When we deal with the Palestinian cause, it is important to deal with it in the general context as a whole. The general context of the conflict, historical injustice and grab of rights are the ones that draw the limits of the cause, not the prevailing power balances. Dealing partially with the Palestinian cause leads us to nowhere.
The Jerusalem's position in the Palestinian cause is one compound of the conflict with the Zionist colonial project. Part of the debate is the fact that Jerusalem constitutes intensification of symbolism in the Palestinian national liberation movement in face of the Zionist project, which deals with Jerusalem as a main compound in building its structure and its legend.
Jerusalem is in the heart of the Palestinian cause and a symbol of its people's unity. It is also a symbol of a collective role of the Arab nation. But what happens on the ground is that neither the Palestinian official order nor the Arab official order possesses a liberation project, or a nation-building project. They replaced the Arab strategic dimension of the Palestinian cause as an Arab cause with complete loyalty to the American imperialist project that dominates the region and that takes Israel as its strategic base.
It is important to stress that the battle on Jerusalem has not been decisive yet. If it was decisive in Israel's calculations it would not have been so occupied of it day and night. The battle on Jerusalem is not decisive yet in favour of occupation, and the Palestinian, Arab, Islamic and world's role should work hard to thwart any efforts to decide in favour of occupation. But this does not mean that every thing is fine with Jerusalem and that the results are guaranteed. Here comes our role and responsibility as a people. And that should be decisive. Jerusalem keeps the Arab and Islamic dimension viable. It encompasses the liberation project from a Palestinian, Arab national and Islamic perspective. Consequently, Palestine is in need of Jerusalem for the liberation battle, and Jerusalem will be liberated within Palestine and not isolated from it.
The Palestinian official abundance of the resistance as a strategic option and fundamental right and a project of the Palestinian people make the methods to liberate Jerusalem unfeasible as long as current local, regional and international positions persist. The method of the current Palestinian negotiations can not be called a conflict management, while Israel deals with its negotiations as conflict management which helps it to change the reality on the ground and play on the time and force factors to impose facts on the ground. Such position will not lead to liberation of Jerusalem. Absence of Arab action makes it worse.
Another serious factor is that the Arab popular action is politically limited, and is dealt with sympathetically and in a charity way with the victims of occupation to help them, instead of pushing them to participate in the resistance battle and liberation of the occupation. This kind of charity work weakens resistance.
Another factor in the Arab popular and official dealing is preoccupation of the instantaneous Israeli crimes in such a way that the essence is lost. This happened in early 2009 during the aggression on Gaza. The eyes of the Palestinians, the Arab world, charity institutions and the whole world were fixed on Gaza. This was important, necessary and moral. But most of them refused to look at what is happening in other fronts, where there was grave escalation of the policy that targeted to hush down all the Palestinian voice and action of 1948 to denounce aggression on Gaza. There was also another front where colonial settlement bulldozers were in full gear in Jerusalem making use of the world's preoccupation in Gaza. This should be a lesson learned for the future of the importance of dealing with all processes that are going on everywhere, and not to let Israel control the rules of the game.
There are big international blocs that did not succeed to stop the aggressor or save the occupation's victims. Even the European Union which concentrated on the economic role and subsidy, assumed, in decisive moments, the role of financing the recovery of what the Israeli aggression had destroyed, instead of punishing Israel and imposing the rules of a new game that bind Israel to comply to international law and justice. Therefore we do not care much of the recent EU's stance of recognition of Israel as "capital of the Palestinian state as well".
In the current situation, the popular resistance is vital. The features of this resistance seem to be on the sacred land in face of demolition, displacement, judaization, and camps of steadfastness and in coalitions and national mobility in Jerusalem and in the role of the Islamic movement in defence of Jerusalem and its sacred sites.
In face of the occupational isolation policy, suffocation, imposing silence on the population of Jerusalem, and trying to confiscate the Palestinian right in Jerusalem, the mobility in Jerusalem is most important, and all Palestinians are responsible of its continuity.
It is true that there is an international official complicity that supports Israel at its victims' expense, but this complicity will be enhanced in return for each Palestinian or Arab retreat, especially in Jerusalem. Israel tries to prove to the world that the accession is final. It now tries to show to the world that it is a battle where there is no Israeli concession, and that it is ready to confront the American Administration in the Jerusalem issue, using the rules of American domestic game and its balances.
The popular resistance of Jerusalem population affirms to the Palestinian people, Israel and the world that the battle on Jerusalem is not decisive, and that the international community is bound to deal with Jerusalem as an occupied area.
