Journalist and historian Paola Caridi, author of “Hamas: From Resistance to Regime,” joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the roots and nature of Hamas, and what we miss when we unthinkingly cast Hamas as nothing more than a terrorist organization.
Journalist and historian Paola Caridi, author of “Hamas: From Resistance to Regime,” joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the roots and nature of Hamas, and what we miss when we unthinkingly cast Hamas as nothing more than a terrorist organization.
Hamas, like all resistance groups, from the African National Congress to The Irish Republic Army, are as demonized as they are misunderstood.
Hamas is a religious, nationalist political movement. It is not, despite what Israel and Washington say, a terrorist organization—although, like most resistance groups (including the Jewish militias that created the state of Israel), it has used terrorism as a tactic. Because those on the outside do not understand what went into making Hamas—the steady drip of humiliation, violence, and impoverishment that define Israel’s Occupation of the Palestinians—Hamas and its ideology appears incomprehensible. But from the Palestinian perspective, Israel has left the Palestinians with no other choice.
Hamas: How Israel created its own nemesis w/Paola Caridi | The Chris Hedges Report
When Zionist militias, using advanced Western arms, conquered historic Palestine in 1947-48, they expressed their victory through the deliberate humiliation of Palestinians.
Much of that humiliation targeted women, in particular, knowing how the dishonor of Palestinian females represents, according to Arab culture, a sense of dishonor to the whole community.
This strategy remains in use to this day.
When scores of Palestinian women were released following prisoner exchanges between the Palestinian Resistance and Israel, starting on November 24, there was very little room to hide the facts.
Unlike the 75-year-ago Palestinian community, this current generation no longer internalizes Israel’s intentional humiliation of women and men alike, as if an act of collective dishonor.
This has allowed many newly released female prisoners to speak openly, often on live TV, about the kind of humiliation that they were exposed to while in Israeli military detention.
The Israeli army, however, continues to act with the same old mindset, perceiving the humiliation of Palestinians as an expression of dominance, power and supremacy.
Over the years, Israel has perfected the politics of humiliation – a notion that is predicated on the psychological power of shaming whole collectives to emphasize the asymmetrical relationship between two groups of people: in this case, the occupier and the occupied.
This is precisely why, in the early days of the Israeli war on Gaza, Israel detained all Palestinian workers from the Strip who happened to be working inside Israel as cheap laborers at the time of the October 7 operation.
The dehumanization they experienced at the hands of Israeli soldiers demonstrated a growing trend among Israelis to degrade Palestinians for no reason whatsoever.
One of the worst documented episodes took place on October 12, when a group of Israeli soldiers and settlers assaulted three Palestinian activists in the West Bank. Israeli newspapers Haaretz and The Times of Israel described how the three were assaulted, stripped naked, bound, photographed, tortured and urinated upon.
Those images were still fresh in the minds of Palestinians when new images emerged from northern Gaza.
Photos and videos published in Israeli media showed men stripped down to their underwear, being placed in large numbers on the streets of Gaza, while surrounded by well-equipped and supposedly menacing Israeli soldiers.
The men were handcuffed, tied together, forced to hunch down and then, eventually, thrown into military trucks to be taken to an unknown location.
Some of the men were eventually released to tell horror stories, which often had bloody endings.
But why is Israel doing this?
Throughout its history – violent birth and equally violent existence – Israel has purposely humiliated Palestinians as an expression of its disproportionately greater military power over a hapless, confined and mostly refugee population.
This tactic was infused more during certain periods of history when Palestinians felt empowered as a way to break their collective spirit.
The First Intifada, 1987-93, was rife with this kind of humiliation. Children and men between the ages of 15 to 55 would be habitually dragged into schoolyards, stripped naked, forced to kneel down for endless hours, beaten, and insulted by Israeli soldiers using loudspeakers.
Those insults would cover everything that Palestinians hold dear – their religions, their God, their mothers, their holy places and more.
Then, boys and men would be forced to perform certain acts, for example spitting in each other’s faces, shouting certain profanities, slapping themselves or each other. Those who refused would be immediately overpowered, beaten and arrested.
These methods continue to be applied in Israeli prisons, especially during times of hunger strikes, but also during periods of interrogations. In the latter cases, men would be threatened with the rape of their wives or sisters; women would be threatened with sexual violence.
These episodes are often met with collective Palestinian defiance, which directly feeds into Palestinian popular resistance.
The image of the Palestinian fighter, dressed in military fatigue, brandishing an automatic rifle while proudly walking the streets of Nablus, Jenin, or Gaza, in itself does not serve an actual military purpose. It is, however, a direct response to the psychological impact of the kind of humiliation inflicted upon Palestinian society by the Israeli occupation army.
But what is the function of a Palestinian military parade? To answer this question, we must examine the sequence of the event.
When Israel arrests Palestinian activists, they attempt to create the perfect scenario of a humiliated and defeated community: the terror felt by the people when nightly raids begin, the beating of the family of the detained, the shouts of insults, and other well-choreographed horror scenes.
Hours later, Palestinian youth emerge on the streets of their neighborhoods, proudly parading with their guns amid the ululation of women and the excited looks of children. This is precisely how Palestinians respond to humiliation.
Palestinian armed Resistance has grown much stronger in recent years, with Gaza currently serving as a case in point.
As the Israeli military is failing to reoccupy Gaza and subdue its population, utilizing the politics of humiliation on a mass scale is simply impossible.
To the contrary, it is the Israelis who do feel humiliated, not only because of what has taken place on October 7, but everything else that has taken place since then.
Unable to operate freely in the heart of Gaza, Khan Yunis, Rafah or any other major population centers in the Strip, the Israeli army is forced to humiliate Palestinians in whatever little margins they can control, Beit Lahia, for example.
Frustrated by their military failure to deliver on their promises of subduing Gazans, ordinary Israelis have taken to social media to taunt Palestinians in their own way.
Israeli women, often along with their own children, would dress up in ways that would convey a racist representation of Arab women crying over the bodies of their dead children.
As bombs rain on Palestinians in Gaza, Israelis like Eve Cohen have taken to TikTok in Arab face to claim Palestinian mothers are faking their deaths. pic.twitter.com/DIYICk9Y3o
This type of social media mockery seems to have appealed to the imagination of Israeli society, which still insists on its sense of superiority even at a time when they are still paying the price of their own violence and political arrogance.
This time around, however, Israel’s politics of humiliation is proving ineffective because the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis is on its way to being fundamentally altered.
One is only humiliated if he or she internalizes that humiliation as a sense of shame and disempowerment. But Palestinians, this time around, are experiencing no such feelings. On the contrary, their ongoing sumud (resilience) and unity have generated a sense of collective pride unequaled in history.
كان اندلاع الانتفاضة الشعبية الفلسطينية الأولى، المعروفة بانتفاضة الحجارة، أمراً طبيعياً من حيث حتمية حدوثه في سياقٍ أخذت فيه عربدة النظام الاستعماري الصهيوني بُعداً جديداً؛ فقد ثبت فشل المساعي الإسرائيلية لاحتواء سكان المناطق التي احتُلَّت في حرب حزيران/ يونيو 1967، من خلال استخدامهم كأيد عاملة رخيصة في قطاعات البناء والزراعة والصناعة الخفيفة. كان النظام الصهيوني يعي تماماً أن التكلفة المنخفضة لقوة عمل سكان الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة، ستعني تحسّناً نوعياً لسكان «المناطق»، وهو مصطلح ورثته إسرائيل من حقبة الاستعمار البريطاني الذي قسّم فلسطين إلى مناطق عسكرية خلال ثورة 1936، ولا تزال إسرائيل تستخدمه لوصف الضفة والقطاع نظراً إلى خضوعهما للحكم العسكري -خرجت غزة من التسمية بعد إعادة إسرائيل لانتشار قواتها عام 2005.
فشل استراتيجية المضطهِدين أمام صيرورة المضطهَدين كانت إسرائيل تعوّل على أن التحسّن الاقتصادي لسكان الضفة والقطاع، إضافة إلى تخريبها المنهجي لقطاع التعليم سيحقق ما أراده ديفيد بن غوريون بأن «يموت الكبار وينسى الصغار». لكن بن غوريون ومن جاء بعده غفلوا عن أن تلك المقولة منطقية في سياق غير سياق الاستعمار والطرد، أي إنها منطقية في حالة طبيعية -لا وجود فيها لعوامل تهديد وجودية كالاستعمار الصهيوني- لا في حالة غير طبيعية كحالة دولة إسرائيل التي قامت وتقوم على التطهير العرقي والاستعلائية العنصرية والتنكيل بالشعب الأصلاني بوتائر مختلفة، وكلها ممارسات يومية ضد من تبقّى من الشعب الفلسطيني في فلسطين.
لقد أدى الارتفاع النوعي لدخل أكثر من مئة ألف أسرة فلسطينية في الضفة والقطاع إلى تحسّن ملموس في ظروف المعيشة وإنعاش لحياة الفلسطينيين هناك -وأغلبهم لاجئون داخل وطنهم- كما أدى احتكاكهم بسوق العمل الإسرائيلي الذي ينهل من أحدث التقنيات الغربية، ويشارك في إنتاج بعضها، إلى نقل معرفة وآلات حديثة امتزجت مع ما حمله الأصلانيون الفلسطينيون من معرفة مما قبل النكبة، فأخذ ذلك اتجاهاً نحو صناعة فلسطينية -على نحو جنيني؛ إذ ظهرت ورش ومعامل في قطاع غزة والضفة الغربية كانت إمّا جزءاً من شبكات قيمة تابعة لشركات رأسمالية كبرى، أو كيانات مستقلة، ففي غزة ومخيم جباليا كانت تصنع ملابس لعلامات كـ Levi’s و Lee، وأيضاً ثلاجات العرض للمحال التجارية، وفي الخليل ازدهرت على نحو أكبر صناعة الأحذية -المعروفة بها تاريخياً- إضافة إلى معامل للصناعات الغذائية في غزة ونابلس ورام الله والخليل. وقد أدى ذلك إلى بروز طبقة عاملة فلسطينية شكلت قرابة 38% من سكان الضفة والقطاع، وكان ثلثها عاملاً في الاقتصاد الإسرائيلي.
كانت إسرائيل تعوّل على أن التحسّن الاقتصادي لسكان الضفة والقطاع، إضافة إلى تخريبها المنهجي لقطاع التعليم سيحقق ما أراده ديفيد بن غوريون
لكن الفلسطينيين استمروا في الحديث عن نكبتهم شفهياً، على الرغم من أن المدارس كانت تعتمد في قطاع غزة منهاجاً مصرياً وفي الضفة الغربية آخر أردنياً، كما ظل اللاجئون يشيدون بيوتاً تراوحت بين الجيد والفخم بعد أن تحسّنت أحوالهم المادية عام 1980من القرن الماضي، لكن داخل المخيمات وحولها، فقد كانوا -ولا يزالون- متشبّثين بالمخيم ويعتبرونه مرحلة ما قبل العودة، وأن أي مكان غيره سيعني اللاعودة. تزامن ذلك كله مع جهود صهيونية مسعورة لمسح أي مظهر من مظاهر الهوية الوطنية الفلسطينية، ومنع الفلسطينيين من الاستقلال اقتصادياً عن إسرائيل -التي أرادت لهم تحسناً يُنسيهم ماضيهم، مع أن يظلوا تابعين لاقتصادها، إذ تناسب تحسّن الأحوال الاقتصادية طردياً مع تعاظم الروح الوطنية. يُضاف إلى ذلك أن إسرائيل شعرت بنشوة بعد أن هزمت منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية عسكرياً إثر اجتياح بيروت عام 1982 فصار تنمّر العسكريين الإسرائيليين على الأهالي جزءاً من الحياة اليومية.
1987 تجلّى «هرم ماسلو»… لا مخطط من أي فصيل! كثيراً ما تردّد الفصائل الفلسطينية، الوطنية منها والإسلامية، أنها خطّطت للانتفاضة، أو أن نضالاتها تسبّبت في تأجيج نار الكفاح في صدور أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني. لكن ذلك منافٍ للواقع تماماً مثلما تُفيد روايات من عاصر تلك الفترة، وواقع الحال اقتصادياً وسياسياً. ففي حين أشبع فيه الفلسطينيون جوعهم واكتسوا من بعد برد وسكنوا بيوتاً من بعد خيام، وفي وقت لم تكفّ فيه إسرائيل عن حرمانهم من العودة إلى ديارهم، بل ومنعتهم من أن يكونوا أنفسهم -فلسطينيين أبناء هده الأرض التي سميت عنوة إسرائيل- لا بل تمادت في غيِّها بعد أن كسرت شوكة منظمة التحرير التي رؤوا فيها ممثلهم الشرعي والوحيد، وصارت تنغّص عليهم عيشهم بعد أن صار بإمكانهم كسبه من دون الركون إليها، صارت الثورة والخروج على المحتل أمران تحدثهما به النفس طوال الوقت.
