The Center for National Strategy (USMER) has organized an international conference on the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea on July 18 and 19 in Istanbul, Türkiye. Today, we present the speech by Mohammad Makram Balawi, Director General of League of Parliamentarians for alQuds (LP4Q).
By Dr. Mohammad Makram Balawi, Director General of League of Parliamentarians for alQuds (LP4Q).
Honorable president, Honorable chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear friends,
Peace be upon you all.
Let me start by thanking the organizers who gave me the honor to speak on behalf of Palestine. Putting the speech on Palestine at the beginning of this conference, reflects the level importance and support they give to this just cause, for that I thank them again.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear friends
Today, we stand not to recount a new tragedy, but to speak of an old wound that has never healed, of a crime that has never ceased, and of a cause that has become the true measure of the world’s integrity — and an exposure of the falsity of its standards.
What is happening in Palestine is not a religious conflict, nor merely a national dispute. It is a colonial, settler, and racist project built upon the ruins of a European tragedy — what is referred to as “the Jewish Question” — and exported to a land that had no part in it.
Today, more than a century since the beginning of the Zionist project, over seven decades since the Nakba, and nearly two years into the genocide in Gaza, we stand to reaffirm:
As we see Israel strike in Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq and formerly in Egypt, we realize that Palestinians are not merely defending Palestine; they are defending the full meaning of freedom and justice in this world.
After emerging from its major wars, the West declared its commitment to international law and human rights. Yet when it came to Palestine, it turned its back on all its slogans.
From its earliest stages, the Zionist project was a settler-colonial enterprise backed by Western powers.
This project has aimed to erase the identity of the Palestinians not only through the seizure of land, but by removing them from the global narrative — portraying them as obstacles to progress, as a “demographic threat,” or even as “terrorists” standing in the way of modernity.
The aggression did not stop at denial. Supported by the West, the occupation carried out one of the most extensive ethnic cleansing operations of the modern era. More than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in 1948. Over 530 villages were destroyed. Refugees were denied the right to return despite UN Resolution 194. Today, more than six million Palestinian refugees remain deprived of their right of return. This ethnic cleansing was not an incidental event; it was the very core of the project.
Later, the occupation continued its expansion through a policy of “creating facts on the ground” — building settlements, seizing land, demolishing homes, enacting racist laws that discriminate between Jews and non-Jews, and ultimately becoming a full-fledged apartheid regime.
This system is manifested in:
- · A dual legal system: one for Jews, and another for Arabs.
- · Military courts for Palestinians, and civil courts for Israelis.
- · Segregated infrastructure: roads, water, electricity, and even
telecommunications networks.
- · A permit and checkpoint regime that controls movement in a way unmatched
anywhere in the world.
All of this takes place while the occupation continues to market itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” while practicing the ugliest forms of racial discrimination and colonialism.
Dear friends,
Since the catastrophe of founding a Zionist state in 1948 on the land of Palestine, better known in the Palestinian culture as Nakba, the Palestinian people have endured continuous military occupation, systematic settler colonialism, a suffocating blockade, mass killings, land confiscation, Judaization of Jerusalem, and denial of their most basic civil and political rights.
In the West Bank, settlement expansion takes place in broad daylight, civilians are killed in cold blood at checkpoints, refugee camps and cities are raided in military operations, children are arrested, homes are demolished, and farmlands are bulldozed.
In Jerusalem, Judaization projects accelerate. Palestinian neighborhoods face forced displacement campaigns. Palestinians are prohibited from building in their own city, while settler groups are encouraged to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque under military protection — part of an effort to divide the mosque temporally and spatially, and to impose new realities at the expense of historical, religious, and national rights.
As for Gaza, it represents the peak of this historical injustice — the flashpoint that exposes all the contradictions in the West’s narrative, and all the ugliness in the policies of the international order.
When we speak of Gaza, we are not merely describing a region that has been under siege for 17 years. We are talking about the largest open-air prison the world has ever known, created by the Zionist occupation, where more than 2.3 million people are besieged and deprived of their most basic human rights — a historically unprecedented situation of such long duration.
This territory — which became home to hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by Zionist militias from their homes, lands, and towns following the 1948 Nakba — has since become a laboratory for the occupation’s experiments in collective punishment, siege, and starvation.
Since 2008, Israel has launched five devastating wars on Gaza, in addition to continuous military aggression, combined with blockade, killings through various means, travel restrictions, and movement bans. The ongoing genocide that began on October 7, 2023, is the most brutal and bloody in the history of the Strip — but it did not emerge in a vacuum. It is a continuation of the essence of the Zionist project, which seeks to annihilate the Palestinian people and deny their very existence.
The occupation has, to date, killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, including 17,000 children, and injured over 137,000 people, half of whom are women and children. Thousands of buildings have been destroyed. Schools, hospitals, and shelters have been deliberately targeted. Electricity, water, and access to medicine have been cut off, and displacement rates have exceeded 90%, while the remaining population struggles to survive amidst the near-total collapse of every basic aspect of life.
