[News] Free Palestine Alliance - Sheikh Yassin Analysis

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The Assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin

Position and Analysis



The Free Palestine Alliance-USA

March 23, 2004



  The Free Palestine Alliance – USAA (FPA) joins the profound indignation 
and anger of the entirety of our people in Palestine and in exile at the 
colossal loss of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of the 
Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine.  We stand with the Palestinian 
and Arab people, the Muslim world, and all in deep mourning as we extend 
heartfelt condolences to the families of all who have fallen, and to our 
Palestinian and Arab national collective.



On Sunday, March 22, following daybreak prayer, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was 
shelled with 3 missiles by an US-made and funded Apache helicopter, the 
sound of which was deliberately masked by a thundering F16 jet piercing the 
skies of Gaza.  The elderly and quadriplegic Palestinian was shredded into 
pieces while being pushed in his wheelchair from his neighborhood mosque 
back to his home located approximately 100 meters away.  Also viciously 
killed were his two aids, his son-in-law, and several neighbors, a total of 
nine.  Ten others were wounded, including two of his sons.



We condemn this latest criminal and illegal act by the Zionist State, which 
has made colonial destruction and obliteration against the Palestinian 
people a normalized daily habit.  We recognize that the prevailing racist 
anti-Arab and anti-Muslim demonizing sentiments within the West have given 
credence to such brutal and vicious state-sponsored terror.



We echo the call for unity by all sectors of the Palestinian people across 
all spectrums in the determination to complete the thorny journey for 
liberation and return.  Like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and all those who fell 
with him and before, we well recognize that this journey of inevitable pain 
is of existential nature, along which many will pave with the dearest of 
all – their lives – a bridge for a certain free Palestine.



Born in 1936, the year of the six-month General Strike in Palestine, Sheikh 
Ahmed Yassin was expelled in 1948 from his village, Al-Jura, near Al-Majdal 
at the Mediterranean coast of Palestine.  Al-Jura, like nearly 500 other 
villages and towns were obliterated following the establishment of Israel 
on 78% of Palestine and the expulsion of at least 75% of the Palestinian 
people.  A dispossessed and impoverished refugee, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin rose 
from the wretchedness of the camps to the stature of a highly regarded 
leader.



The Project to End Palestine:



Our immeasurable indignation and insistence on our people's national unity 
and collective march forward are neither polemics nor hyperbole.  They are 
a manifestation of the material consensus that is prevailing amongst all 
Palestinian sectors and movements.  Despite variation in political 
discourse, organizational, philosophical and ideological constructs, the 
colonial displacing nature of the Zionist project imposed on the 
Palestinian people has catalyzed the emergence of an inextricable unity of 
national resistance.



The shear brutality of the ongoing and escalating Israeli assault has 
amplified the need to direct all attention to the primary contradiction 
with Israeli colonial designs.  The most essential task today for our 
people is to defeat the expanding project to terminally end Palestine as a 
movement for liberation.



In fact, the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is part of systematic 
measures to eliminate all primary anchors for Palestinian liberation.  The 
cumulative material effect of such measures poses a grave danger on the 
very existence of the Palestinian people. These measures include:


The elimination of top political leadership through targeted 
assassinations, imprisonment, and exile to evacuate the Palestinian 
movement from its cumulative organizational, political, and historical 
experience.  Since the early seventies when the Israeli policy of 
assassination was normalized on a large scale, a great many of the most 
highly regarded Palestinian political leaders and intellectuals have been 
murdered.  The assassinations of Ghassan Kanafani in 1972, Khalil Al-Wazir 
in 1988, Abu-Ali Mustafa in 2001, and now Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, along with 
great many other exceptional leaders, span the entire political spectrum of 
the Palestinian movement, and is an indication that the target is indeed 
the cumulative political reservoir of the Palestinian people.

The elimination of union, community and regional leadership to break 
grassroots and popular mechanisms of organizing, cohesion and political 
discourse.  The killing, expulsion and jailing of many thousands of leaders 
for the past fifty-six years, with at least 7,000 remaining in jail today, 
are but some examples.  Trade and professional union leaders along with 
nearly the entire Palestinian student leadership at university and high 
school levels have been particularly targeted for elimination, with the 
hope to unravel the very fabric that holds the Palestinian society together.

