 Hi, everyone. Good evening. I'm Dean Amater at the Chair of the Center for Palestine Studies at SOAS, and I'm really delighted to be chairing this final session on the conference on the right of return for Palestine and Palestinians. So the panel is called Right of Return, Activism, Agency and Return, and we've got four speakers. It's going to be an exciting session where we come to think about the agency and the activism around this very important topic. We've heard in the previous sessions histories of the right of return. We've also had international law perspective and other perspectives and it's been a very stimulating day. Please ask the audience to put their questions. There's a question and answer kind of icon at the end of your screen. Put your questions there and I will pose them to the speakers. So first to speak is Dr. Mesna Kato from the University of Cambridge, and her title is Chalk with Palestine, Schooling, Education and Return. It seems a very interesting topic. While Mesna is speaking, I'm going to go kind of dark and silent, so please welcome Mesna and the floor is yours. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Abid, Nimid and everyone and Reem and everyone at Birzid, Houston and SOAS for organizing this really exciting seminar series or conference. In my time with you today, in my short time with you, I'd like to reflect on a particular phrase or clause often used by Palestinians and their allies in the documentation of their rights in their advocacy in their mobilization. And the phrase is, you know, XXX, the right to return as enshrined by resolution 194. As we've seen throughout the day, 194 as resolution is legitimated through the institutions with produced it, but its power comes from its tactical use in demands and claims made by Palestinians and their allies. But here I'd like to offer a proposition. How can we see 194 as perhaps produced by international instruments, but whose power and political legitimacy is not so much enshrined, but is exercised. It's not necessarily a matter of resistance or its celebration per se. And there's tons of literature on this, right. This is not a rehearsal of, for example, how Palestinians respond to challenge or push international law, take it up or take it down. But it's to think beyond, in fact, the dyad of resistance and repression. I'll do so today through one of the most important crucibles for articulations of belonging and togetherness for nearly everyone, not just Palestinians, but certainly including them schooling. And I'll do so through three forms of what I would regard as schooling as return. One, return as act and infraction to return as experimentation and curriculum and three return through collective study. Now, in terms of return as act and infraction, one of the things that is often left out in terms of the idea of return. There's so much emphasis on the ways in which Palestinians and Palestinian young people are taught to demand return. You know, there's a famous kind of or there's an often used discourse in particular refugee studies but in other places that every Palestinian child knows how to rehearse resolution 194 that resolution 194 is taught in classrooms. And I'll get to that in a minute. But here what I want to lay claim to is that the very first act of a Palestinian child was to in fact attempt to return home. In the aftermath of the network. Hundreds upon hundreds of Palestinian young people would escape the tent classrooms that were made for them that were set up for them by one or one other institutions, and in fact would run to the border in an attempt to go home. This is, in a sense. The Palestinian in the moment in which they were gas lit into thinking that they no longer existed, asserting through their through through their hike through their walk through their trespass of the seam zone, the border, the minefield that they themselves refuse that act of change, and that they knew and understood where they come from, and they where did they where they wanted to go. This act of return as act and infraction continues throughout the next 70 years as pal as Palestinian young people and students and their teachers, and turned into political formations, develop their own political relations, marched rallied organized mobilized develop secret clubs, and societies, and in fact in 1968 marched towards another place get on a, in order to build and reimagine a new way for them to return. Because of infraction, because of the instruments that were utilized to criminalize these initial acts of physical return. Be it the new Israeli state, international regimes, and in fact, their host, or their quote unquote host countries, and their, and the regimes of those and into military apparatuses of those host countries. In this sense to Palestinians when they made when they enacted and attempted to enact this kind of return. They were entered into an alliance amongst themselves of of that required a shared sense of precarity and physical in danger self endangerment. I wanted now. So, and I will I'll get to that. I'll talk about this a little bit more. But here I want to actually emphasize, you know, the ways in which they try to mitigate this danger. And that's what they do in this nation and they're entering into what they themselves built up and created within the PLO of PLO schools of PLO, you know, young training camps, and building and working together to strengthen themselves bodily in terms of their body, their physical capacities, in order to think about they own, they built themselves bodily in order to return. Return is experimentation and a curriculum. One of the most important things we need to think about in terms of return. And this idea that young people every Palestinian young child can rehearse 194. What is that such schooling emerges, despite not because of the institutions that were built and that claim to support them. Return became an important and central project for a pedagogical project for teachers, students and parents alike. When school indeed schooling itself and the idea that a Palestinian must become an educated citizen was to become an educated citizen of a tomorrow Palestine, a Palestine that must be created and built through the pedagogical power of its future citizens. But beyond that, it was to experiment and to develop schooling and imagine of curriculums that would, in fact, create and build what Palestine will become. In 1948, this meant that in the middle and in the midst of war, Palestinians would gather themselves in order to educate their young people. In the 1950s and 1960s, it meant the building up of the architecture of the owner educational system, and in the sort of the political pressure by Palestinians, Palestinian parents and students and teachers alike, in how that system will be developed. But it also meant in any schooling that they had within public schools and elsewhere, a kind of setting a setting space for determining other imaginative possibilities for schooling. For example, experimentations in pedagogical practices, debates and discussions around the idea of building Dewey style systems Montessori might entering into discussions and building and exercising experimenting with Montessori schools. In their first into father, it was enter, you know, it was developing schools outside of classrooms, such that they might be able to continue on with the project of education, despite curfew and the collapse of formal architectures as a result of Israeli violence. This kind of experimentation is crucial in understanding how Palestinians develop is crucial not just because by virtue of the fact to celebrate, you know, this education as being experimental or radical or progressive. And I think, although I think that is crucial. It's because because it answers a particular question of why they develop these schools to begin with. It was for future Palestine. It was to think about the tomorrow of Palestine, but it was a concern, a deep founded concern that this return must be radical and progressive, and that it can only be so through this through a continual transition and in continual insistence on 194 at or return per se as sort of central crucible through which experimentation can be made. Third, in terms of return through collective study. What I think is often, you know, articulated when we think about 194 is return as something that will happen. What I want to propose through here is to think about return through collective study, and by which I mean the historic multiple ways and multiple forms through which Palestinians in gathered as a beginning as a way of expressing the possibilities and the thinking through which return is made possible. And here I think of Palestinian experimentations of collective study through in gatherings at universities wherever they might find themselves, be it Baghdad, Yemen, Lebanon, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Santiago, Delhi. Anywhere Palestinians found themselves as young people, they tried to find others. And in so doing, they built together all sorts of historic institutions allowed the Arab American University graduates and far far earlier, the Palestine anti Zionist society in New York. And, and in fact, any kind of Palestinian student mobilization, the most important of course of which is the general union of Palestinian students. These formations may be regarded and often dismissed, or in fact, fetishize as some sort of popular arm of the PLO, but I think they're most important, and their most radical articulation is as sites of collective study and and so being sites of collective study and in gathering and social and and and exercising relations and socialities of care in their in their exile and in their shut up. So what am I trying to say with these three acts of return. Is that Palestinians are already returning that acts of return that 194 isn't so much enshrined and therefore something that must be achieved, but that it's achievement is it's an it's, it is an exercise, it's a muscle. And in so far as Palestinians, build and work through acts of physical return through acts of experimentation and political and popular mobilization through acts of curricular curricular and pedagogical practice and through collective study. They are already returning. They move towards return. This is all part of return that 194 in fact in becomes a sort of language that Palestinians work through but always work in excess of. So what I want to end by saying is what I mean chalkboard Palestine, I think very much of a very kind of oft repeated line, but a very powerful one and can a fan is returned to Haifa. So when Sophia is asked, what is the nation Sophia. And, and she responds, homeland, what is homeland, my whole what on your Sophia, and what on who I must talk about. And what I hope to believe what I hope 194 can be rethought of to say is that the right to return is one to a future that we're already and Palestinians are already making that they're etching and re etching. Every day, everywhere, and that this return and 194 will not be in trying, but will be exercised by Palestinians themselves. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was a powerful beginning for this panel, particularly your idea of collective study, which might see again really well to what my students career from King's College is going to talk about the right of return the pitfalls of Contrarian research. So welcome my soon. I'm going to mute myself and leave you the space. My soon. You are on mute. Okay, can you hear me now. Thanks for the invite. I start. I want to return Palestine to our land, wrote a 10 year old Palestinian from Shatila camp on her drawing for an NGO workshop in Lebanon. But the Raja Palestine are not the drawing was a hit when the girl was asked where her land was she said it was in the camp. The nation's end of the Palestinian to the camp became a story that seemingly undermined the Palestinian refugees returned to Palestine. The drawing was put in an exhibition and took a life on its own eventually printed on a T shirt, one of which you can see displayed behind me here. A drawing of a 10 year old became kitsch. It came to represent the attachment of the Palestinians to Shatila and how they wanted to stay. It started to be invoked whenever the issue of refugee return heated up. I have to say, Palestinians belong to their camps, they feel home in their camps are noble mobile. This of course, true attention to the NGO and the NGO itself put it in many of its own proposals as a way to project that we are doing something different to allow children to say that they want what they want and express themselves freely without any restrictions. The NGOs would try to indoctrinate children to that politics as one of the NGO worker workers that this we are different and we don't do like others do is that rope I want to investigate today when it comes to researching the right of return in Lebanon are from now on. The talk will investigate how structural incentives and pressures of the higher education grant and publishing economy to be economy to be contrarian by which I mean the need to constantly come up with new ideas and argument for the sake of being entrepreneurial. This impacts how the reader the ROR is studied and understood in Lebanon. I will name them the contrarian entrepreneur researchers and related this to the political economy of research and how it has affected studying the struggle for return. Ironically, the other research Palestinians in Lebanon is connected to the ROR. Shatira became known as a site for studying refugees to a combination due to a combination of different factors in the 90s. The start of the peace process classified refugees as a final status topic. And as a result deferring any agreement to their status indefinitely. The period also witnessed