op-ed: National resistance, not an external agenda

Since the remarkable escalation of guerrilla operations in the occupied Palestinian territories with the emergence of the Lions' Den group and the Jenin Brigades almost a year ago, the Israeli political and security leaders, led by Netanyahu, have been accusing Hamas and Islamic Jihad of being behind these operations with support and incitement from Iran and Hezbollah. Netanyahu reiterated these allegations in a meeting (To the Cabinet), which met hastily in response to the Hebron operation on the 21st of this month, threatening that it would respond forcefully to the parties that support and finance those who carry out the operations. He mentioned Iran, Hezbollah, and even Hamas and Islamic Jihad, vowing to return to the policy of assassinations.

These Israeli allegations aim to achieve several goals, including:

1- Covering up the reality of the occupation and its terrorist acts, and on the fact that the resistance is a natural reaction to the occupation that gains its legitimacy from all religious and positivist charters and laws.

2- Strengthening his propaganda system directed against Iran as being behind the instability in the region and thus justifying his terrorist acts against the resistance fighters and their families by claiming to prevent Iran from expanding in the region.

3- Distorting the image of the national resistance and showing that the Palestinian people in the West Bank have surrendered to the fait accompli and are willing to live under the yoke of the apartheid occupation state, and that the commando operations are directed from abroad and not with national motives.

4- Stirring up strife by claiming that the aim of these operations is to overthrow the Palestinian Authority and for Hamas to take control of the West Bank, just as it took control of the Gaza Strip.

5- Misleading Israeli public opinion and attempting to silence the escalating opposition against it by claiming that Israel is exposed to an existential threat that surrounds it from every side.

6- Misleading international public opinion, which has begun to discover the truth about the Zionist entity and its terrorist and racist practices.

There is no doubt that Iran supports the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements with money and weapons, just as other countries supported the PLO factions even before the emergence of these two movements, and this is normal for liberation movements around the world, as none of them relied on their own capabilities. All the socialist camp, especially China and the Soviet Union, and the Algerian Liberation Front were supported financially, politically and militarily by many Third World countries in addition to the Soviet Union, Egypt and neighboring countries, and the African National Congress in South Africa in its struggle against the apartheid regime was supported by the majority of the world's countries, even Western and from The United Nations, which issued resolutions boycotting the racist De Klerk regime and imposed sanctions on it, and the Free French forces led by Charles de Gaulle found all support and backing from America and Britain during their fight against German Nazism during World War II, and now Ukraine finds all military, financial and political support from NATO to confront what It considers it a Russian invasion of its lands, and no one accuses Ukraine of terrorism while it bombs Russian cities!!

The problem, then, does not lie in the presence or absence of external support for liberation movements from colonialism, and our subject is the Palestinian people and their fighting movements. independent on his land and the legitimacy of his resistance to the occupation.

How can it be believed that an Iranian foreign agenda stands behind the resistance of the Palestinian people to the occupation while the resistance to the occupation extends over a century, from the Al-Buraq uprising of 1929 to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam revolution of 1935 and the Great Arab Revolt of 1936, then the contemporary Palestinian revolution of 1965 and the two great intifadas, all of which were before they appeared. The Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and the axis of resistance!! Israeli leaders and analysts also blamed the escalation of guerrilla operations on the extreme right and its policies, and Netanyahu's submission to Ben Gvir and Smotrich's provocative tendencies of the Palestinian national feeling.

Exaggerating talk about an external agenda is an insult to the national resistance fighters and to the Palestinian people in general, because the resistance to the occupation has never stopped and it continues before and after the emergence of the so-called axis of resistance. Since the beginning of the year, 34 settlers have been killed, and the majority of those who carried out the commando operations are citizens who do not belong to any political faction, and the number of fighters officially affiliated with Fatah and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and from the security services may exceed the number of those officially affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Even if they belong to these two movements, they are Palestinian movements. The majority of these fedayeen were martyred and buried in the land of Palestine as Palestinians, and they were shrouded with the Palestinian flag, not with the flag of Iran or Hezbollah.

There is no doubt that there is a Palestinian division and regional interventions to strengthen the division and support one party at the expense of the other, and there is no doubt that Iran has its own agenda just as the Muslim Brotherhood has theirs, and we do not deny the role of Hamas in the division and its coup against power and its aspiration to replace the PLO in the leadership of the Palestinian people, and it is also true that if The actions of the resistance were within the framework of a comprehensive national strategy, as agreed upon by all the parties, so the feasibility of the resistance would have been better, and there would have been no all this confusion and suspicion, etc. However, this does not justify distorting the resistance and considering every commando operation as serving an external agenda or aiming to weaken and overthrow the authority in the West Bank, and the Hamas movement will be delusional. If she believed that it would happen in the West Bank as it happened in Gaza and that the occupation would enable it to have power and a state in the West Bank.

If the occupation seeks to destroy or abolish the national functional role of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank or transform it into an agent or a modernizing village association, which is the authority that was established within the framework of a political settlement project in which the Palestine Liberation Organization recognizes Israel. Hamas, so how will Israel allow Hamas to have power in the West Bank when it says publicly that it does not recognize Israel and the armed resistance to liberate all of Palestine?!

[email protected]