The destruction of civil society institutions and the banning of political 
organizations on an international scale to gut out the social, political 
and economic engine of the Palestinian people, leaving them dependent as 
wage laborers or mere junior functionaries.  All in an effort to transform 
the Palestinian people from a cohesive and efficient movement for 
liberation to a dependent and colonized fragmented population without 
political strategy.  The attempted dismantling of community based 
institutions - including health care clinics, pre-schools, orphanages, 
union halls, sport and social clubs, vocational training centers, 
illiteracy schools, literary and scientific societies, and all universities 
and grade schools – are measures that intend to cut off the veins that 
connect together the Palestinian people in total, spanning the past, the 
present, and looking into a future.  In fact, during the 1982 invasion of 
Lebanon, most Palestinian libraries and archives were either burned or 
robbed, and nearly all institutions were destroyed, precipitating the 
vicious massacre of Sabra and Shatila, also under the immediate direction 
of the butcher Ariel Sharon himself.

The expropriation of land and the destruction of homes in favor of 
expanding the building of colonial settlements to create the intended de 
facto presumed reality that an Apartheid-style Bantustan is the only option 
remaining for the Palestinian people.  The current construction of the 
racist Apartheid Wall is perhaps the most vivid example of such 
policies.  Without land, and with a brutalized Palestinian Arab population, 
the Zionist state hopes to actualize even more its founding slogan that 
Palestine is a “land without a people for a people without a 
land.  Through a total material transformation of land and demography, 
Zionism hopes to permanently cement the establishment of its settler 
colonial project and the effective exclusion of the indigenous people.

The imposition of extreme social, economic and political pressure, with the 
goal of fracturing the well-known cohesive union of the Palestinian 
movement.  In this measure, Israel hopes to minimize the priority of the 
national struggle in favor of securing individual and family economic 
sustenance.  In fact, great many Palestinians today depend on their wage 
labor from Israeli economic facilities as the only means to secure one meal 
per day for their children.  The crossing from Gaza at Beit Hanoun to 
Israeli factories and farms within 1948 Palestine is a painful reminder of 
the effect of the Israeli colonial economic strangulation.  Thousands of 
workers are herded like cattle between the hours of 2 AM and 5 AM into 
Israeli busses and vans, and are returned fully spent at the end of the 
day, only to come back several hours later for a repeat of the same 
exploitation.  Recognizing the importance of this factor, the Palestinians 
instituted an alternative popular economic structure during the previous 
Intifada that lasted from 1987 to 1993.  A developed economic model also 
existed in Lebanon up to the invasion of 1982, and to a lesser degree in 
Jordan in the various camps.  It was this economic power that Israel also 
targeted during the seventies and eighties.

The imposition of political formulations that amount to utilizing extreme 
pressure to secure significant compromises on issues of existential nature, 
namely: (a) the abandonment of the right to return; (b) the acceptance of 
enclaves and Bantustans as the only possible outcome; (c) the fractionation 
of the Palestinian people into multiple disjointed units void of national 
continuity and identity; (d) the abandoning of Jerusalem; and (e) 
de-linking the Palestinian people from the Arab people in preparation for 
normalizing the Israeli polity with Arab regimes.  The Camp David Accords, 
the Madrid Conference, the Oslo Agreement, and all other formulations and 
sub-agreements that followed, including the latest Geneva Accords, are 
examples of such imposed formulations.  All are geared towards transforming 
the Palestinian anti-colonial movement for liberation into a state-building 
functionary apparatus that would settle for a truncated Bantustan.  This 
process began in the early seventies as the Palestinian movement was 
coerced into accepting partial rights with the promise of statehood.  That 
was the beginning of a slippery slope of imposed models that finally led to 
the Oslo Agreement, and to placing the entire Palestinian people either in 
captivity within actual walls or nationless in exile.