an economic crisis, the lack of jobs and the launching of student loans, which contributed to a surge of PhD level student enrollment in the US and elsewhere. And many of these students were inspired by the audit or right of return movement in the 1990s, who then came to study the refugees. The refugees also witnessed a raging debate in Lebanon over the civil rights of Palestinian Lebanese authorities consistently argued that any granting granting of civil rights to Palestinian refugees would undermine the right of return as part of its contribution to pressure Palestinian negotiators to put the right of return on the table. The right of return mellowed down after the 911 attacks and the researcher who came after that started to started to really the ROR and issues surrounding Palestinians in Lebanon. It was also a time when the post colonial critique of nationalism and national struggles was at its peak. Furthermore, given the over research of the preceding period researchers needed to find new ways distinguishing their work, new gaps in the literature to fill in, and new scholarly frameworks to test out in their field work. The lack of a displaced population facing discrimination in its host country, while, while struggling to return the Palestinians of the early 2000s needed to be liberated from their Palestinian identity and re-narrated as humans who want to live and belong where they are. As one scholar put it, refugees can't hold the brunt of the right of return or the Palestinian struggles. While of course it's very important not to reduce or restrict Palestinian to their Palestinians, there are both political and ethical issues that need to be asked about the way we are writing them off their Palestinians. However, much of this is couched in the language of researcher humanitarianism that only seek to restore the Palestinian their humanity as individuals. Beside the NGOs we were trying, who are trying to tailor their discourse to funders, academics infatuation with what is new and different, let some to take the discourse of the right of return out of context and give it one interpretation, doubting the intention of the Palestinians to return to their homes. This will be illustrated through three examples. The first process I want to talk about is the pitfalls of leading right of return of the civil rights in Lebanon. In Lebanon, right of return has been emptied as a slogan by its first champion, the PLO, who completely turned its back on the Palestinians. Second, by the other champion of the right of return, the Lebanese state, which is responsible for the systematic legal discrimination and treatment of Palestinians as potential security threats and the cause of the civil war. Indeed, the more anti-Palestinian Lebanese politicians, the more likely they are to publicly support right of return to get Palestinian out of Lebanon. Hazem Zamzoum sums up the dilemma of the right of return in Lebanon brilliantly when he says, as a public political demand, the right of return takes on a dual character. On one hand, it is the lifelong dream and redress of a collective trauma of displacement and exile. On the other, demanding it publicly, aligns you with the fascists who want to come and fight tooth and nail to deprive you from your civil rights and of course. Despite all these complications of the ROR, there are several academics who still take declaration of Palestinians on this side when the Palestinian prioritized their civil rights as a way to argue that we should not restrict the study of Palestinian to national struggle and national identity. These include quotes taken from marches on civil rights in which Palestinians declare in some forms that they do not want the right of return. When put in this context, Palestinians who speak up as if against the right of return in marches for their civil rights might be declaring an outcry against the Lebanese government connection of the right of return with the civil rights. It might, it might be a way to highlight just how important civil rights are to them, then to outright this course let alone, sorry, let out to them then to outright denounce let alone renounce the right of return. To take such statements out of context to liberate Palestinian studies and the Palestinian from the struggle and the oppression of reducing them to freedom fighters and to argue for the need to focus on the quotidian is perhaps another way of oppressing them, deciding for them how they should be studied and represented as individuals living in the camps. Some researchers speaks of that as ethical but ethics here is read off of politics. Okay, that was the first process. The second process I want to highlight is the writing on private versus public and how the Palestinian what Palestinian says in public about the ROR is different from what they say in private. This was attributed to a discourse that Palestinians have to perform their Palestinians in public from fear either of being rejected by their communities or from political parties in the camps or being seen as traders. Therefore, the argument goes, we should always read with a grain of salt, what we hear from the Palestinian in public, because it is a performance, a performance of their identity as Palestinians belonging to the collective and being denied their individuality in a context in which they are oppressed by their national identity. One of the stories told to show this dichotomy is of an old man who always teaches about the return in public to journalists and researchers expresses his longing to Palestine and his village and continuously expresses his willingness to do anything to see his village again. However, through earning an EU passport, one of this old man family members was able to visit the village from which the family was displaced by Zionist forces in 48. When the family member came back and wanted to show the father the pictures that member found that the old man in his 80s did not even want to look at the photographs from this village, adamantly refusing to check them out. The teacher's purpose in telling the story repeatedly was to emphasize the need to check the performativity of the older Palestinians, because they have gotten used to performing the right of return demanding Palestinians. There are many questions to be asked here about the sole interpretation given to the father's behavior and the analysis based on private public and the ways Palestinians are told to publicly perform their national identity while in private they are not. First, the idea of the father unwillingness to look at the picture could be attributed to the fact that it might be too emotional to him to see it, or maybe he doesn't want to see pictures he wants to keep the pictures as he had in his mind when he left. Is it inconceivable that a man in his 80s wanted to avoid triggering his own trauma or forced displacement by looking at photos of the site of that throne. Perhaps he is scared to look at the picture which could be interpreted as endorsing the family members visit to Israel, something many Arabs not only Palestinian find to be an act of normalizing Palestinian dispossession, or perhaps. Returning to a village still under occupation was the permission of the military forces that occupies it only to snap some photos and and leave again is not the return that the father wants, even in his public performances. Given all of these very relatable and understandable possibilities for refusing to see the photos, why was this act of refusal transformed into a full blown argument about a bifurcation of the Palestinian psyche into a public performativity of demanding return. That stand in stark contradiction to an interior and private rejection of that reform return. Further, the public private dichotomy a central to this kind of argument deserves further scrutiny. What was private about the moment in which the old man refused to look at the photos of his destroyed and depopulated village. We are not told who else was in the room. So the return of the family member after absence would presumably be a family affair. We're not told anything about the dynamics of the family members. So, what was private here. Is it the absence of journalists and researchers that makes an event private. Is it only Western eyes that can make something public. A third set of writings. The last one is connected to the research of Palestinian identity and sense of home. Belonging and sense of home has become prominent in research on migration. Where is home, what does home mean blah blah blah blah. I would like to approach the stream of literature and its pitfalls through a story that happened to me. It was in 2000 when we went to the borders after the liberation of the south. I was with a group of teenagers from Chattila that I was I worked with for a while. They had developed a strong group identity strong bonds of attachment as we used to meet on a daily basis. The students were so excited to go see Palestine from the borders. It was a very emotional day. When we reached the border, they were Palestinian there were Palestinians from their villages. On the other side of the barbed wire fence across which those who had flocked to the border asked one another all sorts of question and started stories and laughter and tears. Way back, one of them suddenly asked what will happen if we all return to Palestine. Each of us will go to their village. The distance of that sort drove her to look on the map to see which of the others would be close to her. She was from the shun. There was a silence. Then one of them screamed from the back of the bus. Don't worry, we will build a village in Palestine and call it Chattila. And that way we can stay together. For a researcher of the kind I'm examining here, the lesson from such a moment would undoubtedly be to claim that when facing return as possible reality this Palestinian teenager might not want to return because they see their home as Chattila. For us in the bus who are aware of the nitty gritty details of the relationships in that group. It was much more obvious that this was a group of teenagers who had been together all their lives attended the same school and shared a bond of friendship central to each of their individual senses of home and belonging. But friendship was not a topic that is studied amongst the refugees, and this is not a call to study at all. The story was told and retold again about where they felt home and anyway feeling home is more of a cosmopolitan class existential dilemma than a worry for the refugees. But regardless, I'm not sure who on earth can deny people to belong where they live, and the only place they know what a discovery that the Palestinians in Chattila loved and belong to their camps, despite the fact that they curse it and live a constant state of uprising against their dire conditions to be surprised that people who lived in a place for so long and actually belong to it is the problem. Now we discovered that Palestinian belong where they are. Perhaps if it was not mentioned before, it's because it was taken for granted. Moreover, the right of return does not mean that everyone has to return to Palestine. As a legal right and a political entitlement, it is a right to choose whether they want to stay in Chattila or return. The bonds of friendship and belonging to the camp by itself does not in any way undermine those rights. Why was that treated as a startling discovery to start with? Finally, the ROR for most of the Palestinians in Lebanon was a given, barely any new of the UN resolution 1994 but thought it was their natural right. If someone kicks you out of your house, you are entitled to go to your house back, simple as that. They didn't feel they need a UN resolution or an international court of justice decision. It was a historical fact, they were driven out and they will return one day. It is just common sense. I want to conclude by coming back to the point with which I began. A concern with the pressures and incentives in the university and NGOs to be contrarian to always need to say something new and different. I think if we reflect on this issue, we can all find many examples of these pressures and incentives in our working environments. The argument that I want to make here is not that being contrarian is always harmful or problematic, but that it can become harmful or problematic when it is being done for the sake of being contrarian or for the sake of being getting new grant, new publication, new niche in the field. Indeed, there is an alternative type of contrarianism that I would argue is vital to embrace research and work on Palestine. This is a contrarianism that we might call following the work of Laura Nader, a critical form of contrarianism as distinct from the entrepreneurial contrarian scholarship that I have been speaking about thus far. In her latest work, Laura Nader and as a critic of the entertainment of the Academy to the establishment argues that a contrarian anthropologist is a critical one that seeks to unravel how professional mindset are constructed and made hegemonic. This is a step towards committing to justice not have money, so no peace studies to the powerless through studying power and to colleagues in academia to unravel how they are themselves part of the system they sometimes criticize as a grip of external funding in academia, the globalization of research and crackdown on Palestinian activism Titan the need for a critical contrarian scholarship of Palestinian studies and critical contrarian scholars whose widespread respect comes from integrity, honesty and aversion to power becomes ever more obvious. Thank you, my son. That was again a very powerful kind of speaks to my own concerns. Presentation and that reminded me a lot of what Edward Said spoke about in his brilliant book after the