قد يبدو تناقضاً أن إسرائيل -التي من مصلحتها أن يتحسن حال الفلسطينيين اقتصادياً- راحت تغلق المعامل، وتضع أنف مخابراتها في شؤون الناس. لكن ذلك من التناقضات المتأصلة في كيان استعماري كإسرائيل، فهي تخشى استقلال التابع، وتخشى ألا تكون لها سيطرة على صياغة وعيه، فتوافرت الظروف الموجبة للانفجار.
(عبد الرحمن المزين)
تفيد نظرية عالم النفس أبراهام ماسلو بأن الإنسان يأخذ في السعي إلى تلبية حاجاته المعنوية والمادية الآجلة، بعد أن يلبي حاجاته المادية العاجلة. لذلك تفرّغ من بقي من الفلسطينيين داخل وطنهم للانبراء للاحتلال. ورُبّ سائل يسأل: أوليس أحرى بالجياع المشردين أن ينقضُّوا على من نكبهم وشرّدهم؟ والجواب: بلى، غير أن وجود فصائل مسلحة وممثل سياسي هو منظمة التحرير، ودول عربية في الخلفية وحول إسرائيل، جعل الفلسطيني داخل فلسطين ينتظر الفرج ممن هم نظرياً أقوى منه. وعندما اتضح أنه لم يبق في «الميدان إلا حميدان» كما يقول المثل الشعبي الفلسطيني، لم يتأخر حميدان عن القِراع. لذا لا يمكن فهم اندلاع الانتفاضة الشعبية الأولى في حدثٍ عنيفٍ محليٍ هنا أو هناك.
الثورة السائبة تُعلِّم السرقة!
كان أبناء الشعب من عمّال وفلاحين وطلبة ومثقفين، رجالاً ونساءً من مختلف الشرائح وقود الانتفاضة، فقدّموا الشهيد والسجين والجريح، والمطارد، والمنفي. لكن لم يكن لكل هؤلاء حزبهم بالمعنى الاجتماعي الاقتصادي، إذ لم تكن معركة الوعي مربوحةً، كما أن الفصائل اليسارية التي طرحت نفسها ممثلة للكادحين كانت عقيمة تنظيمياً وفكرياً ومصابةً بنيوياً بأمراض اليمين. أمّا اليمين الذي قاده ياسر عرفات، فقد أفسد حالةَ التنظيم الشعبي -التي نسَّقت الإضرابات ونظمت التعليم والتآزر المجتمعي- بالمال الذي كان يُغدق بغير حساب من مكتب المنظمة في عمَّان على كل من هبّ ودبّ، لا سيما على الزُّعران والبلطجيّة الذين أثاروا الفوضى وعملوا على تصفية الكوادر الفتحاويّة القليلة التي عارضت التسوية السلمية من مدريد حتى أوسلو. أمّا الفصائل الإسلامية -وخاصة «حماس»- فكانت تغرّد في وادٍ من التهيؤات المخلوطة بالمراهقة النضالية وفهم بدائي سطحي للدين. لذلك كان من مصلحة منظمة التحرير ورئيس أكبر فصائلها «فتح» وزبانيته أن توقع اتفاق أوسلو الذي تنازل عن ثوابت القضية الفلسطينية مقابل «حلّ سلمي» جلب له بساطاً أحمر وأموالاً غربية. لقد كان حلاً للطبقة الطفيلية التي لا تهمها العودة والخلاص من الصهيونية، على حساب الطبقات الكادحة التي يهمّها ذلك. لذلك فإنه ما لم يكن لجماهير كادحي الشعب الفلسطيني في كل مكان، حزبها هي، فإن كل انتفاضة ستُسرق مثلما سُرقت انتفاضة الحجارة. ذلك هو الدرس المُرّ الذي يجب أن يعى كي نحتفل يوماً ما بالتحرير، لا الذكرى.
Yedioth Ahronoth military affairs commentator, Ron Ben Yishai, said that “A senior source in the security establishment presented two weeks ago an important piece of information related to the security situation in the ‘Israeli’ entity”.
The source said, “A tremendous part of the regular ground occupation army is currently being recently invested in the West Bank with ongoing security missions, and this comes at the expense of training that it has not implemented.”
“This matter directly harms the army’s readiness for war, whether in Lebanon or in other arenas. Indeed, if there is any escalation that deteriorates into a war on several fronts, we may enter it unprepared, as what happened in the July 2006 War in Lebanon,” added the source.
Ben Yishai said that he has heard “these gloomy expectations more than once in the recent period from different sources talking about the capability of the ‘Israeli’ army and its readiness for a large-scale confrontation, in both regular and reserve soldiers.”
He went in to say, “The data speaks for itself. At the end of the last year, 13 battalions of the ground army – the vast majority of which are regular battalions and some reserve battalions – maintained the ongoing security in the West Bank and along the line of contact. Meanwhile, at the present time and for several months, 25 battalions from the ‘Israeli” ground army are maintaining security in West Bank, along with special units that carry out special tasks and 16 companies of border guards,” stressing that it is a “huge” force by all standards.
Besides, Ben Yishai said the situation will never improve and the “Israeli” army won’t hold training in the near future.
By the same token, the military affairs commentator noted that “no responsible and reliable source in ‘Israel’ can currently estimate when this escalation will subside or instead deteriorate into a large-scale intifada. But the prevailing opinion among all professionals is that the region is volatile and can catch fire in the future.”
Against the backdrop of tensions in the West Bank, Ben Yishai considered the coalition negotiations to have a special meaning, and said, “The most dangerous in them is the chaos and the struggle over powers, which not only characterize ministers and senior officials in the security, military and internal security establishment, but also all government ministries, which may lead to the lack of governance, both in the West Bank and in the occupied area west of the Green Line.”
He, likewise, affirmed that the struggle over power and the political differences between ministers will probably spill over to the “Israeli” army, the “Shabak” [Shin Bet], and the police.
The military expert concluded by saying, “The capacity and readiness of ground forces in the ‘Israeli’ army is rapidly eroding. The vulnerability to explosion in the areas of the West Bank, and perhaps in Gaza, is also increasing. Chaos in the government institutions threatens to cause fatal damage to governance in ‘Israel’ and the territories. Therefore, there is only one thing that can be said confidently and that is 2023 will be a challenging year.”
Hezbollah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was one of the first defenders of the uprising [the Intifada] in Palestine and among those who called for revolution against the “Israeli” enemy, even with a knife.
In a speech in 2000, Sayyed Nasrallah called on the Palestinian people to fight the enemy, even with a knife, saying, “If you don’t have bullets, who among you doesn’t have a knife?”
The Palestinian Nakba began exactly 105 years ago with the release of a letter from then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to the leader of the Zionist movement in what became infamously called the Balfour Declaration.
The project to establish the Zionist entity was and still is based on a long-term joint program between the Zionist movement and some colonial powers, primarily Britain and the US
As someone who grew up and was raised in the city of Yafa after the occupation of eastern Palestine in the 1967 war – known as the Naksa – in the house of his late grandfather and under the auspices of a great educational figure such as my grandmother, known as Madame Khoury, who’s slogan “I’d rather die in my house in Yafa than become a refugee” became a mantra that engraved in our minds the effect of attachment to the land… and as someone who listened and read the successive enthusiastic political articles of his father, the political writer Naim Youssef Machool, about the Nakba, the land, agriculture and steadfastness, as well as the articles, plays, interviews, and lectures of his mother, writer and novelist Antoinette Adeeb El-Khoury, I thought that based on this extensive personal experience, I should support and base my claim, listed below, on journalistic observations from the 80s and 90s in Palestine in particular and on two decades of academic research on the Palestinian issue in Britain in particular, and present a contribution to an expanded project whose main idea I will briefly list below.
We say that it is widely accepted that the Nakba of the Palestinians took place chronologically under the British mandate between the partition plan and Resolution of 29/11/1947 and the 1949 armistice with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, although there was no agreement within the framework of an armistice or the like with the Palestinian people; whether those who were expelled from it or those who remained in their homeland.
Accordingly, the struggle involving the Palestinian people remains open: Zionist domination of Palestine and Palestinian resistance against the occupation.
This article, part of which was presented at the University of Freiburg in Germany in 2011 and the Bandung Conference in 2015 and 2022, argues that although the most catastrophic period of the Palestinian Nakba (lit. catastrophe) reached its peak between 1947 and 1949, the Nakba was neither the beginning nor the end of the Palestinian people’s catastrophe.
This article claims that the Nakba of the Palestinian people began exactly 105 years ago with the release of a letter from then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to the leader of the Rothschild Zionist movement in what became infamously known as the Balfour Declaration issued on 2/11/1917, which followed the occupation of Palestine by Britain that was involved in WWI, especially the occupation of Al-Quds by General Allenby in December 1917.
It also argues that the Nakba includes everything that has happened since then until now, but certainly, this catastrophe reached its peak between 1947 and 1949 – which witnessed the forced expulsion of half of the Palestinian people from their homeland and the destruction of the majority of Palestine’s cultural, commercial, and social structure – and is continuing deliberately according to a plan that has not stopped until achieving liberation and independence.
Apart from emotional slogans, the project to establish the Zionist entity was and still is based on a long-term joint program between the Zionist movement and some colonial powers, primarily Britain and the US. In addition, this article claims and warns that an attempt to implement a new chapter of the Nakba of the Palestinian people is very possible, including the expulsion of additional Palestinians from West and East Palestine because the goal is to seize Palestine as a whole and the Palestinian people are seen as an obstacle that must be eliminated to achieve this goal.
Since the peak of the Nakba between 1947 and 1949, Palestinians, whom I defined as the survivors of the Nakba – meaning those who were able to remain in their homeland and who were intended to be loggers and waterers, as per the Israeli occupation administration, for the ruling Zionist class and its Jewish Arab servants who were brought in from the Arab countries to colonize Palestine – consisted a “security problem” not only in Al-Jaleel, the Triangle Area, and Al-Naqab, but also in the Palestinian coastal cities, such as Akka in the north and Yafa in the south.
When late historian Dr. Constantin Zureik published the book The Meaning of the Nakba in 1948, a few months after the catastrophe and the peak of the Nakba, his description of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people was accurate – due to what he witnessed personally and through his professional academic tools – being coupled with a resounding catastrophic psychological trauma.
However, examining what has happened to the Palestinian people, during the past 105 years, requires a new definition or at least an updated definition of the Nakba that has prevailed so far. What happened since 1917 onward shows the numerous and ongoing chapters of the Nakba of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration till now, including the decision to partition Palestine in 1947 and the occupation of the second part of Palestine in 1967, the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987, the Oslo Accords and their offshoots between 1993 and 1994 and the second Palestinian Intifada that began in Al-Quds in 2000, as well as the killing of the first official Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004, the repeated wars on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing aggression against the occupied West Bank and Al-Quds, in addition to a set of racist laws against the Palestinian people in western Palestine, specifically the so-called “National Law” of 2018, the continuous killing of the Palestinian people in occupied East Palestine and the arrest of more than a million Palestinian since the Naksa, including women, children and elderly, the expanding settlement that hasn’t stopped and the confiscation of lands, the so-called “Deal of the Century” and Netanyahu and Trump’s annexation scheme, which I called in a previous article the “third armed robbery,” and the economic and “military” occupation siege on the Gaza Strip by air, sea and land,
On December 16, 2016, exactly on the 99th anniversary of the issuance of the Balfour Letter, we launched the Palestine Initiative 100 to re-engage with the beginning of this catastrophe. We were determined to renew encouragement to open the Balfour file since the beginning of the Palestinian people’s Nakba in 1917 and held a publicity evening in London, the capital of the British Empire that issued the Balfour Letter to the Zionist movement. As part of holding Britain to its historical, legal, and moral responsibilities, we demanded three types of steps: apology, compensation, and correction. We believe that canceling any of these steps would be naive, incomplete, or deceptive.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
The Palestinian resistance is now on the rise. With every passing day, its military capabilities are increasing steadily, and pledging more sacrifices and efforts.
From stones to missiles: Evolution of the Palestinian resistance forms and methods
After “Israel” invaded Lebanon in 1982, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was forced into yet another exile. PLO’s forces were stationed in far–away Arab capitals (Yemen and Algeria) and the PLO headquarters were moved to Tunisia. This major development resulted in a general decline in resistance activities inside and outside of occupied Palestine. The shock lasted for a few years during which “Israel”, backed by the US, tried to capitalize on its military achievement to turn it into a political triumph, hence the (Saudi) Arab Initiative for Peace in1982, the rapprochement between the PLO leadership and the Egyptian regime, and the increased activities of the collaborationist “villages’ leagues” in occupied Palestine.
