Support for the Palestinian people, against Zionist-Israeli crimes, and for the immediate release of Juana Ruiz Sánchez, kidnapped by Israel since April 13.
We denounce the Zionist-Israeli bombings in Gaza, which have already killed at least 24 Palestinians (including 9 children), as well as the ongoing violent attacks against Jerusalem in general, and specifically against the residents of the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and those who visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. More than 500 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli forces in Jerusalem alone in recent days. This includes dozens of injured Palestinian children and beatings—recorded on video—of accredited journalists such as Faiz Abu Ramilo of the international Anadolu Agency.
These Zionist-Israeli bombings, assaults, and crimes are nothing new. Nor are they "violent clashes," a "conflict," or a religious issue. It is yet another episode in the Zionist settlement colonization of Palestine, which seeks to acquire as much territory as possible with the minimum number of native non-Jewish Palestinians. And to this end, since 1948 the State of Israel has practiced apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and since 1967, also military occupation. This May 15th is precisely the Day of the Nakba, which commemorates the massive ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, in which Zionist-Israeli troops evicted and destroyed 615 towns and villages and expelled some 750.000 people—who became refugees—simply for being Palestinian. Although the UN demanded the right of return for the population in 1948, the 6 to 10 million Palestinian refugees today continue to be denied their inalienable right to return to their homes and lands.
It is also important to remember that in April 2021, Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading NGOs, declared Israel an apartheid state. Apartheid is a crime against humanity prosecutable in international courts—in fact, the International Criminal Court recently declared itself competent to investigate these crimes in Palestine—and states have a duty not to cooperate with Israel, as declared by the UN General Assembly and as demanded by the global BDS campaign for the rights of the Palestinian people.
The Nakba and ethnic cleansing continue. They are an "eternal present" for the Palestinian people. In recent days, the forces of the apartheid state of Israel have been attempting to violently expel the residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and confiscate their homes and land. This constitutes an attempt at gradual ethnic cleansing. Although Palestinian citizens of Jerusalem have lived under the constant threat of expulsion for many decades, these actions have intensified in recent weeks. In Sheikh Jarrah, Zionist settlers, with the protection of the Israeli state, enter the neighborhood to provoke and threaten the Palestinian residents while Israeli soldiers attack the population.
Furthermore, during this month of Ramadan, which is about to end, Israeli apartheid has been preventing Palestinians from exercising their right to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on a daily basis. Aside from military checkpoints at the entrance and provocations by Israeli settlers, in recent days, military forces have attacked Palestinians arriving to pray with stun grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Hundreds of Palestinians have been injured inside and outside Al-Aqsa while Zionists celebrated the burning of part of the compound, as has gone viral on social media.
Let us not forget that Israeli forces and settlers have murdered more than 2.000 Palestinian children since 2000, and Israel is the most officially condemned state in the world by the UN Human Rights Council. To a large extent, Israel does all this with total impunity thanks to the complicity and support of artists, businesses, cultural events, governments, institutions, and political parties, including those in Latin America and Spain. And also because of the passivity of the international community. This ongoing crime against humanity that is Israel will not stop until people and governments around the world say enough is enough, impose an embargo on Israel, and cease collaborating with this racist state, as the global BDS campaign demands.
Enough complicity with Israeli apartheidYes, long live free Palestine!
FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASEJUANA RUIZ'S ÓNSánchez, kidnapped by Israel since April 13
We, the undersigned, organizations and individuals involved in solidarity efforts in our country, wish to convey to the public and institutions our deep concern regarding the situation of Juana Ruiz Sánchez, a Spanish citizen residing in Palestine for over 35 years, who works as a Project Coordinator for the Palestinian health organization Health Work Committees. Juana has been arbitrarily detained and imprisoned by the Israeli State for 27 days now, without any specific charges, under the pretext that she must be interrogated.
The arrest took place on Tuesday, April 13, 2021, at 5:45 a.m. when more than 20 heavily armed Israeli soldiers arrived at Juana's family home in the West Bank town of Beith Sahur, near Bethlehem. After intimidating Juana, her Palestinian husband, and her mother-in-law, who lives in the family home, they took Juana Ruiz Sánchez away for questioning. This lengthy interrogation will continue for another three days, until Monday, April 26, by order of the judge presiding over the case. Unless the judge decides to extend it further, she will have been detained for 13 days without any formal charges.
Previously, in the early hours of March 8, 2021, the Israeli army raided the headquarters of Health Work Committees (HWC), the health organization where Juana works, in the city of Al Bireh. They arrested Tayseer Abu Sharbak, Head of HWC's Accounting Department, who remains in prison, and seized computer equipment and documentation related to the humanitarian work HWC carries out in collaboration with international organizations, including several NGOs in Spain, and with funds from Spanish donors. Saeed Abbad, who is no longer employed by HWC but was Head of the Accounting Department until two years ago, is also being held in detention. This Manifesto also calls for the release of both men, who are also being held in administrative detention.
These circumstances lead us to suspect that those responsible for the arrests are seeking to prove some type of crime linked to the financing of the projects carried out by HWC and that they intend to involve Juana Ruiz in this accusation.
We, the undersigned, believe that it is impossible for projects financed by cooperation in our country to have any criminal aspect, since Spanish cooperation, mostly public, requires the execution of the planned activities and the full justification of the financing of the different projects that have been carried out with our support.
The HWC has carried out dozens of health and social projects with the help of our country's cooperation. These activities include bringing preventative healthcare to villages in the West Bank, vaccinating children in East Jerusalem, whom the Israeli government has systematically refused to vaccinate, providing prenatal and postnatal care to women in the West Bank, conducting information and training campaigns on countless health-related issues, hygiene practices, and the prevention of the most common diseases in the area, providing free care to 40% of its patients in the 14 clinics the HWC operates throughout the Palestinian Authority territory, and other similar activities that could hardly be considered suspicious of constituting any kind of crime.
Despite its humanitarian and health-related nature, or perhaps precisely because of it, the HWC is being intermittently attacked by the State of Israel in a policy of repression, attrition, and dismantling of Palestinian civil society organizations.
With this MANIFESTO:
We demand the immediate release of Juana Ruiz Sánchez
We also demand the release of the rest of the people detained during this new operation of harassment against the HWC organization.
We demand that the State of Israel respect International Humanitarian Law and the Human Rights of the Palestinian population.
We demand that the State of Israel provide material reparation for the assets damaged and/or confiscated from the HWC, some of which were financed by Spanish cooperation.
We demand that the Spanish Government take action and exert all possible pressure to secure the immediate release of Juana Ruiz Sánchez.
We call upon all people and organizations that fight for human rights in general, and for the rights of the Palestinian people in particular, to join this Manifesto and demand through this means the immediate release of Juana Ruiz Sánchez and her imprisoned HWC comrades.
May 11th 2021
CLACSO Working Group Epistemologies of the South
Special Group Al Zeytun Magazine/CLACSO Palestine and Latin America
This statement expresses the position of the aforementioned Groups and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.
