Poster for Orinoco Tribune's interview with Palestinian analyst Khaled Barakat. Photo: Orinoco Tribune.
The Palestinian resistance, as well as West Asia’s Axis of Resistance, are prepared for a long war because “this is an open confrontation against the Zionist settler regime,” Palestinian author and activist Khaled Barakat said in an interview with Orinoco Tribune. “We have no other option except to continue with the resistance and to defeat Israel because the other option that Israel is offering us is to surrender, to become slaves for the Zionist regime, to become puppets for the imperialist forces, to just give up on our hopes and dreams. That we should just sit back and watch them plunder our resources and steal the future of our children and our next generations. That is not going to happen.”
“The resistance that we have today in Palestine and Lebanon, we did not have that strong resistance in the ’90s, yet they were able to defeat Israel and liberate the south [of Lebanon] with simple guns and explosives,” he continued, referring to the victory of Hezbollah and other Lebanese organizations in 2000 that expelled the regime’s military forces from Lebanon after almost two decades of occupation. “Now, the resistance in Lebanon is stronger than ever… Today, it is almost 100,000 fighters, and the elite fighter unit has over 5,000 [members]. Israel understands that it cannot invade Lebanon anymore. That time is gone. And if it tries to invade the south, it will be defeated.”
On October 3, Khaled Barakat, associated with Masar Badil, Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, gave an interview to Orinoco Tribune, where he discussed the war situation in Lebanon and Gaza, the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah by the Zionist entity and Iran’s retaliatory airstrikes in response, the Axis of Resistance’s war of attrition strategy, and the potential impact of these events globally. He also called out the ambivalent attitude of China, Russia, and the multipolar world order towards the Zionist regime’s genocide in Palestine.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a leader like Che Guevara
Reflecting on the life of the martyred leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Barakat said that he was an iconic revolutionary, “we view him very much like how Latin Americans view Che Guevara. He was an exceptional leader, thinker, scholar, and fighter… We have to acknowledge that we have lost a great leader.”
“Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s everyday task was to build for the future,” Barakat explained. “That is why he personally participated in building the institutions that will carry on the resistance and the task of the resistance… In fact, he reminded us all the time that he is with us temporarily, that he might be killed or he might die at any moment. So, he always advised fighters, leaders, people in general to always be committed to the resistance and to the path of revolution, that this is not an individual project.”
He added that Sayyed Hassan maintained constant communication with the “popular cadre of the resistance.” He had the ability to reach supporters of the resistance across the Arab and the Muslim world and the world as a whole, so that “although you don’t see him or shake his hand or be in the same place with him, he was always there.” Without a doubt, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was the most popular leader in the Middle East and possibly in the entire Arab world.
Hezbollah’s internal organization and values of the resistance
When asked about how Hezbollah would recover from the assassination of a leader like Hassan Nasrallah, Khaled Barakat responded that the movement has a strong and comprehensive internal organization. Therefore, killing some of its leaders will not end the movement. “Hezbollah is based on institutions, not on individuals,” he explained. “Every leader has a deputy. In some departments there are two or three deputies … because they are in daily confrontation with the Zionist enemy, and they know that any day a leader could be killed or may have a different task.”
He added that the assassination of the general secretary did not stop Hezbollah’s machinery. Moreover, “there is a sense of national unity here in Lebanon that I have never witnessed before, and Hezbollah’s internal front is very strong … The back of the resistance is secure.”
He went on to add that there exists no cult of personality among the resistance. “I think we are offering the world a different set of values and culture than the West especially, where they consider a leadership position as a job they get paid for, whether it is a president or a prime minister or a member of parliament,” he commented. “They are usually talking heads, they have no values, their policies are based on their interest … and they are puppets of the military-industrial complex, the oil companies. Our leaders are different; they are there for the cause.”
Regarding fundamental themes like humanity, democracy, or the rule of law, he considered that “the West, especially the imperialist West, wants to impose its vision on people who have different cultures and different understandings of their social, economic and political lives. The nations in Asia, particularly in West Asia, we are facing colonialism until now. We are confronting occupations. We are still in the era where we have sultans and kings and princes supported by ‘Israel’ and the United States—we want to get rid of these regimes … In the last 15 years, they worked a lot to divide our people into Shiites and Sunnis and Ismailis and Zaydis and this and that, while the resistance has acted as a kind of glue that brought the nations back. That is why the unity of the people of our region is based on our people upholding the resistance as collective salvation to enter the future and not just to fight. These are not just groups with military might and military missiles. These are groups promising a different future for our people. Resistance is a culture.”