That period of lull and uncertainty ended in 1987, when the first uprising (in Arabic: Intifada) erupted. The heroic military operation against the Israeli army, using gliders, launched from Southern Lebanon, was very inspiring to the Palestinian people under occupation and revived the belief in resistance and revolution. The Intifada was very widespread among the masses, far exceeding the framework of the Palestinian organizations. Popular struggle against occupation; demonstrations, strikes, and closures, was its main feature. Brave young people confronting the heavily-armed Israeli troops and throwing stones at them, attracted the eyes of the world. Stone became the symbol of the Intifada. The Stone Revolution was actually a popular invention, considering the lack of support, the absence of infrastructure for armed struggle, and the state of encirclement imposed by “Israel” on the Palestinian people.
The Dark Nineties
After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf war, the first phase of the Intifada ended. The PLO got engaged in extensive series of public and secretive negotiations with “Israel”, that resulted in the “Oslo Agreement” in 1993 and the formation of the “Palestinian Authority” in the major cities of Gaza and the West Bank. As for the Palestinian struggle and resistance, the nineties were very bad years! The “Palestinian Authority (PA)” joined “Israel” in its battle against anybody who plans for, or even thinks of, fighting the Israeli forces. That happened under the banner of “security coordination” according to the terms of the infamous Oslo Agreement. Life became very difficult, if not impossible, for the real freedom fighters, especially in the environment of fake peace that took over the whole region. Jordan joined in and signed the “Wadi Araba Treaty” with
“Israel”, and with Egypt already having its “Camp David Accords” with “Israel”, the prospects for armed struggle against the Israeli occupation became gloomy. With Iraq defeated and isolated, Libya under sanctions, and Algeria in internal turmoil, Syria was pushed by the Arab League to join the negotiations process in the middle east – sponsored by the Clinton administration in the US (though it maintained its political stance towards the Palestinian cause and did not sign any bilateral deal with “Israel”). The only country in the middle east that maintained its support for the Palestinian right to liberation via armed struggle and remained vocal in its opposition to the so-called “peace process”, was Iran. But Iran at that time was very busy in major internal rebuilding after the eight-year destructive war with Iraq (1980 – 1988). Iran’s focus was on helping the Lebanese resistance to liberate the Southern part of the country – still under Israeli occupation.
Under these circumstances, popular and mass resistance actions were no longer possible, so the Palestinian revolutionaries turned to other methods targeting the Israeli occupation, particularly explosive devices and booby traps, individual attacks, and martyrdom operations carried out by small groups and orchestrated by a few individuals – planners. However, by the end of the nineties, “Israel” – with real contribution from the Palestinian Authority – was able to eliminate the active masterminds of that kind of armed resistance, and things in Palestine appeared as if the Israel-PA partnership is working.
The Second Intifada
In the year 2000, negotiations between PLO’s Yasser Arafat and Israel’s Ehud Barak reached a deadlock and collapsed. Arafat failed to get anything tangible or meaningful in return for his years-long cooperation. In the meantime, scenes came from Southern Lebanon of the humiliating and disgraceful Israeli withdrawal under the strikes of Lebanese armed resistance.
Pragmatic in nature, Yasser Arafat decided to use the armed struggle as a means of pressurizing the Israelis. He had done that repeatedly in the past, while in Lebanon. Arafat hinted to his aides to bypass the security coordination with “Israel” and he relied on the Palestinian guerilla fighters. It didn’t take long for the second Intifada to break out. It quickly turned into a wave of strong and impactful martyrdom operations against “Israel”, the biggest of which was in the town of Netanya where 30 Israelis were killed on 27 March 2002.
Despite the large scale of the Israeli invasion of the PA territories, the massacre in the Jenin refugees camp, and the encirclement of Yasser Arafat in his headquarter, the Palestinian revolutionary spirit didn’t weaken, especially in the Gaza strip. Arafat passed away in 2004 and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, was much less charismatic and powerful. In 2005, “Israel” came to the conclusion that the Gaza strip was a “lost cause” and decided to unilaterally withdraw its forces from there. The net result of these developments was a stronger presence of the armed resistance organizations in Gaza, particularly Al-Qassam group, the military wing of the (Islamic) Hamas movement, which started working almost openly.
Build up of Palestinian Military Capabilities
2007 was a landmark. Hamas movement managed to expel the security apparatus of the PA and imposed its control all over the Gaza strip. Since then, the “golden era” of the armed Palestinian resistance began. The fighting groups, particularly Al-Qassam and “Saraya Al-Quds”, were inspired by the Hezbollah struggle against “Israel” in Lebanon, and gradually started moving in the direction of military professionalism, with brigades and hierarchy. They quickly established links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, headed by Hajj Qassem Soleimani, and to Hezbollah in Lebanon. For its part, “Israel” traced and thwarted several attempts to stop smuggling weapons from Iran to Gaza via the Red Sea, Sudan and Sinai. It also assassinated Hamas’ military wing liaison officer, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai. Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, in turn, arrested the Hezbollah commander, Sami Shehab, in charge of channeling military aid to Gaza in 2009. Despite all that, and the very complicated logistics situation, it was evident that significant technical and financial support did reach Gaza and enabled the resistance movements to start with a “local production” program for military tools and means, though simple and limited.
With the repeated Israeli attacks and encounters, the Palestinian resistance movements gained substantial military experience and became more effective. In 2014, the Palestinian armed resistance launched rockets that landed inside “Israel”, though with limited precision and range. “Israel” was getting very worried about the developments in Gaza and tried its best to eliminate the scientific and qualified personnel of the resistance in Gaza. “Israel” actually managed to assassinate senior leaders from the Palestinian military wings responsible in particular for the missiles programs, notably among them was Baha’ Abul Atta of Saraya Al-Quds, and before him Ahmad Al-Ja’abari, the deputy commander of Al-Qassam brigades. But the momentum gained by the resistance movements in Gaza didn’t vanish. On the contrary, military wings became even stronger and their work became systematic – not dependent on specific persons. When the Americans assassinated Hajj Qassem Suleimani early in 2020, the role that he played in building the Palestinian military capabilities came into public. The leaders of all armed wings of the Palestinian movements spoke very warmly of him and expressed their gratitude for his help and leadership. On the Palestinian front, Hajj Qassem cared for one thing only: unity against the Zionist entity (Israel). He whole-heartedly believed that Zionist injustice in Palestine will have to come to an end, sooner or later.
During Saif Al-Quds Battle
In the last encounter of 2021, known as Saif Al-Quds, the much-improved military capabilities of the Palestinian military wings came into display. Within a few days, thousands of missiles were successfully launched from Gaza and reached their targets deep inside “Israel”. The Palestinian movements also formed a joint operation and command room to coordinate activities and responses. The Israeli army, and its “Iron Dome” defense system, failed to down the Palestinian rockets. “Israel” didn’t dare to carry out ground operations in Gaza and was no longer able to sustain prolonged military operations due to the internal turmoil caused by the Palestinian missiles which practically “froze” the Israeli economy for days. A state of deterrence was established with “Israel” as if it were between two armies. That was a remarkable success for the Palestinian resistance. The days when the Israeli army was able to wander in Gaza without expecting a damaging response were long gone. The Palestinian resistance was able to impose new realities on the ground. It’s a new era, that of the “missile” resistance. No more knives or stones throwing.
The Palestinian resistance is now on the rise. With every passing day, its military capabilities are increasing steadily, and pledging more sacrifices and efforts. The new generation in Palestine is more determined than ever before to liberate its country. And it’s not over yet.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Palestinians in Gaza commemorate the assassination of Palestinian leader Khalil al-Wazir by Israeli forces in 1988. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)
Palestinians in Gaza take part in a rally on Saturday, April 16, marking the 34th anniversary of the assassination of Palestinian leader Khalil al-Wazir by Israeli forces in Tunisia.
Al-Wazir, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Jihad, was killed on April 16, 1988. Israel only admitted to his assassination in 2012, almost 25 years later.
Al-Wazir was a Palestinian leader and co-founder of the political party Fatah.
During his career, he was a member of the Palestine National Council, the Central Council of the PLO and the Higher Military Council of the Palestinian Revolution and deputy to the General Commander of the forces of the Palestinian Revolution.
He was accused by Israel of being one of the main architects of the first popular Palestinian Intifada of 1987, which he supported until Israeli military unit Sayeret Matkal, led by Major Moshe Yaalon (who later became Minister of Defense), assassinated him at his house in the Sidi Bou Said neighborhood in Tunis.
(All Photos: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)
نبّهت السلطة، تل أبيب، إلى تصاعد الدعوات إلى التظاهر والاشتباك في مختلف مناطق الضفة (أ ف ب )
خلافاً لما تُروّج له رسمياً، بدأت السلطة الفلسطينية، فعلياً، التعاون مع إسرائيل من أجل إيجاد الأسرى الستّة المتحرّرين من «جلبوع»، مدفوعةً بخشية هستيرية من انفجار الأوضاع في الضفة بسبب هذه القضية، وهو ما جعلها «تشترط» على تل أبيب الإحجام عن تصفية الأسرى عند العثور عليهم، في حال تَحقّق ذلكغزة | لا تزال الخشية من تجدّد الاحتجاجات الشعبية في الضفة الغربية المحتلة وتصاعدها انطلاقاً من قضية الأسرى الستّة المتحرّرين من معتقل جلبوع، تؤرّق قيادة السلطة الفلسطينية التي وافقت أخيراً على طلب إسرائيل التعاون معها في البحث عن الأسرى. وبحسب مصدر قيادي في السلطة تحدّث إلى «الأخبار»، فإن نقاشاً دار أوّل من أمس بين مسؤولين في «اللجنة المركزية لحركة فتح»، ومسؤولين أمنيين في السلطة، أفضى إلى التوافق على مساعدة تل أبيب في الوصول إلى المحرَّرين، من أجل إنهاء هذا الملفّ الذي يُخشى تطوّره شعبياً وميدانياً، بما لا يخدم موقف رام الله، الساعية إلى تهدئة الوضع لاستكمال مشروع «السلام الاقتصادي» الذي انطلق أخيراً. وجاءت موافقة السلطة على التعاون مقرونة باشتراط ألّا تتمّ تصفية الأسرى، وأن يُكتفى باعتقالهم، بالإضافة إلى تهدئة الأوضاع في السجون بالنظر إلى أن التصعيد الإسرائيلي هناك بدأ يفعل فعله في إثارة الشارع الفلسطيني. وكانت دولة الاحتلال وافقت على طلب تَقدّم به رئيس السلطة، محمود عباس، خلال لقائه وزير الأمن الإسرائيلي، بيني غانتس، قبل أسبوعين، بالإفراج عن بعض الأسرى الفلسطينيين بهدف إعادة تعزيز مكانة السلطة.
وعلى الأرض، بدأت بالفعل جلسات التنسيق بين الاحتلال والأجهزة الأمنية للسلطة التي حذرت في لقاء عُقد أوّل من أمس في الضفة بين مسؤول منها ومسؤولين في ما يُسمّى «الإدارة المدنية» في جيش الاحتلال، من اغتيال الأسرى الستّة لأن ذلك قد يؤدّي إلى تفجّر الأوضاع في الضفة، على اعتبار أن قضيّتهم تمسّ عوائل وأوساطاً واسعة هناك، منبّهة إلى تصاعد الدعوات إلى التظاهر والاشتباك مع العدو في مختلف المناطق. وتوافَق تحذير السلطة مع خشية مقابلة لدى جيش الاحتلال وأجهزة أمنه من تدهور الأوضاع في الضفة، في ظلّ تنامي التفاعل الشعبي مع المحرَّرين، واتّخاذ عمليتهم «أبعاداً عالمية وإقليمية»، بحسب ما أوردته إذاعة الجيش الإسرائيلي. وعلى رغم نفي رام الله البدء في مساعدة تل أبيب للوصول إلى الأسرى، كشفت قناة «كان» العبرية أن غانتس طلب من السلطة التعاون، وهو ما وافقت عليه الأخيرة خشية إجراءات وعقوبات من قِبَل الحكومة الإسرائيلية ضدّها في حال عدم استجابتها، ولذا أبلغ وزير الشؤون المدنية، حسين الشيخ، غانتس، أن «السلطة ستبذل جهودها ضمن العمل المشترك».
بالتوازي مع ذلك، وفيما أبدت دولة الاحتلال انزعاجها من دعوة أطراف داخل حركة «فتح» إلى مسيرات مؤيّدة لأسرى «حركة الجهاد الإسلامي» المحرَّرين، تواصلت في القدس والضفة التحرّكات الشعبية المسانِدة لهم والتي قابلها جيش العدو بالقمع وإطلاق الرصاص الحيّ والمطّاطي والغاز المسيل للدموع على المشاركين فيها، ما أدّى إلى إصابة المئات منهم، فيما اندلعت مواجهات في مدن القدس ورام الله ونابلس وجنين، وذلك خلال تظاهرات رافضة للإجراءات الانتقامية الإسرائيلية بحق الأسرى. واعترف جيش الاحتلال بتعرّض قواته في رام الله وجنين ونابلس لعمليات إطلاق نار من دون وقوع إصابات، في وقت تواصلت فيه عمليات البحث عن المحرَّرين في جنين والمناطق القريبة منها. وكانت سلطات العدو قرّرت الدفع بـ3 كتائب قتالية و7 سرايا من الجيش، لمساعدة الشرطة في البحث.
