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Barghouti praises Palestinian victory in Gaza war and calls to expand resistance

September 19, 2014 at 12:52 pm

The jailed Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, has called the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip a victory for the Palestinians and stressed that efforts should now focus on mobilising the boycott of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine.

Barghouti is serving a life sentence in Israeli jails. In comments to Reuters news agency, he called to expand the confrontation with Israel and to develop a strategy that is significantly different from the cautious approach adopted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Arabs48 news website further quoted him as saying: “The Palestinians must make Israel pay a heavy price,” adding that “Freedom in Palestine will not be realised until the launching of a wider resistance campaign associated with a broader political, economic and security boycott of the [Israeli] occupation.”

Without referring to Hamas, Barghouti praised the resistance for the 51 days of war fought against Israel by the Palestinian factions in Gaza and described it as a victory for all Palestinians. “We consider that the battle represents a victory for the resistance. It has proven that Israel cannot and does not have the ability to resolve the conflict [with the Palestinians] by military force, and that the only way to end the conflict is to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.”

Barghouti called to strengthen the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against the Israeli occupation as a prelude to isolating it internationally with sanctions.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has left the door open to the possibility of resuming peace talks with Israel, despite the collapse of the last round of talks after nearly a year of negotiations. However, Barghouthi called it useless to continue the negotiations with Israel, noting that: “Negotiations with Israel failed over 20 years to achieve freedom, return [of the Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in 1948] and independence.”

Barghouti concluded by saying: “I do not see that Israel is ready for real peace, but instead it wants to use fruitless negotiations to continue its occupation and settlement and to ease its growing international isolation.”