Head of the National Relations Department in Hamas abroad Ali Barakeh:

▪ We denounce the continuation of the approach of appointment, exclusion, and unilateralism in reconstituting the Palestinian National Council, and the opening of factional electoral assemblies that do not reflect the representation of all أبناء شعبنا الفلسطيني in the host countries.

▪ One of the most basic rights of our Palestinian people abroad is to elect their representatives in the National Council through free and direct elections. If elections are not possible, the alternative is broad national consensus, not appointment or imposing factional representation by one side.

▪ The control of one party over the reconstitution of the institutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization in this sensitive stage does not serve national unity, but rather deepens division and fragmentation, and we are in urgent need of national partnership and the unification of efforts to confront occupation, settlement, Judaization, displacement, and the ongoing aggression against our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and القدس, and to defend our land, our holy sites, and our national rights.

▪ Depriving Palestinian refugees abroad of their right to choose their representatives is a diminution of their national and democratic rights, in light of what our people have suffered from uprooting and displacement since the Nakba of 1948, and the remaining right of return to our homes and our displaced properties is a fixed right that does not lapse with time.

▪ We call on all Palestinian factions, forces, and national figures to assume their responsibility, reject appointment, exclusion, unilateralism, and monopolizing the national decision, and adhere to the national understandings and agreements since the Cairo dialogue on 17 March 2005 and up to the Beijing Declaration on 23 July 2024, which stressed the need to rebuild and activate the Palestine Liberation Organization according to democratic, participatory, and national foundations.

▪ We affirm that the Palestinian National Council must be a comprehensive national framework for all أبناء شعبنا in the homeland and the diaspora, not an institution that excludes and appoints, and that rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization will only be achieved through national partnership and respect for the will of the Palestinian people and their right to freely choose their representatives.