Resistance by Vehicle

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Palestine is living through a historical phase strange to the history of peoples and homelands living under occupation, because resistance is, to a large degree, absent. Ordinarily, resisting occupation would be the defining daily activity, dominating over every other activity, according to the historical logic holding that the sharp contradiction between the sons of a homeland and the invading forces ultimately produces a revolution, or at least resistance. In Palestine, the Palestinian factions find no time for resistance, deeply absorbed instead in their own wretched tribal disputes, draining the people nationally, morally, and spiritually. The occupation besieges Gaza, and the West Bank has become a stage for the daily, secure operations of the occupying army, which finds not only no resistance, but approval and cooperation from certain Palestinian parties.

Palestine lives through a historical vacuum that affects, emotionally and nationally, the souls of millions of the sons of the Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic nation, and this abnormal condition must inevitably produce its own opposite. The process of forming an organized opposite takes time, because of security complexities, but this does not preclude rapid reactions, resembling first aid for the spirit of resistance. This may explain the resistance by vehicle carried out by some Palestinian heroes, for whom this clear decline in the state of Palestinian resistance generally is unbearable. They use effective, lethal tools to attack the enemy and avenge the Palestinian people, trying, through this, to rescue the situation and restore prestige to the idea of resistance.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “المقاومة بالمركبات” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.