last sky, you know, researching or writing about Palestine as being you know, subjects and objects of study about about Palestinians. But again, thanks again and looking forward to asking some questions a few. So, I now introduce Dr. Rafi to see other from so was, and, and she's going to talk about organizing the right to return. So hopefully we're thinking around the question of agency but the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Dina. And thanks to the organizers and the hosting centers who put this event together. I followed all the sessions and it has been really remarkable. I really hope we can have more collaborations like this in the future. I'm speaking on a panel with my soon and business and my first instinct is to seed my time so I could listen to them. But I don't think I'm allowed to do that. So I wanted to speak to you today around organizing for the right to return which wasn't the title I came up with. But when I saw it, it was, I thought this was the most fitting way to have this conversation as the right to return something that we are, we are doing and we are organizing for something that is lived and continue. The audience has invited us to a conversation about the Palestinian right of return on the 72nd anniversary of UN resolution 194, which of course stipulated the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their original homes, as well as reparations, among other populations. Obviously, for 72 years, the resolution has not been fulfilled, along with countless others concerning Palestinian rights, Palestinian refugees that are denied the right to return and remain the world's largest refugee population. Of course, here it's worth noting that in our region of the world, now most of the countries are holding competing for that title of the world, the largest refugee population and it's very important to keep that in mind. Very importantly, for our conversation today, Palestinian refugees remain the majority of Palestinians, as Nemes said earlier in the day, two thirds of the Palestinian population are refugees. So any conversations about Palestine decolonization or even solidarity, without speaking about Palestinian refugees is essentially ignoring the majority of Palestinians. Nicely why the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 4748 that led to the flight of more than three quarters of Palestinian population is not simply a painful historical memory. What Palestinians call a neck by the catastrophe remains very much part of the reality and structures Israel's ongoing settler colonial project. It was expelled in the longing of millions of Palestinians to return to their homes and lands from which they were expelled decades ago. It is seen in the segregation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to scattered population centers divided from one another by Israeli settlements military checkpoints and Israeli only highways. And even air prisons surrounded by an apartheid wall and it's associated infrastructure of settlement military zones and roads, mean that Palestinians are now confined to approximately 12% of historic Palestine, and even that 12% is dwindling. And of course the neck by remains with those Palestinians who stayed on their land and became Israeli citizens, forced to live a second class people in a state build on the destruction of their national identity. The refugees in particular are presented as a stumbling block or a problem in mainstream frameworks of conflict resolution, which were the dominant perspective on Palestine, particularly those that were hegemonic through the 1990s. These presented the issue as an intractable conflict between two equal sides with the promised solution coming from the paternalistic intervention of the West, the so called honest broker paradigm. Upon which the accords between Israel and the Palestinian liberation organization is based, gives little regard to the bloody hand of colonialism, specifically British colonialism in the creation of the so called Palestine problem in the first place. This conflict resolution model helps also helped to frame the right of return itself as something negotiable among a long list of concessions to be made, rather than the right of return being the core of Palestinian liberation and anti colonial struggle. In such frameworks, the historical reality of Palestinian dispossession and the fact that Palestinians in the Middle East are now fragmented across at least four geographical spaces, the Arab world, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and inside Israel is simply lost. It is in this context, and in relation to these frameworks that I want to discuss the right of return today. And I want to argue that we are here at the logical end, but also a very dangerous juncture of such frameworks, whereby economic pacification policies are openly being pursued in an attempt to liquidate the Palestinian right of return. In conjunction with these policies of economic pacification and geographic fragmentation, there is a concerted silencing campaign attempting to criminalize even discussion of the network and the right of return. In that sense, I'm really thankful to the organizers of this conference for clearly encouraging scholarly and activists exchange as it pertains to the right of return. Such silencing campaigns was one must say, are not to me by any measure of the imagination. And I think Edward Said's permission to narrate spoke eloquently about this type of racialized denial of history. But let me start on the context of organizing and what I mean by economic pacification. In many ways, the reality faced by Palestinians today, the denial of the right of return, the ongoing military occupation and colonization of Palestinian land is a result of the policies of consecutive Israeli governments, whether to the so-called left or right of the Israeli political spectrum. Israel has been contending since its inception with the central quandary of an exclusionary nationalism attempting to manage an occupied population. But it must also be said that this trajectory of Israel settler colonial project has been combined with a disastrous strategic orientation of the Palestinian national movement through the 1990s. It is a course that was solidified in 1993 Oslo agreements and the famous handshake between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister at Haqrabin on the White House lawn in the warm embrace of Bill Clinton. The Oslo process reduced the demand for Palestinian liberation and return to a state building project on ever shrinking slivers of land managed by a very narrow quarter of Palestinian officials in the West Bank and Gaza. The right to return among other central questions to Palestinians were put on the back burner. More importantly, refugees became bargaining chips rather than as agents in their own liberation. The economic pacification policies pursued today aim at putting pressure on the Palestinian population to accept a monetary package in return for truncated autonomy, and very importantly for dismissing the right of return. It is very much within the Trumpian business deal model that an entire population will give up on their rights if there is if there is a monetary package that they can receive. But it is within the tenants of the Oslo Accords and the practice of Paris protocol in particular that this type of economic dependency and economic colonization was forged. The Paris protocol binds the Palestinian economy with Israel via customs union that leaves no space for independent Palestinian economic policies. It connected the OPT trade policies, tariff structure and value added tax rates to Israel. Moreover, authorities in Israel collect trade tax revenues on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. They are meant to transfer these, but of course these have been held back as a form of pressure on the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian fiscal resources are going to the pressure Israel estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars per year. And here I am emphasizing this economic side of it, because quite often there's a lot of writing on the infrastructures of the occupation, the militarism, the checkpoints, the apartheid wall, but these economic dynamics of colonization are often not discussed and not put forward. Decades of the development policies have destroyed the productive base of the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Military attacks destroy the infrastructure, military policies enshrine both geographical and economic fragmentation, various restrictions on imported inputs and technology make it difficult for industries and services to function. Of course, this is along with the very direct land theft settlement expansion and of course the siege on the Gaza Strip that has caused the economy there to collapse. Almost all Palestinian imports and exports transit via ports and crossings of Israel at which delays and security measures can increase costs. As you would know about the barriers of movement and this type of economic strangulation. There's a long list of dual use technologies that are not allowed and are banned to the Palestinian economy. This list contains 56 items requiring special approval. In the current COVID-19 moment, it has really become clear the issues with this use of forbidding importation of dual use projects because many of them are used in hospitals, and you could really see the impact on Palestinian hospitals. As a very clear example of this economic colonization in March 2019, the government of Israel began to implement its law mandating the deduction of $12 million per month from Palestinian clearance revenue equivalent to the payments made by the Palestinian authority to families of Palestinian prisoners and martyrs. At first the Palestinian authority rejected this cut, but eventually they have accepted it. And here it's very important to recognize that these cuts do not simply impact Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory. And this is part of the issue that has happened with the collapse of the Palestinian liberation organization into the budgets of the Palestinian authority. So those cuts to the families of martyrs affect refugees in Lebanon, refugees in Jordan, who do get these payments because we have to remember that these populations had undergone their own wars in various points of Palestinian history. When we speak of this kind of strangulation, it is also a strangulation of Palestinian refugees. It really works against the methodological nationalism of thinking there is such a thing as an independent Palestinian economy. What exists is a captive economy in the occupied territories, but one that also has a connection to Palestinian living everywhere. First, I have to say that the impact of these economic pacification policies is not even. There have been some that profited very handsomely from the neoliberalization of the occupied territory. And here I would urge people to engage with the excellent works by Palestinian political economists like Tariq Zana, Alaa Thartir, Samia Bhutmet, Afiq Haddad, Adam Hania, on this particular subject. Because it's also important to recognize that Palestinians do have class differentiation among them and that policies of neoliberalization also have internal beneficiaries. But in addition to Israel's policies of economic strangulation, the donor community has been complicit in this economic pacification. Donor aid cuts have worked to tighten the noose on the Palestinian population. Donor aid has actually fallen from 32% of GDP in 2008 to 3.5% of GDP in 2019. Most notably for this conversation today is of course the connection being made between cuts to the budget of Anirwa and the right of return. These cuts impact very basic services that Anirwa is able to provide. The Trump administration through Jared Kushner mainly did not mince words about the purpose of such cuts. It was to force refugees to move on and to take the right of return off the table. But it was also very telling the language that was used around refugees, which is very much the language of racist landlords in the United States. There was racist anti-poor language around welfare recipients around being lazy and needing to move on. This economic pressure on Palestinians both from Israel and the international donor community is coupled with a very vigorous silencing campaign aimed to make it unacceptable to even speak about the Palestinian right of return. This can be seen clearly in the proposed IHRA definition, for example. And here it's interesting that the attempt is to make the defeat of the Palestinians absolutely total in not just accepting that the land was stolen but also to even accept that we have no right to speak about the right of return or that history of theft. One of the basic tenets of organizing for the right of return, then I would say, is to consciously work against the silencing. The Palestinian right of return should be central to all solidarity activities and the knowledge produced by our movements must be grounded in the history of Palestinians with the voice of the most marginalized at the core, and that is Palestinian refugees. This means that the experience of the network must be kept upfront with an emphasis on the continued displacement fragmentation and dispossession of the Palestinians. I'm emphasizing this because in debates around the IHRA in the UK, we have had some supposedly allies telling Palestinians that they should put the right of return off the table and not speak about the Nakba. So I think we should go back to that occupation-only paradigm. But we have worked really hard over the past years to center Israel's settler colonial projects, logic, and to explain the Nakba. So asking us to go backwards towards the Oslo framework