Harming the Resistance Is Harming Palestine

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

I remember how the Egyptian people turned against the Palestinian people when President Gamal Abdel Nasser accepted the American Rogers Plan for establishing peace between Arabs and Zionists. An Egyptian decree was issued at that time deporting elements of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine from Egypt, and Egyptian security forces raided the residences of Palestinian students at night and deported them, in their sleepwear, to Damascus and Baghdad under cover of darkness. The Egyptian people turned against the Palestinian people at that time, and many Egyptian voices rose in curses against Palestinians and Palestine. This incitement against Palestinians was repeated on numerous occasions. Under Sadat, many Egyptian pens rose up against Palestine and its cause, and numerous Egyptian writers incited openly against Palestinians in broad daylight, viewing Israel as a friend against these Palestinian “saboteurs.” Under Mubarak, matters were no different, and it went so far that the deposed Egyptian president incited against the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, and against Hamas in particular, by claiming that Palestinians were violating Egyptian sovereignty — this at the time when Palestinians breached the colonial-era border between Egypt and Palestine in order to break the siege that Mubarak and the Israelis had imposed on the Strip.

Egypt is now witnessing clear incitement against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance in general, and against Hamas in particular, and Egyptian public opinion is being mobilized against Palestinians. The latest cry of this incitement takes the form of accusing Morsi of conspiring with Hamas, and imprisoning him for fifteen days pending investigation.

Morsi conspired with the Israelis, sent Israel a message of goodwill, and worked to close the tunnels between the Strip and Sinai. Yet he was not accused of conspiring with Israel. Why? Is Israel a friend, and Hamas the enemy?

Likewise, the regime currently in power under Sisi is conspiring with Israel. There is now strong security coordination between Israel and the Egyptian regime, allowing Egypt to bring forces into Sinai to confront Islamist groups carrying out military operations against Egyptian positions. Why is Sisi and the leadership of the Egyptian security services not imprisoned pending investigation into conspiring with foreign parties?

We hope no one tries to outbid the other on this. Morsi wanted to shield himself from Israel at the Palestinians’ expense, and Sisi and his associates are doing exactly the same thing. Each side wants to placate Israel, and the United States behind it, so as not to disturb the calm of its own domestic policies.

…Arab [renewal] is the first step toward building and reviving the Arab nation. We pray to God that change may come without bloodshed, and if we can bring hearts together for a smooth, calm change without bloodshed, then we will be in the field. But we will not enter into internal strife, and we will not help one side against another. We stand with the peoples, aware that internal strife destroys peoples, ruins property, and breeds hatred and enmity. We have interfered in internal affairs before, and reaped poor fruit from it; and if reason does not guide us to the right path, then bitter experience has taught us. But at the same time, we will not retreat before policies that would harm the nation and its future. So if Egypt should ever need our efforts in defense of the waters of the Nile, we stand ready at the call; and so too do we stand before policies aimed at bending the nation to the American and Israeli will.

Hamas erred when it took sides, behaving at times as though the Egyptian regime under Morsi were its own regime, and it erred on the Syrian question as well. But any dispute with Hamas must remain within its political bounds, and must not be allowed to extend to the Palestinian people in Gaza, or to the Palestinian resistance, of which Hamas forms the spearhead. The Lebanese and Syrian precedents provide a rule for dealing with political positions. Syria did not punish Palestinians because of the positions some Palestinians took toward the regime, even though some Palestinians were killed while fighting in the ranks of the opposition; nor did Lebanon punish Palestinians even though Palestinians took part in the attack on the Lebanese army at Abra. Nor did Hezbollah’s and Iran’s assistance to the Palestinian resistance stop, despite political positions issued by Hamas and other Palestinian parties.

We ask our Egyptian brothers not to manufacture a crisis with the Palestinian people, and to halt the incitement against the Palestinian people. We are a great and enduring Arab nation, and every act of incitement only contributes to keeping us backward, defeated, and exposed to the ambitions of others. We ask that no one burden the Palestinian people with the weight of Egypt’s internal problems. And it is essential that everyone remember that Hamas and the Palestinian resistance in Gaza held out against the Israeli army for twenty-three days in the Cast Lead war of 2008–2009 — something that Arab armies were unable to do. Instead of accusing the people of Palestine, we ask the Egyptians to think about how to reclaim their sovereignty over Sinai, and when they decide to do so, we will certainly be soldiers under their command.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “المساس بالمقاومة مساس بفلسطين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.