2022-08-04

West Bank

West Bank / Announcement / Core Program / position paper

Conveying threat messages does not legitimize nor contribute to the stability of the regime

MUSAWA - The Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession warns against the forces of darkness and backwardness reformulating the Palestinian political system, changing its identity, nature and essence into some kind of medieval regimes of darkness that do not recognize intellectual pluralism and shut the door in the face of the right to participate in public life and the right to opinion and expression, and therefore affect the national identity and its cultural, civilizational and humanitarian diversity, and hand down the keys to gangs that take violence and hooliganism as an approach in imposing its vision and perspective of society’s structure and cultural and social fabric.

MUSAWA condemns the unidentified threat to Abdul Mohsen Al-Qattan Foundation (AMQF) to prevent it from carrying out a musical evening at its cultural center in Ramallah by the Palestinian artist Jowan Safadi on Thursday, 4 August 2022, and thus forcing the foundation to cancel the event against the messages conveyed by official bodies threatening the physical integrity and human dignity of the organizers and attendees of the event, in addition to the previous threats targeting the Palestine Hip-Hop Festival last Thursday 28 July 2022 that were delivered by the security services and attributed to unknown individuals. The Center describes what is happening as bad omen and an abandonment of the official authorities of their duties and the duty thrusted thereto to protect the safety and security of citizens, and an abandonment of official bodies responsible for the activation of cultural life and the development of the status of the national artistic and cultural production and creativity and its failure to fulfill their role and their strange and reprehensible silence that demands accountability, and even the security forces taking over the mission of delivering threats to artistic and cultural institutions, the thing that gives these gangs the reassurance, protection and encouragement to continue targeting these institution and threaten their existence.

MUSAWA considers that the unleashing of hooliganism and intimidation gangs is a serious threat to individual and societal security and an outspoken call for lawlessness, a loss of the Palestinian people's cultural and civilizational assets that they have accumulated throughout history, a consecration of alienation and tendency to immigration or taking law by hand, an ignorance of the Palestinian people’s history of struggle and creativity that has become a beacon established by Palestinian poets, writers, artists and cultural institutions in the face of the successive colonial regimes oppressing the Palestinian cultural scene but failed to conceal, distort or divert the Palestinian creativity.

MUSAWA invites all NGOs, political parties and social events of all kinds, and all those who cherish their patriotism, identity and the human and cultural assets of their people to raise their voices, not only in the face of these covert gangs, but also in getting the Authority to carry out its legal and ethical responsibilities in the disclosure and accountability of these gangs, and not to cohere with them because conveying threat messages does not legitimize nor stabilize the regime but represents a naked stain and a scandal exacerbating the regime's crisis and isolation.

Issued on 04.08.2022

MUSAWA