دعت فصائل فلسطينية، اليوم، إلى اعتبار الجمعة المقبل «يوم غضب» ضد الاحتلال الإسرائيلي، بسبب انتهاكاته بحق الأسرى في السجون بعد عملية فرار ستة أسرى من سجن «جلبوع» شديد التحصين.
وقال عضو اللجنة التنفيذية لمنظمة التحرير، واصل أبو يوسف، إنه تم التوافق بين جميع الفصائل والقوى، على اعتبار الجمعة «يوم غضب» ومواجهة من الاحتلال الإسرائيلي على نقاط التماس، «دعما للأسرى ورفضاً لسياسة التضييق والانتهاكات الإسرائيلية بحقهم».
وفي تصريح نقلته وكالة «الأناضول» للأنباء عن منسّق شؤون الفصائل الفلسطينية، أبو يوسف، قال الأخير إن «المطلوب هو التفاف شعبي كبير في كافة المحافظات، بما فيها مدينة القدس، وقطاع غزة، نصرةً للأسرى». وتابع: «قضية الأسرى توحّد الشعب الفلسطيني في كافة مناطق تواجده».
وندد أبو يوسف بالممارسات الإسرائيلية بحقّ الأسرى داخل السجون، وتجاه عائلات المعتقلين الفارّين، مذكّراً بأن «القيادة الفلسطينية تُجري اتصالات مع جهات دولية ومؤسسات ومنظمات حقوق الإنسان، لوقف الانتهاكات والإجراءات الإسرائيلية بحق الأسرى».
يتوهّم كثير من المسؤولين في العالم والمنطقة أن الملفات التي يقومون بنقاشها، والسياسات التي يتولون رسمها هي ما يحدد إيقاع الأحداث المقبلة، فمنهم من يعتبر العودة إلى التفاوض حول الملف النووي الإيراني الإشارة الأهم لرسم طريق الاستقرار، ومنهم يعتبر أن تفاهماً روسياً أميركياً حول سورية قد يكون التطور الذي يحكم ما عداه، ومنهم من يعطي الأولوية للحوار الجاري بين السعودية وإيران بصفته المدخل الأبرز لتغيير وجهة العلاقات السياسية وعبرها إيقاع الأحداث في المنطقة، ومنهم من ينظر لما سيلي قمة بغداد على مسار العلاقات العربية والإقليمية مع سورية باعتبارها التحول المعاكس للمسار الذي بدأ قبل عشر سنوات وتسبّب بالاضطرابات التي شهدتها المنطقة، فيغلق المسار ويعكس الاتجاه نحو استعادة التوازن والاستقرار.
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كلّ ذلك مهمّ بالتأكيد لكنه يتجاهل حقيقة وجود مسار انفجاري قادم له عنوان واحد هو فلسطين، ولا يوجد ما يستطيع وقفه، وفي حال حدوثه فلا شيء سيبقى على حاله في المنطقة، والانفجار في فلسطين لا يبدو مساراً للمستقبل البعيد ولا المتوسط بل للمستقبل القريب والقريب جداً، فحال الاحتقان ترتفع كل يوم، وما يجري في انتفاضة الأسرى والتفاعل الشعبي معها قد يكون شرارة الانتفاضة المقبلة، ولا يقابلها على مستوى الإجراءات والسياسات في كيان الاحتلال إلا ما يزيد فرص الاشتعال، حيث قيادة الكيان تنطلق في سلوكها ومواقفها من انسداد سياسي وعجز عسكري يضعانها في خانة السعي لاسترضاء المستوطنين ومجموعات التطرف التي تحوّلت منذ سنوات إلى قلب صناعة السياسة وتوازنات الانتخابات في الكيان، مع ضمور وتراجع كل الجماعات الأخرى، بينما على المقابل الفلسطيني فلا ثقة بكلّ حديث عن التفاوض، ولا قبول لكل مفاعيل التنسيق الأمني، وغضب وسخط على سلوك قيادات السلطة متصاعد منذ اغتيال الناشط نزار بنات، ويقين بأنّ المواجهة هي الوصفة الوحيدة لمنع العدوان وتخفيف ثقل قبضة الاحتلال، منذ نتائج معركة سيف القدس وما ظهرته من موازين للردع، واعتقاد بأن اللحظة الدولية المتميزة بالتراجع الأميركي فرصة لا يجب تفويتها، خصوصاً بعد الانسحاب من أفغانستان، والمناخ الإقليمي يسجل صعوداً مؤكداً لصالح محور المقاومة، خصوصاً بعد التأكيدات التي قدّمتها تجربة سفن المقاومة لفك الحصار والتراجع الأميركي- «الإسرائيلي» أمامها.
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لحظة الانفجار الآتية حكماً ستتكفل بصناعة اصطفافات تغير وجهة كلّ ما يمكن فعله لصناعة الاستقرار في الملفات التي يعتقد المسؤولون الحكوميون أنها بوابات السيطرة على توترات المنطقة، فلا العودة إلى الاتفاق النووي بين أميركا وإيران، ولا عودة سورية إلى الجامعة العربية، ولا علاقات جيدة بين السعودية وإيران، أو بين واشنطن وموسكو، ستحول دون انقسام المنطقة والعالم حول فلسطين، فعلى الأقلّ لن تستطيع واشنطن ترك تل أبيب تتلقى الصفعات المؤلمة وحيدة، وليس وارداً بالنسبة لطهران ودمشق مجرد التفكير بالمساومة على اللحظة التاريخية الموعودة لنهوض فلسطيني قادم، والإيقاع الذي سيفرضه الحدث الفلسطيني هو الذي يفسّر التباطؤ في الخطوات المطلوبة في المسارات التقليدية نحو الاستقرار، ذلك أن واشنطن وحلفاءها يتساءلون عما إذا كان كلّ انفتاح وتقدم في العلاقات مع محور المقاومة سيتحوّل إلى جوائز مجانية إذا انفجر المشهد الفلسطيني، وليس خافياً حجم السعي لمحاولات مقايضة أيّ تقدم في مسارات الانفتاح السياسي بالحصول على ضمانات تتصل بأمن كيان الاحتلال، بينما لا يمكن تفسير ثبات وتشدّد حكومات وقوى محور المقاومة إلا من باب الحرص على التمسك بإيصال هذه الرسائل للداخل الفلسطيني بأن فلسطين ستبقى البوصلة التي تحدد الخيارات، والتي لا تقبل المساومة.
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قد تتحرّك بعض المسارات السياسية ولكن الأرجح أن بلوغها نهايات حاسمة قد لا يكون متاحاً من بوابة مفاجأة فلسطينية كبرى مقبلة، وربما تكون المنطقة وتوازناتها بحاجة لجولة مواجهة تعيد ترسيم موازين القوى كمدخل للتفاوض المقبل بعدها وليس قبلها.
“What they need to do is they need to occupy the bases of the Canadian Armed Forces! They need to occupy the military hardware factories! They need to occupy their courts and stopthe shipping of these weapons to apartheid Israel! Anything less than that will not actually cleanse them from the blood on their hands as Canadians!”
– Laith Marouf, from this week’s interview
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
As of 2:00 am on May 21 by the Israel-Palestine hour this morning, or 7:00pm EDT on Thursday, the two sides of the disputing rivals had ceased hostilities – at least for the time being.[1]
As of 2:00 am on May 21 by the Israel-Palestine hour this morning, or 7:00pm EDT on Thursday, the two sides of the disputing rivals had ceased hostilities – at least for the time being.[1]
By the standard account, the bitter eruption rose up on May 6 when Palestinians rose up in protest to a Supreme Court of Israel ruling on the matter of evicting six Palestinian families from their housing units in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. This was followed the next day by Israeli police storming the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam and firing stun grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas at the worshippers in attendance.
Then on May 10, Hamas, the militant force governing over Gaza, wanted Israeli security forces removed from Sheikh Jarrah and the Temple Mount complex, location of the holiest site in Judaism which also housed Al-Aqsa Mosque. When Israel refused they fired rockets on targets in Israel. What followed was a campaign of airstrikes by Israel.
The following clip recorded by Middle East Eye is just a sample of what the last two weeks were like:
“I don’t know what to do.”
A 10-year-old Palestinian girl breaks down while talking to MEE after Israeli air strikes destroyed her neighbour’s house, killing 8 children and 2 women#Gaza#Palestine#Israelpic.twitter.com/jnZx8wruaX
Regrettably, violence in the region tends to spring up from time to time. And absent being held to account for past crimes by the UN, Washington, or really anyone, Israel will most likely continue on setting up more shelters on occupied land, and besieging the beleaguered Gaza, and ignoring the human rights of their Palestinian neighbours frankly at levels well beyond the harsh treatment of Blacks in modern day America.
But something is a little different this time. Despite Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ technology taking out as many as 90 percent of rockets, some projectiles, cruise missiles no less, are punching through and hitting Israel stronger than ever. The Palestinians in Israel are themselves taking action in the streets, in businesses, and synagogues. And even in the United States, while the President continues to disappoint with his tepid remarks about the right of Israel to defend itself, sharp and popular critics in Congress such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are speaking out loudly against continuing to arm Israel despite its ongoing abuses against Palestinians.
Do these and other unique scenarios marking this 11 day period of terror mean things will be different now or in the long term? This is the question running through this Global Research News Hour and its sixty minute broadcast.
On the show in our first half hour, Richard Falk, professor emeritus of law at Princeton university talks to listeners highlighting some of the less talked about elements of the past month, including how it was incited by right wing settlers and during the Islamic holy period known as Ramadan. He also discussed attacks on media and the prospects for victory for Palestinians in the long term.
Following that, we hear from Richard Silverstein, a progressive blogger focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He will dwell on the growth in Hamas’ arsenal, the growth of Palestinian solidarity in Israel, and the potential ability of the International Criminal Court to wound Israel’s prospects.
Finally, Palestine activist and commentator Laith Marouf joins us again to dwell on the motives of the new Palestinian resistance, the prospects for the conflict to intensify, and the goals of Canadians wishing to show their solidarity with the damaged but determined victims of 73 years of Israeli confrontation.
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years and holds the title of professor emeritus. In 2008 he was also appointed by the UN to serve a six-year term as the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. He contributes regularly to Global Research.
Richard Silverstein is a political writer and commentator. Since 2003 he has authored the progressive Jewish blog Tikun Olam, which focuses on exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. He contributes regularly to Middle East Eye, and has contributed in the past to Truthout, Alternet, Haaretz, Mint Press News, Jewish Forward, Los Angeles Times, Comment Is Free and Al Jazeera English.
Laith Marouf is a long time multimedia consultant and producer and currently serves as Senior Consultant at the Community Media Advocacy Centre (www.cmacentre.org) and the coordinator of ICTV, in Canada (www.tele1.ca). Laith derives much of his understanding of Middle Eastern Affairs from his ancestral background of being both of Palestinian and of Syrian extraction. He is currently based in Beirut.
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.
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In an opinion piece published by the ‘Jerusalem Post’, former Zionist Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote that the events that have transpired in occupied al-Quds these last few days are not a coincidental occurrence that will disappear so quickly.
“We are on the brink of a violent awakening that could intensify and lead to violence on our streets. These clashes could end in a significant number of casualties,” according to Olmert.
The former Zionist premier cited the recent days to conclude that new circumstances have arisen, which could drag ‘Israel’ into a new round of ‘violent’ activity, which he described as ‘terrorist’, and bloodshed on both sides.
The first Palestinian Intifada was a sustained series of Palestinian protests and riots in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the ‘Israeli’-occupied territories. The protests were against the Zionist occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that had begun twenty years prior, in 1967. The intifada lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, with the signing of the so-called ‘Oslo Accords.’
The intifada began on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an ‘Israeli’ occupation force truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers.
The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, started in September 2000, after then Zionist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a highly provocative visit to the holy al-Aqsa Mosque. The visit sparked protests and riots which the occupation police put down with rubber bullets and tear gas.
سُمّي بالرجل الثاني للثورة الفلسطينية ونائب القائد العام لقوات العاصفة، وجياب الثورة الفلسطينية لشدة شباهته بجياب فيتنام، لكننا كما عرفناه في اللحظات الاستثنائية على امتداد سنوات العمل الفدائي فهو الرجل الطاهر وقاهر الجنرالات كللاً ومللاً وإحباطاً ويأساً وقنوطاً…!
الرجل المهذّب والمؤدَّب والخجول الذي يعتني بهندامه ويحرص على تمشيط شعره حتى وهو ذاهب الى معسكر التدريب واهدأ رجال الثورة على الإطلاق وأكثرهم وداعة ووسامة وخُلُقاً في كل أيام السنة حتى لتظنه أبعد ما يكون عن الحرب والسلاح…!لكنه هو نفسه صاحب الروح العاصفة التي تنتفض من داخله وسرعان ما يظهر لك بركاناً ثائراً يمتلئ دفعاً وعنفواناً وروحاً حربية لا تهدأ ولا تكل ولا تمل بعد ثوانٍ من جلوسك إليه..
