PLO high official says PA will resort to violence if demands for "an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital" are not met: " I've a revolutionary's gun in one hand and an olive branch in the other - do not let the branch fall from my hand"
Headline: “Al-Ahmad: Our people can no longer tolerate the non-implementation of the international institutions’ resolutions that will put an end to the occupation”
“Head of a delegation of the Palestinian National Council (i.e., the legislative body of the PLO) to the 143rd assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Fatah Central Committee member, and PLO Executive Committee member Azzam Al-Ahmad said that our people can no longer tolerate the non-implementation of the international institutions’ resolutions, which will put an end to the occupation and enable it [to realize the right] to self-determination, to return to its land, and to live free in its independent state whose capital is Jerusalem.
During the speech of the State of Palestine, which he gave yesterday [Nov. 28, 2021] at the general assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Madrid, the capital of Spain, Al-Ahmad added: ‘The international [UN] Security Council has issued more than 70 resolutions since the start of the conflict, and this is in addition to the hundreds of resolutions that the UN General Assembly has issued, but not even one of these resolutions has been implemented. Is that justice and equality? [Is this how] we achieve security, peace, and stability?’
He added: ‘The UN has issued hundreds of resolutions, including the partition resolution on Nov. 29, 1947 (see note below -Ed.), which gave the Palestinian people the right to establish a state on 44% of the territory of historical Palestine. Afterwards was the resolution to establish a Palestinian state on the territories that were occupied in 1967, which gives our people the right to establish a state on 22% of the territory of historical Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital. The Security Council issued Resolution 2334 in 2016 (see note below -Ed.), which confirmed this and the illegality of the settlement enterprise. We agreed to this in order to establish peace, but how long will the occupation continue to ignore all these resolutions?’…
He emphasized that the continuation of this situation, along with the fact that the international community is not doing what it determined must be done and what it constantly calls to do, gives our people a feeling of frustration and hopelessness for its children, its women, its young, and its old. He added that this causes it to believe that there is no avoiding a reexamination of dealing with this reality and demanding all its historical rights.
Al-Ahmad recalled the statement of our eternal Martyr [former PLO Chairman and PA President] Yasser Arafat before the UN General Assembly in 1974: 'I've come to you with a revolutionary's gun in on hand and a green olive branch in the other hand – therefore, do not let the green branch fall from my hand,’ in other words, do not let peace fall.”
PLO Executive Committee member Azzam Al-Ahmad who spoke on official PA TV also serves as head of the PLO Department of Arab and Parliamentary Affairs, Fatah Central Committee member, Fatah Commissioner of National Relations, and Fatah Commissioner for Relations with Lebanon.
UN Resolution 181 (the UN partition plan for Palestine) was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1947. It called for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as a separate entity under the rule of a special international body. The Arab state was meant to be comprised of the western Galilee, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and the remaining territory of the Mandate west of the Jordan River would be the state of Israel - Jordan (known at the time as Transjordan) had already been established in what had been the part of the Mandate that was east of the Jordan River. The resolution was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, but Arab leaders and governments rejected it, and launched a war to destroy Israel.
UN Resolution 2334 condemned the establishment of Israeli "settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem," saying it "has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace." It demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities” in the area. The resolution further said “it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines” other than changes made through negotiations, in reference to the 1949-1967 ceasefire line between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries following Israel's 1948 War of Independence. The resolution called “upon all States… to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.” It also called "to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as acts of provocation and destruction... and to clearly condemn all acts of terrorism," and noted the obligation of "the Palestinian Authority Security Forces to maintain effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantling terrorist capabilities." The resolution was adopted during US President Barack Obama’s final weeks in office and reflected a change in the longstanding US policy of averting UN Security Council resolutions that prejudice or negatively influence direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Yasser Arafat – Founder of Fatah and former chairman of the PLO and PA. During the 1960s, 70s and 80s Arafat was behind numerous terror attacks against Israelis. Although he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 together with then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and then Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East" after signing the Oslo Accords peace agreement, Arafat launched a 5-year terror campaign - the second Intifada (2000-2005) – in which more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered. Arafat died of an illness in 2004.