The date of 29 November was chosen because of its meaning and significance to the Palestinian people. On that day in 1947, the General Assembly adopted resolution 181(II), which came to be known as the Partition Resolution. That resolution provided for the establishment in Palestine of a ‘Jewish State’ and an ‘Arab State’, with Jerusalem as a ‘corpus separatum’ under a special international regime. Of the two States to be created under this resolution, only one, Israel, has so far come into being.
Resolution 181 includes the recommendations that Jaffa be part of the proposed Palestinian state and that Bethlehem be part of the ‘corpus separatum’.
In resolution 58/19 of 3 December 2003, the Assembly requested the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights, as part of the observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on 29 November, to continue to organize an annual exhibit on Palestinian rights in cooperation with the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations. It also encouraged Member States to continue to give the widest support and publicity to the observance of the Day of Solidarity.
On this particular year, the Palestinian people are in the utmost need of International Solidarity. However, it is missing.
Israel, fully backed by the U.S. administration is practicing all kinds of Human Rights violations, kicking aside all Human Rights charters and conventions and throwing the International Law in the trash.
The present American Administration initiated a ‘peace plan’ called the Road Map, and soon after that endorsed the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral Disengagement plan that aims to avoid implementing the internationally-Road Map.
Despite the fact that the Road Map does not restore much of the violated Palestinian Rights, yet Israel insists that it should not be implemented.
The Palestinian people, who now number more than 8 million, live primarily in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, including East Jerusalem, part of which is now administered by the Palestinian Authority; in Israel; in neighboring Arab States; and in refugee camps in the region.
The International Solidarity with the Palestinian People is not only by exhibits and festivals. However it is needed in the UN security council that should publicly outlaw the Israeli occupation to Palestine and strongly demand that Israel should end the occupation, starting by destroying the annexation and expansion wall being built on the West Bank land confiscating almost %50 of the West Bank that is %22 of the Historic Palestine pre-1948.
Dismantling the occupation should be the call of the Security Council on the Day of International Solidarity with the Palestinian People. It will serve both peoples living on this small piece of land, Palestinians and the Israelis.
Peace harms nobody, except the enemies of peace.
The ones who really act in solidarity with the Palestinian People are those of the International Solidarity Movement and others who put their lives on the line sometimes to save a Palestinian child or a house or a tree from being killed, destroyed or cut by the Israeli Killing Machine.
Those ISM activists, like Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, Brian Avery and many others have made all days of the year, days of International Solidarity with the Palestinian People reminding the world of their duties and commitments towards peace and justice, and towards the selective implementation of the UN Security Council.
