Arafat “Where to?”, he said: “To Palestine”

On November 15, 1988, that is, 35 years ago, the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat announced from the Algerian capital the establishment of the State of Palestine. Between the Palestinian declaration of independence and the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel were decades of conflict. 

It began with the 1948 War, which began in 1947 and continued until 1949. It was confronted by Palestinian wars of independence that began since the Palestinian National Movement announced the launch of its armed struggle in 1965, and continues to this day. The war in or against Gaza is one of the major confrontations after the Lebanon War (1982) that the Palestinian people are waging in order to extract their independence, and in which the Israelis are also waging their second war of independence.

From independence to it, the Israeli elite is aware of the magnitude of the non-military repercussions of the blow it received last October 7 on the nature of society and the state, in an entity that has been inhabited by existential obsession and anxiety since its inception. 

Tel Aviv can respond militarily to what happened, but this time it may fail to contain the concerns of its citizens and restore the principle of deterrence and security. Before the war, it was experiencing its own internal crises and vertical divisions as a result of shifts in the social environment, from the division between the right and the left to a complex triangle between a declining left, a traditional right unable to develop its discourse, and a rising extreme right embracing an exaggerated discourse that enabled it to expand its control over society and the state, and embarrass its opponents. On the traditional right, and removing the established left from competition.

On the way to the second independence, the Israeli extreme right realizes that it must sacrifice in order to win it. This is what was discussed in 2010 in one of the study centers in Washington between American and Israeli strategic experts about the role of this right in any external military conflict that might threaten the integrity of the entity. However, The shock came from within, so his sacrifices will be greater, and his gains less. The left, which sacrificed for the first independence, succeeded until 1965 in denying the existence of a Palestinian national liberation movement, and at the height of its victory it realized the necessity of gradually recognizing Palestinian rights (the Oslo Accords). As for the current right, it faces a difficult dilemma, as its war on Gaza will not achieve the victory it desires. It will not spare him political losses if the final solution is linked to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

On the way to statehood, it took the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh 35 years to admit to the historical leader of the Palestinian struggle, Yasser Arafat, the reality of the “Algeria Declaration,” and to recognize UN resolutions, and at a great cost in lives and property in order to accept the two-state solution. Arafat’s courage in war and peace was exceptional; When he was asked on the ship after he was forced to leave Beirut: “Where to?”, he said: “To Palestine,” which he reached via “Oslo.” This Arafatian realism is now required of Hamas if its concern is national, to act with political realism as its predecessors in the Palestinian struggle movement behaved. Returning to the Palestinian national home is a pre-emptive necessity before Israel declares its victory in its second war of independence.

On the way to armed struggle and the disappointment of Hamas with its allies, we can take advantage of what the Palestinian thinker Dr. Yazid Al-Sayegh wrote in a study entitled “Armed Struggle and the Formation of the Palestinian State” that “the Palestinian national movement, which was established with the specific goal of liberating Palestine through armed struggle, has proven its inability, in over the past years, it has refrained from liberating any part of its national territory by force, and in the end it accepted the Oslo negotiated settlement, the terms of which were in opposition, in practice, to all the principles and goals it had adopted throughout this time.

The “Oslo Accords” constituted a foothold for the Palestinian struggle movement and an essential step towards the establishment of their state. A state where the Palestinians made great sacrifices in order to gain its independence, and they are now facing a great challenge. The necessity of turning their tragedy into an opportunity equal to their sacrifices so that their enemy does not win the second confrontation as it did 75 years ago.

Alsharq Alawsat