[News] Leila Khaled: “Liberation is not achieved at the negotiation table”

[Anti-Imperialist News]

peoplesdispatch.org
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/17/leila-khaled-liberation-is-not-achieved-at-the-negotiation-table/>
Leila Khaled: “Liberation is not achieved at the negotiation table”

Madaar interviewed the celebrated Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine militant about the ongoing resistance to Zionism in Gaza and
around the world
January 17, 2024
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/17/leila-khaled-liberation-is-not-achieved-at-the-negotiation-table/>
by
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/17/leila-khaled-liberation-is-not-achieved-at-the-negotiation-table/>
Madaar <https://peoplesdispatch.org/author/madaar/>
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[image: leila-khaled-palestine-resistance-israel-gaza-1024x576.jpg]

Leila Khaled speaks ash the Third Dilemmas of Humanity Conference organized
by the International People's Assembly, hosted in Johannesburg (Photo: Rafa
Stedile)

Leila Khaled, the celebrated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
militant who continues to be a source of inspiration for revolutionary
movements across the globe, spoke to *Madaar *in early December about the
current revolutionary movement taking place in Palestine and across the
West Asian region, Israel’s genocidal response, and the world’s epic show
of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

In over 100 days of war, Israeli has killed over 24,000 Gazans, nearly
10,000 of them children. The scale of Israeli killing of innocent
Palestinian civilians has caused widespread grief
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/11/israeli-war-in-gaza-revives-arab-solidarity-with-palestine/>
in the Arab region with nearly 97% of the respondents expressing some kind
of distress and over 84% claiming it to be “great psychological stress.”
Since October 7, the scale of the war has only grown. On Friday, January
12, in retribution for the solidarity Yemen’s Ansar Allah has shown to the
Palestinian people, the US and UK launched several airstrikes inside of
Yemen.

Below is a part of Khaled’s dialogue, in which she discusses the
implications of the Palestinian resistance:

*Madaar*: *In your opinion, what are the major implications of the Al-Aqsa
Flood Battle?*

*Leila Khaled*: All peoples rose up with this overwhelming attack, and the
most affected was Israel. This entity was shaken, and the first attack was
carried out on a military squad, something their intelligence did not
expect.

Israel relies on its military strength… and until this moment it has not
achieved any form of victory, but its ugly face, the face of murderers and
war criminals, has appeared. This has become the image of the Zionist
entity. The Palestinian narrative has risen, defeating the narrative that
the Zionist movement has worked on for a hundred years…

The West was also shaken by the demonstrations in various European
countries, which it shares with Israel. We all noticed how heads of state
came, the first of whom was Biden, who came to announce that he supports
Israel, and came with battleships and all kinds of weapons to support this
entity.

This entity is considered a cat’s claw in the Arab region, and in fact it
was a cat’s claw, but on the land of Palestine it was always faced with
resistance. The resistance has not stopped since the occupation of the
country, the establishment of this entity on our land, and the displacement
of our people and the masses of refugees in different countries. Yes,
Palestinian society was destroyed in 1948, but this people restores itself
every time.

But this time is completely different, so the entity did not have a plan
for confrontation, and it resorted to one method, which was to kill the
people in a complete extermination process, genocide and ethnic cleansing,
and this is what it wanted, because they bombed the homes in the presence
of its residents, including children, women, men, the elderly, and the
youth. This is what actually happened up to this moment. They said that
their goal in this war, in response to the attack, is to root out and
eliminate Hamas. It is a country that has 200 nuclear warheads and is
facing an organization, as it did in 2006 when it faced an organization
called Hezbollah…

It does not attack armies, so where will it strike? It does not see the
place of Hamas in Gaza, so it was surprised that the resistance, along with
Hamas of course, fought battles for more than 60 days. It was the one that
asked for the fighting to stop. Note that this was the first time in the
history of the Zionist entity to request protection from America and the
West, so they came with their weapons and their support… Blinken, the
American Secretary of State came to Israel and said, “I came as a Jew, not
as a foreign minister.” But later the US Secretary of State became part of
the war council prepared by Israel.

All of these repercussions are still continuing until this moment, until
America asked Israel to stop the fighting, because they feared that the
army that entered Gaza would collapse, and continued to enter and exit due
to the resistance.

As for the ceasefire, the resistance benefited from it by bringing in aid,
and set conditions to replace its detainees with our detainees in the
prisons, including children and women. The Zionist society is now divided.
The army used to go to fight, whether in Lebanon, Gaza, or the West Bank…
it would unite behind it, and it would be forbidden to criticize it or
criticize the government. However, we heard the criticism, and we heard
many soldiers left the front and returned. Two battalions whose soldiers
returned and said: We could no longer fight in the face of the ferocity
with which the resistance faced them.

So we are talking about this being the beginning of the liberation battles.
Liberation battles begin with strikes on all places in this body called the
Zionist entity, and this will not be the last time. Our people will also
fight other battles, and liberation means withdrawal from Palestinian land,
and now we are witnessing that. After the first strike, Ben Gurion Airport
was crowded with thousands of people leaving.

