With spirit and blood we will redeem you O shahid...
With spirit and blood we will redeem you O Palestine.To the masses of our glorious people:
On the way to the escalation and continuation of the uprising, on the way to the
removal of the occupation and the realization of the slogans of the uprising, we urge
the national action committees and the popular committees to ensure the escalation
and advancement of the victorious popular uprising by declaring a general and com-
prehensive strike from the morning of Tuesday, January 19, 1988, until the eve of
Friday, January 22, 1988.
Let our people remain in their houses on Wednesday and Thursday, let the
prayers, the symbolic funerals, and the vociferous popular demonstrations resume on
Friday to commemorate the martyrs of the uprising. Let the bells sound in the churches
in all the villages and towns throughout the occupied homeland.
O heroic merchants,
You who have recorded a glorious and honorable struggle with steadfastness, you
who experience the arbitrariness of the occupation and its daily repression. You who
valiantly defy the closure orders, the brandished rods, the war machines, and the armed
soldiers, you who maintain a commercial strike despite all the measures of the occu-
pation, we salute you and your central role in our people’s uprising and in the victo-
ries that are achieved every day.
We urge you to observe the general strike that has been called even if the army
increases its presence and in spite of the measures it will take. We further urge you to
continue establishing and expanding special committees for merchants in every street
and city, village, and camp, in order to formulate a united stand and form a united
plan that will endorse a collective abstention from paying V.A.T. With all the masses
of the people and its national movement behind you, the threats and measures of the
occupation, whatever they may be, will not succeed in dissuading you from imple-
menting this slogan, which is one of the paramount slogans of our people’s heroic
uprising.
O masses of our people from all sectors and strata,
From this day we will begin to boycott Israeli merchandise and products that our
industry also manufactures. We note especially the boycott on Israeli chocolates, milk,
and cigarettes.
O masses of the Palestinian working class,
Indeed the bronzed arms of steel have succeeded, by virtue of their broad and
active participation in the general strike, in bringing to a stop the production line and
the wheels of industry in thousands of Israeli plants, projects, and workshops. The pio-
neering role of the workers in the uprising was prominent and honorable. Persist in
your labor strikes in Israeli plants, our valiant workers. Do not be intimidated by the
frightened threats being voiced by the Zionists, authorities, rulers, and owners. All we
have to lose in our uprising are the chains, the suppression, and the exploitation that
we groan under. Let the wheels of Israeli industry grind to a halt through damaging
the Israeli economy and deepening the economic crisis in Israel. This is one of our
weapons on the road to attaining our rights of return, self-determination, and estab-
lishment of the independent national state.
O masses of heroic pupils,
198 ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS