(Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire have
turned Justice Mute)

[This article is a translation from the Arabic original in Assabeel of December 31, 2002]

by Ibrahim Alloush
Translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr

It is not strange, when Arab and Palestinian negotiators verge on abject begging, that those who call for continued armed resistance struggle are labeled "extremist". But when the official Arab regimes reach the level where they resemble the old wall of a garbage dump, discussing them in sanitized "unbiased" language becomes just another way to mystify the facts.

The supporters of the resistance must express themselves with all the more clarity now that new political filth is being shoveled in, leaving no room for sanitized language. This filth is labeled "the Palestine Authority's dialogue with the Palestinian armed groups in Cairo aimed at working out a unified strategy and political resolve".

The essence of the matter is that British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants to hold a round-table discussion concerning the reform of the Palestine Authority in the middle of January 2003. At that meeting, according to reports from officials in the Palestine Authority and the news media, a cease fire, as well as other matters, are to be discussed. To help out, one Arab regime has volunteered to wait on Blair's table for reforming the Palestine Authority (something which was, originally, a Zionist demand), provided that it will be able to offer up on a golden platter an appetizing cease-fire pledge by the Palestinians. This pledge would have been cooked up in the course of an internal Palestinian dialogue aimed, supposedly, at coordinating positions - that is, the Cairo talks. Of course, Blair will then pass on that plate to the Zionist-American side, even if he first takes a little piece of meat for himself. Only, the meat on this plate is none other than the flesh of the Palestinian Islamic, patriotic, and leftist resistance forces.

Leaders of the fighting Palestinian armed resistance! What are your delegations doing at that marketplace called the "Cairo talks" where your flesh and that of the intifada will be up for sale? Do you not know that you've been invited to Cairo for one reason only - to be robbed, under the pretext of "coordinating positions", of the most important cards in your hands: 1) the card of political decision-making and of representing political forces independent of the Palestine Authority, and 2) the card of armed action that is not subject to the petty calculations of the Authority and the Arab regimes?

For your information, the rise of the new forces in the Palestinian arena at the end of the 1980s came about because they refused to slip into the stinking swamp of a political settlement, coexistence with "Israel", and "realism", and because they were able to transform their stances into militant action on the ground that was capable of upsetting the existing balance. But a militant does not have cumulative credit. This means that the forces and people that are swept towards middle-of-the-road, wavering, conciliatory, or "moderate" positions cannot draw on their militant record in the past to make up for the deterioration of their positions now. The biggest proof that this is true is the way that the Palestinian people abandoned their traditional leaders for Arab nationalist and leftist parties in the 1950s and 1960s, and then abandoned these parties in favor of the armed resistance organizations at the end of the 1960s. The current is always towards those forces most ready to strike the enemy with arms in hand.

I am not trying to belittle anyone. I know the measure of the militant fighters and their honorable record. But I wish to warn those resistance fighters as a brother, friend, and comrade against the disaster of being pushed onto the political gallows that have been set up for them today in Cairo. Cease fires and negotiations - besides the fact that they do not represent the highest interests of the Palestinian people and the Arab Nation at a time when the Zionists are waging a war of extermination and dispossession against our very existence - are just basically not the game of the resistance forces nor the reason for their existence.

Moreover, to agree to grant the Palestine Authority the right to make political decisions on behalf of the resistance forces at a time when that Authority is adopting a bizzare strategic goal that is totally unrelated to Palestine, i.e., to confer legitimacy on the Palestine Authority equal to that of any other Arab regime, in effect, means the subjugation of the resistance struggle to the Palestine Authority's program.

Furthermore, accepting this program under the limitations required by an Arab regime - one that does not carry a project for liberation, and one that is tied by a treaty of surrender to the Zionist enemy - means tying the Palestinian struggle unnecessarily to official Arab considerations that have nothing to do with it and that do not concern us in any way whatsoever. Those officials, in their submissiveness and degradation, consider support for the Intifada to be a violation of their internal security! They still mutter about aggravating the Zionists diplomatically and of "exposing their lack of desire for peace" before world public opinion! They are not ashamed to talk about a plot by Sharon to "sabotage their efforts for peace" and about the need "not to be drawn into it". And this, even after Sharon trampled on their disreputable initiative just hours after it was proclaimed at the Arab Summit in Beirut.

What America and the Zionists need today is the liquidation of the resistance forces. Sharon's failure to do this militarily has impelled Britain to try to accomplish this politically by means of the "Cairo talks".

There is only one way to avoid the perils of both types of attempts to liquidate the resistance, and that is to escalate the armed action against the Zionist enemy.