is simply not an option. Centering the movement around the Palestinian historical reality really produces a different type of knowledge about what needs to be done. Mistakes happen when the lives of people and movement is supposed to be supporting are not seen. This is one of the reasons for the decline of solidarity movement during the 1990s, for example, with the rise of the Oslo Accords, the majority of Palestinians were suddenly excluded from the concerns of the liberation and solidarity activism. Because of the founding myths of a people without a land for a land without a people, and because the major aim of the Israeli settler colonial project is to render the Palestinian experience invisible, the Palestinians and the solidarity movement have to work twice as hard to bring out this experience. The flip side of ignoring the Palestinian right of return is its reduction to one of perpetual victimization. To some, often well-meaning individuals, the Palestinian voice is there simply to recount suffering rather than to be a key agent of liberation. Organizing against silencing must not be based on tokenization of Palestinians or projecting an image of victimhood but rather on solidarity and mutual respect. Organizing against silencing and centering the right of return is crucial. With the beginning of the second Palestinian interfaudal in the North American context, which I was familiar with, there were renewed efforts to recenter the right of return. In North America, the Al-Aouda coalition was really instrumental to this. And to a large extent, the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign has helped to center the right of return as a key demand of Palestinian civil society. The three demands of the call pertaining to the right of return and end to occupation and equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel speak to all sectors of Palestinian society, but also importantly center the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Fed up with the empty rhetoric and cheap condemnation of the violence on both sides, people began to feel that they had the power to make an impact. The campaign enabled unions, student groups, cultural and religious organizations to demonstrate a popular refusal to participate in and sustain the structures of racial discrimination and oppression. It helped to break the fragmented and stunted nature of Palestine solidarity work that tended to fall into the never ending response to Israeli massacres, rather than providing an alternative action to stop the massacres. On a very practical level, the campaign helped to answer the question, what action do we take after we have centered the NACPA and the right of return in our analysis and organizing. Having said all that, along with concerted efforts by Palestinian refugees to center the right of return and all organizing, I think there's an internal Palestinian conversation that needs to happen about the strategic orientation of the liberation movement as a whole. The narrow focus on building the infrastructures of a state lit in the hopes that Israel and international power brokers would grant some autonomy in return has clearly failed. The Palestinian Authority has become fluent in the language of human rights and UN resolutions, bids for statehood, as the situation on the ground keeps shifting to make even the most truncated form of autonomy impossible. This is not to diminish from the importance of being present at international fora, but the key issue is what are we doing and what is the strategy in these international fora. The maximum that we gain by returning for more resolutions is to add some numbers to a long list of numbers that have not helped to shift the status quo. To organize for the right of return necessitates a rethinking, revisioning of the Palestinian movement. One, this conversation is of course part and parcel of a campaign to democratize Palestinian institutions to democratize the Palestinian Liberation Organization and center the issue of representation, especially the representation of Palestinian refugees in Palestinian political structures. This is not easy. It is not a simple task, especially considering the fragmentation and economic dependence that exists. And I don't want to be naive here and think we can magic a new movement I realize we are not in the global 60s moment, and there's a large difference. But I do think there is a moment where social movements around the world are coming together and thinking of alternatives and thinking of change beyond the status quo and what is given. And the Palestinian movement needs to be part and parcel of that reimagining of radicalism and radical movements for change at an international level. And on a final note, just to close, I want to stress that we need to rethink of the right of return and the new movement for Palestinian rights in relation to the normalization moves that have been occurring on a regional scale. One of the things that has happened unfortunately with the coming of the Oslo Accords is that Palestine has been fragmented and taken away from its regional context. Very clearly authoritarianism today is working through the issue of Palestine with normalization deals being cemented cementing relations between authoritarian militarized regimes and here we're speaking about the so called Abraham Accords for example, between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel. So thus to speak of liberation for Palestine, as historically was the position of the Palestinian movement at least the left sides of it is also to speak about liberation in the entire region, liberation against authoritarian regimes that are unaccountable to their regulation. So liberation for Palestine is also around ending the war in Yemen. It's also around the discussions of the Western Sahara, and we of course saw what happened with the Moroccan normalization deal there. So parts of reimagining return is also reimagining our orientation to our surroundings and not dividing Palestine out of its regional context. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rafiq. Again, brilliant presentation. At least, you know, you kind of summed up the situation and what we need to be doing but you also brought back this important point around solidarity, particularly in a regional context, and in the context of constant normalization. And now you see it as someone who works on the media as being something that is perpetrated by media as well. Now I invite Ekrem Salhab, our last speaker today. He is from Migrants Organized and he's going to talk about countering the erasure of the Nakba re-centering Palestinian rights kind of works well with what has been said so far. Thank you. Thank you for everyone who organized the event today. And I have the unenviable task of finishing off today's wonderful conference with so many of the points that needed to be covered already covered by previous speakers so I might give a slightly truncated version of why I was going to to avoid repetition. So I'm speaking I guess in a capacity firstly as someone who worked for migrant justice here in Britain but at the same time as someone who's a Palestinian engage in many of the discussions around the right to return about strategy about how we go about achieving these rights. So I wanted to bring in what I've been some of what's already been discussed today about some of the challenges to the traditional framework by which we undertake advocacy and organizing on the right to return and then speak about some of the frameworks or approaches that I think would be really productive to to returning towards to a strong framework of collective rights of Palestinians being at the forefront of how we speak and work and organize around Palestine. And I think I'll start by saying that you know when we talk about the Nakba and the right to return this really means we're speaking about vision of liberation freedom and obviously its connection with self determination. But lots of lots of these rights of the Palestinian people and their cementation international law and the articulation of them on the international stage was an achievement of the Palestine Liberation Organization in a previous period of revolutionary struggle who brought them to the fore and articulated Palestinian rights in that sense and I think that framework. The right to return national self determination and the framework international law which overlaps with them is an achievement that we need to first of all obviously recognize and be prepared to defend in the work that we do. And I think what's one more focus on today is the fact that there has been in a variety of different ways, an erosion of some of this basic language around the cause of Palestine in activist circles within the solidarity movement, and to a certain degree amongst Palestinians themselves. So I think understanding those understanding the challenges we're now presented with and trying to avoid some of the pitfalls of the terminology we use the language we employ in the communities we take in our campaigns is of utmost importance for everyone concerned with advancing Palestinian rights. And I think one of the first frameworks that we find is increasing use is the one around humanitarianism in human rights. And we see increasingly that when we talk about Palestine. There's the framework of rights I was talking about is put to one side, and there's a focus on only individual manifestations of injustice against Palestinians, and in certain contexts as in every campaign. We run campaigns and we organize around individual cases, protect individuals and to fight for justice, and to exemplify the kinds of challenges we're facing. But this should really be done within the overall framework of international law, and the rights of the Palestinian, inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, there have been occasions when this has been diverted to speaking about very specific attempts to lobby the Israeli military occupation from afar in models that reduce what the Palestinian demands to simply some advocacy model which has no chance of success against a belligerent colonial regime. And I think the how this applies to campaigns and organizations organizations in Palestine and those outside differs, but it's something that we need to be really careful of, because one of the trajectories this takes us in is of us talking about individual Palestinian rights, not as a collective camp, not as a collective cause of national self determination. And this is what we what we've often seen which is a, especially since the Oslo records in 1993 is a focus of an of advocacy advocacy solidarity and attention only on the West Bank and Gaza to the exclusion of Palestinian refugees, living out of those areas or Palestinian refugees as Palestinian refugees and the right to return. And this obviously began. This was accelerated considerably after the 1993 Oslo records and now mapped on to an institutional modernization of them within the structures of the PLO, but also lesson focused by solidarity organizations on Palestinian organizations in exile. And this has some this is increasingly mapped on to a discussion of why what you could call the identity politics encroaching on the Palestinian context in speaking about lived experience on the ground and West Bank and Gaza, and how being priority or exclusion excluding experience of Palestinian refugees living elsewhere in the world. And we really need to return to a discussion of Palestinians, the status of refugee as a political status, and as Palestinian being equal in their different sectors in the different areas and not trying to claim that one area Palestine has priority over Palestinians living elsewhere. One of the most egregious manifestations of this was the statehood question and the statehood initiatives that were pushed over the past few years by the leadership, and there was, and was supported in by solidarity organizations in the West, and there was a certain degree of the time of a sense that, well, there's the certain advantages that this will give us such that we're willing to sacrifice other Palestinian rights or frameworks of speaking about Palestine, but what that's effectively done is it's brought the focus of discussion to the question of statehood, supporting statehood being proxy for supporting Palestine and the exclusion of talking about the right to return and national self determination and and then Palestinian refugees and the right to return and what happened in 1948 being excluded entirely from this framework. And I think we can, the biggest example of how Palestinians are being excluded from this framework within was within the statehood initiatives itself, in which they were very careless. There was very, there's a great deal of disregard for Palestinian refugees how they would be included in the future of representative institutions of the United Nations, but also whatever state of Palestine was to be created how they would be incorporated involved in the very complicated legal debates around that did not satisfy the basic and demands of Palestinians which is to be equal under an equal representative in the United Nations, and elsewhere as a basis for you know the PLO as a national representative of the Palestinian people. And I think this, this is part and parcel of, you know, we talked about the marginalization of the right to return and Palestinian history, but crucially we're also talking about the marginalization of Palestinians themselves. And I think of the past years we've seen the devastation to Palestinian camps in Syria, we've seen Palestinian camps in Lebanon the immense political and economic pressure has led to an exodus from the camps. And, and this has taken place with various degrees of coverage but largely, you