Letter From The Palestinian Resistance, March 1988
|
Signs of the Times
11/08/2006
|
From a letter written by members of the Palestinian underground resistance in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to a rally in Paris, France, on March 3, 1988, organized by an ad-hoc committee of supporters of Palestinian human rights. Sadly, nothing has changed in the intervening 18 years.
Dear friends,
We send you this letter from inside our beloved land - Our land of honor, of dignity, courage and defiance - from our Palestine, from Jerusalem, the sacred city.
We send you this letter in the name of our people, a patient people who are today standing tall and are waging a struggle unparalleled in our entire history.
We want you to know that the Palestinian people have not been defeated. They are alive. They are struggling. They are saying that they will not accept humiliation and submission.
The confidence of our people in the legitimacy of their struggle is immense. And our people know that their victory is certain - whatever the sacrifices, whatever the price that must be paid.
Today, our people are suffering. They are shedding their blood to win their freedom, dignity, and honor; their right to determine their own destiny; their right to live in their homeland and to build a free, democratic, and sovereign state in all of Palestine.
To all free men and women, to all our comrades, we say the following:
The Palestinian people have been the victims for many decades of an international plot - of vicious attacks - aimed at exiling them and chasing them from the lands upon which they have lived for centuries.
We have been expelled from our lands - lands which have now been settled by foreigners in accordance with the aims of colonialism and imperialism. This settlement has been imposed by the laws of oppression promoted by the Western nations and the Eastern totalitarian regimes. These oppressive laws are also those of international Zionism.
We have been subject to terror, assassination and torture. Today, we are deprived of even our most elementary and legitimate rights. "They have wanted to make of us an exiled people, destined permanently to refugee camps. They have wanted to destroy us physically and eliminate us.
Through the wars of 1948 and 1967, they carried out the occupation of all of Palestine. But they forgot that by occupying all of Palestine they also unified the entire Palestinian people in their struggle against oppression.
That is what is happening today as the children, the elderly, the women and the youth have risen up as one single person, without arms, to face the military machine of Zionism and imperialism - to face the violence of the guns, the clubs, the kidnappings, and the assassinations.
Our weapons come from our homeland. They are the stones with which our people have built up a wall to defend their combatants and the Revolution.
Dear friends: You should know what is going on in our homeland. Two weeks ago, the forces of occupation buried eight young Palestinians alive after having beaten them savagely and broken their limbs. Four of them were saved by the people; the other four were never found.
Three days ago, Israeli military forces dropped three live Palestinian youths from a helicopter flying at a high altitude. One of the youths was only 13 years old.
This is what they are currently doing to our people.
Dear friends: We want you to know that we reject all so-called solutions and peace projects that some people would like to impose on us through international conferences.
We want you to know that we are committed to continuing our revolution until the total liberation of all of Palestine, until the establishment of a democratic and free state in which all free men and women, from wherever they may be, are welcome to live so long as they accept to live with us as equals on our land of Palestine.
We are no longer on our knees. We are standing tall. We will not yield. We feel that it is legitimate for us to demand aid and assistance from people throughout the world who are struggling for the freedom of all oppressed peoples.
We ask of you not only that you speak out in support of our struggle in your speeches and protests but that you demand that your governments take a clear position in opposition to the repressive and criminal methods of Zionism. We ask for your moral and material support for our Palestinian people, who are struggling to obtain their final victory.
|
|
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](/signs/images/valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
