Marking the 50th anniversary of Ghassan Kanafani’s assassination, we present his 1968 article ‘Resistance is the essence’ for the first time in English, with translation by Louis Brehony and Ameen Nemer.
Introducing Kanafani’s article
The June 1967 defeat of Arab forces led by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt saw the Zionist state occupy Gaza and the West Bank, along with the Sinai and Golan. 320,000 Palestinians were displaced in 1967 alone. While the defeat echoed bitterly in Arab capitals, the same period saw the steadfast optimism of the camp-dwelling dispossessed take on new forms through the Palestinian Revolution. Striking Zionism through guerrilla tactics and reaching out to other anti-imperialist struggles internationally, the movement became a space for socialist and revolutionary ideas.
Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani became a leading light in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and founded its newspaper al-Hadaf (The Target) in 1969. In Resistance is the essence (Al-Muqawama Hiya al-Asl),[1] written in late 1968, he responded to the suggestions of Egyptian journalist Ahmed Baha’iddeen for a Palestinian state. Kanafani’s response echoed Che Guevara’s call for a new human being, forged in the process of revolutionary struggle. Looking back on a period of defeat, which he traced back to Britain’s suppression of pre-1948 revolts, Kanafani found hope in renewed resistance. Like Che, Kanafani saw the path to socialism and liberation as intrinsically linked to the ‘fighting spirit’ or consciousness of the masses.
A Zionist car bombing in Beirut on 8 July 1972 cut short the contribution of Kanafani, whose Marxist writings offer deep insights into the struggle for Palestine, international solidarity and cultural resistance. Marking 50 years since his assassination, PFLP spokeswoman Suhair Khader summarised Kanafani’s school of thought as the revolutionary view that ‘considers the human to be the cause.’ In the years after his assassination, echoing the promise of Cuban students to ‘be like Che,’ refugee children in Lebanon sang that, ‘Ghassan taught us the love of the cause.’
‘Resistance is the essence’ by Ghassan Kanafani
The suggestion of Ahmed Baha’iddin on the issue of recreating a Palestinian state in Jordan and Gaza (al-Masur, 13 October) will appear to many as putting the horse before the cart. But I think the problem is doubly more difficult than that. And if now was a suitable time to open the old notebooks, to make it easy for us to become acquainted with the new pages, the worst thing about these notebooks is that the Arabs of Palestine, and the Arabs in general, rejected suggestions like this in 1948. And on 15 May of that year, as Israel announced the creation of its first government at midnight, the thought didn’t cross the mind of any Arab that announcing a Palestinian government that same night would change more than a single event of the 20 years that followed.
Is it possible to right these wrongs after 20 years, after a disaster even more bitter than the disaster of 1948? There is no doubt that it is possible, as long as we know from the start that this time it will be even more difficult and less effective than it would have been in 1948. But this does at all not mean that the suggestion is not a worthy entrance to a field whose gates now appear to be completely closed.
However, consideration of this proposal in the first place requires the recording of several points that are related, directly and indirectly, to the matter as a whole:
Firstly, that the biggest crime committed against the rights of the Palestinian people, after the crime committed by the Zionists in alliance with the imperialists, was the crime of dislocating the Palestinian people from their cause, and then expelling them from what remained of Palestine. This did not take place from 1948, but since 1936, when the waves of Palestinian revolution practically constituted a rising of the Arab movement for freedom, at a time when the Arab organisations were as yet unable to perceive the organic link between Zionism and colonialism, and felt unashamed in appealing to the Palestinians to end the revolution, relying on the promises of ‘our friend Britain.’
Secondly, the isolation of the Palestinians from their cause, whether it was intended or not, has led to the ‘dispossession of the Palestinian,’ after the dispossession of his land. And this comparison means something. Namely, that what happened on the level of the land happened to the human being. The Palestinian land was violated and the Palestinian was violated. What is left of the Palestinian land has not ceased to remain Palestinian, and so what is left of the Palestinian people has not ceased to remain, in the sense of struggle, Palestinian.
Thirdly, the question of the entity has remained negative, seemingly unable to rise to the required level, not least because land is necessary for such an entity, no matter how small the land is. But also because the Arab countries who had acted as the overseers of the Palestinian people would not be able to end this connection, which will be decided in practice by the Palestinians themselves.
It is these points, I think, that inexorably lead to the adoption of the proposals adopted by Ahmed Baha’iddin, if there is a genuine intention to support the Palestinian people to recover themselves and their land and take the lead again in the decisive field of struggle. However, the Palestinian state proposed by Ahmed Baha’iddin in the West Bank, East Bank and Gaza (and, I would add, with vast expanses on the borders of Syria) requires more than just a political decision based on geographical principles.
This brings us back to the story of the horse and the cart – and I think it would be a waste of time thinking about which is in front of the other, when right now, neither the horse nor the cart are within our hands.
The movement to create a ‘Palestinian state’ must inevitably go hand in hand with the ‘creation’ of a new Palestinian human being. And it is a role that the Arab countries collectively must take upon themselves – as long as they consider themselves guardians – to build it side by side with the people of Palestine themselves.
Palestinians are able, after 20 years of wandering and exile, to remain steadfast in the face of all of the treacherous conditions that confront them, and I do not think that they will give up their Palestinian identity, despite everything. Yet there is no doubt that the relationship between Palestinians has become one of exile and displacement, rather than a revolutionary relationship. And I think the demand for ‘land’ should be accompanied by a demand to create a new relationship between Palestinians, as well as between them and the Arab states. This question runs parallel in importance to the creation of a Palestinian state. Because this state will not be created as an ordinary state, but a ‘state of juncture,’ a ‘state of importance,’ a ‘state with an aim.’ This means the immediate demand – along with the creation of the state of Palestine – for the creation of a people who embody the cause of this state.
Here is not the space for detailed discussion on how this will happen. However there is no doubt that at the forefront of what needs to be done is to create a new relationship between the Arab states and the Palestinian people in order for this state to emerge, with the Palestinian cause as the ‘centre of the archway’ for Arabism. And then find a way, either through coercion or free will, to mobilise the Palestinian people, from all the wasted capabilities that I have discussed in relation to its particular field, to put in place a Palestinian and Arab strategy and carry out its goal.
All of this brings our attention to the dangers of the caveats contained in the following points:
Firstly, that this state is considered the solution to the Palestinian cause. Secondly, that it will be an excuse for the international public opinion to get rid of the Palestinian cause; this is dependent on the fact that the world, wrongly, views the Palestinian cause as a refugee issue. Thirdly, that this state will fail to achieve international recognition. Fourthly, its ability to become, like Pakistan, split down the centre, or on the other hand, like West Germany under the imposition of the Holstein agreement. And fifthly, the ability of this state to remain steadfast in the face of Israeli reprisals.
It is encouraging to note that the Palestinian resistance in the occupied lands is more capable of linking the fate of the West Bank and Gaza than resistance elsewhere, and that certainly bolsters Baha’iddin’s theory and gives objective justification to the suggestions. And there is no doubt that this resistance, in its latest phases, presents two inseparable proposals: the creation of the state and the aim – the creation of a fighting people.
[1] Ghassan Kanafani, Al-Dirasat al-Siyasiya (Political Writings) [Vol. 5], p479-484, article undated. Lebanon: Rimal Books, 2015.