The Arab role and the role of Palestinians as a people is to determine the objective of reinforcing the popular resistance and resistance of the occupation in Jerusalem as a strategic objective and as a project that requires to be provided with all its needs to succeed. First there should be steadfastness, providing all material and moral requirements, and not to allow Israel to isolate Jerusalem from other occupied areas.
It is important to develop challenge strategies and confrontation, including termination of negotiations and negotiation process that is based on Palestinian weakness. In the media battle and battle on the public opinion we have our tools and the future is on our side. The coming stage requires Palestinian collective strategies based on the people's unity and the unity of its cause which is founded on Palestinian legitimacy and rights.
After the geographical isolation of Jerusalem from the natural extension in the West Bank, and isolation of the Bank from Jerusalem, Israel hit the structure of the popular mobility and the Palestinian popular resistance. In that stage, the importance of the role of Palestinians of 1948 emerged in the battle on Jerusalem. Their leading institutions met in late October 2009 to discuss action strategies in Jerusalem, and launching a battle on the Palestinian right in it. We still remember the Aqsa Intifada in 2000 when both the national and Islamic dimensions combined to start on both sides of the "Green Line", i.e. Palestine of 1948, the Western Bank and Gaza.
The current objective of the battle of Jerusalem forces, supported by Palestinians of 1948, and in particular the Islamic movement, is not to liberate Jerusalem, but to stand fast and abort the occupational schemes, and to build an important foundation for the Palestinian and international action about Jerusalem, and stop Israel's endeavours to obliterate it. The important lesson here is that the Palestinian people should act as a people, not as groups with each of them a different cause within its geographical border, but as one Palestinian cause.
The Arab world is unable to liberate Jerusalem, and it is divided and impotent as a central strategic factor. However, there is an important weapon in the hands of the Arab popular forces, i.e. rejection and combating Israel's normalisation and Zionist crimes. This means refusal the legitimacy of the colonial Zionist project.
The colonial Zionist project is a secular project in its nature. But it changes in Jerusalem to have a religious, cultural and symbolic dimension. The project uses Jerusalem as a central objective to search for justifications of its existence and to try to find "a right" or historical merit" in Palestine. Jerusalem provided the colonial project with spirituality, and there is campaign by the Jewish state to use the concept of building a Jewish spiritual centre as happened in other cities and settlements to stop Arab migration to these places.
Transforming the battle to a religious one was an Israeli strategy that transformed it from a battle of national liberation to a religious struggle, so that the equation will be a religion against a religion not a colonialist against the population. This will also show Israel to the Western world as if it is a protector of Christian sacred places, not an occupation force that violated these places.
The Israeli racism targets the whole Palestinian people in the homeland and in the diaspora, and takes away the legitimacy of those who exist and cancels the refugees' right to return. Israel's racism is a tool of colonialism, displacement, racial cleansing and seozure of a homeland together with a cancellation of a historical right of a people in its homeland. Israel with its executive, judicial and legislative authorities cooperate with Jewish terrorist organisations and religious settlement schools and world Zionist organisations in distributing roles to Judaize every cubic metre of the Old City.
Jerusalem is a city that unites the Palestinians and the Arab and Islamic project, nationally, morally and culturally. The main battle is over sovereignty on Jerusalem and who will be the sovereign. We have to admit that Israel runs the battle to secure sovereignty and legitimacy, and is more efficient than the official Arab and Palestinian Order. The sovereignty will not be provided by the American Administration or the European Union but by the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples. Absence of the resistance and liberation Palestinian project or the Arab project to kick out the occupied forces is equal to admitting that Jerusalem and all Palestine may stay under occupation.
We are in the stage of managing the conflict, where there is no sign of a just solution in the horizon that may rectify the historical injustice and the first occupation of the homeland in 1948. We should do our best to reinforce the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, and secure the failure of the Zionist project that is based on the Palestinian and Arab weakness. We should do our best to weaken Israel and deepen its internal and external crisis, and mobilise the world to boycott it and impose sanctions on it. An Arab project should develop to combat normalization, and promote the Palestinian and Arab rights. Arab normalisation with Israel means accepting it as it is and accordingly accepting the Zionist colonial racist project.
If there is no liberation, at least we should keep the features and the borders of the Palestinian right in Jerusalem, all Jerusalem and not only Eastern Jerusalem, and all Palestine, to say no to normalisation with Israel, and to adhere to sovereignty on Jerusalem as a right and as a responsibility.