Achievements of Al-Aqsa Flood
Assessing the achievements of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation a year after its launch, Khaled Barakat highlighted the revival of the Palestinian cause on the Arab and global levels. “Before October 7, we were witnessing the slaughtering of the Palestinian cause,” he stressed. “Israel was attacking Gaza, West Bank, attacking Al-Aqsa, stealing Palestinian land, building settlements, committing all sorts of crimes before the eyes of the world, and no one was saying anything. And at the same time, the Arab regimes, especially Saudi Arabia, were getting ready to sign a normalization pact with Israel. This would have pushed the vast majority of Muslim countries to normalize their relationship with Israel.”
However, October 7 and its aftermath changed the equation. The Palestinian resistance groups’ war of attrition, the direct and impactful participation of Hezbollah and Ansarallah from the very beginning, the support from Syria, Iran’s Operation True Promise I and II, the recent attacks on the Zionist entity by resistance bloc in Iraq – all this has killed the US-Zionist dreams of “normalization.”
“The Al-Aqsa Flood is no longer limited to the Palestinian situation,” Barakat highlighted. “It has unified the masses of the region. It is going to give us strength and hope that a different world is possible. It is going to end US hegemony in our region. It is going to unify the Palestinian people under the banner of a unified national resistance front. It will give birth to a new balance of power in the region … The Zionist regime is going down. It is sinking, it is getting eaten up from within. Israel has no future in our region.”
He added that the Al-Aqsa Flood has made the United States realize that despite its military might, it “cannot go on doing whatever it likes.”
China and Russia must play a more supportive role
The activist criticized China and Russia for their “poor role” with respect to the Zionist aggression and genocide in Gaza. “China needs to understand that it could play a better role, a more supportive role in our region. The same goes for Russia,” Barakat emphasized. “We know that both countries take their own interests into consideration first, but that cannot be at the expense of our interests and those of the people of our region.”
He especially criticized China’s economic relations with the occupation regime, given that China remains its second largest economic partner (after the US) although the principal Chinese shipping companies have suspended their operations with the entity. “We do not view China as an aggressor; we view China as a friend,” he noted. “However, a friend must be truthful to a friend, so we have to say it as it is. China loves business more than it loves adopting a major political role in opposing Israel and the United States,” and this, in his opinion, must change.
Cowardice Brought Us Here, Bravery Will Get Us Out: Resistance Is Always the Answer
He also called out the way China and Russia uphold the United Nations resolutions regarding Palestine in order to justify their ambivalent actions on the issue, especially in a situation where the UN-based international system has failed in its duties. “This rhetoric about United Nations resolutions that China and Russia sometimes try to talk about, it is just rhetoric. We want to see real actions,” Barakat stressed. “One year of genocide and war crimes against the people of Gaza—and honestly, what exactly did China do? Did they even try to stop the Israeli genocide and war crimes? The only forces that are confronting the Zionist and US aggression are Yemen, Iran, Syria, the camp of resistance, and the international anti-imperialist movement.”
The position of China is especially lamentable, Barakat opined, because China’s own Taiwan issue has many similarities with Palestine. “China is not willing to give an inch from Taiwan, and yet the Chinese are asking us to give away 78% of Palestine to the Zionists, and they talk about two-state solutions,” he commented. “They have One China policy, we respect that. We have a One Palestine policy as well. Palestine is ours from the river to the sea. So, every time we hear a Chinese official talking about the two-state solution, it really bothers us. It hits us in the heart. China needs to stand up for principles, not just for its interests, but also for principles.”
“China is not looking at our region in a strategic way,” he noted in this regard. “I think they are calculating from their relationship with the US, when we can see that the current US is not what it was 30 years ago.”
He also highlighted the position of Russia, which has almost 1.5 million citizens who have “Israeli” citizenship and who live in the occupied territories. Stating that “Russia understands what the NATO and the US are trying to do with the Ukraine war, to push Russia into despair, siege, and isolation,” he added that the Russian leadership must realize that this is precisely what the Zionist regime is trying to do to Palestine and the broader west Asia. “It is good that China and Russia are strengthening their bilateral economic and military relationship, but it is necessary for them to understand that this has to reflect on our region as well.”
Special for Orinoco Tribune by Saheli Chowdhury
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Saheli Chowdhury
Saheli Chowdhury is from West Bengal, India, studying physics for a profession, but with a passion for writing. She is interested in history and popular movements around the world, especially in the Global South. She is a co-editor and contributor for Orinoco Tribune.
