The Resistance of Palestinians

To understand and trace and identify the Palestinian resistance, one must first go through the pages of history and identify its beginnings and characteristics. this is the story of the Resistance that stands against the apartheid regime, extremism, racism, and, even if boycotted.

History

To unveil the history of the Palestinian resistance, we must look at the history of the creation and formation of the Zionist regime in the land of Palestine. The year 1916 marked four centuries since Palestine had become part of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire. For most of this period and history, the Jewish population represented a small minority, approximately 3% of the total, with Muslims representing the largest segment of the population, and Christians the second. Meanwhile Zionism arose in the late 19th century in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. 

In July 1914 war broke out in Europe between the Triple Entente (Britain, France, and the Russian Empire) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and, later that year, the Ottoman Empire)

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

The original letter from Balfour to Rothschild; the declaration reads:

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The local Christian and Muslim community of Palestine, who constituted almost 90% of the population, strongly opposed the declaration. As described by the Palestinian-American philosopher Edward Said in 1979, it was perceived as being made: "

(a) by a European power, (b) about a non-European territory, (c) in a flat disregard of both the presence and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, and (d) it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group."

These actions of Great Britain and France, like this declaration and The Sykes-Picot Agreement )treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire and current middle East) it destroyed the natural balance of this region, as David Fromkin explained in its novel book “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (also subtitled Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914–1922)”.

Resistance to this current and extravagance began from the earliest days in Palestine. The first spark of resistance in 1920 from the city of Jerusalem ignited the "Revolution of the Prophet Moses", followed the following year by the "Jaffa Revolution", which led to the conflict in the city of Tulkaram, then the "Al-Buraq Revolution" in 1929.

To this day, there is a history full of resistance and war and the killing of Palestinians for their rightful claim,

 which has even been endorsed in the resolution of general assembly 1514(Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples), and it is beyond the scope of this text to examine all of them. But examining the history of the creation of the Zionist regime determined the very reason for the beginning of this unlawful regime, the ridiculous point is that Israel is the only so-called “country” in the world that was created by others. While the natural custom is for countries and nations to exist and then find a political system.

The current situation is the oppression of the Zionist regime and the Islamic resistance of the Palestinians.

 In April 15, 2022, Israeli forces raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem with medics reporting at least 158 Palestinians injured in the ensuing violence as hundreds were detained. The Islamic endowment that runs the site said Israeli police entered in force before dawn on Friday, as thousands of worshippers were gathered at the mosque for early morning prayers. The Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said it evacuated the majority of the wounded to hospitals. The endowment said one of the guards at the site was shot in the eye with a rubber-coated bullet.

Based Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General, Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories, Israeli security forces killed 315 Palestinians, including 197 men, 41 women and 77 children, and injured 17,597 Palestinians, including at least 527 women and 1,472 children, during the reporting period.

This is while Israel’s then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (message posted online in March 2019): 

“Israel is not a state of all its citizens… [but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them”,  A clear sign of the apartheid.

 Amnesty International is calling for Israel to end the international wrong, and crime, of apartheid, by dismantling measures of fragmentation, segregation, discrimination, and deprivation, currently in place against the Palestinian population.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet describes ‘disastrous’ human rights situation across Occupied Palestinian Territory ,“This clearly also has damaging impact on prospects for peace and sustainable development for Israel, as well as the surrounding region”, she argued.  

On April 17 every year, Palestinian Prisoner’s Day is commemorated to highlight the plight of those held in Israeli jails and their struggle for freedom against the Israeli occupation.

Over the course of 2021, the Israeli military arrested nearly 8,000 Palestinians, including more than 1,300 minors and 184 women. As of April 10, 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinians held in Israeli jails in Israel and the occupied territory.

For Palestinians, they are political prisoners fighting to end Israel’s illegal occupation. Of those:

530 are held without charge or trial

160 are children

32 are women

549 are serving life sentences

499 are serving a sentence of more than 20 years

Conclusion: 

Despite all these problems and unkindness, the young generations of Palestinians are also pursuing their rights and resisting. As one of the well-known actress truly said our duty as a human being ,“solidarity is a verb” Perhaps the best interpretation about the resistance of Palestinians has been given by the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish:

“Here, where the hills slope before the sunset and the chasm of time

near gardens whose shades have been cast aside

we do what prisoners do

we do what the jobless do

we sow hope”