know, and largely under in a way this generally been invisibilized and the principal victims of the ethnic cleansing 1948 Palestinians are refugees being invisibilized. And really, when we talk about Palestinian liberation, the engine of this has been the Palestinian camps, especially during the revolutionary period in Syria, and in Lebanon, and what we're struggling to contend with we're going to need to contend with now as Palestinians is the fact that these two locations, which were engines of the revolution have suffered this considerable blow and attack and decimation. And meaning that the way we think about the right to return will need to shift in terms of strategy, and in terms of how we work with and engage with the people now no further further away from Palestine and we were before simply. And I think, and Rafif, I think I've been touched on this as well is the question of the context in which we find ourselves in here in the UK. And that's this of this the delegitimization campaigns are taking place against Palestinians and Palestinian history. And I want to talk about the specifically about the IHRA definition, which specifically prohibits speaking about the state of Israel as a racist endeavor. And, but of course, the racist endeavor and the racist intent and the practices were evident in the establishment of the state of Israel when Zionist militias ethnic ethnic declines more than 700,000 Palestinians from their home. So the clear target of this, of this definition is to forbid legal analysis that highlight the apartheid nature of the state of Israel as a racist endeavor, but also to deny the facts of what happened to Palestinians in 1948. And with respect, we ought to regard and understand the IHRA as akin to laws in other countries that prohibit speaking about historical and massacres or historical genocides, such as those laws in Turkey which work to deny and silence that historical interference. And the reason I'm kind of going running through the different factors I think are important because that brings us to some central points I think of how we need to be thinking about responding to this. So one of the discussions we've heard today is how we maintain and rehearse this anti-colonial framing that we've been discussing and what this means in both our academic work and in our campaigning work. And so I think we really need to ensure that we talk about Palestine within this accurate historical contact of colonialism, but also within a frame of anti-colonial struggle. One that sits naturally and is connected to the anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles within the countries we're living and elsewhere of which Palestine is an inseparable part of the story and in this struggle. And if we think of it in that context, we also have to understand and Britain of course was complicit in what happened in Palestine from 1917 to 1948 and obviously until today in its continued support for Israel. But I think we need to understand that there's a general aversion to speaking about colonial history. And as that's beginning to change in Britain at least, we find that the discussion on Palestine is definitely being pushed in the other direction, principally because we're not dealing with a historical colonial situation, we're dealing with a live colonial situation, which has implications when we speak about the history, but what we should do moving forward. So I think we have to focus and understand that we need renewed efforts at education within this broader anti-colonial framework of the Black Lives Matter movement and others that we have begun to gain traction here. And I think the other important point is that how we speak about Palestinian history. So one of the, one of the, I think it was Abid earlier was speaking about this thing of discussing things as a Palestinian perspective or from a Palestinian narrative, which is of course dangerous because it suggests that this is a Palestinian point of view rather than documented historical fact. And the other side of this in discussion to have taken place in Britain are the, when we're being challenged about what we can and can't say about Palestine, one of the responses has been to discuss our freedom of speech under law in the British context. And oftentimes discussing freedom of speech, unfortunately, can divert us into a framework in which Palestine, and this is what happened, has happened to Palestine under the prevent legislation is rendered extreme or controversial. So in Britain's prevent legislation, it's the countering violent extremism program. They've included Palestine as one of the examples of extremist speech and controversy. And the purpose of that isn't always to ban Palestine events, but it's to say that this area of discussion ought to be monitored and examine for as a possible indicator of extremism. So even so some on the call will know that events have been cancelled speakers and have been forced to change neutral church imposed on events, various restrictions taking place in academic settings around that. And, but also the events that do take place are rendered or placed in this category of extreme or controversial. So we have these two challenges one is a pigeon holding Palestine, Palestinian history as a Palestinian perspective or some sort of akin and equal in weight to the Israeli official history about the neck in particular by other incidents in our history, which we need to contest because it's historically inaccurate, but also misrepresents what happened to us in in the past and therefore misrepresents the rights that we're advocating and campaigning and organizing for. On the other hand, we have this question of being pigeon holders extreme or controversial, which delegitimizes what you have to say before you even can open your mouth. So I think part of what we need to be thinking about when we respond to attacks by the ITRA by prevent legislation by other attempts to delegitimize our work is to ground in historical and present fact and reality, which means making visible Palestinian history, also making visible the Palestinian present, the people what's taking place in all the different manifestations of inside of Palestine and outside. And I think we have to reaffirm in very basic ways the right to return and national national self determination and talk about the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. And I know this might sound obvious, but there's lots of times where press releases, organizing and initiatives frameworks begin from a completely different set of rights, such that what we're talking about in terms of Palestine is completely obscured. And I think we really need to ensure and be aware that outside of some of the circles we operate in and work in a lot of these arguments and discussions are not understood is only articulated in a very vague way. So I think we need to make crystal clear that the cause of Palestine is a cause of displaced and dispossessed people struggling for their inalienable rights that we are refugees and that the right to return and the cause of Palestinian refugees is completely inseparable from the cause of Palestine more generally it is the cause of Palestine. And I think the final point which some have touched on a little bit but I think it's central to some of the discussion internal discussion amongst Palestinian relates to how, how and why we have found ourselves in this situation. And I think there's lots of talk of the different ways in which the economic analysis, or there's lots of analysis of how the economic situation in Palestine has restricted and limited Palestinians from expressing them from struggling for their rights how the donor regime has limited what we can say what we can do and how we can organize. And there's of course this parallel political story of how Palestinian refugees have been excluded from the PLO, which of course is a crisis of representation on the one hand but it's also a crisis in organizing terms as the majority of Palestinians have no representation and are not included in their own national structures. And this exclusion, as a result of the Oswega cause is the reason is one of the chief reasons why the, the center of gravity of Palestinian politics politics has shifted to the West Bank and Gaza. And what's happening in Lebanon and Syria, and other countries of Palestinian diaspora, the egregious crimes are committed against our people. The apartheid regime I think others were describing the Palestinians in the Gulf living in many instances. These things are put on the back burner and not seen, and not discussed, and the way to overcome that is this reform of our national institutions, the Palestine Liberation Organization through elections to its national parliament, the Palestine National Council. And this has been a demand of Palestinian refugee communities for a very long time, alongside the examples we've heard of today, are people physically marching to the border of repeated attempts by Palestinian refugees to return home. The return of refugees is also returned to our national institutions, their recreations so they can represent the collective will of the Palestinian people. And on that basis we can renew a truly collective struggle, and to ensure that the Palestine is prioritized again which it would be if all Palestinians are included. We've set up the national agenda and are organizing and our struggle could be new itself on that basis. So I really look forward to the discussion and thank you again for everyone to organize, organize this wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. That was great. And also made us think a lot about certain issue and recentering the debate as as was talked about this morning. One of the questions that seemed to have come through the, the questions and answers is a question around, you know, when we talk about refugees are we also talking about people in exile or in diaspora so perhaps, maybe one of you can answer that and then I have a specific question to Mesna in the chat, which is a question related to when you talk about returning. How do we teach and embody the right to return in academic spaces and institutions when these spaces are constantly subject to censorship and distortion. The occupier controls what gets to be included in the Palestinian curriculum for primary and secondary students. So anyone from the other speakers, Amesun or or Akram or Rafith can talk about, you know, when we talk about refugees are we also including the exotic Palestinians or Palestinians in diaspora, not to, you know, not to try and kind of say, you know, or kind of impose differences but perhaps just to clarify for this for the audience. Would anyone like to come and answer that question before Mesna do you want to come in. Yeah, Akram. Well I'm just going to say, yeah, you know, this is the point I was making which is that the status of the refugees is a political designation and tied to a certain set of rights, and irrespective of if you're living in awful conditions in Syria or you're living in Orange County in the United States. So, yeah, these rights are enjoyed, I'd say enjoyed, and Palestinians have these rights irrespective of whether irrespective of where they are exactly. Some are classified under them, come under UNRWA under the Article 1D which is the exclusion of Palestinian refugees from Article 1D. So they form the UNRWA Monday but other Palestinians in different ways have different protections under international law but it's not restricted to living in a camp or just being in the vicinity of Palestine. Rafith do you want to come in before I go to Mesna to answer the question specific to her. No, I think Akram covered it. Mesna, can you come in? Yes, thank you for the question and also I would I would also say and make clear that there is this often this idea of those in exile or in the broader Shattat somehow quote unquote more privileged than those more formalized as refugees. And I think we need to remember that it is that is quite inaccurate. There are, you know, in addition to those refugees in the region that are outside the UNRWA protection gap. Those in the Shattat have also experienced incredible repression, not only in the, you know, sort of Iraq or, or Egypt or Libya, but including the United States, where the, you know, there's this idea often that you know that the Palestinian is certainly there are certain forms of privilege that come from other kinds of citizenship, but there has been incredible levels of repression of silencing of incarceration of Palestinians because they're Palestinians and because they choose to exercise and speak for Palestinian rights in the diaspora. I just kind of want to make that clear that this idea of the discourse of privilege that sometimes circulates around how we talk about Palestinians in the Shattat really needs to be pushed back on and challenged. So to the question about how do we teach and embody the right to return in academic spaces institutions when these, I'm not sure if the questioner is asking about in Palestine, or outside of Palestine. Because they also say the occupier controls what gets to be included in the Palestinian curriculum for primary and secondary students. This is not a new problem. This is an old problem, right. This is since the occupation in fact since the British mandate. Palestinians have never had what I like to call a self determined curriculum. So, ever since the sort of beginnings of the formations and the thinking around once you know Palestinian national identity. One of the main instruments which is education has never been fully availed to Palestinians as the site for their next building their political national consciousness. Not yet here we are and yet here are Palestinians. How does that happen. And I think part of part of the