Stuttgart Declaration

contributed by ipk

Closing Document of the Palestine solidarity conference
“Separated in the past – together in the future”.
Stuttgart, 26-28 November 2010

Equality – or nothing (Edward W. Said)

From 26-28 November 2010, over 200 participants came together for a “Palestine Solidarity Conference”. The theme of this three-day conference, with the title Separated in the past – together in the future, was “Barriers and Perspectives for a just solution” of the conflict between the state of Israel and the Palestinians.

The speakers were the Israeli historian Prof. Ilan Pappé from the University of Exeter (U.K.), Prof. Haidar Eidfrom the Al Aqsa University Gaza, Prof Mazin Qumsiyeh from Bir Zeit University Ramallah, the co-founder of the Internet Portal Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian activist Lubna Masarwa, the international law expert from Hamburg Prof. Norman Paech, the journalist and human rights activist Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, Annette Groth MP from the parliamentary fraction of the left party (DIE LINKE), lawyer Jörg Lang, and Attia Rajab and Verena Rajab from the Stuttgart Palestine Committee. The jazz musician Gilad Atzmon supported the conference with his welcome address. The actress Julianna Herzberg and Samir Mansour with his Layalina Ensemble performed in the cultural programme. The patron of the conference was the Israeli-German lawyer and human rights activist Felicia Langer.

The conference participants from England, France, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, the USA and Germany discussed strategies and objectives that they could follow together.

The great majority determined that the dogmatic adherence to the 2-State Solution ignores the actual realities and assumes a false parity between a colonized and occupied people on one side, and a colonial state with its military superiority on the other. This falsely propagates the possibility of achieving a peace in which the Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967 are granted limited national rights, while the rights of those living within the borders of 1948 and of the expelled are denied their rights.

The adherence to a 2-State Solution condemns Palestinians with Israeli citizenship to live as second class citizens in their historic country, in a racist state in which they are not allowed the same rights as Jewish citizens. Furthermore, the continuance of a Zionist state on the land of the Palestinian refugees denies these refugees the internationally recognized right to return.