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Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi tells Israeli Court ......Thursday 02 Oct 2003
author: Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)
summary
Barghouthi tells court “One can’t be a Palestinian leader if he doesn’t fight the occupation.” Imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi told an Israeli court Monday
that Palestinians have an inherent right to resist the Israeli military occupation of their homeland.
Barghouthi tells court “One can’t be a Palestinian leader if he doesn’t fight the occupation.”
Imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi told an Israeli court Monday that Palestinians have an inherent right to resist the Israeli military occupation of their homeland.
“We have been suffering under your sinister military occupation for the past 36 years, you killed us, you tortured us, you destroyed our homes, you seized our land, you made our life an enduring hell. We have a legal and moral right to resist your occupation. If you were in our shoes,
you would do the same as we are doing, you would resist,” Barghouthi told the District Court in Tel Aviv.
Barghouthi told the court it had no right to prosecute him since he was a citizen of another country and that Israel had no jurisdiction over the Palestinian people.
He reminded Israelis that their state had committed 14 massacres against the Palestinians which culminated in the Nakba of 1948 and the expulsion of the bulk of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland and dispersal to the four corners of the globe.
He described his trial by the Zionist court as “silly and goes against the nature of things.”
“It is I and my people who should be trying you for occupying my country and tormenting my people. We are your victims, you are our tormentors.”
Barghouthi warned Israel against impeding the creation of a viable Palestinian state, saying that Palestinians would never accepted a truncated and disconnect state on isolated parts of the West Bank as envisaged by the Israeli government.
“You either accept a Palestinian state on all the occupied territories of 1967, or we’ll force you to accept a bi-national state on all mandatory Palestine.”
The imprisoned Fatah leader praised the Israeli Air Force pilots who had refused to carry out operations on Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying the pilots realized that what they had been committing war crimes all along.”
Defying his captors, Barghouthi said the fight against the occupation would continue “every minute and every moment,” adding that “a man cannot be a Palestinian leader if he doesn’t fight the occupation.”
Several peace activists and representatives of the European Parliament attended the hearing.
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Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)
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