Mahmoud Darwish by Muna Abu Eid;

Author:Muna Abu Eid;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786720139
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Intifada: Terrorism, or Resistance?

Darwish distinguished between ‘resistance’ (muqāwama) and ‘terror of the state’ (irhāb al-dawla):

Resistance is not an act of terror. It is a legitimate expression of defiance in the face of state terror, which Israel has imposed on the Palestinians for nearly half a century […] Thus the Palestinian has suffered twice: once due the expropriation of his homeland, and a second time as a result of the expropriation of his image, as the Israeli executioner continues to enjoy the victories of the sword and the victory of the image – being an executioner in victim's clothing.54

In this interview, given in 1989, at the height of the first Intifada, Darwish justified resistance, or freedom-fighting, without addressing the question of whether such resistance also permits the targeting of civilians.55 Later, the events of the second Intifada, September 11, 2001, and the global war on terror, would all force Darwish to redefine his stance on this issue, as shall be discussed later. After the death of the head of the military wing of the Fatah, Khalīl al-Wazīr (Abū Jihād) in 1988, Darwish wrote an article whose title was ‘Khalīl al-Wazīr and the bitterness of life’:

The consciousness of the global spectator needs more time – and more killing – to reshape a new concept of terrorism […] who is a terrorist? Is it the child who stands facing a tank or the state that kills the child with a tank? Who is a terrorist? Is it the people protecting its right to live in the face of a war of destruction, or the state that assassinates Khalīl al-Wazīr in Tunis?56

Darwish considered the Palestinians to be purely freedom fighters, while Israel was nothing but an occupier state, an executioner state, and a terrorist state waging a war to the finish against the Palestinian people, while also striving to expropriate the image of the victim in the international arena. Thus he saw the popular Intifada as a struggle for liberation, freedom, and independence – an important and necessary stage for the Palestinians.57 In an interview with ‘Aqil al-‘Awīṭ, a Lebanese writer and scholar, Darwish described the Intifada as an outcome of the endless suffering and boundless endurance of the Palestinians both within and outside the homeland. According to him, the Intifada restored the meaning of basic freedom, which had long been forgotten. ‘Out of the depths of this oblivion came a [Palestinian]thundering voice to remind [the humanity] of a spontaneous or conscious collusion to forget; There, on this small piece of the earth, is a people that is deprived of all rights because it lacks the basic condition for human life: self-determination.’58 In an interview with Hilit Yeshurun, Darwish spoke about the Intifada as an internal political protest about the helplessness of the PLO:

I felt that the Intifada is the simple, just, and true response that returned the [Palestinian] cause to the spotlight […] It shook the Palestinian people free of the complacency that the PLO allowed them. I saw in the Intifada revenge for laziness and revenge for a long sleep.

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