia, South Africa, Middle East, South Asia, Palestine, South Africa and the UK and its aims to disseminate knowledge about Palestine, Asia. It is a project of education and information on the history of Palestine, the 1948 Nakba and the Palestinian minority inside Israel the occupied west bank, the besieged Gaza strip and the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees. It is also a project in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation as well as a source of information and data about this struggle since its inception until today. To Read More click on CONVIVENCIA