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Newspaper Sur
Buenos Aires, Monday, December 4th, 1989

Intifada with love (view)

By Suhail Hani Daher Akel
Representative of the Palestine Information Office in Argentina

Accepting the division of a homeland for those who are not children of that land is much easier that for the indigenous inhabitants of the land. The truth is that during these centuries Palestinians have been mute witnesses of how some ones took control of our fields, ate our harvest, took the economic rewards and became owners of our cultural wealth in the name of an emperor, a king or a sultan. But one day we saw our homeland partitioned into two States, with the logic division of the people.

This is how with a sui generis invocation of the Bible (as if this was a kind of land grant) not only were they content with what they had received by means of a signed paper, but they also took the rest. From there onwards, the biblical case was transformed into their “security problem”, since the persecution suffered at the hands of Europeans turn their paranoia of persecuted into savage persecutors.

After 30 years a new signed paper brought moral reparation and turned the day of the partition (November 29th, 1947) into the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. But of course, it was late, most Palestinians were refugees... without land or homeland, we ambulated from here to there with pain and death at our shoulders. Until one of those days at the blood bathed autumn, in the occupied territories, lighted the torch of freedom and expelled a word to the whole world whose sound was difficult to erase from the are channels and people began to ask: What does the word Intifada mean? They slowly began to understand that being free is the determination of our people, but inside that firm conviction, we generously accepted the existence – on our land - of those who had denied our own existence.

Two years away from this last Intifada, Israel has not yet convinced itself of our determination and it continues to exchange violence for cohabitation, war for peace, death for life. After all, peace a victory which is not achieved without combat and Palestinians are sure that peace comes from the hand of the Intifada. And to achieve that peace, the words of Palestine State President, engineer Yasser Arafat, were heard as an echo among our people:

"If our men could not struggle any longer, our women will struggle; if our women could not struggle any longer, our children will struggle; but if our men, women and children could not struggle any longer, our dead will rise and they shall struggle”.

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