Statement
The Israeli occupation authorities raided, in the dawn of Wednesday, July 7th 2021, the office of the Union Of Agricultural Work Committees applying the order to close it for 6 months by a military decision. They also smashed some contents and furniture of the main office in Ramallah.
This brutal attack comes after a large incitement campaign led by Israeli settlers and their far-right government in order to shut the voices of the union and to limit its work as a civil institution that supports the resistance of the small scale farmers in occupied Palestine.
The Union, that was founded in 1986, has always been persevere in the context of tide struggle (the first Palestinian Intifada) and in the implementation of the principles of tenacity to the earth, the sea and all the resources via the continuous support to farmers and small producers. Since the foundation until today, the Union supports farmers to plant the seeds of sovereignty on the land via a continuous field struggle. The Union is also a member of the international movement “La Via Campesina”.
The Palestinian people incur great diversity, since the establishment of the zionist state, whether in the cruel prisons or by displacement and killing. However, all this savagery didn’t win over the people and these conspiracies didn’t stop their struggle and resistance that inspire the people of the region who consider the Palestinian cause their main cause and the first line of defence in the face of the colonisation in the Middle East/the Arab region/North Africa.
The Union Of Agricultural Work Committees has worked for 35 years on the support of the struggles of small scale producers of food. This is what infurates the zionist occupation that opresses all the militant committees or tries to adapt them to the shameful normalization process which follow some states in the region, under the sponsorship of the Amercian imperialism that gives a political cover to burry the Palestinian cause.
We, in the North African Network for Food Sovereignty, express our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Union Of Agricultural Work Committees, against the oppression and the closing of the Union’s office in Ramallah. We also condemn the oppressive military attack of the zionist occupation on our comrades in the Union and on all the Palestianians including the wars on hundreds of martyrs, wounded and innocents.
In the North Africa Network for Food Sovereignty, we call to:
-Mobilize immediate solidarity on the regional and international levels with the Union Of Agricultural Work Committees by organizing solidarity meetings and festivals that expose the cruel practices of the zionist entity against the Palestinian people and to condemn the authoritarian regimes of the region that continues the normalization with this entity.
-All the committees and organizations, that struggle for the project of food sovereignty, to condemn and expose this attack on a large scale on the field and in the media.
-The serious and effective boycott of the Israeli goods (fruits and all the agricultural commodities) and the consolidation of collaboration with the groups of “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) in all the countries.
-The palestinian militant organizations to condemn the Israeli decision to close the office of the Union and to open a unified front of militantism on the national level to grab the right to civil and political efforts that support the resistance of the small farmers on their land until its liberation.
The regional secretariat of the North Africa Network for Food Sovereignty
10/07/2021