As previously mentioned, a primary target for termination by the Zionist 
state is the individual and collective right to return of the Palestinian 
people.  The elimination of this inalienable right secures the maintenance 
of an exclusive theocratic polity.  Upon its founding, the State of Israel 
materialized its Zionist vision by enacting several laws that denied the 
Palestinians from returning, expropriated their land, and granted the right 
to return only to conquering colonists.  Though exile is a reality for the 
majority of the Palestinian people, the demand to return remained central 
and inseparable from their identity as the indigenous people of the 
land.  Remaining unachieved by Zionism, therefore, was the goal of legally 
sanctioning the colonial displacement and permanently removing the right of 
return from the Palestinian political discourse.  To that end, the Zionist 
project is attempting to extract such a goal from Palestinian functionaries 
under the threat of total dissolution.

The normalizing of Israeli relations with Arab states, and advancing 
Zionism as an acceptable ideology of liberation, all while destroying the 
anchors of Palestinian resistance and movement for liberation.  These are 
simultaneous tasks that have made headways with corrupt Arab regimes 
seeking the blessings of the US.  In the upcoming Arab Summit in Tunisia, 
it was expected that Arab regimes would introduce yet another peace 
proposal that would bring the Israeli polity into a normalized fold while 
giving way to an official establishment of a Bantustan.  A normalized 
Israel would dominate technologically, economically, and politically, 
securing an ideal and sustained bridgehead for imperial designs.

The introduction of alternative narratives and the transformation of 
liberation language and vocabulary.  These are also tasks that are underway 
to normalize acceptance of defeat.  As examples, the reference to Palestine 
at present time is related to a truncated Bantustan. Palestinians within 
1948 areas are called Israeli Arabs, and colonial settlements are called 
neighborhoods.  The conflict is no longer referred to as an Arab-Zionist 
conflict, but as an Israeli-Palestinian border dispute.  Jerusalem has been 
replaced by East Jerusalem, and speaking of Zionism as racism is considered 
too radical.  What is also worth noting is that although Israel has created 
itself as a Zionist entity, and proudly proclaims itself as such, and 
although it has forcibly formulated its laws and demographic make-up to 
reflect a Jewish only state; any reference to the Zionist entity is 
considered unacceptable old school.  This is because normalizing the state 
of Israel as a nation-state is an imperative of high priority for the 
Zionist movement and western colonialism simply because such process 
simultaneously undercuts any national Palestinian claims, and cements into 
reality a colonial outpost.

A significant measure attempted today by the Israeli polity is to extract 
and exclude the paradigm of Palestinian liberation from the accepted 
international discourse for justice.  This process also entails the 
isolation of the Palestinian movement on an international level to allow 
for accepting any measures taken by Israel as measures needed to protect 
the “civilized world” from “terrorism”.   Hence the assassination 
of prominent leaders such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin would be regarded as 
necessary actions.

The Role of the United States:



There is no doubt that the US regards the Palestinian liberation movement 
as a hurdle to its globalization program and political-economic imperial 
dominance on an international scale.  Simultaneously, the US recognizes the 
vital proxy role Israel plays in securing its interests in Northern Africa 
and Central and Western Asia.  In that regard, the US has been complicit 
directly and indirectly in providing military, economic, and diplomatic 
support to Israel for many decades.  At the very least, Israel receives 15 
million dollars every day in the form of support from the US.  Any time a 
challenge to the Israeli polity emerges, the US provides a cover and 
ensures protection.  But the symbiotic relationship between the two powers 
has not been limited to the Arab region, as it has affected the African 
continent, South and Central America, and much of Asia.  It ranged from 
supporting the Apartheid regime, to training and arming the Contras in 
Nicaragua, to supporting death squads in Guatemala and El-Salvador.



The US, therefore, sees its relationship with Israel as a long term 
strategic interest needed to secure dominance through subjugating the Arab 
states, and to play a proxy role in securing Pax-Americana globally.



The support of successive US administrations for the Zionist project has 
made the people in the US directly vested in securing justice for the 
Palestinian people rather than continuing this course of destruction and 
colonial subjugation.



