FATAH Central Committee Member Muhammad al-Alul has said that the Palestinian leadership is currently working on developing the popular resistance against the Israeli occupation within the framework of a Palestinian national strategy.
This strategy, he said, will be in harmony with the creative activities of the popular resistance and will seek to give these activities the quality of inclusiveness and ensure the widest possible participation by Palestinians in all their areas in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Speaking last Wednesday, Al-Alul also said that the Palestinian leadership is seeking to entrench the principle of popular resistance in accordance with the idea of constantly living in a state of opposition to the presence of the Israeli occupation.
Al-Alul explained that they are currently seeking to entrench the popular resistance culture to become a prevailing method by all the Palestinians.
He said: ‘I practise popular resistance when I refuse to buy Israeli goods.’ He also indicated that they are currently working on changing some of the concepts towards the popular resistance.
He indicated that popular resistance does not only mean going out in a demonstration to reject a certain policy that Israel practises against the Palestinians and this rejection and resistance end as soon as the demonstration ends.
He also noted that the Palestinian leadership is planning to form a central committee to follow up and manage the work of the popular resistance.
Al-Alul also said that the actions by Israeli occupation troops during confrontations with the Palestinian youths – including directly firing live bullets at them and arresting them, along with the daily violations against the city of Jerusalem – is a proof of Israel’s anger at the popular resistance that has started in large areas of the West Bank.
The peaceful popular resistance option is not a new idea, but was proposed throughout the past period. It was fundamental in the first intifada in 1987. However, the momentum that the armed resistance gained during the Al-Aqsa Intifada marginalised this option and weakened the call for adopting it under the various oppressive and violent forms of the Israeli aggression that have been practised against the Palestinians.
The popular resistance option has recently started to regain its momentum and importance in the absence of the armed resistance in the West Bank, thus making the popular resistance the possible solution at this crucial phase in the history of the Palestinian cause.
President Mahmud Abbas embraces the peaceful popular resistance option and has demonstrated his absolute support and backing for this method in confronting the occupation’s policies.
The aim is to bring pressure to bear on the occupation’s leadership by reactivating the popular element that represents a factor of real annoyance to the policy and schemes of the occupation authorities, which have grown accustomed to the policy of killing and armed oppression, but has stood helpless in the face of this kind of resistances.
Palestinian TV at 1800 gmt on 17 December carried a new episode of its talk show ‘State of Politics’ presented by Khalid Sukkar.
The show hosted in the studio Nimr Hammad, adviser to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.
Referring to the UN Security Council resolution calling for the end of the occupation by 2017, the presenter asked Hammad about the expected effects of the vote on relations with the United States.
Hammad said: ‘The pressures are there. No one denies this. The truth is that President Abu-Mazin (Abbas) receives numerous calls from different sides.
‘The position of President Abu-Mazin is not one of rejection and stubbornness. On the contrary, the position of President Abu-Mazin is al-sahl al-mumtani (something that appears to be easy or simple, yet is difficult to undertake or imitate), so to speak.
‘Quite simply, when someone calls him and asks him to delay, his answer is as follows: Delay for what reason? Give us a chance.
‘What do we tell the Americans: Mr John Kerry, because practically the one who is now leading the orchestra, so to speak, of demanding the delay is the United States. The answer always, and quite calmly, with Mr John Kerry: “You have tried and you asked, and nine months of negotiations were sponsored by you.”
‘What President Abu-Mazin does not tell John Kerry, but certainly John Kerry comprehends it: You know how these negotiations ended and the statements issued by the Israelis. Is there an alternative?
‘Mr John Kerry himself says that the Palestinian-Israeli situation is unbearable. Why is it unbearable? If you ask Mr John Kerry about the main obstacle and the foundation, he will tell you the continuation of settlement activity, the restrictions on the Palestinians, the ongoing arrests, and the insults.
