Columnist: “We are fighting to wrest free and liberate every inch of our land from the colonialist” Israel
Excerpt of a column by Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “We will not argue with their ‘Israel,’ rather we will wrest our right from them”
“Those who spread the rumor in their speeches and statements that [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas has trusted the various American governments or political parties and election results in the occupation system (Israel) [parentheses in source] should read his books that were written for the sake of history. They should read every word in his speeches directed towards the Palestinian people or the world’s peoples, its states, its governments, and its leaders in the international forums, and specifically at the UN General Assembly – the heir of the League of Nations, which gave Israel a fake birth certificate as part of the greatest conspiracy against the peoples, which was carried out by the colonialist states that won in World War I. If they would read with a desire, perhaps they will understand the consequences and the goals of President Mahmoud Abbas in focusing on two parallel paths of the Palestinian national struggle: the first is on the ground, on the land of Palestine, through peaceful popular resistance with all its meanings, demands, and methods(i.e., term used by Palestinians, which also refers to the use of violence and terror). The second is the legal, political, and diplomatic [path] in the international forums, which will establish Palestine on the world map geographically, and will establish it in international law.
On the ground there is proof that we own the historical and natural right, while there, in the [international] forums, we must remove Israel’s fake legitimacy and the discriminatory resolutions that have been passed by the League of Nations and its heir, the UN. This is through resolutions that will emphasize the Palestinian people’s historical and natural right, even if only partially, as happened in [UN] Resolution 67/19 of 2012, when we achieved a resolution on adding Palestine to the UN as an observer member…
The long-term vision of the leader of the national liberation movement, Mahmoud Abbas – its gist is to wrest the Palestinian people’s historical and natural right from the colonialist states, which committed the worst crime in the history of humanity: establishing their front base (Israel) [parentheses in source] following massacres, wars, uprooting, expulsion, and destruction. We do not rely on these colonialist states, foremost among them the US; we will wrest from them what we can of our rights, because we understand that they are the ones who determine what will be the fate of their ‘Israel,’ which we do not argue with it under any circumstances over the right to our land. This is because our homeland Palestine belongs entirely to the Palestinian people, even if we relate with a realistic approach to the resolutions of the international institutions.
It is true that we, the members of the Palestinian people here on the land of our homeland Palestine, are fighting against the Israeli occupation army, the settlers, their government, and their system that is called ‘the State of Israel.’ But the truth is – according to the logic of the political leader figure [Abbas], who sees things in the long term and delves into reading the history that is near to us and to our land chronologically and geographically – we are fighting to wrest free our land, as it is a sacred historical and natural right. We are fighting to wrest free and liberate every inch of our land from the colonialist states’ proxy (Israel)[parentheses in source] through the policy of stages, as the oppressive colonialist states, which committed the worst crime against humanity in modern history, stole the Palestinian people’s historical and natural right in stages. This was despite the fact that they had material and military might that enabled taking control [of Palestine] and achieving their goal at once!”
The terms "peaceful uprising/resistance,” and “popular uprising/resistance" are used by PA leaders at times to refer to peaceful protest and at times to refer to deadly terror attacks and terror waves. For example, Mahmoud Abbas defined as “peaceful popular” the murderous terror during the 2015-2016 terror wave (“The Knife Intifada”), in which 40 people were killed (36 Israelis, 1 Palestinian, 2 Americans and 1 Eritrean) and hundreds wounded in stabbings, shootings, and car ramming attacks. Abbas said: "We want peaceful popular uprising, and that’s what this is." https://palwatch.org/page/9276