DAYS OF PALESTINE – Sayid Marcos Tenório
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) adopted a new program in May 2017, in which it declares itself a Palestinian national, Islamic, liberation and resistance movement that, as a strategic goal, aims to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist colonial project of the called the “Jewish State”.
According to the movement’s programmatic definition, Palestine is the land and home of the Palestinian people, a holy and blessed Islamic Arab land which has a special place at the heart of what is meant by theIslamic Ummah (Nation), formed by the territory that extends from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras Al-Naqurah in the north to Umm Al-Rashrash in the south.
The movement declares that the colonial occupation of Historic Palestine, as well as the expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people, which began with the Nakba (tragedy) in 1948, does not nullify the right of the Palestinian people to the entirety of the land, while at the same time does not recognize any right of the Jewish state over it.
Would these programmatic formulations be contrary to the right of “Israel” to exist?
For Hamas, regardless of the catastrophes that have befallen the Palestinian people since 1948, as a result of the partition, occupation and Zionist policy of displacement and ethnic cleansing, Palestinian identity will not be erased or denied. A Palestinian man or woman will never lose his or her national identity and rights, even after acquiring a second nationality.
The movement’s program makes it clear that the conflict in occupied Palestine is based on the struggle against the Zionist colonial project, not against the Jews. The resistance understands that without eliminating the underlying causes of injustice and tyranny, peace and security will not be achieved because “Israel” is a colonialist entity that imposes an illegal occupation of Palestine and subjects the Palestinian people to oppression, siege, daily humiliation and systematic human rights violations. And against that, Hamas promises to fight hard.
In the new programmatic formulation, Hamas maintains that Israel is not a normal state, but an occupation of Ashkenazi, Khazar and Sephardic Jewish settlers brought from Europe, which was created during the process of mass expulsion and expropriation of the Palestinian people. Since 1948, millions of Palestinians continue to be victims of occupation, exile, and dispersion. In this case, Hamas advocates that recognizing “Israel” would mean legitimizing all the Zionist claims and myths on which the creation of the “State of Israel” is based.
The relationship between the Palestinian people and Israel is not a relationship between sovereign states. It is a relationship driven by Israeli colonialism, military expropriation and occupation, and the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom and self-determination. That’s the reality, and there’s no way around it. Asking Palestinians to recognize Israel’s occupation would be tantamount to asking black South Africans to recognize the legitimacy of the white South African apartheid regime; or hope that the Algerians would recognize the French occupation during their war of national liberation.
For Palestinians, to accept the reality of their occupier and oppressor is to abandon the dream of freedom and liberation and betray those who fought long and hard for their freedom, self-determination and dignity and the very principle of the universal struggle for justice and freedom – premises enshrined in the divine treaties, in international law, and in the Charter of the United Nations.
The movement’s leaders say that it is possible to recognize their friends, but it is rather absurd to accept the legitimacy of their enemies. They consider it absurd to use the recognition of “Israel” as a precondition for “peace agreements” or “normalizations” to take effect, when it is known that “Israel” remains with its systematic actions of injustice and oppression against Palestinians, while continuing to expand occupation.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized the “State of Israel” in 1988 and reiterated this recognition in the process of the Oslo negotiations in 1993, in addition to promoting various peace initiatives with “Israel” since the Madrid Conference in 1991. One must ask: what did these negotiations and this recognition give the Palestinians?
Israeli governments never respected the terms of the agreements. “Israel” has never recognized the legitimate historical and political rights of the Palestinian people to land and to return and their moral, political and legal responsibility for the expropriation of land and the expulsion of Palestinians.
On the contrary, Israel continues to attack the Palestinians militarily with massive aggressions and seizing land; to build new and expand illegal Jewish colonies; to besiege Gaza; and to systematically violate the human rights of the Palestinians, accumulating the staggering number of more than 4,600 political prisoners, among which are about 160 children, 34 women, 547 Palestinians sentenced to life imprisonment and 9 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, legitimately elected in 2006.[1] It is estimated that since the Nakba, more than 1 million Palestinians of all ages have passed through Zionist prisons.
Based on the experience of these “peace agreements” and other negotiations with the Zionist occupier, there is more than evidence that these initiatives failed to bring back the rights of the Palestinians, nor did they guarantee the effectiveness of the various United Nations (UN) resolutions which could restore these rights. The main problem is not the negotiations, but the fact that “Israel” does not recognize any of the Palestinian rights. Israel simply does not abide by the agreements, continues to transgress what was agreed upon and advances even further with its aggressive colonialist policies in the Palestinian territories.
From the point of view of the Palestinian resistance, it would be unthinkable, immoral and unfair to expect the Palestinians, who are continually oppressed and subjugated by the Israeli military occupation, to capitulate to Israel’s humiliating conditions. There is no precedent in modern history in which a people consented to the theft of their homeland without resisting, and the people of Palestine have definitely demonstrated over these 73 years that they will be no exception.
Sayid Marcos Tenório is a historian and specialist in International Relations. He is vice president of the Brazil-Palestine Institute (Ibraspal) and author of the book Palestina: do mito da terra prometida à terra da resistência [Palestine: the myth of the promised land to the land of resistance] (Anita Garibaldi/Ibraspal, 2019, 412 p). E-mail: [email protected] – Twitter: @HajjSayid
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