The Problem Is Not in the Principle of Resistance but in the Way It Is Practiced

Author: ابراهيم ابراش 

Although any discussion now about armed resistance, steadfastness, and challenge has become outside the interests of the people, especially in the Gaza Strip where people die daily by the dozens and sometimes by the hundreds at the hands of the occupation army or from hunger, it is beneficial to return to the topic of resistance as long as some in the arena, under the banner of resistance and jihad, deceive Arab and Islamic peoples and cause the people and the national cause further losses and disasters.
The Palestinian people, along with all the free people of the world, have struggled to affirm their right to resist and to distinguish between the resistance of peoples for freedom and independence on one hand and terrorism on the other. They also fought for the independence of national decision-making without linking the national cause to any external agendas or axes. Since the beginning of the 1970s, the United Nations has issued several resolutions recognizing the Palestinian people's right to self-determination on their land and their right to resist occupation by all means, including armed struggle, which is a principle recognized by all religious and worldly laws.
As the Palestinian people are still under occupation, they have the right to resist by all possible means according to the capabilities and circumstances of time and place. However, the problem lies in the means of resistance and their references, as well as the absence of a national strategy for resistance.
The Palestinian revolution led by the Palestine Liberation Organization would retreat when it felt that the winds were not blowing its way, and that matters were not in favor of the Palestinian people, due to the strength of the conspiracy and adversaries or due to leadership and faction mistakes. President Arafat would bend to the storm to spare the blood of the people and protect the revolution and its continuity.
This occurred during the events in Jordan in 1970 (Black September) when he agreed to withdraw the Palestinian revolutionary forces from Jordan after the massacres in Ajloun and Jerash, where thousands of Palestinians were killed while the Arab world watched idly. It also happened during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 after the legendary resilience of the revolution and the Lebanese national movement against the occupying army that invaded southern Lebanon and entered Beirut, extending the war for 88 days without any action from the Arab and Islamic world. At that time, Arafat decided to respond to the demands of the Lebanese national movement and mediators to stop the war and accept Philip Habib's initiative and evacuated the revolutionary forces from Beirut on the ship of freedom. After the Gulf War in 1990, where the Arab regional system and the socialist camp collapsed, the revolution and the national cause were targeted even by some Arab states that were preparing a substitute for the organization and the national project. There were attempts to abort the achievements of the first intifada (the peaceful stone-throwing uprising), forcing the Palestinian revolution to enter the American settlement process after it was accepted by Arab countries at the Madrid Conference in 1991, in order to maintain the presence of the cause and invest the achievements of the first intifada, knowing the pitfalls and risks of the Oslo settlement.
After the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, which exercised its limited self-rule over all of Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank and built institutions for a future state, Hamas rejected Arafat's and later Abu Mazen's calls to stop its military operations within the occupying state and accept a temporary truce, so that the enemy would not use these operations to destroy what the authority was building and evade Israel from the obligations it has under the Oslo agreement. Today, after about a quarter of a million Palestinians have fallen in the sector between martyrs, missing persons, prisoners, and the wounded, with total or partial destruction of about 80% of the sector, in addition to what is happening in the West Bank and Jerusalem where the main battle is, the movement is negotiating a truce and ceasefire for sixty days in exchange for merely staying in power over what remains of land and people in the sector and on hundreds of meters in the sector's axes and borders, knowing that the enemy's only goal is to release its prisoners and then resume its war that extends beyond the Gaza Strip and Hamas.
Therefore, the criticism directed at Hamas and other factions is not because they resist the occupation, but due to their responsibility for the division first, and then confining resistance to direct military action and practicing it without a national strategy and the movement's connection to an external agenda and its disregard for the suffering of the people, especially in the sector where people die by the hundreds daily either due to bombing or due to hunger.
When Hamas's resistance leads to the division and collapse of the Palestinian political system, questioning the collective national identity, the homeland, and nationalism, linking the national cause to an external agenda, followed by the current war and what it has brought about in terms of destruction, death, hunger, and the potential for displacement from the homeland, in this case, we are not faced with a national resistance nor even a jihadist Islamic one in the true sense of jihad, but with armed groups that are not national, closer to mercenary groups seeking to achieve special interests for their leadership and non-national references or defending an imaginary idea or doctrine, justifying their behaviors and laughing at the masses. The result is the distortion of the real national resistance and labeling it as terrorism, even causing the people to detest resistance.