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Resistance strategy highlighted against failure of negotiations approach as sole option


By Dr Fayez Rasheed - Palestine's many experiences with Israel, especially that of resistance and the steadfastness of our people, not least in facing up to "Operation Protective Edge", highlight the failure of the negotiations approach as the sole political and strategic option.

The example of all national liberation movements demonstrates that resistance, in all its forms and manifestations, especially armed struggle, is capable of forcing Israel to accede to the legitimate rights and demands of the Palestinians. Resistance has forced Israel to recognise the presence of the Palestinian people after a long era of denial, even if some officials and politicians still deny our existence. The resistance also strengthened our national identity and gained broad international recognition for our people and their national cause. At the same time, it acted as a source of pain and loss for the Zionist project as a whole, and prevented the enemy from achieving the goals behind its attacks on the civilians of the Gaza Strip.

Since they were founded, all of the Palestinian resistance factions have adopted the concept and tactics of "a long-term popular war" in our conflict with Israel, and insisted that Palestine, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, is the natural and historic Palestinian homeland. The deviation of some from this, either in the PLO's Ten Point Programme; in the build-up to the Oslo talks or following the Oslo Accords; in the elimination of the Palestinian National Charter clauses related to the armed struggle in 1996; or by setting negotiations as the sole strategic option which has only brought about destruction to the Palestinian cause and the rights of our people; all of this has resulted in Israel merely granting a degree of autonomy for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This, of course, all happened before the political division and the emergence of two "Palestinian Authorities" and their supervision of the administrative and daily issues of the residents of both areas, but there have been no signs of sovereignty. The negotiations only led to Israel's increased appetite for Palestinian concessions, more settlements and more massacres. Israel has never, even after the Oslo Accords, stopped arresting, torturing and killing the Palestinian people, destroying their trees and stealing their land and homes, in what amounts to a form of genocide.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is pressing to get the "peace negotiations" back on track after the US refused the (tripartite) plan launched by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the grounds that it comes from one side and there must be agreement from both sides. Kerry's previous tours in the region and his talks with both sides, the Israelis and the Palestinians, have resulted in a distorted American solution that is based on an Israeli perspective, the content of which is a framework agreement for a temporary mini-state that lacks sovereignty, any part of Jerusalem and the return of refugees. This mini-state would be nothing more than self-governance for the Palestinians, which already exists; a dismembered canton without any geographical links to Gaza, as well as an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley area, that will become permanent. more

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