The European Palestinian Initiative Against Apartheid and Settlements

Date: October 19, 2024, 9am - 6pm
Location: MAI Hall, Rue Washington, 40Bruxelles 1050

Since its establishment in 2023, the European-Palestinian Initiative Against Apartheid and Settlements has extended a hand to cooperate with the Anti-Apartheid Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization and other partners in the anti-apartheid solidarity movement.

The European-Palestinian Initiative Against Apartheid and Settlements is open to collaboration with all those committed to international humanitarian law and international law and who support internationally recognized Palestinian national rights. The Initiative aims to build a global front against Israel’s apartheid and settler colonialist policies. The Initiative is based on the call issued by the first Palestinian National Conference Against Apartheid in December 2022, which stated:

“The dismantling of Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid is an indispensable condition for the Palestinian people to exercise its full legitimate and inalienable rights as stipulated in international law. Foremost among these rights are: the right to self-determination of the entire Indigenous Palestinian people on its national territory; the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their original homes and lands and to receive reparations (as stipulated in UNGA Resolution 194); the right to establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital; the national rights as well as the right to comprehensive equality of our people in the 1948 areas (including recognition of their Arab-Palestinian national identity); and the right to sovereignty over our natural resources.”

The European-Palestinian Initiative Against Apartheid and Settlements recognizes the importance of the participation and support of political forces and parties, civil society institutions, as well as jurists, academics, trade unionists, writers, journalists, and activists for freedom, justice, peace, and human rights. Joint and continuous work is required to pressure regional and international decision-making centres to end the war of genocide and forced displacement in the Gaza Strip, and to dismantle the Israeli settler-colonial and apartheid system in the West Bank and Jerusalem, by holding Israel accountable and ending the complicity of the states, companies and institutions that support it.

The objectives of the European-Palestinian Initiative are:

1. Forming a broad European alliance against apartheid and racist colonialism by supporting and expanding the framework of participants in the European-Palestinian Initiative Against Apartheid and Settlements, and creating coordination frameworks for national, regional, and European coalitions that will be part of the global front and work to develop action plans and guide national, regional, and international movements against Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism.

2. Defining strategies and action plans to be used to end international support for the Israeli apartheid system and hold those responsible accountable, including through legal and judicial means.

3. Strengthening and mobilizing public, trade union, and official opinion to confront the crimes of genocide in Gaza, the annexation policy in the Palestinian West Bank, and the Israeli apartheid system.

4. Supporting the organization and continuity of the widespread and growing solidarity in Europe and globally with the Palestinian people and their just cause, through support and active participation in all solidarity movements and advocacy for the Palestinian people and their rights.