The US has never had a PA, PLO leaderships more ‘willing to play’ under their terms
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) leaderships “have been playing everything by the book when it comes to the US”, Xavier Abu Eid, former communications director for the PLO, tells Al Jazeera.
He said the US’s decision to deny and revoke visas for members of the PLO and PA before the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September shows “no matter what Palestinians do, whether they support armed struggle or diplomacy or negotiations or civil society campaigns or anything, they are going to be undermined by the US policy”.
“I think that’s the main issue now, whether the Palestinian leadership are going to take a tougher position. … What I know is that back in 1988 when the US negated a visa for [late PA President] Yasser Arafat, it was a UN resolution at the UN General Assembly that only had two votes against – the US and Israel – that moved the whole assembly from New York to Geneva”, he said.
It's time to move the UN headquarters as well.
Thousands gathering in Detroit for People’s Conference for Palestine
Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi is in the US city of Detroit for the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine, a three-day series of seminars and other events aimed at strengthening support for Palestinians.
“It really feels larger than last year. Some 4,000 people have registered,” Rattansi said from one of the conference halls, which has been named after Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, who was killed in a targeted Israeli attack in Gaza this month.
“There is a very interesting discussion under way right now about how to turn … [a] new understanding of the Israeli genocide into more practical calls not just for a ceasefire but for an arms embargo,” Rattansi said.
World at ‘critical juncture’, Palestine organiser says
Lea Kayali, an organiser with the Palestinian Youth Movement, has noted that this weekend’s People’s Conference for Palestine comes amid a crackdown on pro-Palestine organising in the United States.
“There is a relentless assault on an overwhelmingly popular movement for Palestinian freedom,” Kayali told Al Jazeera from the event in Detroit, Michigan.
“We’ve seen the Trump administration and even before that the Biden administration crack down on organisers. We saw the imprisonment of Mahmoud Khalil and other students that dared to speak up for Palestine, [and] the blanket labelling of any organisers as antisemitic.”
Kayali added that the world is at a “critical juncture”; “We either reject Zionism or we reject our own humanity,” she said.