شخصيته الهادئة هذه لا تقوى على السكينة بعد دقائق من الحوار معه إذ سرعان ما يشي لك بأن كل كيانه يحنّ للاشتباك مع العدو كما يحن الطفل لحليب أمه، وتدفعه المشاعر الجيّاشة للانتقال إلى فلسطين المستولية على وجوده أساً كان المكان أو الزمان الذي تواجد فيهما وهو الذي تنقل في كل الساحات حاملاً هموم شعب الجبّارين الحافلة بالمفاجآت والمتغيّرات…!
وقد تكثّفت كل هذه السمات لدى قائد الفدائيّين الشعبيّ الذي لم يستقرّ له قرار، بطريقة حوّلته عملياً إلى غرفة عمليات متنقلة ومتحرّكة خاصة بعد أن تسلّم، مسؤولية القطاع الغربي – أي فلسطين المحتلة – وهي التسمية التي تعود الى حقبة تمركز الفدائيين الفلسطينيين في الاردن، حيث كانت الجبهة مع العدو مقسمةً الى ثلاثة قواطع، هي: القطاع الشمالي والقطاع الأوسط والقطاع الجنوبي.
فمن المعروف أن الشهيد أبا جهاد كان قد عكف منذ توليه هذه المسؤولية خلفاً للشهيد كمال عدوان، على إحداث انقلاب استراتيجيّ في مفهوم الحرب الشعبية طويلة الأمد وتطويرها وتعميقها، وهي الحرب التي كانت تمارسها قوات الثورة الفلسطينية، منذ انطلاق الثورة بتاريخ 1/1/1965.
وقد تمثلت الفكرة المركزية، لديه، في تطوير هذا المفهوم، في إيجاد أو بناء القاعدة الجماهيرية القادرة على تحويل هذه الفكرة (فكرة الانقلاب الاستراتيجي) الى خطوات عملية تتبلور في كل إنسان فلسطيني، بحيث تتحول شخصية الواحد من السكان الى قوة فاعلة في مواجهة العدو وإضعاف سيطرة الغاصب والمحتل العسكرية على الأرض التي يحتلها، من خلال استنزافه الدائم في معركة لا يمكن له أن ينتصر فيها حتى صارت عقيدة عمله الكفاحية الفدائية تقول: أنا الفلسطيني أشتبك إذن أن موجود.
بدأ أبو جهاد بإعادة هيكلة تنظيم حركة فتح وإنشاء أطر جديدة لهذا التنظيم، كحركة الشبيبة (الفتحاوية)، التي بدأت تنشط في الثانويات والجامعات داخل الأرض المحتلة، تمهيداً لإشراك كل جماهير الشعب الفلسطيني في الأرض المحتلة في استنزاف جيش العدو ومشاغلته والمشاغبة عليه في كل وقت وحين.
وبالتوازي مع بناء التنظيم والخلايا الفدائية المسلحة، داخل فلسطين المحتلة، واصل الجنرال أبو جهاد من موقعه كنائب القائد العام لقوات الثورة الفلسطينية، إلى بناء وتطوير الوحدات القتالية الفدائية القادرة على اختراق إجراءات العدو الأمنية والوصول الى عمق تشكيلات العدو وبنيانه وتنفيذ عمليات فدائية كبرى ضد قواته ومنشآته في فلسطين المحتلة.
ولعل من المفيد في ذكرى استشهاده الثالثة والثلاثين 16 – 4 – 1988 الإضاءة على بعض تلك العمليات الفدائية الكبيرة، التي شكلت ضربات موجعةً جداً للعدو والتي قلبت معادلة الصراع معه، ومن بينها العمليات التالية:
عملية فندق سافوي في تل أبيب، والتي نفّذتها قوة فدائية، قوامها ثمانية فدائيين، بتاريخ 6/3/1975، حيث سيطرت على الفندق، بعدما لم تتمكن من الوصول الى وزارة الدفاع الإسرائيلية والسيطرة عليها، حسب الخطة الأساسية للعملية. حضر إلى مكان العملية كلّ من رئيس وزراء العدو آنذاك، اسحق رابين، ووزير حربه، شمعون بيرس، ورئيس أركان جيشه، الجنرال مردخاي غور، وقاموا بالإشراف شخصياً على محاولات القوات الخاصة الإسرائيلية لاقتحام الفندق وقتل الفدائيين الفلسطينيين، حيث حاولت هذه القوات مرة أولى وثانية وفشلت فيهما، مما جعلها تقوم بقصف الفندق بمدفعيّة الدبابات وتنفيذ عملية إنزال قوات محمولة على سطح الفندق والاشتباك من جديد مع المجموعة الفدائية، التي قاتلت ببسالة حتى نفاد ذخيرتها، واستشهاد سبعةً من أفرادها ووقع الثامن أسيراً بعد إصابته بجراح، في ما قُتل من قوات العدو المهاجمة 56 عنصراً وأصيب ما يربو على 100 جندي بجراح مختلفة، بينهم العقيد عوزي يائيري، ضابط الاستخبارات العسكرية الإسرائيلية، الذي وضع خطة اغتيال القادة الفلسطينيين الثلاثة، كمال عدوان وأبو يوسف النجار وكمال ناصر في بيروت بتاريخ 10/4/1973، والذي شارك في تنفيذ العملية على الأرض أيضاً.
عملية الساحل، بقيادة الفدائية دلال المغربي، والتي تمّ تنفيذها بتاريخ 11/3/1978 وأطلق عليها اسم: عملية الشهيد كمال عدوان، حيث وصلت تلك القوة إلى السواحل الفلسطينية، على متن باخرة تجارية كانت تحمل الزوارق المطاطية التي استخدمها الفدائيّون في الوصول من نقطة انفصالهم عن الباخرة الأم حتى وصولهم إلى ارض فلسطين، شمال تل أبيب، وقيامهم بالسيطرة على عدة حافلات عسكرية إسرائيلية واشتبكوا مع دوريات العدو، التي بدأت مطاردتهم فوراً، الى أن وصلت الحافلات الى منطقة هرتسيليا حيث قامت قوات خاصة إسرائيلية بالهجوم من الجو والبر على الحافلات التي كان يستقلها الفدائيون مع الرهائن الصهاينة.
وقد اشتبك الفدائيّون الفلسطينيون، لمدة تزيد على الساعتين، مع القوات الخاصة والمروحيات العسكرية الإسرائيلية، التي كانت تساند وحدات العدو، وتطلق النار من الجو على الفدائيين، الذين استشهدوا جميعاً باستثناء واحد منهم وقع في الأسر بعد أن نفدت ذخيرته. أما خسائر العدو فقد وصلت إلى 79 قتيلاً بالإضافة الى ما يزيد على 123 جريحًا جرى إخلاؤهم جواً من أرض المعركة.
علماً أن الجيش الصهيوني قد بدأ بعمليات التمهيد الناري، لشنّ هجوم، واسع على قواعد الفدائيين في جنوب لبنان، اذ عمدت مدفعية العدو بفتح نيرانها على طول الحدود اللبنانية مع فلسطين المحتلة، بينما بدأ الطيران الحربي المعادي، عند الساعة الواحدة من فجر 15-3-1978 بتنفيذ غارات جوية كثيفة على أهداف للقوات المشتركة، اللبنانية الفلسطينية، في جنوب لبنان وجنوب العاصمة بيروت، وأتبع ذلك بعمليات إنزال جوي في منطقة العزية/ قضاء صور، وبدأ اجتياحه البري لجنوب لبنان في عملية عسكرية واسعة النطاق أسماها العدو: عملية الليطاني. ولا يخفى على أحد طبعاً أن العملية كان مخططاًلها مسبقاً وبانتظار التنفيذ فقط، إذ لا يعقل أن يجري التخطيط لعملية عسكرية واسعة النطاق وتحريك قوات برية وبحرية وجوية كبيرة خلال ثلاثة أيام فقط.
محاولة الهجوم البحري على ميناء ايلات سنة 1985. وهي عملية تم خلالها تجهيز باخرة، في ميناء من موانئ إحدى الدول العربية، لتنفيذ عملية بحريّة لتدمير ميناء إيلات عن بكرة أبيه وإخراجه من الخدمة لسنوات طويلة، حيث تم تدريب مجموعة من الضفادع البشرية الفلسطينية على قيادة السفينة ثم تم تحميلها بمئات الأطنان من المواد المتفجرة، كي يتم تفجيرها عند دخول الباخرة الى الميناء، بالتزامن مع قصف صاروخيّ، بمئة وستين صاروخ غراد، لمنطقة الميناء، كان يفترض أن ينفذ من منطقة العقبة الأردنية المقابلة لإيلات، لكن تآمر جهاز مخابرات إحدى الدول العربية، المشاطئة لخليج إيلات، ورصدها للسفينة المسلحة ونقل معلومات حولها للعدو، قد أفشل العملية، حيث بادر العدو إلى مهاجمة السفينة على مدخل خليج العقبة واشتبكت معه المجموعة الفدائية لحوالي ساعة ونصف. وقد أسفرت العملية عن استشهاد المجموعة الفدائية المكونة من تسعة مقاتلين وإيقاع عدد من القتلى والجرحى بين جنود العدو.
أما كبرى ثمار جهود الشهيد أبو جهاد المتواصلة لإحداث انقلاب استراتيجي، في المواجهة مع العدو الصهيوني، فقد نضجت في شهر 12/1987 عندما انفجرت الانتفاضة الشعبية الفلسطينية، التي شاركت فيها جماهير الشعب بكل فئاتها وفي كل المناطق المحتلة، في الضفة والقطاع وحتى تلك المحتلة عام 1948 والتي خلدت في التاريخ باسم انتفاضة الحجارة. حيث قام الشهيد أبو جهاد، عبر القيادة الوطنية الموحدة للانتفاضة التي شكلها ورعاها داخل فلسطين المحتلة، بمتابعة كافة التفاصيل الميدانية والعملياتية، بما في ذلك عمليات الإمداد والتمويل والدعم الإعلامي والسياسي والديبلوماسي، على امتداد العالم. حيث قام بإنشاء غرف عمليات قيادة وسيطرة في اكثر من دولة في العالم لمتابعة أدق تفاصيل الانتفاضة بهدف تطويرها ودفعها الى الأمام.
نجح الشهيد أبو جهاد اذاً، في جعل المواجهة مع العدو حرباً شعبية طويلة الأمد، استمرت لسنوات بعد استشهاده، سنة 1988. أي أنه أحدث تحولات استراتيجية عبر انخراط كل جماهير الشعب في العمل الوطني المباشر في الميدان، وإن باستخدام أبسط وسيلة اشتباك ألا وهي الحجارة فق ط.كما أنه نجح، من خلال هذه الانتفاضة بفرض حرب استنزاف طويلة الأمد على جيش العدو الصهيوني، الذي اضطر الى نشر ثلاث فرق كاملة، في الضفة والقطاع، محاولاً قمع الانتفاضة وإخمادها من دون جدوى.
وبعد هذا النجاح الهائل، في إشراك الشعب بأكمله في مقاومة الاحتلال، تابع الشهيد أبو جهاد جهوده لتعزيز الصمود الشعبي وتوجيه المزيد من الضربات العسكرية الموجعة للعدو، تعزيزاً للشعب الثائر ولممارسة المزيد من الضغط على قادة العدو، رئيس الوزراء اسحق شامير ووزير دفاعه اسحق رابين ورئيس الأركان الصهيوني دان شومرون، الذين أمعنوا في تكسير عظام الفلسطينيين وفشلوا في إخماد ثورتهم.
وفي هذا الإطار قام الشهيد أبو جهاد، بوضع خطة لتوجيه ضربة عسكرية استراتيجية، للعدو الصهيوني، من خلال مهاجمة مفاعل ديمونا النووي الإسرائيلي لتكون بمثابة قوة ضاربة في طليعة المواجهة، حيث تمّ تدريب وتجهيز ثلاثة من الفدائيين الفلسطينيين ونقلهم إلى داخل الأرض المحتلة بعد عملية رصد واستطلاع دقيقة لمحيط المفاعل والإجراءات الأمنية الإسرائيلية، المتبعة لحمايته.
وفي صباح يوم 7/3/1988 تمكّن الفدائيون الثلاثة من الوصول الى نقطة، تبعد سبعة كيلومترات فقط عن مركز المفاعل، وقاموا بالسيطرة على حافلة تحمل ضباطاً وخبراء نوويين إسرائيليين وانطلقوا بها الى مركز المفاعل. وعلى الفور تمّ تفعيل اجراءات التأمين وقامت المروحيّات العسكرية الإسرائيلية بمحاصرة الحافلة ومن على متنها بالنيران ثم قاموا بإنزال قوة صهيونيّة مجوقلة عند نقطة اشتباك قريبة من الحافلة. وقد بادر الفدائيون قوات العدو بوابل من النيران واشتبكوا مع قوات العدو لمدة تزيد عن الساعة إلى أن نفدت ذخيرتهم واستشهدوا جميعاً.
