On that day, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the Palestinians’ parliament in exile, convened in the Algerian capital of Algiers and adopted the Palestinian Declaration of Independence. But the electricity cut-off only raised the level of the celebrations.”Twenty-eight years later, without the actualization of independence, the scene in Palestine is somber. Hassan Breijieh, the head of the Committee to Resist the Apartheid Wall in Bethlehem, lamented to Al-Monitor, “The declaration is a statement that was supposed to be built on. “People were mourning Arafat, who died 12 years ago, rather than celebrating the Declaration of Independence,” he said. It will be hard to celebrate a public declaration while the illegal, Jewish settlement enterprise remains ongoing, and the Israeli military occupiers rule over Palestinians.