| Our stance is clear: Palestinian Cultural Institutions Rise Against the Policy of Genocide in Gaza. We, Palestinian cultural institutions, raise our voices in the strongest possible terms. We condemn the ongoing, systematic, and comprehensive policy of man-made starvation imposed upon over two million of our people in the Gaza Strip. This policy is wielded as a weapon of death within a broader goal of physical, existential, and cultural genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli occupation authorities with direct American and Western support, amid regional and international silence and complicity. What is happening in Gaza transcends siege and military aggression; it is a systematic process of stripping Palestinians of the bare minimum essentials for life. Its aim is the dismantling of our social fabric and the breaking of our resilient people’s collective will. This is not merely a war crime; it is a comprehensive, collective policy of genocide. It targets place and home, and assaults our economic, cultural, intellectual, and scientific existence. This demands a unified Palestinian response and immediate cultural and societal mobilization. Driven by our national and cultural responsibility, and setting aside varying political differences , we demand: 1. That the policy of starvation and genocide in our beloved Gaza be declared a national emergency. 2. The immediate formation of a permanent crisis task force. This body must include representatives from political factions and civil society institutions. Its mandate will be to: * Monitor the living and health conditions in Gaza. * Document ongoing violations. * Propose practical, on-the-ground solutions. * Regularly and weekly convey these findings to local and international public opinion. We call upon everyone to participate in and expand vigils, marches, and hunger strike actions to increase pressure and amplify our collective voice of outrage. As Palestinian cultural institutions, we commit to the following urgent tasks: 1. Refocus our cultural work to serve the national emergency, transforming cultural spaces into platforms for support, documentation, and advocacy. 2. Produce artistic documentary content (video, audio, text, podcast) directly involving artists and writers from Gaza, documenting and showcasing the impact of starvation and siege. 3. Call on international cultural institutions to boycott and cease cooperation with all official and cultural Israeli institutions complicit in crimes against our people. 4. Organize a Global Cultural Week for Gaza featuring literary events, exhibitions, and seminars focused on starvation as a systematic crime. 5. Pressure UNESCO and international cultural bodies to open an official investigation into the targeting of Gaza’s cultural infrastructure, recognizing it as part of a policy of erasing memory and identity. 6. Coordinate between cultural institutions to launch the “Gaza Starvation Archive” – a living, open digital archive collecting images, testimonies, and voices documenting the use of starvation as a weapon of war. 7. Continue twining cultural efforts with psychological support and relief initiatives. This includes producing simple content (drawing, theater, storytelling) for use in displacement centers to provide psychosocial support for children and youth and help them process trauma. Silence in the face of genocide is complicity. |