Our freedom is bound up with Palestine’s
Three left-wing organizations from the Middle East issued the following statement in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance to Israel's bombing of Gaza. Its message of pan-Arab unity to achieve Palestinian liberation is crucial at a time when Israel enjoys not only the unswerving support of the U.S. government, but also of practically every Arab regime--in particular, Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza and could immediately end the siege of Gaza by opening up the Rafah border crossing.
FOR SEVERAL weeks now, the Israeli war machine has continued its bombardment and ground operations against Gaza, committing one massacre after another, while the so-called "international community" complacently looks on. This "World Order" or "international community"--from the United Nations, its Security Council and General Secretary, to other international institutions--has remained largely silent about, if not complicit in, the atrocities of the latest Israeli war.
The vast majority of these global powers are keeping up their depraved blame of the Palestinian resistance in this war--a usual occurrence in the logic of our current world, where resistance and revolutions are condemned as "terrorism" and state terrorism is given legitimacy under the guise of "self-defense."
More significantly, in the midst of this shameful spectacle, the Palestinians face yet another siege, an Arab siege instigated by regional regimes, both the "moderates" and the "moumanaa." The Egyptian government, through the counter-revolutionary apparatus represented by Sisi's treacherous government, has kept Egypt's borders closed to Palestinians and has reassured the Zionist regime by destroying the tunnels. Sisi's government continues to push cease-fire agreements, which are complicit with occupation and Zionism, at the very least, and contributes to the systematic destruction of Palestinian society.
On the other hand, the Jordanian authority consecrates this betrayal by maintaining its peace agreement with the Israeli regime and systematically represses all political movements in support of Palestinian resistance to occupation. Jordan also actively helped the Zionist entity overcome this heroic resistance by opening Amman airport to Israeli planes after the rockets fired from Gaza led to the closure of Ben Gurion airport.
The wretched Gulf monarchies, in their daily validation of their regimes' loyalties to world imperialism and implicit allegiance to Israel, strangle the resistance--by supplying with their alliance all forces hostile to the Palestinians globally with oil and logistical, political and intelligence support.
On the other side, Syria--a regime of the mumanaa axis--carries on with its bloody war against its people, displacing millions and detaining tens of thousands of peaceful protesters demanding their freedom and dignity. In the meantime, it has persistently demonstrated its unwillingness to confront the Zionist state and its massacres of Palestinians (refraining from replying to Israeli aggressions on Syria).
The Syrian regime and its allies in Iran and other countries in the region, including Lebanon, participate actively in one way or another in this siege of Palestine (the situation of Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Syria, particularly Yarmouk, attest to this)--through the brutal repression of their citizens and attempts to paralyze and disable popular support to Palestine.
This applies in particular to the Lebanese regime and all its political forces and parties, which have shown no hesitation in enforcing a political, economic and military siege on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Palestinian camps--from Tal el-Zaatar and Jisr el-Basha, to Sabra and Shatilla, to Nahr el-Bared--stood witness to the complicity of the Lebanese regime. Its feuding bourgeoisie, currently divided between March 8 [the pro-Syrian wing] and March 14 [the anti-Syrian wing], participates in manufacturing the ongoing crisis facing Palestinians. While Israel continues its massacres, we see Hezbollah, which has long chanted "Jerusalem, here we come," gladly willing to cross the borders into Syria and Iraq to support its sectarian allies, while keeping the southern borders tranquil.
FOR THESE reasons, we protest today in front of the Embassy of the Camp David Accords, the embassy of the treacherous Egyptian regime, which represents, in its criminal insolence, the model of Arab regimes that need to be overthrown, from the Ocean to the Gulf!
The Egyptian regime is today the spearhead in strangling the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. It represents the main pillar of support to the Zionist occupation and has chained the Egyptian people with the Camp David Accords. The downfall of the Egyptian regime can allow Palestine to breathe and the Arab masses to break their chains and rise, once again, for their freedoms and for the freedom of Palestine.
The liberation of Palestine will only be born out of the ashes of the Arab regimes, starting with the one in Egypt, through the process of collective emancipation of the people of the region, from imperialism, dictatorship, capitalism and reactionary forces.
For this reason, we stand here in Beirut to announce, in all modesty, our solidarity with the people of Palestine in resisting occupation by all means necessary. We also stand in tribute to those martyred by the bullets of Arab and Zionist regimes and in solidarity with prisoners from Palestine to Syria, and those in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and all the people whose uprisings could give the resistance a broader depth. Our collective movement in resisting Zionist occupation and our own rotting and reactionary regimes will bring us closer to Palestine.
Victory to the resistance, down with occupation
Down with dictatorships, imperialism, and reactionary forces
Freedom for Palestine
Signatories:
The Socialist Forum/Lebanon
Sawt al'Niswa
Beirut Walls
First published at al-Manshour. Translated by Anthony Rizk
