forty seven and continued into the nineteen fifties we had in fact continues until this day it's very important not to think of the next although we think of it to the past and we think of it as something continues for all of us it continues for the people in palestine it continues for the refugees who have been denied their right to return home by this rule on the purely racist ground and it continues indeed for the whole region israel continues to generate so much strife and so much conflict but nevertheless sixty three years after the beginning of the neck but we can celebrate that we are all here as palestinians we saw the beautiful young children celebrating palestine and continuing with palestinian traditions and heritage for another generation we can celebrate the fact that as jeff said palestine is not just a symbol of oppression for people around the world but a symbol of resistance a symbol of survival a symbol of underlaying hope i determined nation to be free we can celebrate the fact that that sixty three years after the scientists ethnic cleansing of palestine began there are more palestinians living with him historic palestine today than ever before  now more than five million palestinians in palestine and that numbers are roughly equal to the number of israelis if not slightly more so with that in palestine there are more palestinians living region we celebrate and congratulate our brothers and sisters from tunisia and from egypt for inspiring us with their revolutions incredible courageous uprisings that restored i think our hope that radical change is possible that liberation is possible and what we saw beginning one which cost to miss life but he lit a fire that really is sweeping across the region i think across the world and what started in tunisia and egypt and  and in syria and in other countries i think is going to continue i think we're only at the very beginning of the momentous changes that happened in the region and there are going to where things fall of the certain parts of popular protests and then the regime trying to give concessions and that not working to to pick a people up to peace them and then the regime cracking down and then changing the government and then going through all these gimmicks until finally the president makes a speech where he says i will never leave and then the next day he leaves and that mobile of unfortunately was not repeated i libya where we've seen a western military intervention which i think rather than helping to turn to face to the demise of the regime has transformed the situation in libya into an open head civil war which i think is going to cost many lives but we stand with the people of libya nevertheless the efforts to overthrow the dictatorial regime which they have suffered under for so long makes personal solidarity with people in syria where there is never an excuse there is never an acceptable reason for the government to turn goings on its own people as we have seen in syria but despite these terrible ups and downs i'm convinced but it's a very important tool in the regional level because what we're also seeing with the arab uprisings and revolutions is the probability of a regional system that has existed since nineteen forty five since the end of world war two when the old colonial powers in the region of britain and france sailed off into the sunset and the new imperial power ro to the sea being of course the united states and for the past few decades we've had a regional system and which the united states along with israel dominates the region with the assistance of client regimes and dictatorships at the expense of the people of the region and that system is starting to come unstuck as we see egypt even though egypt's revolution is not yet complete even though there is still a long struggle for people of egypt to see the kind of country and society society that they want and deserve nevertheless we see egypt returning to its central regional role which is not just a geo political role although that's important where egypt is changing the narrative that has been imposed by israel in the united states and to a large extent saudi arabia of israel commits crimes at the expense of our brothers and sisters so egypt is already beginning to shift back to a central role in that heat region and that will continue and it will have big implications will also i think return to a central cultural and media role where we will see cairo once again becoming the important center of media and literature that it has always been but it was so much suppressed under the dictatorship and of course these changes will have an impact in palestine and already are and we've seen some  momentous events in the past few days and weeks that i want to talk about and i think are important we have seen just in the past few days the two main factions in palestine signing a reconciliation agreement a unity agreement hamas and  is a single palestinian i've never met one who is against humanity who wants to see palestinians divided who doesn't your for palestinians to be a united front in the face of the oppression that is struggling against but i have some real questions about this unity agreement that i watering could lead us once more into a d between factions so they can share seems in the palestinian authority that has no real power over the lives of palestinians and simply serves as a faith belief for the operation that might be unity that serves them but it doesn't solve the palestinian people if it's a your duty which which is on the platform dealing  internal matters in the west bank and gaza strip we want the best for our brothers and sisters in the west bank and gaza strip but we have to be careful not to allow the palestinian national move and the palestinian struggle to be reduced to the municipal affairs of the west bank and gaza strip and who holds which ministry who doesn't want the palestinian issue is much bigger than and none of those mothers of us have had a voice in any of this so that is crucially important the other thing that you will not hear me doing very often because in prophetess the palestinian authority of rabbis has had a kind of a peace with israel not to pete not justice but peace and this is in the form of what they call a security coordination where the palestinian security forces actually working very very closely with the israeli army largely to suppress the mass but not  also have arrested many palestinians for many of the factions many activists engaged in the nonviolent struggle against the occupation they've shut down hundreds of charities and it's very clear the united states which supplies that aid the military aid to the palestinian authority has made it very clear that the job of the palestinian security forces is to help israel to crack down on opposition to the occupation so the first question if we say and the division and this is the slogan that has come from the young people in the west bank and gaza strip and the division before we say and the division we have to say and the unity and the unity between the palestinian authority and the israeli occupation nothing to protect the palestinian security forces that own me work to protect the settlers and to arrest promised indians a palestinian only in name so i have to insist on this point and be very firm ed the unity before we can and that the vision if not to what is going to happen we're going to have a situation where you have a continued relationship between our best in israel and the relationship between our bass and hamas and it will be quiet as long as hamas maintains a  ceasefire as it's said