On Saturday July 8th, 2006 around 1,000 people demonstrated on the streets of Bilbao in support of Palestine. The march started at 5:30 pm in front of the Arriaga theatre and then proceeded in a powerful demonstration throughout the capital of the Basque country.
During the march, Palestinian music was played and slogans such as “Leave Palestine in peace,” “Israeli State, Terrorist State,â “No to any relationship with Israel,” and “Euskal Herria [the Basque Country] with Palestine” were chanted.
Members of Komite Internazionalistak and Askapena opened the march in traditional pointed hoods worn by the “joaldunak” [Basque folk dancers] to remember those “joaldunak” from a neighborhood in Vitoria who danced the previous day in a Gaza checkpoint. The march ended with a rally featuring speeches and cultural performances. Gabi Basañez sang two “bertsos” [improvised poems] and then two members of Komite Internazionalistak and Askapena read a manifesto, written for the march, urging a move from words to actions to break all relations with Israel. This manifesto was endorsed by more than 25 organizations from Euskal Herria [See below].
The day before some 20 people had demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the Basque Parliament in Gasteiz, carrying a banner with the slogan “No relations at all with the killing state of Israel!” At the end of the demonstration a letter was delivered to the President of the Basque Parliament requesting a boycott of all relations with the State of Israel.
The organizers consider these events to be a strong start to a permanent campaign âfor Palestine and against the Israeli policies of genocideâ and ask all the organizations and people in Euskal Herria to exert pressure in their respective areas to ensure that relations with Israel are cut.
MANIFESTO: BREAKING ANY KIND OF RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL. SELF-DETERMIANTION FOR THE PEOPLES
Considering the massacre Israel, the Zionist entity, is executing against the Palestinian people and their democratically elected institutions, words are superfluous. The governments who won the Second World War compelled Palestine to live in an occupied land and where all their rights were violated. It is still happening.
This very same international community keeps silent and comfortably seated on their chairs in view of the fire shot by the Zionist tanks, the executions of Palestinian women and men, the never ending bombing, the Wall of Shame that splits the Palestinian land, the hundreds of arrests and imprisonments, the destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure needed to survive, the new occupation of the West Bank and the sequestration of the democratically elected institutions and persons in Palestine. Or even more outrageous, this international community unshamefully asks the Palestinian people to make an effort to reach peace, as recently asked them by the G8.
In Euskal Herrria, in a moment when most of the people, the political organizations and the civil society are clamoring for giving the word and the decision to the peoples, the political and economic relations with the Zionists are intact, on the government side, the political parties side, the cultural, sportive, economical institutions side…
Words are already superfluous. Their own liberation fight and the solidarity of the engaged peoples are the only allies of the Palestinian people to be free.
Enough of hypocrisy! It is the moment to pass from word to facts. In these hard times, solidarity with Palestine has to be done, or it is not solidarity. The undersigning social and political organizations and people call upon the political and institutional class, and all honorable people to break any kind of relation with the Zionists.
As a start we make an urgent call to participate on the march that will be held on July 8th on Bilbao.
We also make a call to take part in all the initiatives that will guarantee the consolidation of the political self-determination, the sovereignty and the peace for the Palestinian people.