Arab leaders take ’emergency’ action — 36 days on

Gaza’s resistance will redraw the map of the entire region

The Arab and Islamic leaders who met in an ’emergency’ joint session in Riyadh on Saturday, a mere 36 days into Israel’s war of annihilation on Gaza began, didn’t halt the war, open any crossings, or spare the life of a single child. They do not represent their people, or humanity at large.

It is the brave fighters resisting the onslaught who speak for the peoples of the Arab and Islamic worlds and will ultimately determine those countries’ future and — through their sacrifices — redraw the political map of the region along new lines based on justice.

When hospitals where doctors have to perform surgery on children in the dark without anaesthetic, are bombed live on TV, it is the utmost disgrace for the armies of some 55 countries representing nearly two billion people and their heavily bemedaled generals, to look on as bystanders.

Gaza’s steadfastness has been amazing. People are rallying around the resistance at an unprecedented level, and many are willing to sacrifice and even die to achieve victory and foil the assault and with it the entire Zionist project in Palestine.

The leaders assembled in Riyadh don’t seem to have heard the words of Dr. Mahmoud Abu-Salmiya, director of Gaza’s Shifa hospital, while its buildings and patients and the thousands of people gathered in its compound for safety were being bombarded by Israeli missiles: “The bodies are piling up. We’ll try to bury them within the hospital, but it’s being constantly shelled by the Israeli army. We’re hours away from death, and the world is watching. We are not mere numbers.”

Western governments have barely lifted a finger in response to the killing of some 5,000 children in Gaza in a matter of a few weeks. The reason is that the killer is Israel, and it is backed by the US and European governments that constantly flaunt their commitment to human rights, and the victims are Arab children, mostly of Islamic faith. Most of the people who claim to represent them are stooges of the US, herded like sheep by Joe Biden and Antony Blinken and instructed on what to say and do.

I advise the leaders of Hamas and other resistance groups not to listen to the Arab middlemen who pose as mediators. They pose more of a threat to the Palestinian people than their US and Israeli masters, on whose behalf they operate. The last thing they care about is saving the Palestinian people, or even the Israeli captives held and the Western nationals stuck in the Gaza Strip.

The death toll of civilians, women, and children, has been horrendous. Dozens of the victims are members of my extended family, and as a native of the Gaza Strip I feel related to all of them. But it is no exaggeration to say that the resistance has already inflicted a devastating defeat on the Zionist project in this battle, by undermining the foundations on which it stands: deterrence, instilling fear, security, stability, and prosperity. That is a historic achievement which could never have been achieved without enormous sacrifices which the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and their fighting groups are now making.

The Gaza Strip is only the starting point on the road to final victory. It can never be governed by rulers installed by Israeli and American tanks, nor allow the return of those who protect West Bank settlers, operate at the behest of Israeli security agencies, and rely on them for their ill-gotten gains.

Gaza will only be ruled by those who are resisting aggression today and have done for years. There is a consensus on this among people there and their compatriots in the West Bank.

Arab leaders take ’emergency’ action — 36 days on