Liberation — Not Negotiation

The Palestinians are an autochthonous people, a people who have suffered great injustices at the hands of the Great Powers who, one by one, backed the Zionist colonization and occupation of their Homeland. They have since been treated not as people who either are born, toil and die on their land or are killed for it, but as nomads. What has been called the “Palestine question” in international bodies has culminated in resolution after resolution for a “two-state solution,” that Palestinians should be content with their land being stolen as long as they negotiate some concessions. Ahmad Shukairy, one of the founders of the then-revolutionary Palestine Liberation Organization, in these three statements before the United Nations asserts the right of the Palestinian people to be and raises the demand for liberation, including the right of return. The imperialist demand for negotiation with the occupier, he points out, can only lead the Palestinians to lose their Homeland. What other people would negotiate into giving up even a kilometre of their Homeland as the Palestinians have been pushed to do? The Palestinians have a right to their Homeland due to their ancestral autochthony. No Zionist colonizer can say the same. In elaborating these points, Shukairy responds to the common assertions of the U.S. and Zionist emissaries, giving an extensive history of Zionism, often in their own words, and ending with the ever-relevant point that as a colonial problem, the Palestinian problem can only be solved through an “Algerian solution.”