Al-Araby al-Jadeed, Ramallah, Originally Posted in Arabic on November 16
While the Knife intifada enters its fourth week, President Mahmoud Abbas is still busy playing games. For reasons beyond my understanding, he still holds the belief that the only way to end the conflict is through negotiations, despite their repeated failure in the last three decades.
Israeli leaders have come and gone, but the occupation remains: checkpoints at every street corner, brutal killing of Palestinian children at the behest of Israeli soldiers, and overall humiliation on a daily basis. And while the world is busy with the crisis in Syria, the Iranian nuclear deal, and the threat of terror, Israel is busy encroaching on more and more Palestinian land – expelling Arabs from their homes and cleansing Jerusalem of Palestinians.
“If the intifada leads to the destruction of our people,” Abbas said in a recent statement, “then we don’t need an intifada.” What was he possibly thinking? The road to victory is paved with blood, not silk. Throughout history, every nation fighting for sovereignty had to make heavy sacrifices to achieve its goals.
The Palestinian Authority must be dissolved. Our leadership must stop cooperating with the occupation forces. Israel must be held accountable for the people it so brutally occupies. – Muhammad Saleh al-Masfer