‘How can this stop? When President Abu-Mazin speaks to them in this language, the answer directly will be embarrassing the other party.’
Hammad added: ‘The absolute truth is in the sky. There is always a relative truth. Some people say that this is because of the Zionist influence, which is not necessarily Jewish because Christian Judaism in the United States is worse and more extremist in understanding the question of supporting Israel and assembling the Jews of the world and other issues. This lobby has a huge influence on the media and on money.
‘Even when the positions of the US Administration head to some sort of balance, we see that the US Congress is almost unanimously supportive of Israel to the extent that many people who watch conditions inside the United States observe that when there is a disagreement between the US President and the prime minister of Israel, whoever he may be, most members of the US Congress support the position of the Israeli prime minister.
‘Is this because Israel is a US interest? Therefore, some people say that the United States is satisfied with anything that Israel does. This is one view. I am personally not inclined towards this view.
‘Some people believe that Israel is a tool in the hands of the United States. I believe – and if you say this to many Europeans, they give you another explanation and they tell you no – that there is a lobby for Israel in the United States that moves the US policy towards the Middle East. This lobby has taken one subject and focused on it.’
Hammad added: ‘If the United States wants to follow the mentality of the cowboy and to be removed from any logic and to accuse us falsely, this is possible. However, I doubt this for one reason, which is that the US withdrawal from any role and leaving a vacuum, well, the United States is aware of the dangers of this.’
He said that the US Administration will not be able to say that the Palestinians made a mistake by adopting this resolution.
He said that he does not believe that the US Administration will adopt a hostile stand towards the Palestinians ‘although there could be days where there will be give and take. However, in the end, there is no alternative to relations with the Palestinian side’.
Asked about European positions towards Israel, Hammad said that ‘Europe has reached a stage where it is not possible to continue the previous positions’.
In answer to a further question, Hammad said that ‘going to the Security Council does not conflict at all with the negotiations’.
Asked to comment on the decision of the European Court on Hamas, Hammad said that the Palestinian official position is that the European decision to put Hamas on the terrorism list was not right. He said that Abbas always says that Hamas is part of the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians’ behaviour shows they’re not worthy of a state, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said amid heckling at an Institute for National Security Studies conference in Herzliyya on Thursday.
Following the Palestinian petition to the UN Security Council, Bennett said: ‘The willingness to give territory to our enemy is every statesman’s entry pass for international legitimacy. . . It’s a simple procedure: Blame Israel, apologise, say we are occupiers, that giving away land is going too slowly, and boom, you find yourself loved, embraced, at cocktail parties in various European countries with people like you. You are valued, enlightened, one of the guys; suddenly you’re called a “man of peace”.’
The extreme right wing Jewish Home leader added: ‘I won’t give territory in the Land of Israel to Arabs. We have to stop apologising to the world. There was never a Palestinian state here. . . There was a State of Israel, 2170 years ago; we celebrate it on Hanukkah. It existed 3,000 years ago too.’
According to Bennett, all the Palestinians did in recent years was prove that they are not worthy of their own state, because ‘murder, terrorism and blood do not build a state. . . rockets and terrorist tunnels built under our kibbutzes after we evacuated Gaza do not build a state.
‘When Israel says clearly, without stuttering and without apologising, that we do not agree to committing suicide and building a Palestinian state on Israeli land, the world will eventually understand,’ he said.
Earlier, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman refused to meet with his Swedish counterpart next month in light of Stockholm’s decision to unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state.
Liberman on Wednesday rejected Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom’s request to convene a meeting in Jerusalem in January during her upcoming visit to Israel.
In October, Sweden was the the first major European country to recognise the state of Palestine.
Liberman has condemned the Swedish government’s willingness to recognise a Palestinian state, and previously snubbed the country’s Prime Minister Sefan Lofven over the issue.
The foreign minister recalled Israel’s Ambassador to Sweden Isaac Bachman to Jerusalem for consultations following the move.