كانت تلك هي المرة الأولى التي يتخذ فيها قائد عربيّ قراراً بالهجوم المباشر على هذا الموقع الإسرائيلي الحصين والاستراتيجي وهو ما اعتبرته القيادة العسكرية والسياسية الإسرائيليتان تجاوزاً خطيراً لكل الخطوط الحمر، الأمر الذي أدى بها الى اتخاذ قرار باغتيال الشهيد خليل الوزير / أبو جهاد.
وقد تم تنفيذ عملية الاغتيال في ضواحي العاصمة التونسية، تونس، حيث تم إنزال القوة المكلفة بعملية الاغتيال، وبتواطؤ من أجهزة نظام الرئيس التونسي السابق زين العابدين بن علي، بحراً على شاطئ مدينة المرسى التونسية التي تبعد بضعة كيلومترات فقط عن مقر قيادة الشهيد ابو جهاد. تسللت تلك القوة الى الموقع وقامت باغتيال الحراس الليليين للموقع واقتحمت المبنى، حيث يقيم الشهيد أبو جهاد، والذي تصدّى لجنود العدو بما يملك من أسلحة نارية واشتبك معهم داخل المقر الى أن نفدت ذخيرته وارتقى شهيداً، بعد أن أصيب بثلاث وسبعين رصاصة معادية. علماً أن العقل الذي خطط للعملية وقادها، من على متن طائرة قيادة عسكرية إسرائيلية، كانت تحلق على بعد مئتي كيلو متر شمال مكان العملية، هو الجنرال ايهود باراك، الذي تولى لاحقاً وزارة الدفاع ثم رئاسة الوزراء في كيان العدو.
وعلى الرغم من الخسارة الكبيرة التي مُني بها الشعب الفلسطيني، بشهادة مؤسس وقائد انتفاضة الحجارة الفلسطينية أبو جهاد، إلا ان هذا الشعب قد واصل انتفاضته، بقيادة القائد العام لقوات الثورة الفلسطينية، الأخ الشهيد ابو عمار، الذي قاد هذا الشعب الى عودة جزئيّة الى الوطن المحتل، لا بل الى إقامة سلطة وطنية فلسطينية، مرغماً العدو الصهيونيّ على التفاوض مع قيادة هذا الشعب، ممثلاً بمنظمة التحرير الفلسطينية رغم ما شاب هذه العملية التفاوضية من أخطاء فادحة وعثرات، لكن ما يُكتب لأبي جهاد ومقولته الثورية أنا اشتبك إذن أنا موجود أنه هو مَن أسس عملياً لاعتراف العدو بوجود الشعب الفلسطيني لعقود طويلة من الزمن. الأمر الذي شكل محطة هامة من محطات نضال الشعب الفلسطيني لتحرير وطنه فلسطين وإقامة دولته الوطنية المستقلة على أرضه كل أرضه، طال الزمان أم قصُر.
If imprisoned Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouti, becomes the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the status quo will change substantially. For Israel, as well as for the current PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, such a scenario is more dangerous than another strong Hamas showing in the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary elections.
The long-delayed elections, now scheduled for May 22 and July 31 respectively, will not only represent a watershed moment for the fractured Palestinian body politic, but also for the Fatah Movement which has dominated the PA since its inception in 1994. The once-revolutionary Movement has become a shell of its former self under the leadership of Abbas, whose only claim to legitimacy was a poorly contested election in January 2005, following the death of former Fatah leader and PA President, Yasser Arafat.
Though his mandate expired in January 2009, Abbas continued to ‘lead’ Palestinians. Corruption and nepotism increased significantly during his tenure and, not only did he fail to secure an independent Palestinian State, but the Israeli military occupation and illegal settlements have deepened and grown exponentially.
Abbas’ rivals from within the Fatah Movement were sidelined, imprisoned or exiled. A far more popular Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, was silenced by Israel as he was thrown into an Israeli prison in April 2002, after a military court found him guilty of involvement in Palestinian resistance operations during the uprising of 2000. This arrangement suited Abbas, for he continued to doubly benefit: from Barghouti’s popularity, on the one hand, and his absence, on the other.
When, in January, Abbas declared that he would hold three successive rounds of elections – legislative elections on May 22, presidential elections on July 31 and Palestinian National Council (PNC) elections on August 31 – he could not have anticipated that his decree, which followed intense Fatah-Hamas talks, could potentially trigger the implosion of his own party.
Fatah-Hamas rivalry has been decades-long but intensified in January 2006 when the latter won the legislative elections in the Occupied Territories. Hamas’s victory was partly attributed to Fatah’s own corruption, but internal rivalry also splintered Fatah’s vote.
Although it was Fatah’s structural weaknesses that partly boosted Hamas’ popularity, it was, oddly, the subsequent rivalry with Hamas that kept Fatah somehow limping forward. Indeed, the anti-Hamas sentiment served as a point of unity among the various Fatah branches. With money pouring in from donor countries, Fatah used its largesse to keep dissent at a minimum and, when necessary, to punish those who refused to toe the pro-Abbas line. This strategy was successfully put to the test in 2010 when Mohammed Dahlan, Fatah’s ‘strong man’ in Gaza prior to 2006, was dismissed from Fatah’s central committee and banished from the West Bank, as he was banished from Gaza four years earlier.
But that convenient paradigm could not be sustained. Israel is entrenching its military occupation, increasing its illegal settlement activities and is rapidly annexing Palestinian land in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The Gaza siege, though deadly and tragic, has become routine and no longer an international priority. A new Palestinian generation in the Occupied Territories cannot relate to Abbas and his old guard, and is openly dissatisfied with the tribal, regional politics through which the PA, under Abbas, continues to govern occupied and oppressed Palestinians.
Possessing no strategies or answers, Abbas is now left with no more political lifelines and few allies.
With dwindling financial resources and faced by the inescapable fact that 85-year-old Abbas must engineer a transition within the movement to prevent its collapse in case of his death, Fatah was forced to contend with an unpleasant reality: without new elections the PA would lose the little political legitimacy with which it ruled over Palestinians.
Abbas was not worried about another setback, like that of 2006, when Hamas won majority of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)’s seats. Until recently, most opinion polls indicated that the pro-Abbas Fatah list would lead by a comfortable margin in May and that Abbas would be re-elected President in July. With his powers intact, Abbas could then expand his legitimacy by allowing Hamas and others into the PLO’s Palestinian National Council – Palestine’s parliament in the Diaspora. Not only would Abbas renew faith in his Authority, but he could also go down in history as the man who united Palestinians.
But things didn’t go as planned and the problem, this time, did not come from Hamas, but from Fatah itself – although Abbas did anticipate internal challenges. However, the removal of Dahlan, the repeated purges of the party’s influential committees and the marginalization of any dissenting Fatah members throughout the years must have infused Abbas with confidence to advance with his plans.
The first challenge emerged on March 11, when Nasser al-Qidwa, a well-respected former diplomat and a nephew of Yasser Arafat, was expelled from the movement’s Central Committee for daring to challenge Abbas’ dominance. On March 4, Qidwa decided to lock horns with Abbas by running in the elections in a separate list.
The second and bigger surprise came on March 31, just one hour before the closing of the Central Election Commission’s registration deadline, when Qidwa’s list was expanded to include supporters of Marwan Barghouti, under the leadership of his wife, Fadwa.
Opinion polls are now suggesting that a Barghouti-Qidwa list, not only would divide the Fatah Movement but would actually win more seats, defeating both the traditional Fatah list and even Hamas. If this happens, Palestinian politics would turn on its head.
Moreover, the fact that Marwan Barghouti’s name was not on the list keeps alive the possibility that the imprisoned Fatah leader could still contest in the presidential elections in July. If that, too, transpires, Barghouti will effortlessly beat and oust Abbas.
The PA President is now in an unenviable position. Canceling the elections would lead to strife, if not violence. Moving forward means the imminent demise of Abbas and his small but powerful clique of Palestinians who benefited greatly from the cozy political arrangement they created for themselves.
As it stands, the key to the future of Fatah is now held by a Palestinian prisoner, Marwan Barghouti, who has been kept by Israel, largely in solitary confinement, since 2002.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website iswww.ramzybaroud.net
تدخل القوى الفلسطينية معترك انتخابات المجلس التشريعي التي تم التوافق على إجرائها وكلٌ يغني على ليلاه، فمحمود عباس يسعى من وراء هذه الانتخابات إلى الحصول على إقرار بكونه الممثل الشرعي لكل الفصائل الفلسطينية في الضفة وقطاع غزة، وعينه على طاولة مفاوضات جديدة تُعْقَد بمباركة إدارة جو بايدن الأمريكية، وعلى استئناف تلقي المخصصات من الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية والكيان الصهيوني، فهو لم يَعُدْ عنده أي شيء آخر ليقدمه للفلسطينيين، سوى ربما المزيد من تنسيقه الأمني “المقدس” مع قوات الاحتلال وبلا أدنى خجل، ولا يحتاج الإنسان إلى الكثير من العناء لتوقُّع مصير هذه المفاوضات، فيكفي النظر إلى تجربة الثلاثة عقود المنصرمة، وإذا كان هذا غير كافٍ فيمكن الاستئناس بما قاله جو بايدن مؤخرا عندما بشّرنا بأن التوافق بين أطراف النزاع يحتاج إلى المزيد من الوقت، وطبعا الكيان الصهيوني مستمر أثناء ذلك في تنفيذ مشروعه بقضم القليل المتبقي من أراضي الضفة عبر زيادة الاستيطان، وصولا إلى تهجير من تبقّى من سكان الضفة لأن الصهيوني يريد الأرض دون البشر الذين عليها، ويقدر أحد أصحاب الرأي بأنه لن يمضي الكثير من الوقت قبل أن يبدأ المستوطنون بحملات الإرهاب ضد سكان الضفة، حملات بدأت بوادرها بالظهور من خلال القتل الاعتباطي لبعض سكان أراضي 67، ولِما لا والسلطة الفلسطينية صارت وظيفتها الوحيدة حفظ أمن المستوطنين موفرةً بذلك للكيان الغاصب أرخص احتلال عرفه التاريخ، هذا ولم نتحدث عن الانتشار المريب للسلاح غير المنضبط بين أيادي بعض المشبوهين من أهالي 48، الذي أدى إلى حصول عدة جرائم في الشهور الماضية.
إن كل ما شهدناه من سياسة الحرد التي اتبعها محمود عباس فترة حكم دونالد ترامب، وصولا إلى اجتماع أمناء الفصائل الفلسطينية في بيروت لم يكن إلا مجرد مناورات تكتيكية، والمضحك المبكي أنه كان يُصرّح طيلة تلك الفترة عن تمسكه باستراتيجية المفاوضات العقيمة، لكن هناك على الساحة الفلسطينية من لا يريد أن يسمع.
أما حركة حماس فهي تأمل من وراء هذه الانتخابات الخروج من المأزق الذي وضعت نفسها فيه بعد خوضها انتخابات عام 2006، لعلها تستطيع تخفيف وطأة الحصار الظالم على قطاع غزة، وهنا يُطرح السؤال الوجيه الذي يرِدْ على لسان الكثيرين: كيف لانتخابات جديدة أن تؤدي إلى انهاء الانقسام بينما كان منشأ الانقسام انتخابات 2006 بالأصل؟
واهمٌ من يظن أن حصار فصائل المقاومة الفلسطينية في قطاع غزة سببه الانقسام، الحصار يا سادة سببه تمسك المقاومة الفلسطينية بالحقوق والثوابت الوطنية، وحملها عبء قضية فلسطين المقدسة، ومربط فرس الحصار عند كيان الاحتلال لا عند سواه، لذلك أي محاولات لفك الحصار أو تخفيفه لا تمر عبر الاشتباك مع العدو الذي يفرض الحصار لن تكون ذات جدوى، ولن تفضي إلا إلى المزيد من تعمق الأزمة وإضاعة الوقت والجهود.
تشهد الضفة هذه الفترة حالة غليان لا يمكن تجاهلها، والعمليات الفردية والبطولية المستمرة تدلل عل أن النار تحت الرماد، فلا يمر أسبوع دون حصول عملية أو اثنتين، فأيهما أجدى؟ تأطير هذه الطاقات وتفعيل الحراك الشعبي وصولا إلى الانتفاضة، أم تنفيس هذا الغضب الشعبي الكامن عبر دخول انتخابات غير مقتنع بجدواها غالبية الشعب الفلسطيني؟
شعبنا بعمومه مدرك لكون فكرة انتخابات تحت حراب الاحتلال الذي يتحكم بكل مفاصل الحياة في الضفة الغربية ما هي إلا مزحة سمجة، لكن أحد أخطر عواقب هذه المزحة السمجة إدخال الإحباط في نفوس الشباب الغاضب في الضفة وتثبيط هممه.
