Against the treacherous ‘Trump Deal’: Palestine will not surrender

The following statement was initiated by Samidoun Madrid. Read the Spanish-language original here:

Following the presentation of the so-called ‘Trump Peace Agreement’ by the Zionist-imperialist forces of the US and Israel, we recall the words of the leaders of the Palestinian resistance, from the 1970s to the present day, from Georges Habash to Yahya Sinwar, including the many people of conscience who put their minds and bodies at the service of the Palestinian cause: the struggle for the liberation of Palestine requires not only the defeat of Zionism but also the fall of the US-led imperialism that sustains it. Today, with a new imperialist proposition on the table, we reaffirm our position: there can be no peace without the total liberation of Palestine.

The so-called liberal democracies of the world in the heart of the imperial core express their satisfaction with this new colonial imposition, whose sole objective is to protect the Zionist project, given its inability to achieve political and military victory in Palestine by its own means. In the West, we have seen how the focus of media and political attention has shifted towards Palestine, in a crude exercise of conscience-cleansing by the representatives of institutional colonialism who, drowned out by the cries of popular movements, have had no choice but to begin to make concessions, even as they continue their support for the Zionist project. In a calculated balancing act, some of these governments have been able to admit that genocide is taking place, but at no point have they demanded that a genocidal regime be confronted or removed. They have attempted to substitute the necessary confrontation of genocide with a claimed “recognition of a Palestinian state” based on a series of unjust, illegitimate and indeed, illegal conditions, while leaving their relationship with the Zionist entity intact.

This new Trump-announced “agreement” — concluded, in fact, between the strategic partners in genocide, the United States and “Israel” —  and Western governments’ defence of it have finally unmasked a position that never aimed to support the necessary foundations for the liberation of the Palestinian people, but rather to establish the political conditions for the maintenance of the Zionist and imperialist project in Arab countries and to pacify the growing movement rising up against it.

As is currently happening in Lebanon and in Syria, imperialism works hand in hand with the Zionist entity in an attempt to dismantle all the sources of resistance to its political project in the region. Therefore, in the face of this new attempt to revive the project of colonisation of Palestine, it is necessary to give our full support to the forces of resistance, who, with the highest level of political and military ethics, and with the legitimacy of international law on their side, are at the forefront of the confrontation against Zionism and imperialism. We recall the words of comrade Georges Ibrahim Abdallah after his release from French prisons: “Those who resist have the last word and decide what needs to be done.”

No foreign power has the legitimacy to impose its destiny on the Palestinian people by claiming to impose a “peace” through ultimatums and demands for surrender.  We know that real peace and justice in the region can never be achieved until the genocidal Zionist project is abolished once and for all.

Similarly, we reiterate that the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah (itself subjected to humiliating conditions in the “Trump plan”) does not represent an alternative for liberation, but rather functions as an imposed and supervised structure that administers Palestinian life, easing the burden of the occupation, and seeks to contain the resistance. Our global mass movement cannot in any way legitimise this farce, nor contribute to normalising institutions designed to stifle the struggle of the Palestinian people.

At this extremely complex moment, it is our anti-colonial and anti-imperialist commitment that must guide our actions. We therefore call on people of conscience who have demonstrated their commitment to the liberation of Palestine to confront this new manipulation by Zionism and imperialism. We make a clear and urgent appeal to governments and peoples committed to the liberation of the Palestinian people to adopt unequivocal and militant support for the cause of decolonisation. This support must go beyond the limitations of liberal demands and translate into real pressure on the institutions and powers that sustain the occupation, and into firm support for the resistance on all levels of engagement.

Internationalist solidarity in Palestine today is reflected in support for and recognition of the legitimacy of the forces of resistance, the release of all Palestinian prisoners, the total liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, and the implementation of the full right to return of the Palestinian people in the refugee camps and in exile and diaspora everywhere.

We will not congratulate ourselves for empty gestures or hollow statements that serve the European conscience more than they serve the liberation of Palestine. It is time to escalate our actions and stand firm in the face of the theatre of empty measures that our governments want us to be part of: if they want to talk about weapons, let them send weapons to the Palestinian resistance and to those who are confronting imperialism on the ground; if they want to talk about international bodies, let them establish a tribunal led by free peoples — first and foremost, the victims and survivors of the colonial genocide — to judge the leaders of Zionism.

We echo the words of Georges Abdallah: resistance has the last word, and the Palestinian people have the last word. It is the men and women who resist the advance of occupation and Zionist expansionism who uphold the struggle day after day, in seemingly impossible conditions that aim to utterly break humanity and the will to live.

“Terrorism” is a colonial term that we refuse to accept in reference to the heroic Resistance. We will not call surrender “peace” nor ultimatums “dialogue.” We will not endorse the demands of Trump and Netanyahu that aim to administer dispossession and genocide and secure gains that the occupation was unable to achieve on the battlefield, nor will we celebrate manoeuvres that seek to disarm the Resistance, whose fighters stand on the front lines in defence of Palestine, the Arab and Islamic nations and indeed, humanity itself.

It is clear: Trump’s “deal” has no “peace” to offer, only greater complicity and attempted legitimization of genocide and colonialism, which it seeks to impose through starvation and strangulation. As long as occupation, dispossession, and impunity persist, any supposed ‘peace plan’ will remain a euphemism for subjugation and an attempt to beautify the bitter reality of colonisation and genocide. Only a peace based on material justice — that is, on the dismantling of the Zionist colonial project, the return of the Palestinian people, and the TOTAL liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea — can be legitimate and lasting.