question around education is that teachers and students find other forms through which to convey and think about and build collective study on Palestine, amongst each other. And you see this through what I was talking about in terms of alternative schooling, schooling outside of formalized structures, the kind of fugitive practices of teachers even within the classroom, where they talk about Palestine and talking about Palestine. The occupier has never been completely successful in controlling Palestinian self articulation and self and collective study within both formal and informal spaces. And I think also the, the, in terms of outside. It's really similar in that sense, Palestinian. Always attempt to think about and work through and work around the sort of repressive systemic carceral practices of states and, you know, anti Palestinian discourses around them. Thank you very much. There's a big question here at the beginning, which is a question from Malik, which says, for all the revolution resolutions that have been made around the right to return. The question is when internet when international institution has why haven't international institutions put restrictive orders for limited return of Palestinian refugees. Then, you know, they're closing the door for for discussion. I think that is, if you could clarify your question later on Malik because it's not very clear here but I think you are talking and correct me if I'm right you're talking about, you know, international organizations not following up on agree on 194 resolution 194. So if we if I may I can return to that later on with the with the organizers. But again, a question around how can we teach and embody the right of return in academic spaces and institutions when these spaces are constantly subject to censorship and distortion. So, Muslim again that's a question to you if you could answer it while we go on to the other questions. I suppose I did really in a sense that you know I the, the, there is this sense that these these kinds of there is bravery that is required to speak on behalf of Palestine. It's something that has to accept the fact that there will, you're fighting a fight, and that fight has consequences, and it must be fought. You know, there's all these kinds of things around the, and, and, and one of the most important ways Palestinians can do so within the Academy is to in gather with allies and in gather with white, you know, there is a kind of Palestinian self exceptionalism that happens that says you know we are the only ones who are repressed in the Academy. And that is simply not true. And there is, there are different scales through which Palestinian scholars can work with others around conditions within their own university as the site of struggle, and then outside their university, and, and do so with others with kindred spirits with other scholars and colleagues, thinking about similar questions. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask this following question to Rafiq. It's a question that says do you believe it will be the Union between different international solidarity movements that will create enough pressure to push for the implementation and what will happen to the refugee camps that have been such important historical sites over the decades? Could they be maintained as anti monuments or extended enforced exile? I'm just quoting the question as it came. Rafiq, would you like to answer that around international solidarity movements? Sure. I think this is why I tried to separate my talk in terms of the internal Palestinian conversation that needs to happen around reimagining what our anti colonial struggle looks like, shifting the discourse from the Oslo Accord. I cannot think of any other accord that has been declared dead so many times, yet we still live under its restrictions, we still live under its rules. So I think without Palestinians being clear about what it is that's being demanded, it's actually very confusing for international solidarity movements to be able to also have a coherent framework. Boycotts, divestments and sanctions have helped us as a campaign in the last period to try and link all sections of Palestinian society together to try and center the right to return. But I think that we need something a lot more, a lot deeper as a transformation to refigure this. And here there's also the link to the regional level as well. Sometimes people think international solidarity, it's just around like Western social movements, but I think there's a connection to the region that we have really lost and need to rethink how to fit in with what's happening on the regional level. If you think of the Arab uprisings for example, you know where was Palestine to that, if you think about the new normalization deals, the waves of refugees that keep being created in the region. As for refugee camps as monuments or what happens with them when there is return. I think that's, that's a very difficult question to answer because I think a lot, many of these things happen in practice. It is a discussion and a political debate, but coming from a refugee family myself, I know that these are not simply camps. These are people's homes people's memories people's childhoods are spent in these in these homes so it would almost be like a second ethnic cleansing if we're like okay everyone let's wipe out the camps. And these are very technical questions we need to think about because it also has to do with property. If we're thinking about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, for example, there would be many that are very happy to clear out these camps to use that as property and property development. So I think it's a much, much broader question that is a political question when when it comes to the organizing itself and that moment where hopefully, you know, we are able to get on the buses and go somewhere else. That's great. Akram I have two related questions to you. Can you, are there any efforts in the UK to pressure the government to discredit the new Israeli ambassador. And who has said that the Nakaba is a lie. And again, again, another question, can you speak about the circulation of Palestinian celebrities academics PLO adjacent. We have limited and delimited the parameters of our conversations and demands that are made visible and public. So in a sense thinking about maybe a question of the way that we, you know, some Palestinians can discredit or limit conversations around rights and the right to return. Yeah, on the ambassador point. This was a quite revealing point that was made by the new Israeli ambassador here in London on a call for Hanukkah, in which she presents she spoke about the Palestinian as Palestinian Nakaba as a colossal line of fabrication. And it's a relief, obviously, in some sense to hear her say it publicly because this is what we've been experiencing in terms of the pressure and the the delegitimization efforts that we've been confronted with here in the UK, at least when the Israeli ambassador comes out and says it very broadly, you can see very simply, and that this is the objective and obviously of course long has been the objective of subsequent regimes and others to make sure that the Nakaba is not spoken about. And you know, there was all the discussion when the new historians discovered many of the facts of history about our dispossession and our displacement in 1948. The overwhelming Palestinian response to that was of course pleased that they would, this had been documented in greater detail but was facts which Palestinian historians. And of course, Palestinians themselves had experienced and was available and on the public record for anyone who cared to look at it. So we've had this long history of attempts to turn what happened in Palestine in 1948 to discredit the right of return. You know, you can even say oh well they fled, they fled their homes. Well even if Palestinians fled their homes, they are entitled to the right of return. But of course, all of this is not a discussion, which is about international law or actually trying to find a solution is one which is aimed at discrediting the right of return by silencing this history. And this is not something that anyone's going to be taking any action against the Israeli Prime Minister for. This is something that won't register with anyone in the political arena, I don't think. But it's part of this much broader effort and they say it's just a clear articulation of the problem. And it's manifest itself today in Britain and has for many years. I'm not entirely clear on the question of kind of the, the delegitimization or the downplaying of the Palestinian right to return amongst celebrities appeal and others. But what's really important to understand is that a lot of the things that we witness happening in the media and many things that are said by Palestinian individuals in that arena is a manifestation of a collective problem, which is a dismantling of the right of return. And then a question, as Dr. Professor Carmen Aboulesi will always speak about about representation and representation of the mass of the Palestinian people and the will of the Palestinian people. And so if you don't have that you of course have individuals within our institutions or celebrities or others trying to either nefariously undercut the right because they have an individual who is doing so, or people in a tough situation trying to make the best of a bad situation and thinking maybe some statehood initiative or maybe this other way of going about it will be what what we need in order to continue the struggle. Absent a mass popular movement absent and national liberation movement which can actually do so to different means and methods, and that will be the discussion of Palestinians within that arena about how we go about that. So I think it is just it's really a symptom of an institutional failure that we're confronted with. And, you know, this is not something that disagreed on by the majority of Palestinians. And unfortunately, you know one voice here or there doesn't make the voice and the will, and the rights of millions of people go away. So obviously it's frustrating to see that but that it's not something, you know we'll party will disagree on many and different things but we don't disagree on this. These are our rights and the rights of our people, and the people who disagree are very tiny minority who are there for the reason that I've just outlined. Thank you and I think you answered a question which I might pose to me soon, which is how can Palestinians demonstrate their struggle as one colonial struggle when they don't agree on one one particular way of liberating Palestine. If you don't feel you want to answer that question may soon then don't but I thought I would like to bring you into the question and answer sessions. I mean, I think that might be a better place to answer this question. Rafi Rafi do you want to come in. How can yeah when Palestinians do not have one voice and so on how can we present it as as a struggle against settler colonialism or colonial practices in a sense. Yeah, I mean this is precisely why the question of democratization and representation comes up. I mean certainly Palestinians are not a monolithic. And there are different, you know variations of opinion there's also different political stripes from left to right, but they're at the same time there are historical demands that that have been constituted and continue to constitute the power of Palestinian liberation. So even those most connected to this concept of having a two state solution or having any kind of autonomy cannot outright deny that Palestinians have a right of return. Those basic demands have not really been diluted and it's actually a testament to the Palestinian people that despite all of this international pressure, economic pacification wars. These demands have not have not been erased. Will it magically happen and come about that there's a new Palestinian strategy know it's that's a question of political work, putting frameworks together, having conferences like this to have the discussions and the debates. I want to make the distinction between what is an internal Palestinian conversation around our particular movement how to put demands forward versus the international solidarity conversation I mean those are not separate they are of course connected but I personally I think there's a bit of Palestinian internal house cleaning that needs to happen desperately fast. Thank you. I think we have answered most of the questions. So, in kind of Daniel who wanted to clarify her question around the discourse not specific to return of return of refugees and the differences in the Palestinian voice around that. And then, in the context of, I think, if I interpreted correctly, in the context of the question about the celebrities and the, you know, political people on the kind of institutional political spectrum. I think, I think what what Daniel wanted to say is, that is a prioritization of certain voices. But again, if we go back to the context of this, this days conference, it's to recenter the right of return as a political language, I think that has came across very clearly, all throughout but, you know, but I'm going to invite the organizers as we don't have any more questions and to thank this last panel for such a brilliant, you know, very important discussions, but Nimar, and then Abed, and also Reem if you could kindly come back and wrap up. