When every day in Palestinians lives is ‘Nakba’, resistance is the only way out.
By: Batoul Wehbe
Every year on May 15, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba (“catastrophe”) in 1948 when 1 million Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their lands and over 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed or depopulated by Zionist terrorist militias to make way for the settler colonial so-called “state of Israel”.
May 15 is an annual occasion to mourn history, weep and recall the harsh scenes of massacres and bloodshed against thousands of Palestinians. It’s the date when Arab regimes humiliated themselves and accepted defeat.
Those Arabs who aborted all sparks of resistance that was launched in occupied Palestine against the Israeli occupation, starting with aborting the so-called “Salvation Army”, abandoning the idea of liberation, and striking the resistance led by heroic revolutionaries such as the Syrian officer Ihsan Kam al-Maz, Sheikh Izzidine al-Qassam and Abdul Qadir al-Husseini.
Either We Come out of War Victorious, Or We All Die!
Al-Husseini, who was the leader of the Arab military force in Al-Quds area, had said on the eve of the war, just before he was martyred on the dawn of 1948: “It is inconceivable that Palestine will be for the Arabs and the Zionists together – it’s us or them. This is a war for life or death: Either we come out of the war victorious, or we all die.”
The irony is that while this Palestinian leader was having a tense discussion with Arab traitors, he concluded with an eternal statement that shall be recorded for life: “History will judge you for abandoning Palestine, you and those who are behind you, I hold you responsible. I will capture Qastel [village occupied by Zionists] and die, I and all my fighters, and history will record that you – criminals and traitors – abandoned the land.”
“Deal of the Century” Doomed to Fail
Indeed, those Arabs have sought with betrayal and direct conspiracies on resistance movements to undermine the Palestinian cause and turn it from an issue of existence to a border dispute, dwarfing it with successive decrees and agreements, gradually dividing and selling the land in bulk and retail, which paved a way for the Deal of the Century which Washington is betting on Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arabs to support and implement.
After 71 years on the Nakba, Palestine and its cause have become at the bottom of the concerns of the divided Arab regimes. It has become a poem and a repeated statement in the fragmented Arab conferences and leagues which have become opposing entities and parties looking for different means to strike the resistance and study possibilities of surrender rather than rejection options.
However, Palestinian people have never had surrender as an option. They have turned the table upside down on Arabs and Israelis by escalating the conflict with marching weekly and protesting against the Zionist criminal. The Great March of Return, which was launched on March 30, 2018, was initially planned to last for 6 weeks until Nakba Day on May 15. Over one year later, people in Gaza continue to march on the militarized border fence every single Friday, demanding their right to return and an end to the siege and blockade of Gaza. They have been marching for more than sixty consecutive weeks without boredom or fatigue despite the killing and wounding of thousands of youth, women and children as well.
To make things worse, not long ago, Washington had recognized occupied Al-Quds as the capital of ‘Israel’, opened an embassy in it, and tightened the financial and economic siege on the Palestinians, while the occupation entity continues to commit crimes, attacks and daily arrests. The aim is to kneel down the Palestinians and force them to submit to the so-called deal with what it entails, from distortion of history to pushing towards the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the land of the diaspora.
700 Rockets in Two Days Proved Zionist Fragility
The Nakba continues in various aspects and at a more difficult pace, but the Palestinian people, who did not settle down for more than a century, are creating everyday new means of resistance.
Without any exaggeration, there is no day that passes in the occupied Palestine without an act aimed at the occupation soldiers, its patrols and sites, by stabbing or running-on operations until the Palestinian cities and camps, especially the Gaza Strip, have become strongholds of resistance fighters and martyrdom bombers, dragging the enemy into a continuous state of depletion.
All this was evident in the Palestinian resistance confrontation to the latest Israeli aggression earlier this month on the Gaza Strip, where the enemy could not bear the continued firing of rockets for more than two days, seeking an international mediation and Arab cease-fire.
The Israeli enemy, today, is no longer able to face the Palestinian resistance alone, which has created a joint military effort and coordination (Joint Operations Room) to ‘make Israel pay a heavy price’. So, the firing of nearly 700 rockets within two days had questioned the effectiveness of the Zionist defensive means –which even Israeli sources said were futile- and expanded the circle of resistance targets beyond Beersheba and Tel Aviv and even deeper into the occupied territories.
The Palestinian resistance is echoing in its every day battle of existence the famous statement quoted by the hero Abdul Qadir al-Husseini back in 1948: “It’s either us or them.”
