This article is in fact a chapter (The Palestinians cannot be defeated) of my work of about 200 pages comprising prologue, Foreword and 13 chapters which I started after Western attack on Iraq in March 2003 and completed in October 2003: Labbaik Allahhumma Labbaik: What is Pakistan’s role when the Muslim world is confronting America and allied West including Israel in a struggle for the Final Solution’? It was partly (prologue, Foreword and 7 chapters) published in Urdu in March 2004 in Pakistan. For presentation here as an independent article, this chapter has been accordingly updated. – Manzoor Ahmed Manzoor 15- 04-2018, Lahore.
Any war is special. Any battle is special. Any skirmish is special. Overall, any struggle is special. There is no fixed formula for victory and defeat. Red Indians were defeated, but not Vietnamese people. In India of 1857, “mutineers” were defeated, but not the Indian society – the people of India. They were victorious at the appointed time. What is that which keeps people struggling in spite of apparent hopelessness of a situation? It is their insight into things – that they somehow can see the future — and their creative spirit, which have sustained people throughout history. The insight into things and the creative spirit of humanity have built layer after layer of civilization, the end product of which we have today. While Israel supported by the United States is pulling down what History had built in Palestine, and now in wider world also, there is the insight and there is the creative spirit operating in the Palestinian people. They cannot be defeated, while more and more brave people are joining them to fight the Zionists. At the appointed time, they will come out victorious.
A land without people for a people without land
The Zionists started the project of the state of Israel fraudulently. They violated the most fundamental values, on which humanity has built whatever we have today. Those who were children at that time are now old and wise men. The fraud of the Zionists has been totally exposed. Eric Margolis writes (June 03):
“I have been steeped in Mideast affairs since the early 1950s, when my late mother, Nexhmie Zaimi, was one of the first female American journalists to cover the Arab world, interviewing Egypt’s President Nasser, and Anwar Sadat, Jordan’s King Hussein, and Iraq’s strongman, Nuri As-Said. She began reporting the plight of 750,000 Palestinian refugees driven from their homes by the newly created state of Israel.
“Few Americans had ever heard of Palestinians. They were told Israel was ‘a land without people for a people without land’. My mother’s newspaper articles and lectures brought her much attention and constant death threats and attacks on our New York City home. The newspapers for which she wrote
were pressured by major advertisers to drop her columns. A courageous, outspoken woman, Mrs. Zaimi continued public speaking until she was finally silenced by threats to throw acid into my face.
“Fifty years later, after living in Egypt and a lifetime travelling across the Arab world and Israel, I am an ingrained pessimist. I would like nothing better than see a just Mideast peace, with Arabs and Jews living together peacefully and productively in a secular, non-racist state.”
This is how they started their project: the state of Israel. The unsuspecting Arabs and Palestinians could not have been in a position to escape the consequences of this conspiracy hatched by the Zionists and the West. A criminal can surprise a community by some sudden and outrageous act. And then society takes its own time to react. This is what has happened in the Middle East. No one should be overawed and impressed by the bigness of the crime.
Seizing land meter by meter
Jean-Marc Mojon (Aug 2003) writes:
RAFAH (Gaza Strip): This dirt-poor Palestinian town on the southern edge of Israeli occupation has long felt isolated. But Rafah is now being cut further by an Israeli security wall going up amid little protest. Drawing scant outside attention compared to a similar barrier in the West Bank, the planned seven-kilometre barricade snaking through Rafah’s centre is triggering new anguish in an already desperate border community.
And many here feel the spiral of poverty and helplessness in Rafah could be a harbinger of the fate awaiting the West Bank if Israel completes the barrier project there that has drawn widespread international criticism. There is no difference between the two walls. This one is also a way for Israel to weaken us and ‘seize our land metre by metre,’ Rafah resident Mustafa Jaber said as he surveyed the rusty iron barrier.
Fighting for not to be expelled again
In the same piece I have quoted above, continues Jean-Marc Mojon:
While the Israeli bulldozers have been active on the southern fringe of Rafah since the start of the uprising, the army only started building the wall this year. ‘I used to be able to see my family on the other side. But this wall has cut Rafah in two, our land and our houses in two,’ said Abu Samir. Since his house was demolished by the army in 2002, the only belongings of the old man are a crutch and a walking stick. He draws a circle on the ground with his stick and plants it in the sand: ‘I will stay here right here, whatever happens. This is the only form of resistance we have left’. For Palestinians like Abu Samir, the debate over a right of return of refugees to their old homes in Israel is academic: ‘For the moment we are fighting not to be expelled again.’
Israel, for the time being, may take land of Mustafa Jaber, in one go or metre by metre, or expel Abu Samir, but can it defeat them? Absolutely not; have taking land and expulsions defeated Palestinians earlier? If Palestinians cannot be defeated, how Israel is going to win? It cannot win. Israel is destined to be defeated.
No fear of Israel: The ultimate weapon of the Palestinians
In one of the worst terror attacks (Aug 19, 2003) in three years of the Intifada, up to 20 people were killed and nearly 100 were wounded by a suicide bomb explosion on Tuesday night in the centre of Al Quds. A videotape released by Hamas in the West Bank city of Al Khalil showed a man who named himself as Raed Abdel Hamid Mask and said he would carry out the suicide bombing (really the ultimate weapon of the oppressed Palestinians) to avenge Israel’s killing of one of the group’s members.
When Palestinian children throw stones on Israeli tanks, the “unequal” (there is no appropriate word) fight is for everyone to see. Even then the Palestinians are not afraid of Israel! What makes them fight against an enemy who is so strong, and when behind this enemy there is the vast reservoir of support
— the sole superpower of the world? There is the insight that somehow can make Palestinians see that Israel will be defeated. “At an appointed time,” civilization will win and Palestinian people will come out victorious. There cannot be any other outcome of this struggle and by enlarging the conflict to Afghanistan and Iraq it has been confirmed that they were failing on the Palestinian front.
According to Reuters (Dec 22, 03): “Worshippers assaulted Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher in the Al Aqsa Mosque on Monday and he had to be rushed to hospital. Mr. Maher, 68, was physically beaten and taken unconscious to hospital, but witnesses and police said he was accosted, jostled and possibly struck several times by a mob shouting that he was a ‘traitor and collaborator’. They threw shoes they had removed for prayers at his entourage and at Israeli police escorting him out of the melee to safety outside the mosque.” Are not all think tanks of the US-led West, Israel included, and their apologists in the Muslim countries misreading history?
The struggle to defeat Zionists in the Middle East has become fiercer and deep down there is the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons at some stage. In any case where ultimately will it end? It has to end in the defeat of Zionism. Where else can it end? The idea that the Palestinians can be broken into submission is wrong, because Palestinians represent civilization. And civilization has inexhaustible resources, not the Zionists. By resisting for so long, have not Palestinians, in fact, waited for and given time to civilization to mobilize? And human civilization is far bigger than the racist project of Zionists — the state of Israel. Everything is in place. The Zionist criminals will be defeated. ■