خروج المقاومة الفلسطينية من أزمتها وتخفيف الحصار الظالم المفروض عليها لن يكون عبر سلوك الطريق الأسهل غير المجدي بل من خلال الطريق الأنجع حتى ولو كان الأصعب، والانتفاضة الثالثة سيكون من شأنها قلب المعادلات وتغيير الوقائع، ناهيكم عن فرصتها الحقيقية في دحر الاحتلال عن أراضي 67 دون قيد أو شرط في ظل حالة التراجع التي يعيشها العدو الصهيوني، والتي باتت تتحدث عنها مراكز دراسات العدو ذاته، ولا يغرنكم حالة التذمر الشعبي من صلافة العيش وضيق الحال، فلتبدأ الخطوات الجدية اتجاه حراك شعبي منظم وانتفاضة جديدة وستجدون خلفكم مارد اسمه الشعب الفلسطيني، يعض على الجراح ويربط الحجَر على المَعِدة لكتم الجوع – متمثلا بالرسول الأعظم – في سبيل الهدف الوطني الأسمى.
On the 15th of January Mahmoud Abbas called for new elections to be held in the next couple of months in the occupied territories. But let us ignore the fundamental contradiction of holding a poll in an occupied territory under the watch of the occupation forces for now, and try to look in the motives behind this step.
We believe that each of the Palestinian factions is planning to run in this elections with a different ulterior motive.
First, Mahmoud Abbas is seeking recognition as the legitimate representative of all Palestinian factions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And all he has in mind is a new negotiating table held with the blessing of the new Joe Biden administration, and to resume receiving financial support from the United States of America and the Zionist Entity. That is because he no longer has anything else to offer to the Palestinians, except perhaps more security coordination with the occupation forces without any hint of shame.
The outcome of this new negotiations is predictable, at least from the experience of the last three decades. And if this is not enough, we can draw on what Joe Biden has said recently when he warned that a consensus between the parties to the conflict needs more time. Of course, the Zionist Entity will continue to implement its project of annexing the little that remains from the West Bank lands by increasing settlement activities, with the aim to displace the remaining Palestinians in the West Bank. The Zionist Entity wants the land without the people on it. One expert envisages that it will not be long before the settlers start a campaigns of terror against the inhabitants of the West Bank; campaigns that began to appear through the arbitrary killing of some of the inhabitants of the territories occupied in 1967. And why not, when the Palestinian Authority sole function has become to maintain the security of the settlers. Thus, providing the usurped entity the cheapest occupation in history.
And we have not mentioned the suspicious appearance of uncontrolled weapons in the hands of some shady individuals in the territories occupied in 1948, which led to several homicides in the past few months alone.
All the steps that we witnessed from Mahmoud Abbas hinting to the withdrawal from the Oslo Accord during the days of Donald Trump was nothing but a tactical maneuver. And the irony is that he was openly reaffirming all along his adherence to his futile strategy of negotiations.
Turning to Hamas, we find that it hopes that the new elections will break the deadlock in which they set themselves up after the last elections in 2006. Also, they hope to ease the unjust blockade on the Gaza Strip as they believe that a new elections will lead to unity between Hamas and Fatah. But here the valid question arises: how can new elections lead to an end to the division between Hamas and Fatah, when the elections of 2006 was what caused the current division in the first place?
In any case,, all who think that the siege of the Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip is because of the current division are deluded. The siege, gentlemen, is because of the Palestinian resistance’s adherence to the Palestinian’s national rights and principles, as well as carrying the burden of the holy cause of liberating Palestine.
The siege locks are in the hands of the Occupation Entity and not in Abbas’s hands nor any one else. Thus, any attempts to dismantle or ease the siege do not pass through the clash with the occupation which imposes the blockade will be sterile, and will only lead to further deepening of the crisis and wasting more time and efforts.
We have been witnessing a boiling situation over the passed year or two in the West Bank that cannot be ignored, and the continuous individual and heroic operations almost on a weekly bases clearly indicate that the fire is under the ashes. So which is more useful then, Framing these energies and activating the popular movement to the intifada, or venting this underlying popular anger by running a new elections?
The Palestinians in their majority are not convinced of the usefulness of this new elections. Our people in general are aware that the idea of elections under the bayonets of the occupation, which controls every detail of the life in the West Bank, is nothing but a joke. But one of the most serious consequences of this silly joke is to introduce dismay in the hearts of angry youth in the West Bank and discourage them.
The Palestinian resistance’s exit from its crisis, and the easing of the unjust siege imposed on it will not be through the easier and useless way, but through the most effective way, even if it is the more difficult one. And a third intifada will change the status-quo and the facts on the ground. Not to mention its real chance to force the occupation withdrawal from the 1967 territories without conditions.
Today the Zionist Entity is witnessing a real deterioration due to many reasons. Even ‘Israel’ thinktanks and strategic centers acknowledge this deterioration , and it would be wise of the Palestinians to build on these new conditions.
Finally, to the Palestinian resistance factions we say, do not be fooled by the discontent displayed by many Palestinians because of the present harsh economic situation in Palestine, let the serious steps towards an organised popular movement and a new intifada begin, and you will find behind you a giant called the Palestinian people, who will bear their wounds, and tie the stone on the stomach to bate the hunger as Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, once did, for the sake of the supreme Palestinian national goal.
In a recent interview with Michael Arria, Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean discuss their book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (2020). The collection argues that socialism should be viewed as an important element in the struggle to liberate Palestine.
“What binds us together,” concludes Awad, “is our class politics. The working class together is what will build a new kind of world and a different system. And what that means is standing with the oppressed outside of our borders and with Palestine.”
While class is a clear connection around which to build campaigns, there are other avenues to explore. For example, in “The Liberation of Palestine Represents an Alternative Path for Native Americans,” Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) describes Palestine as “the moral barometer of Indigenous North America,” thus adding the Indigeneity that Awad touches on to the commonalities that bind activists to the cause of Palestine.
Responding to the controversy that erupted in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a series of pro-Palestinian murals drawn by a local Navajo artist, Elena Ortiz (Ohkay Owingeh) expands on the historical connections between the Indigenous here and in Occupied Palestine.
“The images on that stucco wall,” explains Ortiz, “show the truth of settler colonialism and the effects it has on indigenous people. They were put there to show solidarity with our Palestinian relatives in the face of brutal occupation; to illuminate injustice and shed light on this nation’s complicity in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.”
In that vein, she stresses the importance of acknowledging that the founding of the United States was a process that involved displacing and exploiting Indigenous nations that were living on the land prior to European conquest, a process very similar to the establishment, too, of the state of Israel.
Elaborating on the contradictions between Santa Fe’s reputation as a liberal “art center and home to vibrant Native cultures,” Ortiz asks how a Native-installed art exhibit could cause so much controversy. “Because it illuminates a truth that many people do not want to face?” she speculates, or, perhaps, it offends a lot of people?
In reality, those most offended were local Zionists who assumed the role of victim. “Why is Israel singled out as an aggressor when there are many troubled spots in the world?” asked Rabbi Berel Levertov of the Santa Fe Jewish Center-Chabad. “There are many facets to the story and to highlight Israel is just anti-semitic propaganda.”
Preferring a portrayal that depicts “normalization” of relations between the two—a “work of art depicting…Jews and Arabs living in Peace”—Levertov offered up an image very fitting, too, of Santa Fe, a City Different that hides its racism beneath a veneer of faux adobe.
Several months later another controversy arose when Native people and their comrades succeeded in taking down a memorial ostensibly to Union soldiers. As Elena Ortiz explains, those same combatants participated in massacring Native people and removing them from their homelands.
“Under the shadow of that obelisk,” Ortiz asserts, “on Tewa homelands, in a place we call O’gha Po’geh, we still exist,” despite ongoing efforts by some to prove the opposite.
Alan Webber, the liberal mayor of Santa Fe who might seem a likely ally, proposed a belated Cultures, Histories, Art, Reconciliation and Truth committee. Tasked with replacing other controversial monuments with alternate public art, the commission bears resemblance to similar efforts towards “normalizing” Israeli/Palestinian relations.
Indigenous activists know better, specifically that there can be no peace until there is substantive justice. Elena Ortiz, daughter of the late Alphonso Ortiz, an anthropology professor who was my mentor at the University of New Mexico, says that “the city’s mood and dialogue” have exposed much deeper problems.
“Santa Fe, with its pseudo-liberal, left-leaning politics, thinks it’s somehow above” racial tensions that elsewhere have been exposed.
“But when you look at the vitriol that has come out since the obelisk, we’re peeling back this onion and we’re showing the racism that is endemic in Santa Fe. And we’re showing that, hey, Donald Trump doesn’t have anything on Santa Fe and this racism is so systemic.”
A city that bears a liberal façade, but in which racist and anti-Palestinian sentiments have exploded, Santa Fe is a perfect example of the ways in which Indigeneity unites solidarity activists around the cause of liberation, but at the same time exposes that sometimes a wing of the left-liberal camp declines to be on board.
Finally, President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of New Mexico Congressmember Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) as secretary of the interior owes much to Indigenous movements who organized around land back as well as an end to fracking on and around Native land. An historic first, Haaland’s appointment marks a significant turn-around for an agency that for much of the nation’s history played a central role in the dislocation and abuse of all Indigenous tribes.
“That was a very, very important step for the Biden administration,” says Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, rural development economist and Native American activist. “Indian people know how to take care of this land.” ·
According to the Red Nation, Haaland’s nomination is also significant because she hails from a state that ranks fifth in the country for oil and gas production, much of which is on Indigenous land claimed by the federal and state governments. Moreover, the group explains,
“these conditions, and ongoing struggle against them, put NM at the center of the land back movement — in which a first step is returning public lands back to Indigenous people for any kind of sound environmental policy. Because of this context, Haaland’s appointment is significant.”
Because Haaland has taken a position against fracking on public land and has supported Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) legislation, her selection plays out within this context.
“We have yet to see, however, how this will all play out when she becomes secretary of DOI,” concludes the Red Nation statement. “Regardless, movements are pushing in this direction.”
“While there is widespread agreement among Native people that European colonialism and Indigenous genocide is criminal and immoral,” writes Nick Estes, “there are a surprisingly high number of Native politicians, elites, and public figures who don’t extend the same sympathies to Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.” He continues that the term “anti-Palestinian opportunism” describes “how profitable and career-advancing it is for Indigenous people to align with the Zionist project.”
The future Secretary of the Interior falls into this category. “It’s profound to think about the history of this country’s policies to exterminate Native Americans and the resilience of our ancestors that gave me a place here today,” Haaland said.
Nevertheless, she does not view Palestine in the same light. For example, during her campaign for US Congress, Haaland compared Native Americans getting the right to vote in New Mexico in 1948 to the creation of the state of Israel. Reflecting on this statement, Estes concludes that “Haaland’s opportunism demonstrates that she is anything but an ally to Palestine and more of an opportunist willing to throw Palestinians under the bus when it benefits her political career.”
Recalling a panel in which she participated during the Palestine Writes festival, author and activist Susan Albuhawa explained that “true solidarity has a cost. What is it really worth to the oppressed if it’s easy and cheap and popular? Solidarity matters most when it’s hard, unpopular, and costly.”
Hopefully, in her upcoming appointed position, Haaland will use her platform to point out the ties that bind the Indigenous in this country with their relatives the Palestinians. Both have undergone ethnic cleansing and displacement, parallel experiences that should be called for what it is, crimes against humanity.
Recounting how the Intifada changed the political trajectory of the Palestinian people, Ramzy Baroud explains that “thanks to the Intifada, the Palestinian people have demonstrated their own capacity at challenging Israel without having their own military, challenging the Palestinian leadership by organically generating their own leaders, confronting the Arabs and, in fact, the whole world, regarding their own moral and legal responsibilities towards Palestine and the Palestinian people.”
Perhaps it is this acknowledgment of the need for a grassroots struggle against colonialism that is the tie that binds Indigenous resistance around the world. Commemorating the 2020 election which saw the ouster of Donald Trump, the Red Nation put out the following statement. Regarding what needs to be done, it puts forward the following view on socialism as the tie that binds.
“The battle of ideas against the ideology of greed and individualism, and the need for communal organization are key…Indigenous peoples, peoples of tribal nations, peoples of Maroon communities, peoples of the land have lived before capitalism and against capitalism. They have cultivated relations with each other and the land that do not rely on conquest and surplus but bring abundance and joy and dignity to all. These communal forms should be developed and become schools for freedom. We call these schools for Indigenous socialism. Join us in the struggle to create a better future.”
“To be a socialist you must be a principled champion for Palestine (p. 6),” write Awad and Bean. Their book bears out that certainly, this is true.
