Under the slogan “Palestine state now”, a rally was held in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening, where one-thousand protesters called on Israel to support the Palestinian statehood bid. The crowd was thick with banners, red flags and t-shirts from Hadash, and well-known left-wing activists from Hadash and Meretz took to the stage while the crowd chanted “Two states for two peoples” and “Jerusalem: two capitals for two peoples.”

Dr. Nabila Espanioli, a feminist activist and fifth on the Hadash (The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel) electoral list, gave a speech in which she said “Congratulations to Israel and to Palestine, that after 60 years the call for two states for two people is increasing.” She added that the two-state solution used to be called “a vision of the apocalypse, but this is a vision that is becoming reality. And the people who aspire to peace are saying yes!” Dr. Nava Sonnenschein, director of the Wahat al-Salam school in Neve Shalom said, “We have come here to support you, Abu Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) and the Palestinian people.”

Nabila Espanioli at the rally in Tel Aviv (photo: Dafna Talmon)

Arab singer Mira Awad performed at the rally and said she was “happy with Abbas’ bid and very sad about the inexplicable refusal to finally give the Palestinian people a chance to move forward.” After a short acoustic guitar song by Gaza flotilla participant and refusenik Yonatan Shapira, veteran peace activist Uri Avnery took the stage and said “what is happening today is obvious, it’s a historical event, both for us and the Palestinians. But the work only begins here, the UN won’t give them a state, they need to found their state and if we are choosing to have a future of peace, we must help them build their state.” He then thanked two people whose work led to this day, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and then called on people to make sure that in the upcoming elections they vote for parties that put the cause of peace at the top of their agenda.

In a historic session of the United Nations in New York Thursday, exactly 65 years after passing the Partition Plan for Palestine, the General Assembly voted by a huge majority of countries to recognize Palestine within the 1967 borders as a non-member state with observer status in the organization. Some 138 countries voted in favor of the resolution, 41 abstained and only 9 voted against: Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, U.S., Panama, The Marshall Islands, Palau, Nauru, and Micronesia. Following the vote, U.S. UN envoy Susan Rice said the resolution “does not establish Palestine as state, that it prejudges the outcome of negotiations, and ignores questions of security.”

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas delivered a hard-hitting speech in which he was highly critical of Israel and occupation, drawing extensive applause from the floor. “Palestine comes today to the General Assembly because it believes in peace and because its people, as proven in past days, are in desperate need of it,” Abbas said. The Palestinian Authority chairman said, “The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: Enough of aggression, settlements and occupation.”

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