Their press even criticizes the army and the methods it uses, meaning
killing children and women and demolishing homes on top of their owners.
The world no longer accepts this, and therefore there is no unified
discourse for them… each one speaks differently, and contradicts the other.
The whole goal is to eliminate Hamas, but they are unable to do so. They
were unable to release the prisoners, and so they returned to strike again
in Gaza.

All our people in Gaza say we are with the resistance, we are protecting
it. We hear from inside Gaza those standing on the rubble of houses
chanting: We are with the resistance and we will remain with it.

We are reassured because this battle has also united other arenas, as the
West Bank is also rising up.

*M*: *It is being promoted that the battle is the battle to eliminate
Hamas. How do you view this? How do you see the resistance’s management of
the battle in the field?*

*LK*: Let me say, let us wait for what will happen in the field. Now there
are no more secrets. Everything is exposed, both audio and video, and no
matter how much the Western media tries to spread misinformation and
illusions, it will not be able to cover the image. The Internet is working
and the social networking sites are working, and everyone communicates and
receives images. Consequently, the world did not believe Israel with all
its nonsense, and on this basis I said that it was the beginning of the
liberation battle because there were political achievements achieved
through October 7. I will not call it an operation, because it is an epic,
a true epic in our history, just as we were talking about the armed
struggle, the first intifada, and the Children of the Stones as epics. It
is an expression of the position of the entire people, and not of a group
here or there.

The people united with the resistance, and in the field everyone is united,
except for those who talk about losses and what we won… We won freedom…

We are continuing. If they do not want to exchange, we still have their
soldiers. If they do not want them, let them bomb them. They are free if
they do not want to release their prisoners. But if the enemy believes that
under the constant bombardment they will displace people, our people said
that we will not be displaced after ’48.

This is a unified word: we will not be displaced, we will die on our land
with honor and we will not leave, this is what everyone repeats. Although
they cut off water, electricity, food, and everything else from Gaza, to
put pressure on its people until they are displaced, they will not
immigrate, and do not accept immigration to any destination.

Everyone says that even if our homes are destroyed, we will rebuild them.
This is the people’s position. Some may leave, but the displacement process
will not take place as Israel was planning outside the Gaza Strip… They
will not emigrate while their children are still under the rubble. How will
they emigrate when they have not taken their women out from under the
rubble? How will they migrate? Not possible. These people learned the
lesson in 48, generation after generation… They are not the same generation
that left, about which Golda said: “The old die and the young forget.” This
fourth generation is stubborn and carries the idea and is moving towards
achieving it.

Liberation is not achieved at the negotiation table. The negotiations
carried out by the leaders of the [Palestinian] Liberation Organization
were tried for 30 years, during which arrests increased, settlement
increased, land confiscation increased, the demolition of homes increased,
uprooting of trees, and people were prevented from moving between cities
through the checkpoints erected in the West Bank. Sharon left Gaza because
he considered it like a hornet’s nest. He said, we will leave Gaza and we
will besiege it. Indeed, it was besieged, but did our people surrender? Did
the resistance surrender? No, so what comes next holds surprises, including
political surprises.

There was a meeting in Doha, where the head of the CIA and the head of
Mossad met to search for a solution. What solution are they talking about?
Some of them talk about a Palestinian state, and this was rejected by
Israel a long time ago, even if America said, as Biden said: We support the
two-state solution, but the Palestinian state is difficult to achieve! Why
did he say this? Because they want to create an administration for Gaza
after Hamas. I assure you that Hamas and the resistance exist and will not
end. One person is martyred and others leave, ten, twenty, and a thousand…

Iraq strikes American bases, and Israel raises the flags of other countries
on the basis of covering up its ships, but its matter is easy to detect, as
any ship can know through Google where it is coming from and what it is
carrying. They will close this door on them, and this will affect the
economy, trade, and the oil they bring from the Arabs. This is in Yemen,
where today millions are taking to the streets in support and launching
ballistic missiles.

And Hezbollah, from the second day, said, we have entered the battle on the
northern border of Palestine, and they are still fighting to this moment,
and this is in agreement and in full coordination with the Palestinian
resistance and Hamas.

So we are faced with two scenes: a scene of resistance with all the wounds
and pain and the execution of people in their homes… although it is
difficult. On the other hand, there is another scene, which is the collapse
of their economy. Despite the unlimited support that America and the West
provide to Israel, the economy is at a standstill. Regarding the
settlements, will the settlers return? They will not return because they
were not protected, despite all the allegations. They were not protected,
so they left and never returned. All this affects the course of the battle.
They know they are losing.

In London, every Saturday, half a million take to the streets. They could
turn against the Prime Minister. America is having a crisis now. Millions
are going out in more than forty out of fifty states in demonstrations.
They gathered in Washington for a million-man demonstration… and are still
demonstrating, questioning the human rights, democracy, and justice their
countries claim. Later we will see how many problems will occur in Europe
and in America itself. In Canada, what is happening now? They want to put
their president on trial!!

*This article was translated and adapted from an interview originally
published in Arabic on **Madaar*
<https://madaar.org/%D8%AD%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%AE%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D9%84%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D8%AA%D9%85-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%88/>
*.*
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