A Time to Act in Defence of Palestine

09/01/09

In recent times, the Israeli regime has attempted to separate the people of Gaza from the rest of the Palestinian people. Indeed, the intention of branding Gaza a ‘hostile entity’ over one year ago was to portray the people confined to it as an ‘extraordinary’ people requiring ‘exceptional’ treatment.

More recently still, the Israeli government have attempted to separate Hamas from the people of Gaza, for much the same reason. If the world is to accept ‘exceptional’ treatment of a people, then it is necessary that they be viewed as truly ‘extraordinary’ peoples whom require such treatment.

The reality is that neither is true. The people of Gaza, and the democratically elected government of Hamas, are ‘extraordinary’ for no other reason than their ability to remain steadfast in the face of seemingly insurmountable forces. Their treatment at the hands of Israel, given the history of the ethnic cleansing in Palestine, as harrowing as it is, is in no way ‘exceptional’.

What is ‘extraordinary’ is that whilst Israel and their collaborators, both regional and international, seek to foster false divisions amongst the Palestinian resistance forces, the reality on the ground is different.

For on the ground in Gaza, the resistance forces present the entire Israeli apparatus with a unified front. On the ground in Gaza, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the al-Quds Brigades of the Islamic Jihad movement, the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, the Salah al-Din Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah are unified precisely because they understand what these attacks represent.

Not attacks on Hamas or Gaza but rather attacks on Palestine.

Thus, they are not acting in defence of Hamas or Gaza but in defence of Palestine.

It is time to follow their lead and refuse to allow the separation and annihilation of Palestine's component parts.

It is time to act, not only in defence of the democratically elected government of Hamas, or the besieged and tortured population of Gaza, or any of the component parts which make up Palestine, but in defence of all of Palestine.