The Movement of the Palestinian Refugee Camps

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

There are those who imagine that Palestine is the West Bank and Gaza, and that the Palestinian people are confined to the West Bank and Gaza. The land of Palestine is far wider than the West Bank and Gaza, and the people of the West Bank and Gaza make up only about a third of the Palestinian people. Those who hold this view are trying to confine the Palestinian decision to the West Bank and Gaza, as though the rest of the Palestinian people have no role in shaping and making that decision.

The West Bank and Gaza are living through exceptional conditions that negatively affect the process of Palestinian revival, and it remains incumbent on the rest of the sectors of the people to carry the banner and restore to the Palestinian arena the life and the true spirit of struggle needed to reclaim national rights. The people of the West Bank and Gaza are neither submissive nor faint of heart, and the day will come when the people restore to themselves their dignity and honor, and return to the trench of confrontation with the Zionist enemy. The greater problem now lies in the West Bank, whose authority recognizes Israel, coordinates security matters with it, and is led by people, some of whom were made by the occupation and by America.

It is expected that a Palestinian movement will develop in the camps against this deteriorating Palestinian state of affairs, aimed at drafting a new liberation organization that represents the Palestinian people wherever they may be. Our people in the camps are called upon to launch a broad movement of struggle in order to draft a new national charter, and to reconstitute a Palestinian National Council that does not recognize the enemy and does not concede the rights of the people. It is expected that acts of protest will begin in the camps, and that broad popular assemblies will begin demanding the overthrow of Oslo and the formation of a new Palestinian order.

There are factions in the camps, but it seems that each faction has settled for a particular corner of its own to be the seat of its private sovereignty, turning its back on the Palestinian cause. It is the responsibility of the people in the camps to end this state of factional fragmentation and to insist on the unity of the people. As for the faction that wishes to confront Israel, it is careful to keep its weapons secret, and does not use them for narrow, tribal, factional purposes that harm without benefit.

The Arab nation is rising, and its rise will impose itself on the Palestinian cause. Will the Palestinian people remain in the rear guard, or will they rise to be at the vanguard of the revolutionaries who reject surrender and submission? We are a great, proud people; we do not accept injustice and disgrace, and the banner in our hands can never fall.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “حركة المخيمات الفلسطينية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.