Library:Interview with Ghassan Kanafani

Interview with Ghassan Kanafani
Author	Ghassan Kanafani
Type	Interview
Source	https://x.com/PalestineTunes/status/1762840138881892593

This is a partial interview of Ghassan Kanafani in which he speaks on the Palestinian Liberation Movement and its fight against imperialism and Zionism, the use of false language by imperialists and the meaning of peace, historical context on the Palestinian struggle

Ghassan Kanafani:

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a part of the Palestinian liberation movement. And the Palestinian liberation movement aims to build a democratic Palestine, where all sorts of discrimination, whether they are economical, or religious, or national, or social, are supposed to be cancelled. We believe that because of the nature of contradiction between the Palestinian and Arab national liberation movement, and between the enemy, which is Israel and the world Zionist movement and the world imperialism, because of the nature of this contradiction, there is only one way to solve it, and that is through the peoples' armed struggle. This long peoples' war is supposed to be the way the people impose their will against their enemies and build the society where everybody in it, regardless of their religion, or national background, or economical situation, will be equal.

I want first to notice that among the most dangerous weapons of our enemy is the weapon of words. They call it "peaceful solution" when it is in fact the capitulation conditions. We are against it exactly because it is not a peaceful solution. We are against it exactly because it is another phase of forcing the Palestinian and the Arab people to kneel under the will of their enemies and under the force of the superior weapons and armies. To us, a peace is the justice. And this is why we consider that our peoples' war must be the war that ends all the wars. While the conditions of capitulation, forced against us, forced upon us, by imperialists, by Zionism, is the part of a new phase of force. We tried for a real peace, and this peace can not be achieved except when justice is made, when a progressive social society is build in Palestine, where every single person, not only in Palestine but in all this part of the world, lives equally and shares in building the destiny of their homeland.

The Palestinian resistance movement in fact started in 1918, that is exactly when the British colonialist troops occupied Palestine in the First World War. Since that time the Palestinians have been sacrificing in all forms of struggle continuously till this moment. And all the time it was that the camp of the enemies of the Palestinian people was very big, that the Palestinians alone can not conquer it. In 1918 the Palestinian national progressive movement at that time started speaking about a Democratic Palestine. Calling for Democratic Palestine is not a new method in the Palestinian resistance movement. And in fact, in May 1921, this is well known in history, that the Jewish demonstrations and the Jewish cities were followed by the Zionist elements, and they had to run to the Arab villages and towns where they were refuged and protected by the Palestinian national progressive movement. So we have always been fighting, not only the British colonialists, but also the reactionary elements in the Jewish community in Palestine who adopted Zionism.

Zionism is a reactionary ideology; fitted exactly the ambitions of the British colonialism at that period, and later on the American imperialism plans to the area. Weissman (or Wiseman) for example wrote a letter to lord Rhodes, whose Rhodesia was called after his name, asking him to teach the Zionist movement the style in which the colonialists in Rhodesia succeeded in establishing the racial society there. The Zionist reactionary elements in Palestine kept in very close cooperation with the British colonialists. And it is very strange, maybe surprising to somebody to notice, that the development in South Africa, went since 1910, when the Federation of South Africa was established, went on exactly the same steps which Israel developed its laws between 1948 and 1960. After 22 years of its establishment Israel has proved that it is nothing except a colonialist state playing the role of a tool for the American imperialists. It's myth, of finishing the diaspora of the Jews in the world, has failed badly, because Israel up till now has only 1/6 of the Jews in the world. The progressive Jews all over the world, their numbers start increasing against the establishment of the state and against that racial community which the Zionist movement created in Israel and which goes exactly like the South African one. This is why exactly that the Palestinian resistance movement is not a movement to liberate a geographical 26,000 square kilometers; it is a historical movement that aims to liberate the Jews from Zionism and the Arabs from reactionaries and to establish the Socialist Democratic Palestine.

The question of Palestine is the question of a contradiction, of a clashing contradiction, between the national liberation movement of the Arabs, headed by the Palestinian national liberation movement, and between imperialism in this part of the world, headed by the Zionist movement. And this is how it is a mistake to understand that Israel is just a home of Jews, because Israel is the base of imperialism. And we notice that oil companies in the Arab world, in the last five years they have built factories in Israel, especially military factories, we can mention several names, everybody knew about these names, who built jet engine factories inside Israel, while their money is harvested from the Arab oil (unintelligible). Israel represents in this part of the world the fortress of imperialism and colonialism.

Twenty-two years ago, when the Palestinian people were forced out of their country, they had no place to go to except the refugee camps which were built in the desert. And those Palestinians, they lived the last 22 years in the most horrible conditions a human being can stand. Not only they were stateless; not only they were not represented anywhere in this world. Not only they were living on very poor (unintelligible) given to them by the UNRWA, but also they were denied the right of being part of a nation. They were denied even their own name; they were called sometimes "Arab refugees", so the world conscience wouldn't get shocked when they mention that this is what remains from the Palestinian people. Most people were denied one of the most important things in the human beings life, and that is hope. The Arab governments represented nothing belonging to their hope. The Arab parties represented also nothing that belongs to their hope. And the United Nations was exactly an enemy and not any hope for them. They kept living without hope till the Palestinian resistance movement in the beginning of the 60s started. The Palestinian resistance movement didn't give the Palestinians in the camps better food, it didn't give them better clothing, it didn't give them cement houses, but it gave them something which attracted their loyalty, and that is the hope of a dignified life after a very hard struggle to regain dignity and to build their society. And this is simply the reason of how the Palestinian masses living in the camps gave their loyalty to that resistance movement which only promised them a very late better life. But not on the spot, it gave them -