Merchants of bloodshed ... resistance, wealth don’t mix; Palestine liberation not in French perfume, Cuban cigars
REVOLUTION becomes impossible when it combines two extremes which never concur in a manner that would produce a reality that can be relied upon.
Indeed, everyone should admit to this fact instead of going into the cycle of bloodshed and destruction that has been ongoing since 1947 when the United Nations resolution No. 181 was issued for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with the city of Jerusalem as a separate entity to be governed by a special international regime.
For over seven decades, the Palestinian leaders have been proving that they are not seeking to liberate their land. They hence wasted several opportunities, and resorted to investing in the blood of their people in order to accumulate wealth.
This is what the Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap deduced from the Palestinian leadership when he visited Beirut in the 1970s to study the conditions of the Palestinian resistance. He witnessed its leaders living a lofty life and enjoying luxury cars, Cuban cigars, luxurious Italian suits and expensive French perfumes. This prompted him to compare the Palestinian resistance with the resistance of the “Viet Cong” in the Vietnamese jungles, and declare unequivocally to the Palestinian leadership, “Your revolution will not triumph!”
When the leaders asked him why, he replied, “Because revolution and wealth do not meet. A revolution that is not led by conscience turns into terrorism. A revolution that is showered with money turns its leaders into thieves. If you see someone claiming to seek revolution but living in a palace or a luxurious apartment, eating the most delicious dishes, and enjoying life in luxury while his people live in camps and beg for international aid to survive, then know that the leadership does not want to change the status quo. How can such leadership win?”
This fact was known to the Arabs and the Palestinians for 73 years. We did not see any of the leaders of the various Palestinian factions living in camps, or living like the rest of their people. Rather, we told them they are enjoying opulent life to the greatest extent.
During the Israeli siege of the Lebanese capital Beirut in 1982, I remember coming across a statement made by one of the advisors of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat when he asked about the scarcity of water during the siege. He said, “We have no problem with water”.
This revolution has transformed since the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the early 1960s. The various factions, which total about 20 organizations in number, never agreed on a position, as each one of them is affiliated with an Arab or a regional group or state. All of them fell into the claws of temptations.
Some of them were agents of Israel and were used to expand Israel’s control over all of Palestine by employing them to carry out terrorist operations, thereby allowing Israel to continue with further expansion and occupation.
This Israeli tactic was and continues to be in par with the statement made by the former Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol on the
eve of the 1967 war in a meeting during which it was decided to launch the battle, explaining the risks and future isolation that Israel would face, as well as its strategic planning.
Eshkol said, “Suppose I today accept and break the enemy’s strength, the enemy will start rebuilding his strength from tomorrow, because we too will have lost our strength. Then, we will have to fight after every ten years. Therefore, we will continue fighting wars in the future in order for the Arabs to forget the lands occupied in previous wars and to negotiate with us over the newly occupied lands. We will still need something that would push us to go to war”. This is what the factions in Palestine have been giving Israel since the conflict began.
The Palestinians forgot their cause when they waged a war against the government in Jordan, citing the slogan that “The road to Palestine passes through Amman”. They hijacked civilian aircraft to blow them up in the Jordanian desert in order to draw the world’s attention to their cause, or so they claimed, but instead provoked all the nations such that the West stood in support of Israel.
They also did it in Lebanon where they occupied a part of its land and called it “Fatah Land”.
During the civil war, Abu Iyad said his famous phrase, “The road to Palestine passes through Jounieh”, justifying the massacre of the Lebanese people. They had established a de facto authority in an independent state that agreed to support their resistance. However, instead of returning the favor, they destroyed Lebanon and bequeathed it to Iran to complete its destruction.
Today, after the end of the conflict in Gaza for which defenseless innocent people paid a heavy price, these leaders did not hesitate to invest their crime against the Palestinians by begging for more money from the Arab countries.
The senior leader of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh was clear in his sermon, one day after the recent ceasefire came into effect, about the need for financial aid for the reconstruction of Gaza. At the same time, he praised and thanked Iran, which had supplied weapons to the so-called resistance movement.
Based on all of the aforementioned facts, we ask them, “Whom should we help? Is it the internationally recognized Palestinian authority that seeks to find a two-state solution for which the US President Joe Biden promised his support, or the factions that have done nothing but invest in blood and destruction? This affirms what was said by the Vietnamese General Giap, who defeated colonialists, the French and American forces, and had liberated his country.