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The Palestinians’ Right and Duty to Resist
Faced with
a reality in which Israel is strong and the
United States is in its pocket, it is the duty
of Palestinians to resist the occupation. The
only question relates to the means.
Gideon
Levy
A
Palestinian youth holds a slingshot during
clashes with Israeli police in a suburb of East
Jerusalem, Oct.23, 2014. AFP
October
07, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Imagine you’re the Palestinians. Perhaps
residents of East Jerusalem. Forty-seven
difficult years are behind you; a big,
depressing darkness lies ahead. The Israeli
tyranny that dooms your fate declares arrogantly
that everything will stay like this forever.
Your city will remain under occupation “for ever
and ever.” The defense minister, second in
importance in the government that subjugates
you, says a Palestinian state will never be
established.
Imagine
you’re Palestinian and your children are in
danger. Two days ago, the occupation forces
killed another child because “he lit a
firebomb.” The words “Death to Arabs” were
sprayed near your home. Everywhere you turn, a
soldier or Border Police officer may shout at
you. Every night, your home may be invaded
brutally. You will never be treated like human
beings. They’ll destroy, humiliate, intimidate,
perhaps even arrest you, possibly without trial.
There are
close to 500 administrative detainees, a record
number in recent years. If one of your dear ones
is arrested, you will have difficulty visiting
him. If you succeed, you’ll get half an hour’s
conversation through a glass window. If your
dear one is an administrative detainee, you will
never know when he’ll be released. But these are
trivia you grew accustomed to long ago.
Maybe
you’ve also grown accustomed to the land theft.
At every moment a settler can invade your land,
burn your plantation or torch your fields. He
will not be brought to trial for this; the
soldiers who are supposed to protect you will
stand idly by. At any moment, a demolition order
or random eviction order may appear. There’s
nothing you can do.
Imagine
you’re the Palestinians. You can’t leave Gaza
and it’s not easy to leave the West Bank,
either. The beach, less than an hour’s drive
from your West Bank home, is beyond the
mountains of darkness. An Israeli can go to
Tierra del Fuego, between Argentina and Chile,
much more easily than you can go to the beach at
Ajami.
There are
no dreams, no wishes. Your children have a slim
chance of accomplishing anything in life, even
if they go to university. All they can look
forward to is a life of humiliation and
unemployment.
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There’s no
chance that this situation is about to change
anytime soon. Israel is strong, the United
States is in its pocket, your leadership is weak
(the Palestinian Authority) and isolated
(Hamas), and the world is losing interest in
your fate. What do you do?
There are
two possibilities. The first is to accept, give
in, give up. The second is to resist. Whom have
we respected more in history? Those who passed
their days under the occupation and collaborated
with it, or those who struggled for their
freedom?
Imagine
you’re a Palestinian. You have every right to
resist. In fact, it’s your civil duty. No
argument there. The occupied people’s right to
resist occupation is secured in natural justice,
in the morals of history and in international
law.
The only
restrictions are on the means of resistance. The
Palestinians have tried almost all of them, for
better and worse – negotiations and terror; with
a carrot and with a stick; with a stone and with
bombs; in demonstrations and in suicide. All in
vain. Are they to despair and give up? This has
almost never happened in history, so they’ll
continue. Sometimes they’ll use legitimate
means, sometimes vile ones. It’s their right to
resist.
Now
they’re resisting in Jerusalem. They don’t want
Israeli rule, or people who set live children on
fire. They don’t want armed settlers who invade
their apartments in the middle of the night,
under the Israeli law’s protection, and evict
them. They don’t want a municipality that grants
its services according to national affiliation,
or judges that sentence their children according
to their origin. They also go nuts when the
house of a Jewish terrorist is not demolished,
while the house of a Palestinian will be torn
down.
They don’t
want Israel to continue tyrannizing them, so
they resist. They hurl stones and firebombs.
That’s what resistance looks like. Sometimes
they act with heinous murderousness, but even
that is not as bad as their occupier’s built-in
violence.
It’s their
right; it’s their duty.
This
article was originally published by
Haaretz
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