Palestiniancolumnist in Qatar daily newspaper - "We do not want a ceasefire, we wantongoing war & victory over Israel"
Wednesday,15 May 2024
In hisMay 12, 2024 column in the Qatari daily Al-Watan, titled "Palestine Is aState, Let's Continue the Resistance", Palestinian journalist SamirAl-Barghouti wrote that the October 7 attack on Israel increased globalawareness of the Palestinian cause, as evident from the May 10, 2024 U.N.General Assembly resolution that upgraded Palestine's status in this body andrecommended that the Security Council consider granting it full U.N.membership. Al-Barghouti called to continue the resistance "even ifPalestine sacrifices millions of martyrs and wounded," and added: "We do not want a ceasefire, we want ongoing war," because "the enemyunderstands only a language of force."
The followingare translated excerpts from his article:[1]
"Forover 76 years now, the decision to found a Palestinian state has been delayedin order to appease the Zionist state… The nations never managed to establishthe Palestinian state on the territories specified in Britain's White Paper,which assigned to the Jewish state the areas of Nazareth, Safad and northernPalestine, up to Ras Naqoura, as well as the settlement of Tel Aviv and a safepassage to the Al-Buraq Wall [i.e., the Western Wall in Jerusalem]. To theArabs it assigned [the region] from Acre to Rafah and to Umm Rashrash [i.e.,Eilat], as well as the West Bank.[2]
"Afterhatching plots, the Zionist gangs usurped the areas that had been assigned tothe Arabs along the coast, as well as the Negev and Eilat, and WesternJerusalem. In 1967 the rest of Palestine was stolen, along with Egypt's Sinaiand the Syrian Golan.
"From1967, the year of the Naksa ['the setback,' referring to the Arab countries'defeat in the 1967 war with Israel] until October 2023, there was resistanceand battles, alongside protest, stagnation and calm that almost causedPalestine to be forgotten. But the events of October 7 [i.e., Hamas' terrorattack] and the events that followed them [i.e., the war in Gaza] put Palestineback on the agenda. Although the U.S. vetoed [an April 18, 2024 SecurityCouncil resolution that would have made Palestine a full member of the U.N.],the free world did not refrain from crying out 'long live Palestine,' and [onMay 10] the U.N. passed a resolution in favour of a Palestine state – and thisis thanks to the resistance.
"Oheroes of the resistance in Gaza, thank you. You showed the whole world howhonor takes precedence to life, how faith stands fast in the face of weapons,how blood triumphs over pain and how the free believer stands tall in the faceof the bullet. You proved with your resistance that peoples who surrender havenever been safe and have no future, whereas peoples who fight for their freedomand honour will surely achieve their destination someday...
"Opeople of Gaza, history has never seen a people braver than you, more patientthan you [in the pursuit of] the truth, or more generous in sacrificing for thesake of Allah. O our people in Gaza, despite the martyrs and wounded, you arethe springboard of the hoped-for national future of the Arabs and Muslims… Nomatter how deep the wound, we will continue to resist, because this enemy understandsonly the language of force. Even if Palestine sacrifices millions of martyrsand wounded, we will continue to resist. We do not want a ceasefire, we wantongoing war. Victory is at hand…"
