Palestinians stand atop a captured Israeli tank and wave a Palestinian flag on October 7, 2023. Photo: Yousef Masoud/AP.
By Khaled Ibrahim – Aug 31, 2024
After more than ten months of US-Zionist aggression against the Gaza Strip, the world has changed and the image of the Zionist entity has been shaken militarily, economically, and socially. Humanity has realized, more than ever before, the racism and barbarism of the Zionist project, and its organic connection with imperialism led by the United States has become clearly visible. Contradictions have surfaced among the popular classes in confrontation with a criminal global system that cares only for its economic, political, and military interests. Despite all this destruction and killing, the people of Gaza remain steadfast and proud, and their brave resistance continues to fight, forming the spearhead for the coming strategic shift at both Arab and global levels.
Considering all this, we must analyze the nature of the required political discourse. Positions that were acceptable for Palestinians and resistance factions before October 7 are no longer valid after all this destruction, after the changes occurring in the balance of power, and after the legendary steadfastness of the Palestinian people and all their sacrifices.
It is no longer valid, for example, to talk about “national unity” with the Oslo current, which has persisted in betrayal, collaboration with the occupation, and the suppression and arrests of militants. It is no longer valid to call Mahmoud Abbas “Mr. President” or to promote the discourse of “Brother Abu Mazen” when he says “martyrdom or victory” or to issue praise and glorification for the “advanced position that His Excellency called for.” The arguments that are presented by Arab parties to justify their presence inside the Knesset dome and their participation in the so-called political life of this rabid racist entity are no longer acceptable. It is no longer acceptable for these Palestinian embassies, which represent the Oslo approach and its outcomes, to continue forcibly usurping the representation of Palestinians abroad.
We are no longer concerned with a leader of a friendly, allied, or even hostile country coming out with a discourse on the two-state solution or similar solutions that benefit the Zionist entity and harm the struggles of our Palestinian people. It is no longer acceptable for us as Palestinians, and as Arabs, for a foreign minister from a major or minor country to dictate to us what we should do, or for a Palestinian leader to hold a symposium with a Zionist professor and embrace and kiss him under any pretext or excuse.
Today, we are not interested in supporting Hamas or Islamic Jihad because they are Islamic movements, nor are we standing in defense of the Popular and Democratic Fronts because they represent the Palestinian left. What concerns us about these factions and movements is that they are national liberation movements, growing in the eyes of the people, and their presence increases with the increase of their military activities, their military strength, their social political influence, the clarity of their political vision, the strength and solidity of their discourse, and their firmness in confronting the enemy.
It is also no longer acceptable for factions to go to Beijing or other foreign capitals and issue a statement that mimics the two-state solution and the like. It is time to tell the Chinese and others that Palestine is no less important to Palestinians and the Arab people than Taiwan is to China, and that the enmity between Palestinians and the Zionists is no different in its magnitude from the enmity that existed between the Chinese and the Japanese during the Japanese occupation of China. The Zionist massacres in Gaza are no different in their brutality from the Japanese massacres in the Chinese city of Nanjing. And the experiments conducted by the Japanese Unit 731 on Chinese civilians are no different in their brutality from the practices of the Zionist entity against Palestinians.
China’s position today towards the Palestinians’ struggle should be no less solid and supportive than China’s position with the Vietnamese. The hundreds of thousands of Arab martyrs from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and others rose for the Arabism of Palestine and its liberation, and they did not sacrifice themselves for the two-state solution or for any other deformed agreement.
Without a doubt, the political position of the Palestinian resistance negotiators has reached unprecedented levels of strength, firmness, and commitment to core principles. This approach has earned widespread popular support. The reason for this is not, as some claim, that Gaza has nothing left to lose. Rather, it stems from the resistance’s battlefield prowess and the hard-learned lessons from a century of struggle and the failures of negotiated surrender. They have seen through every deception and ploy of the enemy. The resistance and its leaders have proven their dedication by sacrificing their families, homes, and lives for the cause.
The Palestinian resistance is an integral part of a large camp extending from Lebanon to Iraq to Syria to Yemen and Iran, to the Arab people in their various countries and places of existence, and free peoples in friendly countries in South Africa, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and others, reaching to universities and streets of the US and Europe and elsewhere, forming in their entirety a great rising resistance camp in the face of imperialism, Zionism, and colonialism.
These days mark the anniversary of the first Zionist conference in Basel, Switzerland (August 29, 1897), where the Zionist movement began preparing and mobilizing to build its entity in Palestine. Today, after all these years of conspiracy and killing, in the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood the Palestinian resistance carried out an operation breaching one of the world’s most fortified lines, and the Lebanese resistance was able to strike the enemy’s most important military bases and remove the threat of a hundred thousand Zionists from the northern settlements. The Yemeni armed forces closed one of the most important waterways in the world, neutralizing the two most powerful naval forces in modern times.
The great victory that began on October 7, 2023, returned Palestine to its Arab, Islamic, and international roots, and shook the pillars of the Zionist project. This victory must be completed by defeating the occupation and foiling its plans. This requires us to act as victors. It is our right and duty to act as victors.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/DZ/SC
