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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/17/leila-khaled-liberation-is-not-achieved-at-the-negotiation-table/">peoplesdispatch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Leila Khaled: “Liberation is not achieved at the negotiation table”</h1>
<div class="gmail-page-excerpts"> <p>Madaar interviewed the celebrated Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant about the ongoing
resistance to Zionism in Gaza and around the world</p>
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<a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/17/leila-khaled-liberation-is-not-achieved-at-the-negotiation-table/">January 17, 2024</a> by <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/17/leila-khaled-liberation-is-not-achieved-at-the-negotiation-table/"></a><a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/author/madaar/">Madaar</a>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><img src="cid:ii_lrijf28n0" alt="leila-khaled-palestine-resistance-israel-gaza-1024x576.jpg" width="391" height="220"><br><p>Leila
Khaled speaks ash the Third Dilemmas of Humanity Conference organized
by the International People's Assembly, hosted in Johannesburg (Photo:
Rafa Stedile)
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<p><span>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 </span><i><span>Madaar </span></i><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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 </span><a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/01/11/israeli-war-in-gaza-revives-arab-solidarity-with-palestine/"><span>widespread grief</span></a><span>
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.</span></p>
<p><span>Below is a part of Khaled’s dialogue, in which she discusses the implications of the Palestinian resistance:</span></p>
<p><b>Madaar</b><span>: </span><i><span>In your opinion, what are the major implications of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle?</span></i></p>
<p><b>Leila Khaled</b><span>: 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. </span></p>
<p><span>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…</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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… </span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>We are reassured because this battle has also united other arenas, as the West Bank is also rising up.</span></p>
<p><b>M</b><span>: </span><i><span>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?</span></i></p>
<p><b>LK</b><span>: 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. </span></p>
<p><span>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…</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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…</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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!!</span></p>
<p><i><span>This article was translated and adapted from an interview originally published in Arabic on </span></i><a href="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/"><i><span>Madaar</span></i></a><i><span>.</span></i></p>
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