– Benay Blend earned her doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her scholarly works include Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, Eds. (2017), “’Neither Homeland Nor Exile are Words’: ‘Situated Knowledge’ in the Works of Palestinian and Native American Writers”. She contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
December 8 came and went as if it was an ordinary day. For Palestinian political groups, it was another anniversary to be commemorated, however hastily. It was on this day, thirty-three years ago, that the First Palestinian Intifada (uprising) broke out, and there was nothing ordinary about this historic event.
Today, the uprising is merely viewed from a historic point of view, another opportunity to reflect and, perhaps, learn from a seemingly distant past. Whatever political context to the Intifada, it has evaporated over time.
The simple explanation of the Intifada goes as follows: Ordinary Palestinians at the time were fed up with the status quo and they wished to ‘shake off’ Israel’s military occupation and make their voices heard.
Expectedly, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) quickly moved in to harvest the fruit of the people’s sacrifices and translate them into tangible political gains, as if the traditional Palestinian leadership truly and democratically represented the will of the Palestinian people. The outcome was a sheer disaster, as the Intifada was used to resurrect the careers of some Palestinian ‘leaders’, who claimed to be mandated by the Palestinians to speak on their behalf, resulting in the Madrid Talks in 1991, the Oslo Accords in 1993 and all other ‘compromises’ ever since.
But there is more to the story.
Thousands of Palestinians, mostly youth, were killed by the Israeli army during the seven years of Intifada, where Israel treated non-violent protesters and rock-throwing children, who were demanding their freedom, as if enemy combatants. It was during these horrific years that such terms as ‘shoot to kill’ and ‘broken-bones policies’ and many more military stratagems were introduced to an already violent discourse.
In truth, however, the Intifada was not a mandate for Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas or any other Palestinian official or faction to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people, and was certainly not a people’s call on their leadership to offer unreciprocated political compromises.
To understand the meaning of the Intifada and its current relevance, it has to be viewed as an active political event, constantly generating new meanings, as opposed to a historical event of little relevance to today’s realities.
Historically, the Palestinian people have struggled with the issue of political representation. As early as the mid-20th century, various Arab regimes have claimed to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people, thus, inevitably using Palestine as an item in their own domestic and foreign policy agendas.
The use and misuse of Palestine as an item in some imagined collective Arab agenda came to a relative end after the humiliating defeat of several Arab armies in the 1967 war, known in Arabic as the ‘Naksa’, or the ‘Letdown’. The crisis of legitimacy was meant to be quickly resolved when the largest Palestinian political party, Fatah, took over the leadership of the PLO. The latter was then recognized in 1974 during the Arab Summit in Rabat, as the ‘sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’.
The above statement alone was meant to be the formula that resolved the crisis of representation, therefore drowning out all other claims made by Arab governments. That strategy worked, but not for long. Despite Arafat’s and Fatah’s hegemony over the PLO, the latter did, in fact, enjoy a degree of legitimacy among Palestinians. At that time, Palestine was part and parcel of a global national liberation movement, and Arab governments, despite the deep wounds of war, were forced to accommodate the aspirations of the Arab people, keeping Palestine the focal issue among the Arab masses as well.
However, in the 1980s, things began changing rapidly. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 resulted in the forced exile of tens of thousands of Palestinian fighters, along with the leaderships of all Palestinian groups, leading to successive and bloody massacres targeting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
The years that followed accentuated two grave realities. First, the Palestinian leadership shifted its focus from armed struggle to merely remaining relevant as a political actor. Now based in Tunis, Arafat, Abbas and others were issuing statements, sending all kinds of signals that they were ready to ‘compromise’ – as per the American definitions of this term. Second, Arab governments also moved on, as the growing marginalization of the Palestinian leadership was lessening the pressure of the Arab masses to act as a united front against Israeli military occupation and colonialism in Palestine.
It was at this precise moment in history that Palestinians rose and, indeed, it was a spontaneous movement that, at its beginning, involved none of the traditional Palestinian leadership, Arab regimes, or any of the familiar slogans. I was a teenager in a Gaza refugee camp when all of this took place, a true popular revolution being fashioned in a most organic and pure form. The use of a slingshot to counter Israeli military helicopters; the use of blankets to disable the chains of Israeli army tanks; the use of raw onions to assuage the pain of inhaling teargas; and, more importantly, the creation of language to respond to every violent strategy employed by the Israeli army, and to articulate the resistance of Palestinians on the ground in simple, yet profound slogans, written on the decaying walls of every Palestinian refugee camp, town or city.
While the Intifada did not attack the traditional leadership openly, it was clear that Palestinians were seeking alternative leadership. Grassroots local leadership swiftly sprang out from every neighborhood, every university and even in prison, and no amount of Israeli violence was able to thwart the natural formation of this leadership.
It was unmistakably clear that the Palestinian people had chosen a different path, one that did not go through any Arab capital – and certainly not through Tunis. Not that Palestinians at the time quit seeking solidarity from their Arab brethren, or the world at large. Instead, they sought solidarity that does not subtract the Palestinian people from their own quest for freedom and justice.
Years of relentless Israeli violence, coupled with the lack of a political strategy by the Palestinian leadership, sheer exhaustion, growing factionalism and extreme poverty brought the Intifada to an end.
Since then, even the achievements of the Intifada were tarnished, where the Palestinian leadership has used it to revive itself politically and financially, reaching the point of arguing that the dismal Oslo Accords and the futile peace process were, themselves, direct ‘achievements’ of the Intifada.
The true accomplishment of the Intifada is the fact that it almost entirely changed the nature of the political equation pertaining to Palestine, imposing the ‘Palestinian people’, not as a cliche used by the Palestinian leadership and Arab governments to secure for themselves a degree of political legitimacy, but as an actual political actor.
Thanks to the Intifada, the Palestinian people have demonstrated their own capacity at challenging Israel without having their own military, challenging the Palestinian leadership by organically generating their own leaders, confronting the Arabs and, in fact, the whole world, regarding their own moral and legal responsibilities towards Palestine and the Palestinian people.
Very few popular movements around the world, and throughout modern history, can be compared to the First Intifada, which remains as relevant today as it was when it began thirty-three years ago.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
BEIRUT, (ST)_ The 6th World Conference of the International Union of Resistance Scholars kicked off on Tuesday in Beirut under the slogan “Nation’s Uprising against Normalization Conspiracies and Elimination Schemes”.
Addressing the participants in the confence via video, Syria’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Badereddin Hassoun, condemned the normalization of relations between some Arab countries and the Zionist enemy, which is still occupying Arab lands and imprisoning hundreds of people and continuously storming al-Aqsa Mosque.
He called for unifying ranks to confront the Israeli enemy instead of normalizing relations with it.
The Mufti affirmed that Syria, whose army and people have been targeted over the past 10 years, remained steadfast and has achieved victory over conspirators.
Syria will stay with the resistance in the same trench, Sheikh Hassoun added.
On his part, Chairman of the International Union of Resistance Scholars Sheikh Maher Hammoud said that resistance against the Zionist entity has become firmer.
“33 years after the start of the Palestinian uprising, it has been proven that stone is more effective than bullet and that the belief in right and future is stronger than occupation,” he stated.
Sheikh Hammoud pointed out that the United States frankly announced that it paid billions of dollars to distort the image of resistance and to strike Syria, Iraq and Libya.
He asserted that the axis of resistance will foil all conspiracies and achieve victory.
Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Na’eem Qasem said that despite the conspiracy, which has targeted Palestine since The Balfour Declaration in 1917, the consecutive generations continue to work on liberating Palestine.
He referred to the fact that the Israeli occupation entity’s record is full of crimes, chaos and destruction acts.
“Stability will never be achieved in the region as long as the Israeli entity exist.. We have to be stronger in order to achieve balance in detterance that led to victory,” Sheikh Qasem stressed during the conference held to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Uprising (Intifada) of the Palestinian People.
بيروت، (ST)_ انطلقت اليوم الثلاثاء في بيروت أعمال المؤتمر العالمي السادس للاتحاد الدولي لعلماء المقاومة تحت شعار “انتفاضة الأمة ضد مخططات التطبيع والقضاء”.
وندد مفتي سوريا الشيخ بدر الدين حسون في كلمة امام المشاركين في هذا الملتقى عبر الفيديو بتطبيع العلاقات بين بعض الدول العربية والعدو الصهيوني الذي لا يزال يحتل الاراضي العربية ويسجن مئات الاشخاص ويقتحم المسجد الاقصى باستمرار .
ودعا الى توحيد الصفوف لمواجهة العدو الاسرائيلي بدلا من تطبيع العلاقات معه.
وأكد المفتي أن سوريا التي استُهدف جيشها وشعبها خلال السنوات العشر الماضية، ظلت صامدة وحققت انتصاراً على المتآمرين.
واضاف الشيخ حسون ان سوريا ستبقى مع المقاومة في خندق واحد.
من جهته، قال رئيس الاتحاد الدولي لعلماء المقاومة الشيخ ماهر حمود ان المقاومة ضد الكيان الصهيوني اصبحت اكثر حزما.
وقال “بعد 33 عاما من بدء الانتفاضة الفلسطينية، ثبت أن الحجر أكثر فعالية من الرصاصة وأن الإيمان بالحق والمستقبل أقوى من الاحتلال”.
وأشار الشيخ حمود إلى أن الولايات المتحدة أعلنت بصراحة أنها دفعت مليارات الدولارات لتشويه صورة المقاومة وضرب سوريا والعراق وليبيا.
وأكد أن محور المقاومة سيحبط كل المؤامرات ويحقق النصر.
وقال نائب الأمين العام لـ “حزب الله” الشيخ نعيم قاسم إنه على الرغم من المؤامرة التي استهدفت فلسطين منذ وعد بلفور عام 1917، فإن الأجيال المتعاقبة لا تزال تعمل على تحرير فلسطين.
وأشار إلى أن سجل كيان الاحتلال الإسرائيلي مليء بالجرائم والفوضى وأعمال التدمير.
واضاف ان “الاستقرار لن يتحقق ابدا في المنطقة طالما ان الكيان الاسرائيلي موجود”.. يجب ان نكون اقوى من اجل تحقيق التوازن في النزاهة الذي ادى الى النصر”.
The International Union of Resistance Scholars assembled Tuesday in Beirut, expressing ultimate support to Palestine and voicing firm rejections to all forms of normalization with Zionist entity.
Entitled “The Uprising of the Ummah (nation) in Face of Normalization Conspiracies”, the Sixth Conference of the International Union of Resistance Scholars convened in Beirut on Tuesday.
Sheikh Maher Hammoud
The Head of the International Union of Resistance Scholars Sheikh Maher Hammoud stressed that the First Intifada which took place in December 33 years ago proved that Palestinian people in no need of Arab armies and Arab “shameful” summits.
“33 years on First Intifada, the stones are still more powerful than bullets.”
Sheikh Hammoud denounced all forms of normalization of ties between Arab regimes and Zionist entity.
“Normalization came after all conspiracies against Resistance in 2006 and in Syrian War have been foiled.”
Sheikh Naim Qassem
Hezbollah Deputy Chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said “Despite conspiracies since Balfour declaration, generations are still sticking to Palestine, its liberation.”
Slamming Gulf regimes, Sheikh Qassem said they have never stood by Palestine, “they have backed all schemes of surrender.”
“Normalization has exposed all traitors and revealed those who support Resistance,” he said via video link, stressing: “Either to stand by Resistance, or by normalization, no third choice!”
“Axis of Resistance has secured promising achievements thanks to steadfastness and firm will to liberate Palestine.”
Sheikh Qassem vowed that the Resistance will work hard to develop its capabilities on basis of military, politics and media.
Ziad Nakhale
Ziad Nakhale, the Secretary General of Islamic Jihad Palestinian Resistance movement, said the Zionist entity has broken all moral, human and religious norms.
He slammed Palestinian Authority for “fleeing forward,” stressing that this policy won’t retrieve rights, but rather will set up new formula on the field.
Touching upon the assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Nakale said the enemies have been trying to deprive us from everything including scientific capabilities,” Nakhale addressed the conference via video link.
“Assassination of Fakhrizadeh is part of Israel’s revenge from Iran for its stance towards Palestine.
Mahmoud Zahhar
Hamas official Mahmoud Zahhar stressed that the Resistance in Gaza stands dignified against the Israeli enemy.
He warned that the enemies of this Ummah have been dedicating capabilities in a bid to weaken the Resistance.
Zahhar, meanwhile, noted that the last battle in which Palestine will be liberated is ‘inventible’ hoping to be one of the soldiers in such battle.
“Our weapons have been developed from the stones to missiles. This proves that we will go ahead until the elimination of the occupation entity,” the official in the Palestinian Resistance movement addressed the conference attendees via video link.
Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun
For his part, Grand Mufti of Syria Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun slammed some Arab regimes over normalizing their ties with Zionist entity.
“Some rushed to normalize ties as they failed to keep the Resistance,” the Syrian Mufti addressed the conference vie video link.
He called for unity on Palestine between Arab and Muslim countries.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 