Fatah is ready for ‘armed resistance,’ says senior official

A senior member of Fatah’s Central Committee said on Monday that his movement is ready to embrace “armed resistance” to fight the Israeli occupation, Quds Net News has reported.

“Fatah has been part of the Palestinian resistance against the occupation for 50 years and it is still major player in the field,” Jebril Al-Rajoub told Al-Jazeera. “The movement’s strategy since the 1967 war is based on resistance, which guarantees persistence of the Palestinian people in this country [Palestine].”

He added that Fatah has never dropped the resistance option, but it sees this not as a goal in itself, but as a means to reach that goal.

Al-Rajoub claimed that the regional and international consensus against the Israeli occupation is a result of Fatah’s resistance. Fatah’s goal, he said, is to achieve an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, in addition to sorting out the issue of the refugees. “We call for the people who resist, come to us to have an agreement and we are ready to adopt what you say and how you say it.”

He concluded by saying that, “For those who think that resistance is rockets and guns, Fatah ignited this kind of resistance, but in the light of the international consensus, we are with the popular resistance and national unity.”

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