The complicity of the United States is a responsibility of the American 
people.  It is a complicity that must be ended.



The Movement to Defend Palestine:



Facing all odds, are the Palestinian people.  Unrelenting in their defiance 
against successive brutal measures in a near lone stance, the Palestinian 
people have secured an unprecedented unbreakable national unity.  The 
killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is an attempt to disrupt this unity, and to 
dry out the historical reservoir of resistance.



During the past few decades, the Zionist state has attempted to create a 
rift between the Islamic movement and the secular nationalist and 
democratic nationalists trends.  What the Zionist polity failed to 
recognize is that the contradictions imposed by colonial designs and 
programs far outweighed any intra-Palestinian disagreements on tactics, or 
even on strategic vision, no matter how vast the gap is.  By threatening 
the very existence of the Palestinian people as a whole, all contradictions 
took a secondary role leaving amplified the contradiction with Zionism and 
its material manifestation.



All in all, the Palestinian people have identified their tasks to secure 
their liberation:



1.       All attempts to normalize with and give cover to the Israeli 
Zionist state must not be allowed to materialize

2.       All attempts at finding formulations to construct a truncated 
Bantustan must be defeated, including the current manifestations of the 
Oslo Agreement and the proposed Geneva Accords.

3.       The Palestinian right to return and full self-determination must 
be protected as indispensable anchors of justice for the Palestinian people.

4.       All entities, individuals, or groups attempting to abrogate the 
national consensus of the Palestinian people and to weaken their united 
stance for return and self-determination should be isolated and exposed.

5.       All aid in all forms by all entities, private and governmental, to 
the State of Israel must be ended.

6.       Securing the national rights of the Palestinian people must 
reflect all sectors of our people, within 1967 and 1948 borders and in exile.



The US Peace and Justice Movement:



Given the grave situation facing the Palestinian people, our community in 
the United States can no longer accept any abrogation of our rights in any 
form.  The US peace and justice movement, therefore, has the obligation to 
stand in solidarity with the Palestinian demand for return and 
self-determination.  Any attempt to impose on the Palestinian people and on 
our community in the United States, directly, indirectly, or through proxy 
individuals or entities, the acceptance of partial rights or a compromise 
on our fundamental anchoring principles should be and will be rejected in full.



Along with our community and people, we stand together with the hundreds of 
organizations, networks, and coalitions and all the many thousands of 
people who have insisted on the centrality of Palestine in the anti-war and 
global justice movement.  We are gratified by their principled 
support.  With them, a corner has been turned, and there is no going back 
to the days when Palestine would be placed on the back burner of the 
movement and the rear of the bus.



We salute members of the solidarity movement who have also fallen along 
side the Palestinian people.  While saddened that these cherished lives 
were lost to blind colonial brutality, we are certain that it is a loss 
with monumental meaning to our people.  In our reciprocal international 
solidarity that has spanned decades and that has joined the camaraderie 
struggle of people from all continents, the movement for justice for all is 
certain to triumph.



The assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is not likely to be the last, as 
Israeli officials have announced their intent to continue this policy of 
targeted assassinations to reach all leaders.  When seen in the context of 
the cumulative effect of all other measures, the clear overall Zionist 
policy is to terminate the presence of Palestine as a movement for national 
liberation.



The Sharon government recognizes that it has placed the Palestinian people 
and the Islamic Resistance Movement in a full-scale confrontation.  By 
escalating the assassination policy to reach the likes of Sheikh Ahmed 
Yassin, and by announcing its intent to carry out the same policy on all 
other leaders, the Israeli government is eliciting a response of similar 
magnitude.  The only logical implication is that the Israeli government 
headed by Sharon is planning an all out assault similar to that carried out 
against the Palestinian resistance movement in Lebanon in 1982.  There can 
be no other outcome.  The Palestinians cannot watch a process of political 
annihilation take over without significant resistance, and by repeatedly 
striking at the very top of the Palestinian movement and at its national 
pride, the Israeli government is certain to continue unabated.



- End -



The Freedom Archives
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