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, Dina. Hello, can everybody hear me. Hello. Can you hear me. Excellent. Okay, so I'm going to give a summation of this wonderful conference that we all participated in today. It was a great pleasure to organize it with the number and dream. And I really enjoyed the fact that we were able to bring in so many different perspectives from so many Palestinian scholars in this long day of discussion. Now, the first panel was an inquiry into colonialism and its outcomes. We're focusing on the coloniality of the Palestine question and the colonial frameworks facilitation of the removal of the native population, and the rhetorical strategies that are utilized to prevent the return of the Palestinian people. Return is of course, both prevented by colonial might, but it is also justified by appeals to write through seven rhetorical and conceptual aggressions against the Palestinian people. We have legalism, denialism, depoliticization, transactional logics, both side is a discursive suppression and criminalization. The latter two are most clearly evident in the current struggle over the IHRA definition. Implicitly, I was calling here for a new historiography and a new political discourse that is based on a shift in frameworks language and morality in the face of this attempt to criminalize and suppress the Palestinian struggle. The new discourses should be based on the notion of promoting return as the only pathway to anti-colonial liberation. Any other course of action ranging from standing on the sidelines seeking to prevent return or trying to limit the ways in which it is imagined and implemented would serve racist colonial considerations based on the idea of establishing an Israeli colonial rather than a democratic anti-colonial state in historic Palestine. And it's very important, I think throughout this conference it was highlighted by multiple scholars that we must imagine an anti-colonial future in Palestine. There is no other way forward. The current situation is unsustainable. The expulsion of an entire people from Islam is unsustainable, unacceptable. We should never accept it. Makhdisi engaged at a deep level with the different political and discursive layers of the undergirded colonial project in Palestine, starting from the fact that two right of returns had existed. A Palestinian one based on modern dispossession of home and land within living memory. And this was a right of return enshrined in international law and based on UN resolutions. And it was in total contrast with the Zionist so-called right of return. The claim of an inherent Jewish right to Palestine that had emerged in Europe in the 19th century, as Professor Makhdisi showed, enjoyed British colonial support throughout the period and since then became an essential aspect of the state of Israel. And suppression of the first right and the actualization of the second illustrated the pervasive and persistent colonial prevarication that the Palestinian people were subjected to in the service of the Zionist movement, but of course carried out by the British administration. Professor Makhdisi showed through a close reading of the principles enshrined in the Charter of the British mandate that these principles had a foundational Zionist nature and mission. And the NACBA he argued was already implied in the terms of the mandate and the logic of that led to the NACBA persisted in the appeal commission report in the UN partition plan and elsewhere. Ultimately, this racialized and colonial vision that underlined an international legal and political order over which Palestinians had no control resulted in the expulsion of our people from their homeland. Dr. Anna Irfan illustrated and discussed the significance of the emergence of Vanuwa after our people were expelled from their homeland, both as a project of containment of Palestinian refugees, but also as an important organization that is currently threatened by a combined Israeli US assault led by Trump and his ideologically Zionist son-in-law Jared Kushner. She illustrated the flows and historical characterizations of Vanuwa, which are currently used as part of this assault. These denied the fact that it was a versatile site that was used by refugees towards their own empowerment. She illustrated that by through examining a range of petitions from camp Muhtar's and various other fascinating material. But also that site, which was a site of empowerment, a site of contestation, a site of demonstrations, a site of protest was also used against refugees with an eye towards disenfranchisement. And this was perhaps the original intention that behind setting up this site. British and the Americans and the European powers did not pump so much money into this project because they cared about Palestinian refugees. It was because they cared about anti-communism, it was because they cared about preventing radical movements from emerging, and it was because as Dr. Irfan showed, they were seeking to resettle the Palestinian refugees and thus destroy the potential of their return. However, all of these attempts at resettlements and all of these attempts at suppressing the right of return could not completely change the legal order around international refugee law. The subject that Dr. Ardim says discussed in great depth in a sober factual presentation and with reference to relevant international law. He discussed the legal reasoning that underlined the right of return. He not only referred to resolutions particular to the expulsion, denationalization and appropriation of property of Palestinian refugees, but also to broader international humanitarian laws that are applicable universally. Now the Americans, Israelis, Europeans have often tried to undermine laws that specifically speak about Palestinians or to reinterpret them in ways that disenfranchise Palestinians and harm them. However, there are other international laws that Dr. Amseys referred to that apply everywhere and these are difficult to tackle. They are difficult to remove. The Palestine problem as a whole therefore was affected by this legal order and at its heart was the right of return as Ardim says demonstrates. Dr. Amseys closed this discussion with insisting that our collective responsibility remains to keep the struggle for dignity and justice alive. Especially when it comes to the rights of refugees who are at the heart of the Palestine cause and international law is one avenue for carrying that torch. Dr. Nemer Sultani, followed by a focus on internal colonialism and internal displacement. And this made sense, you know, given the fact that Dr. Amseys established the overall legal framework. It was only appropriate that Dr. Sultani would look at a specific application, which is that of the internally displaced Palestinians within 1948 Palestine. Often that section of the Palestinian people is ignored. And even though their number is quite sizable there are more than 340,000 Palestinians were internally displaced within 1948 Palestine. The collective efforts to nationalize and internationalize their cause through mobilization were discussed by Dr. Sultani. He refuted also different logics that justify their dispossession. Especially the security logic that is often utilized to prevent Palestinian return in this and other cases. As we know from various presentations in this conference, securitization is a persistent method of trying to suppress Palestinians and to control them and oppress them. Above all, Dr. Sultani used the case of the IDPs as a vantage point for which to illustrate the limits to legalism under conditions of settler colonization, highlighting the flows of the logic that Palestinians have rights in the land but not rights over the land. Sahar Francis moved on to highlight the legal implications of Israeli colonization in Jerusalem and the ways by which it promoted Jewish supremacy in Jerusalem and pushed Palestinians out of the city. Francis focused especially on the residency question, which is key to the ability of Palestinians to remain in their city. She looked at how using a litany of Israeli laws, a residency status of Jerusalemites was regularly invoked. Even when existing Israeli laws prevented their vacation of residency on such dubious grounds as national allegiance, judgments were often delayed and laws were often revised. And this was all to enable an effective form of incremental ethnic cleansing and complete demographic transformation in the city. So, the question of Jerusalem was discussed from that legal and angle, but also Sahar Francis through her experience as a legal practitioner in the city and elsewhere in Palestine, referred to specific cases that illustrated what this means for people's lives. It's incredibly destructive what is going on and listening to her was a powerful reminder of the fact that we're not just talking here about concepts and ideas and things that happened in the past we are talking about a daily challenge that affects people in their daily lives. Millions of Palestinians are affected by this. Professor Gilbert Ashkar surveyed different visions of return that were articulated by Palestinian leaderships and the ways they conceptualize the place of settler colonists, arguing that bourgeois conceptions dominate discussions of return due to focus on individual property rights and to a lack of vision of a vision that could accommodate the colonist presence within the territory. He suggested that some in some historical instances such as in existed. However, often it was absent. Against the idea of individual notions of return. He advocated for a collective settlement of returnees. We're in discussion, of course, whereby Nemer Sultani highlighted the collective nature of the right to return when approached politically and not only legally. And Professor Ashkar responded by highlighting that the definition of a bourgeois right is related to the nature of property itself. So, and the fact that any future compensation should be done on a egalitarian basis. And I think we have a vibrant discussion there open, and I'm glad that we had it because we have to actually talk about different visions of return. And to remind people that any discussion of the right of return in a conference like this or in any other conference if it's not going to be an anti Palestinian discussion has to be centered actually on maximizing people's empowerment and rights, not putting people together and not preventing their full articulation so we should we should always start from a maximalist position and continue to be committed towards that. And unlike of course, the different political logics are discussed in other parts of this conference and we're going to get to them now that start from the position of trying to deny Palestinian rights, and they want to diminish their scale. So, Dr. Maznakha to give us a great service by talking about how Palestinians themselves imagine their rights, and more importantly practice their way. She spoke of return as act in the infraction. That the Palestinians are taught to turn completely runs against the reality that their very first act of Palestinian refugee children in the 1950s and so on was an attempt to return home. You know fresh out of the neck about you had all these kids trying to do that. These acts and infractions against colonial boundaries in space were countered by instruments that were used to criminalize Palestinian attempts to return. Dr. also highlighted the fact that there were attempts of viewing return through the lens of curriculum and experimentation in the curriculum. Schooling happened, despite not because of institutions that were set up to school Palestinians. Schooling on return. So there was this incredible curricular effort effort that she described based on the neck belt as an important pedagogical process that was experienced in people's lives and they needed to learn about in systematic ways. She also visited the idea of a continual insistence on tomorrow Palestine, a progressive idea of Palestine and insistence that she traced historically in the Palestinian educational sphere. She more over highlighted return as a form of collective study. This is the historic and multiple ways through which Palestinians. And this is her term in gather and universities across the world and abroad to express the possibilities of return. And in this through this in gathering they were building historic institutions that brought them together. The foremost example being guts. In such the achievement of the writer return. Dr. to suggest is it takes place through its constant enactment and reenactment and through a constant clinging to the idea that the homeland is the future. The writer return is one to a future that Palestinians are already making. Now, in, in contrast to this future making that that Dr. Khattu discussed so elaborately. So he investigated how the cultural. How cultural industry of what she called contrary and entrepreneurs operated. You know these are people who are engaged in contrary and ideas but towards enter entrepreneurial ends. Such entrepreneurial entrepreneurial researchers proliferated proliferated in many Palestinian sites, including the camps of Lebanon, Lebanon, upon which Dr. so career focuses her study. She traced how such researchers are in line are always in line with Ocaron ideas and the latest fads and fashions. In the 1990s there was a hype around the study of the writer return and refugees due to Oslo. However, this meltdown after nine nine 11 is Dr. so career show. The new discourses were focused in the 2000s focused on the need to liberate Palestinians from their Palestinian identities. In our fascinating paper. Dr. so career showed how much of this was couched in the language of researcher humanitarianism and academic infatuation with what is new. And what is different led to a renewed focus or a new focus on doubting Palestinian intentions to return home. Attributing the commitment to the right towards the right to return to the PLO the Lebanese state, everybody essentially but the refugees themselves. Everybody wants them to go back except for themselves. She showed also