PAL-Awda New York, formerly known as Al-Awda NY, is a Palestinian and Arab led, grassroots community organization working for Palestinian rights since 2000 in New York City. Our name, “Al-Awda,” or “return,” refers to the central cause of the Palestinian movement – Palestinian refugees’ right to return home to all of their lands and properties stolen since 1948, with full rights and sovereignty, and more broadly, to the return of all of Palestine , the people, the land, and their rights, and freedom and justice from oppression and occupation.
We have been on the front lines of nearly every demonstration and struggle in New York for Palestine, as well as standing with our allies in the struggle for social and economic justice in New York City and the world. From antiwar demonstrations, to the response to the attack on Gaza, to caravans and convoys to Palestine, to conferences and conventions, to struggling for the boycott of Zionism, to organizing the Palestinian community in the U.S. to play its role in its national movement, Al-Awda New York is at the center of building a Palestinian movement – and a movement for Palestine – that can make a real impact for meaningful justice.
We also work intensely on issues of civil rights and liberties. Our Arab and Palestinian communities in New York City have suffered greatly from state repression, police abuse, racism, surveillance and violations of our rights. We provide political and legal support to our communities as well as an organizing base to struggle to fight racism and oppression here in New York, and the U.S. as a whole, as well to liberate Palestine.
Points of Unity
1. We are dedicated to advancing the full right of return for all Palestinians. We understand the right of return to be a mechanism which, because of the colonial and supremacist nature of the Zionist state, necessitates the full liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
2. We are committed to the full dismantling of the settler-colonial project and all of its institutions, both in historic Palestine and around the world.
3. We fight for the full and unequivocal liberation of historic Palestine.
4. We uplift and defend the Palestinian right to resist, by any means necessary.
5. We understand that the settler state is an arm of U.S imperialism, sustained and strengthened by the U.S. imperial project.
6. We are firmly anti-imperialist and anti-racist, and stand in solidarity, with the struggles of all oppressed people inside the United States and around the world.