that it's interested in doing but what happens when israel as it routinely does decides to break the cease fire and  and the other half the does going on joint patrols with the israeli army it's not possible so well as all of us share the desire for unity unity has to be built on a principled platform and this has nothing to do with factions because when i listened to the speeches in cairo the other day i didn't hear any principles that really spoke to me being addressed by any of those to lead this and i want to come back to what i think the principles we should start dog on but before that i want to say something about the issue which jeffery is very important is the plan by the palestinian authority to go to the u n general assembly in september and kohl for the recognition of the state of palestine within the one nine hundred sixty seven boundaries be the reasoning behind this and i shall jeff's hope even though we disagree on this somewhat i share his hope that it could be a turning point but i think we also have to temper our enthusiasm and recognize here again the potential pitfalls by the way this isn't all going to be doom and book that's going to be some good news but the reasoning that palestinian authority officials have a recognition of a palestinian state by the un would create political and legal pressure on israel to withdraw its forces from the land of another state that is recognized with the nine hundred sixty seven borders and rights of a fellow member state and diplomatic and legal consequences could follow all of which would be painful for israel now wouldn't that be nice if that would happen the problem is there's no reason to believe that this will happen based on everything we've seen up to this point at least on that reason and of course let's remember that lebanon has been a member state of the united nations since it was founded in one thousand nine hundred forty five and syria this well and that has not stopped israel from occupying large parts of lebanon and syria for decades at the time with no international pressure whatsoever on israel to withdraw on the contrary syria and lebanon and told that you have to give guarantees to the occupier before we ask the occupier to do anything and there's no reason to believe it would be any different to the case of palestine what worries me is that the palestinian leadership up till now have had a strategy that this based soley on diplomatic symbolism on getting palestine recognized you know they declared a state to nine hundred eighty eight before many of the people in this room were born and it was being recognized now by more than one hundred countries it didn't change the reality on the ground doesn't matter how many p l o missions or recognize this embassies around the world it doesn't change the reality on the ground we have seen so many u decisions in favor of palestine dozens of resolutions the international court of justice decision in two thousand and four saying that the wall israel is building in the west bank is legal and must be toned down but these resolutions remain words on paper because there is no enforcement so we don't need more resolutions from the united nations and another resolution even one recognizing and forget about the rights of refugees forget about the rights of palestinians living in the galilee at nazareth and i can haifa jaffa who are also struggling to maintain that  resistance so there are real dangers in these strategies that don't pay attention to the reality on the ground so with that i want to move to the good news what does a real unity platform look like it's not something that we have to imagine because it already exists and i believe that the two thousand and five palestinian civil society call for boycott divestment and sanctions is the real unity platform for all palestinians regardless of where they live regardless of whether they support a political faction regardless if they believe in one state a two state top ten states this is the unity platform for those who don't know what the two thousand and five b d s call is i will give a very brief description  this was inspired by what our south african brothers and sisters did in order to advance the struggle to end apartheid in south africa in two thousand and five hundreds of palestinian civil society organizations signed a call calling on international civil society to impose boycotts to divest from israel and  practices that make palestinian citizens of israel palestinians in nine hundred forty eight an equal that must give them full equality and third to respect promote and implement the rights of palestinian refugees including the right of r i've never met a single palestinian who would know unify around those three demolishes because they include the rights and the interests of all palestinians i think we are at the end of this conflict i can't tell you whether it's a year or two years or five years or ten but zionism in palestine is reaching a dead head it's reaching a demographic that  israeli officials to stand up and to justify to reasonable people the actions that israel is taking and it is reaching a political dead end even here in this country have you noticed the chips the change the shift in the discourse of supporters of israel where that is has israel support based moved in this country it's moved to the very far right it's moved to the most islamophobia the most racist the most xenophobic segments of this country and its political elite and on the way i think this should encourage us because it goes to show that the support for israel's oppression apartheid know exists among the most extreme people and it is up to us to go out and win the rest and i really believe we can do it i want to and i know that we're starting i can hear some of the stomachs rumbling out there and in the room i know minus i want to end by coming back to to the neck about you know everything i learnt about palestine i learned from my parents like many of us my parents are both born in palestine going to allow they're both in good health they live in not they both left palestine at an early age my mother from the village of lift up which has been in the news a lot because it's one of the few intact palestinian villages that was depopulated in any other country a place like lift would be declared a unesco wealth heritage site and it would be protected not just lift but other places too to preserve what's left of palestinian heritage that has not yet been destroyed but lift is no targeted for destruction by israel to turn it into luxury think of return is real not imaginary because left out is that of the people of lifta i think they're just separated and they're separated by a racist system that says you can't come back to this place that you belong to because you're from the wrong religion and that kind of racism that is at the heart of of zionism is really what stands in the way of justice but when i think about my parents said and i hope they will always stay in good health but i think about the sixty three years they've lived since the neck about and i know that many others in this room have parents and grandparents who had similar experiences that we owe it to them to see justice not just in the lifetimes of the beautiful young children who opened this evening but in the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents and that is the time scale that i am working on i believe that we should look for a dramatic transformation in the situation in palestine not in fifty years or thirty years but in five years and i believe it's possible if we continue to build the momentum of the boy