Palestine Is the Responsibility of All Syrians

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

This article does not aim to release Arabs and Muslims from their responsibilities toward Palestine, nor does it occur to me to divide Arabs into Syrians, Maghrebis, and sons of the Arabian Peninsula; it merely seizes on the pressure the United States is directing against Lebanon and Syria to fall in line with a settlement on the American model. America insists on isolating every Arab state from the others and pitting Arabs against Arabs, and these very days it is focused in particular on isolating Iraq and Palestine from every Arab attempt at intervention aimed at lifting injustice and expelling the occupation.

It was reported in the media, on the tongue of a Syrian official (from what is currently called “Lesser Syria”), following the American statements against Syria, that his country agrees to whatever the Palestinians agree to; and it was reported on the tongue of a Lebanese official that the Shebaa Farms are occupied and that the resistance’s continued presence is necessary to complete liberation. It is well known that there are political purposes in the mind of the speaker on both sides, and there are those in this Arab homeland who understand them and those who do not want to understand them. Although I am among those who understand the difficult political positions of Lebanon, Syria and Hezbollah, arising largely from the great imbalance in the regional and international balance of power, I nevertheless point out the following:

First: most Palestinians reject the Oslo Accord and its consequences, and see it as having brought them ruin, destruction, and thieves, and as having turned some of them into guards over Israel’s security. If anyone doubts this, it is possible to hold a referendum among Palestinians wherever they are found. And if anyone believes that the Palestinians outside Palestine have simply evaporated, let him be bold enough to accept a referendum of the people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip under the supervision of neutral states. On this basis, the Syrian official can rest assured that the Palestinian people reject the Road Map and all the roads that follow from it, and insist on the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and properties in the land occupied in 1948. And regardless of any referendum, I am confident that I represent, in this, the great majority of the Palestinian people inside the land occupied in 1967, and the Syrian politician can say clearly that the Road Map is an Israeli interest that turns Palestinians into guards at Israel’s gate. And if the world wishes to see this truth affirmed by signatures at the level of individuals, organizations, factions and parties, that too is available.

Second: Lesser Syria is a part of Syria, and so are the Golan, southern Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan, Shebaa, and the Gaza Strip. I merely remind readers that these current statelets, which call themselves states, are nothing but the handiwork of British and French colonialism. That is, the southwestern part of Syria is occupied — the part called, for the most part in a geographic rather than political sense, Palestine. In other words, it is not only the Golan that is Lesser Syria’s responsibility, but the whole of the occupied land.

Third: whatever responsibilities apply to Lesser Syria apply equally to Lebanon and Hezbollah. The world ought to know that the Arab cause is a single, indivisible cause, and that whatever harms any Arab people harms the rest of the peoples. And although I understand the reasons that lead Hezbollah to focus on the Shebaa Farms, it is important that the world grow accustomed to the fact that all of us, especially in Greater Syria or Bilad al-Sham, are in one crucible, and that the cause of Palestine is the very same cause as the rest of the occupied Arab or Syrian lands. Our hesitation and our fear of calling things by their names from the very beginning have only emboldened the world against us, as though we ourselves gave the world the pretexts to shackle us and to shape our positions however its principal powers hostile to Arabs and Muslims wished. Of course, in the various parts of Syria there are those who oppose this, especially among Palestinians and Lebanese, but they remain a minority unable to shape Syrian public opinion in its full breadth.

And here, merely as a reminder, we must ask the Palestinians who said they were waging a revolution centered on their presence in Lebanon and launched from Lebanese soil: did they not appreciate that the land of Lebanon differs from the land of Palestine only in that the latter fell under occupation, awaiting whoever would liberate it? I also ask brother Tueni of the Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar about the extent of land his grandfathers sold to the Jews, land they owned in Marj Ibn Amer and other areas of Palestine. Were your people not landowners in Palestine? Why? Is it not because Palestine and Lebanon were never separated from each other except by foreign will? Or do the grandfathers have the right to sell while the sons have no share in liberation? Who made Acre Palestinian, Tyre Lebanese, Majdal Shams Syrian, and Ramtha Jordanian? How did the Finger of Galilee become Palestinian, the Litani Lebanese, the Yarmouk a border, and the Gulf of Aqaba divided?

Fourth: the Hashemite regime in Jordan has no right to conclude a peace with Israel, for two reasons: first, that Transjordan is part of Syrian land; and second, that Transjordan and Palestine are wedded to each other, and the leaders of Jordan and Palestine have no right to dissolve that bond. The people are the masters of the decision, not the intelligence circles that never for a day cease sowing hatred and enmity among people. And the regime must not forget that it is the one that was defeated in 1967, and that the West Bank is at least its responsibility; and if the Palestine Liberation Organization has, over the years, worked to relieve it of its political responsibilities, its religious, national and moral responsibilities still stand.

