Despite Abbas and Balfour, we will return
to our homes in Palestine (abridged)
Shahd Abusalama, Electronic Intifada, Nov 3 2012

Without even a shred of legitimacy, on Nov 2 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour promised the leaders of the Zionist movement they could establish their national homeland in Palestine, violating my people’s right to self-determination. Balfour laid the groundwork for the conspiracy launched against the people of Palestine which led to our Nakba, the mass killing, dispossession, and systematic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people at the hands of Zionist gangs. Britain is responsible for this atrocity against my people that the Balfour Declaration triggered, for the expulsion of three quarters of a million Palestinians, who with their descendants now number many millions more. It is also responsible for the Palestinians who survived the violence and mass expulsion, and were forced into ghettos within occupied Palestine under a military regime for decades. On the anniversary of Balfour Declaration, Mahmoud Abbas came with a declaration competing with Balfour’s. I felt sick when I first read an article about it. I could imagine Abbas saying this. At the same time, I wished that it could be fabricated news that he had renounced his and our right to return to our homes and villages. Then I saw the interviewwhen he uttered those shameful statements, and I couldn’t believe what I heard. I am sure that the majority of Palestinian people and people of conscience worldwide were as frustrated as me. Abbas promised:

As far as I am here in this office, there will be no armed third intifada.

Did Abbas forget that the first intifada was a nonviolent struggle, and that Israel is the party that turned to brutal violence, especially against children, to crush it? Did he forget that when the second intifada began, Israel fired a million bullets in the first days and weeks to try to crush it and dozens of unarmed civilians were killed in those first days? Of course nobody supports “terrorism” or harming innocent people regardless of who they are. But with such a statement, does Abbas really mean to suggest that all those who used arm struggle to fight for the dignity and freedom of the land and people are “terrorists” as the Israelis claim? Is this the “president” of Palestine talking, or an agent of Israel? Couldn’t Abbas grasp how insulting it was to Palestinians for him to use “terror” to describe their struggle? Or did the US dictate to him to say so? Being ‘nice’ while addressing the ‘democratic regimes’ doesn’t mean giving up your people’s most basic rights guaranteed by UN resolutions. I feel bad when forced to use UN resolutions and international agreements to justify our right to return and legitimate right to resist occupation and ethnic cleansing and to defend ourselves. Why should Palestinians, as oppressed people, have to use these resolutions to prove the legitimacy of our rights? They were issued only to absorb our anger, as evidence of supposed objectivity, not to be implemented. We, the Palestinian people, don’t want resolutions, we want actions! We want real justice, not just words tossed into the air! Regardless, UNGAR A/RES/33/24 of Nov 29 1978 guarantees the right to use force in the struggle for “liberation from colonial and foreign domination.” It is up to Palestinians to decide if they use that right, or pursue their struggle by other means, but how strange that Palestinians must defend their right to defend themselves, while, Israel, the invader, occupier and colonizer, is always granted the right to “self-defense” against its victims! What Abbas seems to be saying is that Palestinians never have the right to resist or defend themselves as Israel continues to violently steal what is left of their land. That can never be true. Abbas crossed another red line, the right to return, also guaranteed by UNSCR194. He said:

I am from Safed. I want to see Safed. It’s my right to see it, but not to live there. Palestine now for me is the ’67 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is now and forever. This is Palestine for me. I am refugee, but I am living in Ramallah. I believe that West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, and the other parts Israel.

He didn’t only surrender his people’s right to return, he also surrendered his people. He couldn’t have had in mind Palestinians who steadfastly remained in their lands, torn between their Palestinian identity and their cursed Israeli passports, enduring daily harassment and discrimination. He also forgot the millions of Palestinian refugees outside Palestine, many still enduring horrible conditions in their refugee camps in the diaspora.