PLO high official says PA will resort to violence if demands for "an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital" are not met: " I've a revolutionary's gun in one hand and an olive branch in the other - do not let the branch fall from my hand"
Headline: “Al-Ahmad: Our people can no longer tolerate the non-implementation of the international institutions’ resolutions that will put an end to the occupation”
“Head of a delegation of the Palestinian National Council (i.e., the legislative body of the PLO) to the 143rd assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Fatah Central Committee member, and PLO Executive Committee member Azzam Al-Ahmad said that our people can no longer tolerate the non-implementation of the international institutions’ resolutions, which will put an end to the occupation and enable it [to realize the right] to self-determination, to return to its land, and to live free in its independent state whose capital is Jerusalem.
During the speech of the State of Palestine, which he gave yesterday [Nov. 28, 2021] at the general assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Madrid, the capital of Spain, Al-Ahmad added: ‘The international [UN] Security Council has issued more than 70 resolutions since the start of the conflict, and this is in addition to the hundreds of resolutions that the UN General Assembly has issued, but not even one of these resolutions has been implemented. Is that justice and equality? [Is this how] we achieve security, peace, and stability?’
He added: ‘The UN has issued hundreds of resolutions, including the partition resolution on Nov. 29, 1947 (see note below -Ed.), which gave the Palestinian people the right to establish a state on 44% of the territory of historical Palestine. Afterwards was the resolution to establish a Palestinian state on the territories that were occupied in 1967, which gives our people the right to establish a state on 22% of the territory of historical Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital. The Security Council issued Resolution 2334 in 2016 (see note below -Ed.), which confirmed this and the illegality of the settlement enterprise. We agreed to this in order to establish peace, but how long will the occupation continue to ignore all these resolutions?’…
He emphasized that the continuation of this situation, along with the fact that the international community is not doing what it determined must be done and what it constantly calls to do, gives our people a feeling of frustration and hopelessness for its children, its women, its young, and its old. He added that this causes it to believe that there is no avoiding a reexamination of dealing with this reality and demanding all its historical rights.
Al-Ahmad recalled the statement of our eternal Martyr [former PLO Chairman and PA President] Yasser Arafat before the UN General Assembly in 1974: 'I've come to you with a revolutionary's gun in on hand and a green olive branch in the other hand – therefore, do not let the green branch fall from my hand,’ in other words, do not let peace fall.”