Open letter to the President and Palestinian leaders

Trump’s arrogant statements or balloons about displacing Gazans to Egypt and Jordan were not the first, and they will not be the last. However, they cannot be ignored. At the very least, they carry within them a condescending view that reveals a concept that is endemic to reckless American policy that the Palestinians are nothing more than “a group of terrorists and an invented people,” as Republican presidential candidate Gingrich once said, and which was repeated at the time by Netanyahu’s and Trump’s protégé, American billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who said, “Read the history of those who call themselves Palestinians, and listen to what Gingrich said that the Palestinian people are invented.”

Trump's balloons, which intersect with the calls for Israeli fascism, do not only target the fate of our Palestinian people, but they also constitute an aggression against Arab national security, including an attempt to revive the "alternative homeland" policy in Jordan, which imposes the necessity of not only responding with firm positions to nip such conspiracies that target the fate of the Arab region and controlling its wealth for the benefit of Israel, which Trump himself considered to have a small geography that does not match its capabilities, thus calling for more control over Arab land, as he previously offered the occupied Golan Heights to it, and did not reject Israeli expansion into Syrian territory after the fall of the Assad regime.

These statements, despite their recklessness, confirm a number of facts, foremost of which is that Israeli expansionist ambitions are limitless and will not stop at the borders of annexing the West Bank or displacing our people from it and from the Gaza Strip, but rather extend east and south to various Arab capitals. The second fact is that the Palestinian people’s resistance to these expansionist ambitions constitutes a shield to defend not only the rights and destiny of the Palestinian people, but also the destiny of the entire Arab region. The third fact, which is confirmed by the will of the Palestinians regarding the extent of their attachment to their land and their belonging to every spot in it, was demonstrated by the queues of hundreds of thousands who waited for two days on Rashid Street and the so-called “Netzarim” junction, knowing full well that they will return to the ruins of destroyed homes, unfit water and electricity networks, and even schools, hospitals and roads that are not qualified to provide any service. The Palestinians have learned the lesson of the Nakba, as they imbibed it after the defeat of June 1967. However, today, as they are the owners of their fateful decision, they realize that survival and protecting the land are the essence of resisting the racist Zionist project. Finally, the fourth truth is that betting on Trump and refraining from formulating a national vision supported by the Arabs and the international community as a basis for any political movement, while waiting for what the author of the first deal of the century will present, will only lead to further self-erosion. Formulating a national vision has its internal requirements and requires comprehensive and bold reviews from everyone. Without it, we will remain ineffective, and the enormous sacrifices will go down the drain.

This is a final statement for the people whose adherence to their rights is only made more steadfast by the crimes and bloody plots of the fascist government in Tel Aviv. Every citizen of this people, who has been subjected to open genocide for more than sixteen months, has the right to be considered the true hero. Yes, the people are the leaders as long as the leadership appears to be alienated from their ability to endure in order to advance towards their national rights, which are achieved to the extent that the links of the Zionist settlement project are broken one by one, not surrendered to. The national project is an interconnected chain whose essence is survival, steadfastness, and a unified national leadership capable of supporting it to achieve this.

The big question, which I have always repeated in all my previous articles, is: Is what the dominant leadership is doing in the face of the major risks and challenges facing our people commensurate with those existential risks and challenges? Here, an open message must be directed to the president in his capacity, as well as to the Palestinian leaderships of all stripes.

It was natural to disagree about the effectiveness of what the resistance did on October 7, especially in terms of the correctness or misjudgment of the repercussions resulting from it, and the regional and international positions towards it, especially in terms of adopting the Zionist narrative and trying to Daeshize the resistance by mobilizing the "Hasbara" system, which quickly disintegrated in the face of the persistence of the fascist genocide committed by the leaders, army and society of the occupation. Unfortunately, this dismantling of the organized Zionist propaganda was not achieved through a Palestinian political, diplomatic and media effort that stems from a unified vision of a Palestinian discourse capable of dismantling the lies of that crumbling narrative. The narrative that the Palestinians won with was expensive, with what it included of scenes of victims, the blood of children, women and elderly people, and their destroyed homes, which the young men and women, journalists and female journalists of Gaza excelled in conveying to the peoples of the world in all parts of the universe, causing qualitative transformations in international public opinion, and even what can be considered a global uprising in awareness and demonstrations that swept the cities and capitals of the world. The hand triumphed over the awl. However, the Palestinian discourse remained scattered, so much so that the Hamas leadership delayed until March 2024 to convey its narrative about October 7. The UN Secretary-General preceded it when he considered that October 7 was nothing but the result of long-standing injustice and aggression that lasted for more than seventy-five years, while the Arab and even Palestinian leaderships remained silent in front of Macron during his visit to the region, as he called for the establishment of a regional alliance to eradicate Hamas and the resistance, as they had previously done with ISIS, in absolute bias towards the narrative of the fascist Zionist right, which was paving the way with that narrative to commit the most heinous crimes of genocide.

Once again, the direct response to the nonsense of Trump and the advocates of transfer in Israel comes at the hands of the people of the Strip who have always pledged to themselves in the songs of their revolution and uprisings, “We swear to God we will not leave.” But is such a pledge and the will to survive alone enough to defeat the displacement plans?

In a meeting I had with the martyr leader Ismail Haniyeh in March of last year, whom I bear witness before history that he was keen with his molars on unity and moving towards a realistic vision that would break all the artificial obstacles to its achievement, especially with regard to the unity of the national decision in the PLO, and moving towards a transitional government of consensus. This was from a position of awareness that the most difficult war would begin after the ceasefire, and that the Tel Aviv government would try to blackmail the Palestinian people in the dilemma of reconstruction and before that relief and shelter to achieve what it failed to accomplish through the crimes of genocide that imposed global isolation on it, especially among the peoples of the world and the international courts that are now pursuing the criminals of this genocide everywhere and for the first time in their history.

The open letter that should be addressed to the President and the Central Committee of Fatah: Why all this entrenchment and insistence on not implementing what was signed by all factions in Beijing, including the delegation of the Central Committee of Fatah headed by the Deputy Chairman of the movement? At a time when this declaration, which was supported by the People's Republic of China and many countries of the world, has also received unprecedented popular support? Is there still anyone in the leadership of the national movement and the Palestinian political system who believes that he can monopolize national decision-making and authority, or exclude others, no matter how powerful and influential he is?

In this context, we need the support of all Arab brothers to achieve such unity, as the danger of transfer is imminent and not just Kahanist delusions. This danger threatens their interests and national security, and is not limited to our brothers in Egypt and Jordan. Protecting Arab national security requires, among other things, making more efforts to strengthen and restore the unity of the Palestinian people and their comprehensive national institutions, on whose rock Trump’s nonsense, arrogance, and denial of our people’s right to remain and self-determination on their homeland, the homeland of our fathers and grandfathers, will be shattered.