Final session of an historic Palestinian solidarity conference in Beirut, organised by the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. Some thoughts while listening to the other speeches: If Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas (in some respects the second in command) can talk of the unbreakable unity of the forces of resistance, mentioning Hezbollah, the popular forces in Egypt, Iran and its people, and all the rejectionist forces in the region; if he can ascribe the victory of 51 days to that unity; if he can endorse our gathering in Beirut seeking to renew the global solidarity movement; if he can say we must preserve this unity and initiatives launched this week against all the nefarious attempts to derail them; if he can greet the conference in a manner which explicitly acknowledges its Sunni, Shia and multi-confessional basis… If Sheikh Naim, the second in command of the Lebanese Hezbollah, shares the platform; if he echoes the call for Palestine to be the compass point of all right-thinking people, saying that liberation in Lebanon means nothing if Palestine is occupied; if he can acknowledge serious divisions, even antagonisms, over other issues and on other fronts while declaring that they must be kept in proportion and in their place relative to the centrality of Palestine and the global struggle for justice; if he can reciprocate the declaration of unity of all the resistance forces; if he can raise Al Quds as the most ecumenical of struggles for the global youth; if he can repeat the orientation of that resistance on the renewal of the intifada in Palestine as part of the wave of revolutionary struggle born in Tunisia… And if Ramadan Shellah, the leader of Islamic Jihad, can underscore both speeches, as can Abu Ahmed Fouad, the deputy general secretary of the Popular Front; and if… so many others from the different factions and honestly-held standpoints, from which every tradition has given so many martyrs; and if there is - as there is here - a healthy presence of young Palestinians and Arabs who wish to learn from the older generations but not be trapped by their traditions and who are grappling with the perennial strategic problem of grounding the anti-imperialist political and military front in the anti-capitalist social and class struggle then… Then, who in the West dare give themselves the right to foment division on confessional or political lines among those who should be presenting a united front on Palestine, against imperialism and - through responsible debate and genuine dialogue - for the revolutionary transformation of the Middle East? In short and deliberate, brutal frankness - if unity is once again rising across the Middle East region against Israel and imperialism, then to hell with those - of whatever tradition - in the West who sow division, usurping the names of those fighting in the same tunnels agains the central enemy - and dealing with difference accordingly.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 14:54:00 +0000
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