064

Beit Lehem, West Bank, Occupied Palestine

On November 16th 1988, the late Yassir Arafat, signed the deceleration of independence of Palestine in Algiers. The move was a bold expression of the Palestinian will to achieve statehood and at the same time one of the most devastating political developments in the Palestinian cause for justice and liberation since al-Nakba. Arafat's deceleration of a Palestinian state within the illegal territorial realities created by the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the subsequent expansion of Israel, significantly in the regional wars in 1967 and 1973, marked an official Palestinian recognition of the Zionist state on the 1967 border, an effective negation of the Palestinian refugee's claims to a right of return, and a fantastical denial of the reality of ongoing Israeli occupation and settlement of the West Bank and Gaza. In practical outworking the declaration of independence energized an already vibrant Palestinian intifada going on in the occupied territories but over time it deflated the Palestinian's just demands for access to one-hundred percent of Palestine, equal rights and services for one-hundred percent of the citizens of Palestine, whether Palestinian, Jewish, or otherwise, and the right of one-hundred percent of the Palestinian refugees from '48 and '67 to return to their original villages. This photo was taken during an independence day parade in Beit Lehem on November 16th. What was presented as a celebratory expression of the hope of statehood naturally, and I believe quite rightly, evolved in the night into a angry lamentation. There is no independence in a prison, no statehood and liberation in a city and territory surrounded by walls and constantly attacked by an occupying military.

With this photo I denounce the sham of Palestinian independence and dream of a time when real liberation and return will be achieved in all of historic Palestine. I dedicate this photo to the millions of Palestinian refugees who were effectively negated in Arafat's dubious declaration in Algiers.

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Nikon D200
Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8