I’ve always been one of those who
consecrated their efforts for supporting the Palestinian cause for two reasons…
first, because Palestine and all Levant countries, in terms of natural
geography and politics, are situated in the heart of our Egyptian national security
domain, as long specified by our ancient Egyptian ancestors as the region stretching
from north where reversed water resources of the two rivers of Tigris and
Euphrates are… to south where the African horn is… second, because the Zionist
or Hebrew state represents the most outrageous symbol of racist settlement colonization
which we have to resist and put an end to whatever time it takes…
And so, since I’ve always been and still
am until now, my relation – and I guess there are many others like me – to the
Palestinian cause ranged from pursuing fighting action to exerting my earnest
endeavors – which has never stopped but sometimes was afflicted with apathy – in
the resisting action… difference between the two actions is clear and differs
in degree… however, I believe that the resisting action is broader and more
comprehensive than the fighting one that is may be limited to holding arms and
using them…
Before continuing, I’d like to answer
a question that may occur to some; that is: isn’t there a third dimension of
the Palestinian cause; that is the religious one… because Palestine has Al-Aqsa
mosque; the first Qibla and second sacred place in Islam where Prophet Muhammed
ascended to the sky in his night journey known as Mi’raj… it also includes the
birthplace of Jesus, his footprints and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre… and I
here add that it also includes the grave of Prophet Ibrahim and his offspring
from Isaac?
My answer is that I believe that the
religious dimension, as such described, can provide justification for all
conflict parties… however, the national and liberation dimensions leave no alibi
for Zionists to claim anything… in this regard, there are a lot of details that
are not related to our topic now…
I also want to say that away from
fulfilling my mandatory military service in my country Egypt from 1973 to 1976,
I also hurried to fight the Zionists on field battle during their invasion to
Lebanon in 1982… also, I was behind equipping the plane that carried volunteers
to fight from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Damascus… I was aboard the
plane and submitted myself to the Syrian officials in Adra camp; those who were
responsible of welcoming and directing volunteers to the war front… in this, there
has been a long tragic story which I wrote some of its chapters before…
My generation first developed
awareness of the Palestinian right when we started knowing about liberation against
colonization and stances adopted by July 23 revolution and Nasser… we grew up
adopting the revolutionary and political speech placing Palestine and freeing
all occupied land in the heart of it, long time since we were young students in
the students and youth movement at the beginning of the seventies…
I was lucky enough to meet leaders of
the Palestinian Liberation Organization… atop of them Yasser Arafat, Khalil
el-Wazir, Salah Khalaf, Hayel Abdel-Hamid and Farouk Qaddoumi… I met them many
times, especially in Beirut… and there have been some serious contentions between
us where I was – of course – the first to start…
One of them was that situation that
took place in the Algerian Capital when Yasser Arafat welcomed the Egyptian
guests who participated in the 17th tournament of the Palestinian
National Council… the Egyptian delegation encompassed more than 200 figures… I stood
in line between Mr. Amin Howeidi and Mr. Muhammed Fayek where Arafat was
supposed to shake hands with… Arafat shake hands with the first and then he
ignored me to shake hands with the second when Mr. Amin Howeidi – may he rest
in peace – stopped him immediately to ask him if he hasn’t seen me… and then
Arafat answered angrily that he doesn’t shake hands with those who want to foil
the conference… and he continued saying that Dr. Essmat Saif ed-Dawla and that
one – me – have deliberately distributed a paper titled “this is an invitation for
recognizing the impossible” written by Dr. Essmat with me writing the introduction…
that paper was printed in Dar El-Khalij print house where I work in the UAE… I also
carried 500 copies with me to Algeria…
What I want to say here is that there
are Egyptian generations that are connected to the Palestinian cause; fighting
and resistance, since 1948 to date, in an inseparable relation… such relation
that cannot be broken by any one or any circumstances… but what happened so
that a man recognizing Palestine as his life cause, says and admits that he is
no longer that enthusiastic about it?
The answer is complex and starts from
the end… from our present time now and going few years back… meaning our
current situation that imposes a terrifying question; that is: in terms of
Egyptian national security, can we deny that the Zionist state represents a
real danger on Egypt… and that those groups claiming to have Islam as a
reference, holding arms and controlling borders with Egypt and which adopt an ideology
stating that liberating Egypt by Islamizing it is a priority over liberating
Jerusalem and Palestine… are also, like we all witnessed, a danger on Egypt?
Another question: shall we choose
between two dangers… the first was stopped – even if temporarily – by flawed Camp
David Accords… while the second was not stopped until now?
My answer for the first question is:
yes… the Zionist state and all those islamist groups represent real danger on
the Egyptian security… as to the second question, my answer is: we shall not
choose… as the Zionists do not only target Palestine, but Egypt as well… they
don’t want our country to develop or progress in any way…
I also have no doubt that Zionists
were behind enabling those islamist groups to come to power in the states surrounding;
meaning Egypt and Syria… and behind islamists’ strong rise in Jordan, Iraq and
Lebanon… not to mention Libya and Tunisia… because Zionists know well that with
those retarding powers occupying decision making offices, the Arab renaissance
and national liberation movement fighting colonialism are hit in the core.
There have been a lot of waters
running in the river of events… and if we opened the door for a serious
critical reading, we would find that all parties are guilty of disconnecting
the relation tying Egypt and Palestine… since it has been difficult to reproduce
the strategic and geo-political fact once again in the same manner… even if nothing
has changed… and I here mean the fact that Palestine is the essence of Egyptian
national security… and so it’s an Egyptian issue in the first place… gone are
those days when the Palestinians held a pavilion to receive condolences when Sa’ad
Pasha Zaghloul died in 1927… and when they cried and grieved over Nasser just
like the Egyptians did and may be more…
Yes, Palestine is Arab… and yes, Zionists
are settlement colonizing occupiers and we have to fight them sooner or later…
and yes, Hamas and all their likes represent, in a way or another, a danger of
different kind on Egypt…
Now, we come to the question: how can
we tackle those dangers in a way that doesn’t harm the Egyptian and
Arab-national security in the heart… also, in a way that doesn’t make those islamists’
practices a pretext for all those who want to stab the Palestinian cause in the
heart thinking they may have a piece of a new middle-eastern cake of interests
distributed by a direct Zionist-American alliance?
How can we regain our national and
Arab-national liberating speech directed against the international imperialist
and racist settlement colonization?... how can we formulate it once again to
revive the masses’ memory?
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article
was published in Al Ahram newspaper on July 17, 2014.
To see the
original article, go to:
#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #Palestine #Gaza
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