Empowering the Right of Return

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

For the first time in sixty-three years, the commemoration of the right of return has moved out of closed squares and rhetorical festivals into the field, in direct confrontation with the enemy that displaced the people and seized the homeland. Ever since the Nakba befell the Palestinian people, tears have flowed with every commemoration — sorrow over what has befallen the people, longing for the homeland, and yearning toward return. The people have composed a great deal of poetry, delivered nearly countless speeches, and issued innumerable statements and declarations. And with every commemoration, political leaders have tried to outdo themselves with resounding speeches that court the stolen homeland, reassuring their listeners that there will be no concession on the right of return, and that the day of return is near.

The sixty-third anniversary took a different form, given a new flavor by Palestine’s young people — those whose feet never touched that land, who made no memories in it, and never lived its warmth or the abundance of its blessings. Palestine’s youth refused to merely gather in the squares of speechmaking, and came to understand that return requires more than declarations of words, shed tears, and recollected memories. They went out to the confrontation lines to affirm, with blood and sacrifice, their steadfast national commitment to the Palestinian people’s right of return. May 15, 2011 was a true revolution in Palestine’s history, because the right of return began to take its rightful, sacred place in the Palestinian march toward liberation and the recovery of full rights. This anniversary offered lessons and morals, among which I would note the following:

At the Palestinian level

The following points can be enumerated regarding the Palestinian level:

The flow of thousands of young Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza proved that the cause remains alive and enduring, and that neither time, nor agreements, nor recognition of the Zionist entity, nor the alliance of Arab regimes with the Zionists can chip away at its substance. There is a firm and steadfast popular Palestinian commitment to the restoration of national rights, and the will is set on developing Palestinian action toward achieving that goal. The courage of the demonstrators who confronted and stood up to the bullets was evident — a courage that would express itself many times over were these Palestinians able to bear arms.

It has become clear that Palestinian awareness of the Palestinian cause is very high, and that the years spent trying to erase that awareness, neutralize the Palestinian, and distract him with livelihood and circumstantial concerns have not succeeded. The Palestinian has remained attuned to his cause, conscious of himself, and aware of the scale of sacrifice required.

In this anniversary, Palestinians rose above factional and partisan frameworks; Palestine, their mother, brought them together, and no banner or flag was raised except for Palestine. Perhaps this is what will push Palestine’s youth toward further work and cooperation in order to unify the Palestinian people around their steadfast national goals.

All settlement projects with the Zionist entity have, in practical terms, collapsed, and the agreements with the Zionists have lost their validity as a means of addressing the fundamental Palestinian issues.

[The refugee question] has been relegated to the rear of the issues negotiators might study.

At the Arab level

Amid the Arab revolutions, the following points stand out:

The Arab people in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt affirmed that they stand with the Palestinian right, and that this people does not disavow the causes of the [Arab] nation in general, nor lose its true national and pan-Arab compass in favor of settlement projects that betray the covenant and trample on the blood of the martyrs.

The Arab revolutions made the Palestinian feel strong. Arab armies did not march out to meet the enemy, but the Palestinian has come to understand that all the talk about the Arab nation’s betrayal of the Palestinians is nothing but nonsense manufactured by the regimes in service of Israel and America. The Palestinian felt strength because he saw his flag raised in Tunisia, in Egypt, and in Lebanon, and heard the revolutionaries in the squares raising their voices against Israel and America.

The Golan front was opened before the people, and crowds of demonstrators breached the barriers to embrace the Arab people in the occupied Golan.

At the global level

The following points can be recorded at the global level:

The confrontations of this anniversary were far more important, and had a far greater impact, than all the tools of Arab and Palestinian media combined on the international stage. The refugee question constitutes the most important element in persuading the world of the justice of the Palestinian cause, and it ought to be the focus of efforts to make the peoples of the earth aware of Zionist terrorism and the terrorism of the states that support Israel. The Arab regimes and the Palestinian leadership went far in focusing on a feeble state acting as a security agent for Israel, and abandoned the refugee question. The confrontations that took place received worldwide media coverage, and carried a clear message: that Palestinians are not terrorists who kill children and women, but refugees living under harsh conditions for decades on end, because Israel expelled them from their homes and properties in Palestine.

It is likely that Israel and the Western states have come to realize that there is no solution to the Palestinian question except by satisfying the two sole Palestinian constants — the right of return and the right of self-determination — and that every attempt by Arab and Palestinian leaderships to bypass these two constants is doomed to fail.

The world may now realize, after the Arab revolutions and the advancing standing of the right of return, that for the Palestinian, politics is not the art of the possible but insistence on what is possible. The world tried to implant that defeatist definition in the minds of Arabs and Palestinians, but the masses are proving that insistence on what is possible will lead to victory, and that the art of the possible is nothing but the art of defeat before Israel and the Western states.

Conclusion

The commemoration of the sixty-third anniversary of the Nakba is nothing but a beginning, and it will be built upon in the years to come, especially as Arab conditions are set to witness further development and evolution. The Palestinian people will gain further strength and will receive further support from the Arab peoples and the forces of resistance across the Arab and Islamic arenas. And the Palestinian public will certainly work to study the results of this uprising in order to empower the right of return, and will draw the lessons that keep the right of return a constant, present heading in all local, Arab, and international activities.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “تمكين حق العودة” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.