In many cases, death is no longer caused by bombing alone, but also by starvation, thirst, the spread of disease, and the systematic targeting of the healthcare system. The Israeli occupation has bombed, burned, and disabled dozens of hospitals in Gaza, preventing the entry of medical supplies and the evacuation of the wounded for treatment.
This repeated targeting of hospitals — resulting in 36 hospitals being rendered inoperable at various times — is part of a systematic campaign to eliminate healthcare infrastructure entirely.
The criminal occupation has also perpetrated an educational genocide, deliberately targeting teachers and academics, and its attacks have killed thousands of school and university students.
Children, including students, make up 18% of all limb amputation cases — 4,500 in total — as a direct result of the ongoing genocide.
This war bears all the hallmarks of genocide, according to international legal definitions.
Under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the following criteria are evident:
- A clear and declared intent to destroy a particular group;
- Systematic mass killing, and deprivation of the means of life;
- Public incitement by political and military officials calling to “erase Gaza,”
“exterminate its population,” and “cut off their electricity, water, and food”;
- Ongoing refusal to allow humanitarian aid, while targeting those who attempt
to deliver it.
To this day, the bodies of thousands remain trapped under the rubble, as Israeli forces prevent their retrieval. Airstrikes continue to target civilians, without any legal or humanitarian justification, amidst shameful international silence and blatant Western complicity.
The crime has not stopped at bombing and killing. It has extended to a deliberate political deception, practiced by both Israel and the United States, in what resembles a dual-role performance — aimed at buying time, quelling international outrage, and allowing the genocide to continue under the cover of false negotiations.
Dear friends,
Every time ceasefire calls near global consensus, the U.S. administration steps in with an ambiguous stance, claiming concern for “protecting civilians,” while continuing to supply Israel with weapons and offer political protection in the UN Security Council.
What we are witnessing today is not real negotiation. It is a joint maneuver between the occupation and the United States, aimed at circumventing global will, distorting the concept of ceasefire, and turning the Gaza file into a bargaining chip divorced from justice or rights.
Dear friends,
When we speak about Palestine, we are not talking about a “humanitarian issue” relegated to a news corner, nor a “political dispute” between two sides. We are talking about a global compass, a mirror reflecting the distortions of the international system, and a battle in which the legacies of colonialism, racism, Western domination, class discrimination, and military neoliberalism intersect.
Therefore, our responsibility — as supporters of the just cause of Palestine — goes far beyond symbolic solidarity or issuing statements of condemnation. It begins with re-centering the Palestinian cause within the core of global liberation struggles and the collective conscience of justice movements worldwide.
We must dismantle the Zionist narrative that seeks to hijack the story, demonize the victim, and justify crimes in the name of religion or “security.”
We must also work to hold the occupation accountable using all the tools of international law and criminal justice, starting with the International Criminal Court.
Palestine has become a global laboratory for repression — where artificial intelligence tools are tested for surveillance and assassination, media distortion is used against victims, resistance narratives are criminalized, and impunity is granted to aggressors.
Our responsibility is immense, because we know — and we know well — that this battle is not isolated. It is deeply connected to the struggles of peoples in the Global South against economic oppression, environmental plunder, political tyranny, and the new face of imperialism.
Here, I would like to thank all nations, and peoples who stand beside the Palestinian people and are willing pay with their own blood for what they believe in, and who never flinch or hesitate under American pressure or military might.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
What is happening in Palestine is not a local issue, nor a dispute over borders. It is a global challenge to the conscience of humanity, to the credibility of international law, and to the very notion of global justice.
The past years have proven that the occupation is not only a continuing crime — it is a glaring exposure of Western complicity, and a stark contradiction between lofty slogans and actual practice.
They speak of “international law” while supporting an entity above the law. They speak of “human rights” while sending weapons and funding to a machine of genocide.
They speak of “fighting racism” while justifying a system of apartheid no different from the one South Africa endured.
They speak of “freedom of expression” while persecuting anyone who expresses solidarity with Palestine, even in Western universities and public platforms.
And yet, despite all this, the Palestinian people have not been broken — and they will not be broken.
They have endured oppression, confronted massacres, overcome divisions, and kept their cause alive — generation after generation, despite genocide, betrayal, and blockade.
The future of Palestine is a test of the future of humanity.
Either we triumph for freedom and dignity — or we surrender to a new era of colonialism disguised as modernity.
Either we bring the criminal to justice — or we become silent witnesses to a fully realized crime.
And so we say — from here, from this platform:
Palestine is not alone.
Justice, even if delayed, will come.
The peoples of the world still have the power to speak — despite the walls and the tanks.
And as the poet of Palestine once said:
“The river will find its way to the sea,”
No matter how long the night, no matter how many the fires.
Free Palestine, From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free From the Sea to the River Palestine is Free forever.
Wa Assalam