that there was a second process going on which is the focus on private versus public articulations on the part of refugees. This discourse is that Palestinians have to perform their Palestinians in public and that the right of return is just used for that purpose. Dr. so career critiques the very dichotomy between public and private and subjects it to close scrutiny. She shows that it is used to prevent people from articulating and achieving their rights, rather than for the purpose of empowering them. Every set of writings that she identifies on policy is on focus on Palestinian identity and sense of home. Again, using the fact that Palestinian refugees sometimes love their current environment and express love for the communities and the countries they live in. And therefore this is used to suggest that they are uninterested in Palestine. All of these discourses these three different schools of writing. have are enabled by a regime of pressures and incentives that Dr. so career identifies. And these are extremely harmful and problematic for Palestinian refugees and the rights, however, they are very useful for getting grants and for claiming novelty. Dr. if offered a powerful critique of other types of models that operate if Dr. my son so career had focused on anthropological level. Dr. they focused on the conflict resolution studies field and and political science models that permeate the public sphere nowadays. And these models are premised on the idea of return as a stumbling block and on the idea of exchanged concessions made through the facilitation of honest brokers and so on and so forth. And despite the the language of compromise she showed that actually this whole language was also connected to a very active project. It's a project of economic pacification, accompanied by attempts to criminalize expression of the right of return through silencing political campaigns. The liquidation of the right of return in Dr. the other paper is connected to everyday economic realities that are faced by the Palestinian people and the political structures. So economic realities could be traced. For example, she mentioned the case of families of martyrs and refugee camps in Lebanon, as the Syria and elsewhere, who currently have to suffer from the cuts to the P a budget. A strangulation of the occupied Palestinian territories. Therefore, acts as also a strangulation of refugees, challenging the notion that you could ever separate the occupied territories from the chat. The cuts to honor what also are affecting Palestinians across the, the region. And as Dr. Zia denoted, and this is part of a very clear agenda that ties economic with the political that sees economic siege and strangulation as one pathway towards undermining the return of the Palestinian people. Racist discourses are utilized to justify this process, especially in the most recent Trumpian era. Dr. Zia the trace the utilization of anti poor language, for example, against Palestinian refugees and framing their plight in relation to welfare and handouts and so on and so forth. Racist discourses are not allowed to talk about this reality, and how this attempt to completely destroy the Palestinian people is accompanied by an attempt to completely silence anybody who describes that attempt or to destroy the Palestinian people or talks about their this is through the IHRA definition and other definitions that are being proposed at the moment. Against this campaign, Dr. Zia the proposed that the experience of the Nakaba must be kept upfront. And there should be a very tough stands taken on this even in relation to so called allies, or people pretend to be allies and preach to the Palestinians that they must stop talking about their rights. An important points that was raised by Dr. Zia the in relation to this regime of silencing and a regime of strangulation and regime of economic and political control that she described and is the current Arab reality, which is very much connected to all of these processes. She emphasized, and I think very aptly, the fact that we need to rethink the right of return relation to contemporary realities of abnormalization. She beautifully stated that authoritarianism at the moment is working through Palestine. That means that we have a responsibility to reimagine our orientation and surroundings and challenge the attempts to narrow down the Palestinian struggle and to reduce it to the borders of Palestine alone. We have interconnections with liberation struggles across the Arab world. Finally, Akram Salhab, drawing on his years of organizing experience, focused on the status of the refugees as a political status. And I think this was an incredibly important point, because we are often confronted with this discourse of views refugees simply as poor people. This is the idea. If you're a victim, if you're downtrodden, if you're wretched, if you're poor, you're in need of charity, this philanthropic model, this model that completely depoliticizes the Palestinian refugees. And by the way, some scholars now are beginning to contrast how that model of deep politicizing the Palestinian refugees was simultaneously accompanied by an image of Jewish refugees from Europe as empowered, political, you know, always going on the street, always demanding their rights and so on and so forth. It was an assertive vision. It has very profound implications. The fact that a refugee is not treated as a political being, also has to do with a profound misunderstanding of what the Palestinian cause is about. And this is a sort of misunderstanding that allows for discourses that were mentioned by Salhab and others across this conference. Some researchers come and tell us Palestinians, oh, you're a diaspora Palestinian, so therefore you can't be a refugee. Now, little, we don't even recognize where diaspora by the way it's shut up, not diaspora, but in any case putting that on the side. That vision fails to understand that refugee status is a political status. It is not an economic status. Salhab focused also growing on on this basis and building on it that once we understand this and politically through a political lens, we will understand that also the refugees have been completely disenfranchised from the political process as a whole. They are excluded from any representative structure at the moment, and they do not have any say in selecting their official representatives that speak on their behalf. Therefore, there was a need to equalize the status of all Palestinians and to reject privileging one part of the Palestinian people over others. Salhab also focused on the current challenges confronting contemporary solidarity. He showed how prevailing frameworks exclude Palestinians from their own national story as well as their current struggle and future liberation. He showed how Palestinians are even excluded from stories that are all about them, but that are talked about as if they had nothing to do with a good example being the recent anti-Semitism scandal and discussion in the UK. This was all about Palestine, but at least the Palestinians were completely removed from the discussion. On the ISRA, I believe we made a brilliant point when he tied attempts to silence Palestinians through that law and other instruments to the laws existing in such places as Turkey and other countries that prevent discussion of war crimes. He showed that if we're going to talk about the Palestinian cause in factual ways, these laws would effectively criminalize us. They're not about confronting hatred, they're actually about inflicting hatred upon the Palestinians by burying their story. How this happens in a place like the UK and other parts of Europe and even in the United States now there's a big campaign. It happens because there's a lack of confronting colonial history as Akram notes and especially when dealing with a life colonial situation like that of Palestine. In countries that haven't grappled with their own colonial history, how are we going to expect them to grapple with the colonial present that they have created. Making visible Palestinian history and making visible the Palestinian present inside and outside Palestine is the only way forward. And Akram Salhab ended the conference on a very strong note here. We noted that this can only take place if we work really hard on reversing the crisis of representation and the exclusion of Palestinian refugees from the PLO, which is at the heart of that crisis. Because so long as Palestinians are not represented so long as they do not have functioning national organizations, then it is very difficult to organize nationally on their behalf for them to carry out their own struggle becomes very difficult. And that leads to the individualization of their platforms and to the proliferation of different claims to Palestinian authority and authenticity and so on and so forth. We will not serve the cause of collective liberation and instead facilitate the continuation of the colonial continuum that we have talked about so extensively today. I'm going to end after this description with very quick notes for future research for potential topics that we have not talked about today and that I hope we will talk about in future sessions. Professor Makadisi raised an important question in the Q&A box and it never got a full discussion. And I'd like to reiterate it now, which is where does the Arab history side of the story fit in with this. After all Palestinian refugees were all expelled into surrounding Arab states. And before the establishment of the PLO, their cause was pretty much in the hands of these states, politically, in terms of representation. How were the dynamics of return experience there. And I think this is a big topic as a historian I experienced this every day when I read about our history and when I look into our archives and witness especially the organizing the 1950s that our refugees carried out. A lot of that organizing was done to ensure that the Arab states remained true to the rights of the refugees and there was this deep suspicion of state authorities but deep confidence in the Arab peoples and throughout these movements. So a good example is in the case of Egypt in 1955. In March 1955, the first of March 1955 there was an antifada and Gaza. And that was all about the right of return by the way. The Egyptian government was under enormous pressure by the Americans to resettle the refugees. And they were pursuing the so called Sinai project which is now some people are trying to rejuvenate it, believe it or not. The refugees were therefore subjected to constant attacks by Israeli government in the hope that this will encourage Egyptian authorities to resettle them. So you know they were putting pressure in Egypt by launching air strikes on Gaza and launching strikes on us and military operations on it. And Gaza has been assaulted since the Gaza Strip emerged, it's unbelievable the amount of assault that part of the world has been subjected to, but in any case. As soon as as an assault happened in on the 28th of February 1955 in Beirut Safa refugees, the following day, starting from the schools to go back to Dr. The first point about education went out on massive demonstrations with the students that started chanting. No resettlement, no housing. Oh, agents of the Americans. They were clear on who was trying to deny them their rights. They were clear on the fact that there was enormous pressure exerted by Imperial authorities upon on Arab states, all sorts of gifts were being offered. And all sorts of incredible violence was being inflicted on these states so that they could sell out the refugees. And now, as we're surrounded by this wave of normalization and wave of selling out to Palestinian people as a whole. It's important for us to study the history of this pressure. A second topic. I think is the enormous energy. In the 1950s that was put on the part of the international, so called international community which is really the United States. Soviet Union and the rest of, and the old great European powers were trying to liquidate the right of return through supporting the establishment of the colonial structure itself. And to discuss that we need to highlight how the violence against the Palestinian people that is currently inflicted through through military might, essentially, and through economic might is facilitated. And I hope that this will be something that we will talk about in the future. And enormous energy that is put into also the complete the historicization of took place. The complete attempt to present histories that are actually quite bigoted and racist as factual histories as well. A good example is Benny Morris, a good example is your husband power for a good example is dozens of historians that people refer to as legitimate authorities whose histories are loaded. People consult archives, but they use paradigms that deny our people that completely distort what took place, and that would be counted in any other setting as as denialism of the worst and filthy is tight. Honestly, they would be criminalized in other settings. However, the discussion over the neck but today, if you look at it. It's just a conversation amongst some Israeli historians with some references to Palestinian experiences here and there. We need to liberate that story we need to liberate the following stories a story of the Palestinian Revolution. As well from these discourses, and we need to discuss that in future conferences, and I hope that we will be able to repeat this wonderful session that we had today. And that took place despite an enormous campaign to try to prevent talking about Palestine as a whole. Let alone the Palestinian refugee that lies at its heart in institutions across the West. So thank you very much for joining us today. I really appreciate your presence.