Two days ago, we marked the anniversary of the Nakba, which is still ongoing. For these long years, before the eyes and ears of the international community and the international institutions — all these sacrifices the world made to legalize relations between states and peoples — we see them all being dismantled by the Zionist-American hand, with deliberation, without any concealment.
October 7th came, and with it the brazen genocide committed against our people in Gaza. Social media in this era had the credit of conveying the picture quickly to the world, so people moved — as we saw them move on the ground, as peoples, not as regimes. But inside Palestine, massacres and executions and violations are decades old. It is not new for the Palestinian people to make the sacrifices they make.
The basic observation regarding the prisoners specifically is this: when the prisoner is a militant in the street and is taken into captivity, he remains a militant — and he relies on those outside. But unfortunately — and this is something we learned from following the case of the militant Georges Abdallah, for whom the prisoners' cause was always the central issue, both inside and after prison — he always said that the prisoner, the moment he transforms from a hero-militant into a prisoner, begins to lose. As long as he is inside captivity, struggling, he remains able to be steadfast and to move within captivity through this steadfastness, in which he sees himself as a militant. But the movement of people outside in support of the prisoner is a fundamental part of his steadfastness. And as the released prisoner, Mohammed just said, we were let down by those outside. Whether from the immediate surroundings, or from the Arab nation, or others who should have been with the prisoners — these regimes abandoned the prisoners long ago. This abandonment is not new.
So when the Zionist comes to legalize the killing he commits every day, he is not doing this because he has become someone who understands the international system or cares about international law and is now legalizing the daily killing he carries out against Palestinians. Not at all — on the contrary. This law came as additional pressure on the prisoners' movement and on the symbols inside the Israeli prisons, particularly after what happened on October 7th. It was meant to intimidate — those outside, not just those inside. Those inside, as we heard from the testimony — and there are perhaps even harsher cases than Mohammed described — have grown used to it. They know they may be martyred in the end. But the intimidation of this law is for those outside: place limits on your struggle, because there is a law waiting for you, and you are heading for immediate execution.
Of course, this entity has nothing to do with international laws or international agreements, and disregards all conventions. Are we going to invoke the Geneva Convention on prisoners and wars, and how prisoners are to be treated? This entity has nothing to do with any of these rules. And October 7th moved the European street — the same European street that for all these years did not know what was happening in Palestine. The credit goes, first and foremost, to the people of Gaza — to the small screens they carried on their phones, conveying the reality of the genocide unfolding in the heart of Gaza daily. This brought the world's attention to this monster in our region that cannot live except on blood. It feeds only on blood.
The movement of the European street in support of the Palestinian cause was unprecedented after October 7th — the massive numbers that poured into the streets. The credit goes to this besieged Gazan, stripped of everything, who managed to convey the picture truthfully to the outside. The trial of the Zionists became one conducted in the streets more than in the international courts. On the importance of the lawsuits that were filed and that besieged some Israeli officials, these remain without mechanisms of implementation. They are decisions that need much political support and much work for us to say that, if we resort to international law and international courts, we can actually produce something against this entity. The implementation mechanisms are nearly absent here.
There is another point I want to highlight, again based on what the militant Georges Abdallah used to say after he was released — that he drew strength from those outside and from all who showed solidarity with his cause. At the same time, he always distinguished between his presence and his condition inside prison in France, and the condition of the prisoners inside the prisons of the Zionist enemy. There is no comparison. Because he at least had the minimum of his rights as a prisoner — enough to be able to follow what was happening in the outside world. This is something that does not exist for the prisoners inside Israeli prisons, of course, with legal violations against prisoners' rights, which are entirely non-existent inside captivity in Israeli prisons.
From this premise, this requires of us, of the Palestinian street, the Arab street, that there be movements — not only of solidarity with the prisoners but of resistance for the central cause itself. Movements that do not extinguish and remain burning, that can at some point transform the prisoners' movement into a movement that documents these violations. The prisoners' movement has a great history of documenting the violations that occurred — through writings, through testimonies, through correspondence with international bodies and courts, through the Red Cross. They managed to bring out many narratives from inside the prisons so we could understand what is happening inside. They created solidarity within themselves. But unfortunately, the outside did not provide the prisoners' movement what should have been provided.
There was a huge gap between political work on the ground and the work of the prisoners' movement inside the prisons. The prisoners, through their steadfastness and with what little capacity was in their hands, produced this strength — which we are still drawing from them, rather than the other way around. We should be the ones giving the prisoners steadfastness, so that they can remain militants inside captivity and continue. Because if we only rely on filing a complaint through the Red Cross that reaches the UN, the International Criminal Court, or any international organization, this will neither advance nor delay anything. It will be no more than a news item. But on the ground, how do we confront an enemy who has nothing to do with laws or human rights, who respects no international rule, who declares this and prides himself on it — amid this suspicious, complicit silence from the Arab regimes?
Here we are in Lebanon. A war is being waged against us, and we now have more than 21 Lebanese prisoners — nothing is known about them, and their location is not known. Until now, our great government has not taken a single legal step or filed any request to determine its fate. The way they are being dealt with is unacceptable. Instead of standing in one row in the face of this enemy, learning from the Palestinian experience in all its details, we go and tell the Zionist: come, let us sit with you and see how we can make peace. Unfortunately. I don't want to take the conversation to internal Lebanon, but one thing leads to another.
The only counter-plan at the legal level that seems somewhat workable and that may, in some way, besiege this entity, is the lawsuits we are filing before criminal courts, and the warrants that have been issued and adopted by some states that support the Palestinian cause. We can't deny that these have besieged Israeli officials and those responsible for the crimes committed against Palestinians — they have had an effect, one way or another.
Now, when we ask about the mechanism of implementation, that is another matter. If we wanted to take things only to their conclusions or refuse to act at all because of the limitations of this work, we would do nothing. But documentation is extremely important. The testimony Mohammed just gave is a testimony that can be documented, because he is present and has information he can give. We can do this. In the case of the child Hind Rajab, the person who killed her was identified, and the International Criminal Court issued a warrant against him. We can document, work on it, and put the international community before its responsibilities — despite the limited implementation of its decisions, waiting for the moment in which — In the Georges Abdallah case, an occasion arose, and his release ended up costing France much less than keeping him in captivity, because of the role he played in the European and Arab streets, and in the world, with the resistance discourse he advanced — especially regarding the Israeli cause, which was always his primary cause. With the situation building in the region in a new way, for the French, Georges Abdallah's presence in their prisons became a burden. The legal reality integrated with the political reality at a moment that led to the decision to release Georges Abdallah and his arrival in Lebanese territory. As you may know, the French judiciary returned and challenged this decision. After Georges Abdallah arrived in Lebanon, the Court of Cassation decided to annul the release. Surely, with a new legal heresy through which France was once again presenting its credentials to the American-Zionist at the moment we are in.
When we ask how to confront a colonial system that transforms death into law, the answer is indeed unity behind the resistance, the unity of the resistance rifle, may be the only lifeboat to bring an end to this criminal usurping entity, which we all know that war with it is a war of existence, not a war of borders. So if this resistance front is not united in all its colors, we can also draw lessons from everything that has passed — and the Palestinian condition has within it all the experiences. We don't need to look at anyone else's experience; the experience of this mighty people in all its components is enough for us to understand the mechanisms we must work on to unite and actually return the resistance movement and the resistance approach to its glory on the ground — so that this cause does not become only stories and testimonies that we read in books, however important that may be. Armed resistance work and armed struggle are the first and last paths to the end of this entity.
You can view the full webinar here. View Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
