On Tuesday (July 28, 2020), the Center for Political and Development Studies held a seminar on the occupation’s annexation plan in an attempt to identify the status quo and the possible means to resist the plan.

The main guest speakers of the seminar were: Mr. Saeed Bsharat, Mr. Hussam Shaker, Mr. Hassan Abu Hashish and Sheikh Ekrima Sabri.

Mr. Bsharat highlighted the main measures the occupation had taken the past months to initiate the annexation plan:

1. Purchasing lands through falsification and selling them to the Israeli Development Bank which, in turn, sells them to the settlers, and establishes new settlement units.
2. Changing the demographic scale through raising the prices of apartments in Tel Aviv and other similar areas, and lowering the prices in the West Bank and Al-Quds.
3. Building checkpoints that require Palestinians to have permits in order to reach areas such as the Valley (Al-Hamraa checkpoint as an example).
4. Acting as though the lands belong to the ‘Israelis’, areas C mostly and B sometimes.

Dr. Ekrima Sabri emphasized the importance of focusing the resistance efforts on both the annexation and the current Judaization attempts of Al-Quds. He also said that the occupation is trying to distract the world from the atrocities it commits against the Palestinian people inside Palestine.

Mr. Hassan Abu Hashish expressed how insufficient the work the Palestinians have been doing against the annexation. He also stressed five main points that must be taken into account for the battle against annexation:

1. Reaching one understanding of the situation and agreeing on certain terms that describe the status quo; terms that are national and Palestinian not Israeli nor imposed. What is currently happening should be called “a termination project of the Palestinian cause” not “Deal of the Century or annexation”.
2. Believing, in terms of emotions and actions, that this is the cause of all Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, 1948 lands and diaspora. All Palestinians must work together, hand-in-hand, to fight against the occupation’s current attempts to end and annihilate the cause.
3. Prioritizing the events and delegating the tasks. The West Bank has not even held seminars to condemn the occupation’s attempts.
4. Stopping the internal bleeding of the Palestinians, and preventing any alienation of parties. Until this day, there are still harmful actions such demonizing the other or playing with people’s salaries to control them.
5. Raising the national and international awareness. There must be counter media campaigns that can help spread the truth.

The attendants generally agreed on the abovementioned, and they recommended using the capacities and abilities of the youth in all the Palestinian lands, translating the PA’s decisions into action, mobilizing internal and external capacities, and replacing the cause into the arms of the Arab and Islamic nations once again.