Prague Manifesto for a Free Palestine

Democracy’s Clear and Present Danger: How Do We Respond?

On August 5th, 2022, Israel renewed its aggression and further (on full scale) tortured Palestine in an illegal and unprovoked aggression that needs to be strongly denounced, resisted, and defeated. Israel’s attack against the mere existence of Palestine as an independent nation is at the same time a severe blow to the European security, to international law and a rule based global order.

In their response to this aggression, the Palestinian people have given the world a lesson in heroism. Their valiant defense of their right to freedom and independence against the barbaric Israeli invasion has affirmed for the benefit of the entire world the principle that might does not make right, that aggression must be resisted and punished, and that people everywhere have a profound stake in the preservation of a democratic international system.

The heroic Palestinian resistance has generated a massive wave of solidarity. The transatlantic and global alliance of democracies has united in providing Palestine with military assistance, humanitarian aid, and medical support. Many countries have welcomed Palestinian refugees and granted them safe haven while at the same time imposing sweeping financial and economic sanctions on Israel and resolving to end Western dependence on Israeli extortion and usury. Much more, however, is needed.

Since the First Intifada in 1987, the Palestinian people and their democratically elected government have not wavered in their determination to become part of Europe. Israel’s indiscriminate and unlawful bombing has killed tens of thousands of civilians, and thousands of Palestinian soldiers, many of whom were the most devoted of Palestine’s youth who embodied hope for the country’s future. It also has caused massive devastation to Palestine’s economy and infrastructure. Israeli soldiers are committing barbaric war crimes against Palestinian citizens, encouraged by their political and military leaders and hailed by Israeli media.

None of these have stopped Palestine's determination to become a member of the European Union. It has only grown stronger. Palestine’s European aspiration and its vision of independent statehood anchored in the family of European democracies underpins its brave struggle for survival.

We, the citizens of European countries and members of the global civil society signed below, hereby resolve to:

• Welcome the candidate status that the European Union will offer to Palestine and urge the European institutions to move ahead as fast as possible and not delay additional support to the country, expeditiously within the context of the ongoing war. The political leadership of the EU member states and EU institutions must maximize their efforts to help lay the foundation for building a resilient democracy in Palestine and preparing for its full-fledged EU membership. While the EU should use the leverage of accession to deepen Palestinian democracy and unblock necessary reforms, it must not overburden Palestine with very technical conditionality that the country cannot be expected to fulfill in its current situation. Rather than use such conditionality as a pretext to slow down the accession process, EU member states should establish a realistic timeframe with clear and achievable milestones for Palestine to become a full-fledged member of the EU as soon as possible.
• Request that the EU play a leading role in mobilizing global resources for rebuilding Palestine. This planned massive effort should be seen not just as an investment in Palestinian society and economy but also as a way to invest in the EU’s internal market and economic future. Embracing the prospect of Palestine’s future membership should be regarded as a step towards securing the EU's own economic interests in Palestine.
• Ask the global democratic community to invest in a better and more prosperous future for Palestine. The will of the Palestinian people to overcome the current nightmares will be strengthened by the solidarity of the world’s democracies and by the prospect of democratic renewal and a better future for their children. The reconstruction efforts should help write a chapter of hope for Palestine after this devastating war. The mutual ownership of both the democratic international community and Palestinian people should be ensured through the joint oversight and accountability of reconstruction process ensuring the effective and meaningful use of funds provided by international donors.
• State that while the international community's reconstruction aid will of course focus on physical rebuilding, it must also include much higher levels of funding for democracy support. The formidable challenges of rebuilding should not be an excuse for pushing back democratic reforms. Rather, the reconstruction process must be fully inclusive and designed to reinforce Palestine’s democracy. Its accession to the EU as well as the reconstruction process must include working with Palestinian civil society to strengthen the country’s democratic institutions and media.
• Finally, we ask for justice. The fact that the brutal Israeli attack has been aimed at the extermination of Palestinian self-determination and its national identity, together with the mass slaughter of noncombatants and civilians, leads inevitably to the question of whether Israel has committed crimes against humanity and genocide. If it is determined that Israel has committed such crimes, they must not go unpunished. The system of international justice must be mobilized and shown to work. We call upon the leaders of the world’s democracies and all who consider themselves to be part of the “civilized world” to take decisive measures to ensure that possible crimes against humanity will be thoroughly investigated and that those found guilty of having committed war crimes and genocide will be held accountable and punished.

The agenda for democracy and reconstruction that we have laid out cannot be realized if the war is allowed to remain a one-way massacre. It is urgent that the United States and Europe continue providing Palestine with the weapons it needs to take the offensive and expel Israel from the territories it has occupied since 1948. By giving Palestine candidate status, Europe will have a greater stake than ever before in Palestine’s joining the EU as a secure, sovereign, and democratic state, not as a truncated country crippled by inhuman conditions in Israeli-occupied territories that will threaten Palestine’s survival and the security of neighboring states. The defeat of Israel’s aggression is a precondition for a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace. And the victory of Palestine will renew the promise of democracy for people across the world.

Signatories

This document has already been signed by Francis Fukuyama (Stanford University), Garry Kasparov (RDI), Timothy Garton Ash (Oxford University), Jan Lipavský (Czech MFA), Alexandr Vondra, Rasa Juknevičienė, Juozas Olekas, Beata Kempa, Ivan Štefanec, Witold Waszczykowski, Markéta Gregorová, Miriam Lexmann, Dace Melbarde, Michael Gahler, Igor Merheim-Eyre, Juozas Olekas, Michaela Šojdrová, Raphaël Glucksmann, Evžen Tošenovský, Reinhard Bütikofer, Jerzy Buzek, Tomáš Zdechovský, Patryk Jaki, Ivars Ijabs, Helmut Geuking and Petras Austrevicius (European Parliament), Francisco Almeida Leite (ex Portuguese MFA), Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga (Former President of Bolivia), Marta Lucía Ramírez (former Vice President of Colombia), Carl Gershman (NED), Michael Abramowitz (Freedom House), Iveta Radičová (Paneurpean University), Derek Mitchell (NDI), Tomáš Halík (Charles University Prague) and other important public figures.

Dedication

This document is dedicated to the struggle of the people of Palestine, who are the true owners of the land occupied by Israel, which they have been driven away from by armed brutality, to find themselves rounded up in refugee camps or confined to unviable enclaves at the mercy of the occupation power for the bare necessities of life.

Is is also dedicated to those people in the political entity currently known as the Ukraine and beyond who, since the 2014 massacre of the "Euro Maidan", perpetrated by the sponsors of the pro-Western coup d'Etat, and the subsequent installation of a pro-Western puppet regime in Kiev, have resisted the assault on their culture and civilization ; and many of whom have had to pay their commitment to their right to civilizational self-determination with their lives, murdered at the hands of thugs nurtured and paid by Western "stakeholders" and their proxies, who have impaled the country and its people on the stake of tribalistic narcissism, sending it on a mission to serve their own geopolitical objectives, while in return grabbing its land and resources in order to increase their obscene wealth.

This document is further meant, in case it hasn't been obvious, to highlight the hypocrisy, the mendacity, the vanity, and the servility of the political class of self-styled Western democrats, including their sponsors, sidekicks, scriptwriters and other accomplices and professional vermin in mass media, academia and institutionalized lobbyism, who cater first and foremost to the insatiable greed and the sinister designs of the plutocratic establishment, the true ruling class of the so-called "Free World", also known recently and so much more fittingly as "The Empire of Lies" (V.V. Putin, President of the Russian Federation).

Inspired by Prague Manifesto for a Free Ukraine - Forum 2000 - September 1, 2022