Tehran to hold intl. intifada conference

Iran says it will host a two-day international conference as part of the Islamic Republic’s effort to unite Muslims across the world to end the woes of the Palestinian people.
The Fifth International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada is scheduled to be held on October 1-2 in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

The meeting will be chaired by Iranian Majlis (parliament) Speaker Ali Larijani and is expected to be attended by parliamentary speakers, political dignitaries, Palestinian figures and pro-Palestinian activists.

The conference aims at exhausting all “official and non-official capacities of the Islamic Ummah and freedom-seeking nations of the world in support of the Palestinian nation for the realization of their legitimate rights,” the Iranian organizers said in a statement on Thursday.

The event will hinge upon the return of the illegally annexed East al-Quds (Jerusalem), the return of all Palestinian refugees displaced by the Israeli army inside and outside the occupied Palestinian territories, it added.

The conference coincides with the Palestinian Authority’s bid to win support at the United Nations for the recognition of an independent Palestinian state on the lines of the 1967 borders, which would encompass the Gaza Strip and the West Bank including East al-Quds.

The organizers also hope that the conference would call enough attention to the issue of Palestine as it come amid the wave of Islamic awakening and popular uprisings sweeping across Muslims countries in North Africa and the Middle East.

In 1917, Britain issued a declaration calling on the British Jewish community for transmission to the so-called Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

In 1920, the mandate for the administration of Palestine was assinged to the United Kingdom under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations and the UK became responsible for putting into effect its own Balfour Declaration of 1917.

In 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a plan to divide Palestine into four entities: one Arab (which was 99 percent Palestinian Arab on 43 percent of the land), one Jewish (which was 55 percent Jewish and 45 percent Palestinian Arab and on 55 percent of the land), a third entity to be internationally monitored around al-Quds which was 51 percent Palestinian Arab and 49 percent Jewish, and a fourth isolated enclave around the Palestinian city of Jaffa.

The partition gave 55 percent of the Palestinian territory to the 30 percent Jewish population, who formerly owned seven percent of the land. Within months, Israel was forged on 78 percent of the territory where the demographic ratio from 30:70 Jews to Arabs was dramatically flipped to 90:10.

In 1948, the United States withdrew its support for the partition plan, which prompted the Israeli forces to accelerate their attacks on Arab villages and committed massacres, displacing masses of refugees either by direct force or fear for their lives before the Arab armies entered Palestine.

After decades of confrontation with Israel, the Palestinians were left with 22 percent of their historical homeland in 1967.

The Palestinians staged an intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupiers of their territories between 1987 and 1993, and embarked on a second revolt in the 2000s. A total of 6,200 Palestinians died during the popular movements, which were fiercely confronted