It is clear that the leaders of the political statelets currently in existence have, in one way or another, submitted to colonial will, if to varying degrees, or that, for the most part, their own private interests required them to fall in line with colonialism. Some of them speak of the colonial plans that must be aborted, but in truth they are speaking of the new plans while forgetting the old ones, as though they consider them a settled fact. By this logic, the new becomes old, and then a new settled fact, so that we remain distracted by the plans yet to come — while we ought never to cast the past behind our backs, lest the present turn into a new past; and whoever surrenders to an old colonial will ends up, in the end, surrendering to a new colonial will.

Moreover, the matter in this crowded world is not complicated, in that there is no place in the crush for statelets or petty fiefdoms. Their only place is underfoot. Great states like France, Germany and Indonesia find it difficult to keep pace with global progress, with competition, and with preserving themselves from being swallowed up in the face of globalization — so how could it be otherwise for statelets that cannot even stand on their own feet without external support or a crooked stick to lean on? Whoever listens to Jordanian, Palestinian or Syrian television would think the world could not go on without the great genius of the leader, his singular mind, and his divine wisdom. The Lebanese are more modest — and God have mercy on a man who knows his own worth.

It is highly doubtful that the regimes currently in power would move in this direction, for various reasons, foremost among them the personal and private interests of those running the regimes. One of them may offer reasons related to international circumstances and what surrounds them, but these remain flimsy reasons of no value before self-interest. It is clear that the pillars of every regime are pleased with the lands and benefits colonialism carved out for them, and content themselves with talk of Arab brotherhood, solidarity, and joint Arab action. They have not taken a single step forward for the sake of the Syrian people’s interest as a whole, and have often continued to conspire against one another and to place obstacles and barriers in the way of popular integration. Had the leaders of these statelets possessed genuine goodwill toward the land of Sham and its people, they would long ago have opened the field for people to express themselves and choose their own destiny.

For this reason, a great responsibility remains before intellectuals, thinkers, scholars, writers and parties, to change this situation and restore Syria to a condition consistent with Arab will rather than colonial will — knowing that the regimes have proven their inability and impotence in confronting colonialism even if they wished to confront it, and that nothing remains before us but the popular response. And if the people’s forces are to be honest with themselves and with their own people, and faithful to the values and goals they proclaim on the media, there is no escaping organizing across borders rather than within them. This requires daring and courage, given the dangers of repression and persecution by the regimes, especially the Jordanian and Syrian regimes. Of course, the Palestinian Authority is too feeble to practice the repression the Arab regimes practice. In any case, the international climate currently prevailing around the defense of human rights must be exploited.

And if the Syrians are to form such a gathering, I see the necessity of holding fast to the following points:

There is no escaping the formulation of a modern political system to replace the political systems currently in place.

The people alone are the ones who decide the political system they want.

Adopt freedom of organization and of theorizing while respecting the particularity of each group or gathering, and adopt free elections as the basis for the peaceful transfer of power. The leaderships currently in power may run in these elections just like anyone else.

No concession of any part of Arab land whatsoever.

Preserve a degree of particularity for Palestine and its people during the liberation phase, but without depriving Palestinians in the Syrian statelets of their rights, except for the right to naturalization, to leaving the camps, and to the refugee designation. This requires reformulating the Palestine Liberation Organization in a way that takes into account Palestinian particularity, the rest of the occupied land, and the Syrian dimension.

All of Syria is being targeted. America and its agents want to bring Lesser Syria to its knees so that it abandons its nationalist positions; they want to restore Lebanon to what it once was — a den for Western intelligence services and Israeli meddling; they want to strengthen the Palestinian Authority so it continues its work toward liquidating the Palestinian cause; and they want to support the Hashemite regime so it remains in control of the popular forces by sowing hatred and rancor among people and discriminating among them in jobs and spoils. In other words, all the Syrian statelets are being targeted, in one way or another, for containment and subjugation to American and Israeli will. One could even say that were it not for the land of Sham, the recent American aggression against Iraq would not have happened. Iraq is the eastern hinterland of Sham, and Sham stands on the direct line of confrontation with Israel; it is clear that Israel and America have a great interest in liquidating Iraq as a strategic depth, so as to make the swallowing of Sham easier.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “فلسطين مسؤولية كل السوريين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.