Is the international community ready to bind Israel to UN resolutions?

Asks Amina Suleiman, General Union of Palestinian Women – Lebanon Branch

Throughout the past 73 years of Palestinian national struggle, the people of Palestine have never stopped defending their rights, the most basic of which are their right to life, their right to dignity and their right to exist on their land in a free, sovereign, independent homeland. Equally, they have never stopped sharing this message with the world.

During these long years, despite the false and desperate claims of the enemy leaders that our elders will die and our children will forget, the Israeli state has not been able to defeat the Palestinian consciousness nor dismantle its national affiliation.

For liberation, return, and state-building, our people continue to face the occupation’s tyranny, racism, and brutality with violations, including murder, arrest, and settlement expansion, targeting the city of Jerusalem and Judaizing its landmarks. This act led to the massive public uprising in Sheikh Jarrah and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Consequently, the Palestinian people rose in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Gaza and inside the Green Line to support our people in the Holy City unprecedentedly. The result restored momentum to the Palestinian cause and created international headlines that exposed the insistence of the occupation forces to steal the homes of Jerusalemites that they inherited from their ancestors in an attempt to forcibly displace and uproot them, using the policy of racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing in an effort to liquidate the Palestinian presence and obliterate our identity.

What happened during Israel’s brutal aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip indicates the lust for murder in this entity. It targeted all the elements and components of human life, including water supplies, electricity, hospitals, factories, and media institutions. It bombed and brought down buildings on unarmed civilians, women, children, and the elderly. Hundreds of female martyrs have risen, and thousands of others have been wounded. I contend that this indicates that they control their death instinct and the destruction of their life instinct.

However, despite the cruelty and brutality of this aggression, our people still possess the solid will, determination and firm belief to achieve their national and legitimate goals.

Undoubtedly, this situation significantly contributed to the formation of Palestinian public awareness and reinforced international solidarity that rejects the continuation of Israeli aggression against our people in all of Palestine. It inspired the interaction of the people of the free world with our cause – it raised it to the forefront in international events.

This support came from the steadfastness of our people and their many valiant forms of resistance and national unity – prerequisites for victory.

Now, it is necessary to focus on the role of the official Palestinian diplomatic efforts, which have made use of all available human rights and legal platforms, in addition to the position of all Arab, Islamic and international organizations that support Palestinian rights, which must be strengthened, to contribute to the process of preventing war criminals from escaping.

The Israelis must be punished.

The latest step saw the decision of the Human Rights Council to form an international investigation committee into the crimes of the occupation – a decision that angered Israel’s leaders. A significant fact about this committee is that it also included Palestinian people within the Green Line.

What distinguishes the current situation is that Israel’s lies and claims are no longer deceiving anyone. Its aggressive, colonial, racist nature has been revealed, and a clear fact has been proven that the occupation, no matter how much it reaches out through its media machine, has not and will not succeed.

There is no doubt that the international popular movement in the capitals of the world – condemning Israeli crimes – has a significant impact on changing the conflict equation.

Israel has always presented itself as a victim, and that its security is a red line. Above all else, with unlimited American support since the occupation of Palestine, this is what prompts it to challenge all humanitarian norms, conventions, and international law.

Does the United States of America undertake the movement to manage the conflict or work to end the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people despite recognizing that Jerusalem and the West Bank are occupied territories?

Will it succeed in forcing the occupation forces to withdraw from the 1967 lands and establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital free of settlements? Is the international community ready to take a practical decision to pressure Israel and oblige it with the relevant international legitimacy resolutions?

Through the experience with US policy, it consistently affirms its full partnership with the Israeli entity, which has not stopped for one moment in its support at all levels, and this is what enabled the occupying power to establish itself as a rogue state above the law. The proposed scenarios are many, the interests of the major countries are in fierce competition, the conflict is open to all possibilities, and America and the international community remain at stake.

Therefore, the central gamble remains on the Palestinian people with all its factions, constituent components and living forces, and its leadership that possesses the will and firm belief in the power of truth, the national constants, the sacrifices of the martyrs, the steadfastness of the prisoners, its popular resistance and its national unity, which is the essential condition for victory, with the need to strengthen and activate it within the framework of The Palestine Liberation Organization( PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and the title of their struggle.

On the basis of full partnership, strengthening and renewing their national institutions, and the necessity of conducting a comprehensive national dialogue among all Palestinian factions, to develop a national strategy by agreeing on the mechanisms, forms and tools of struggle, and setting priorities within the available possibilities that serve the interest of the cause in confronting the Israeli war machine, the normalization conspiracy, and all the challenges that target the Palestinian national project.

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