Resistance Never Dies!
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network joins Palestinian prisoners, their organizations and institutions, those imprisoned and those released, in mourning the martyrdom and saluting the life in struggle of Palestinian national leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri and his comrades, including leaders Samir Afandi (Abu 'Amer) and Azzam al-Aqra', and the martyrs Zaki Shahin, Mohammed al-Reis, Mohammed Bshasha and Ahmed Hamoud, assassinated by the Zionist regime today, 2 January 2024, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Palestinian prisoners issued the following statement (translation via Resistance News Network):
"Prisoners' institutions, in the name of all prisoners in the occupation's prisons and those who have been released, mourn the national leader and martyr Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri and his companions who were martyred alongside him.
"The prisoner institutions (Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs' Commission, Palestinian Prisoners' Club, and The Supreme National Committee of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs), and the national prisoner movement of the occupation prisoners, and the freed prisoners in the homeland and diaspora, mourn to our great people, the fighter, national leader, freed prisoner, and exiled, Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri (Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas), who ascended today after an assassination operation carried out by the Zionist occupation against him and a group of his companions, in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
"Today we mourn a leader, a national fighter, and a freed prisoner, who devoted his life for the freedom of his land and people until the last moment of his life. He spent a total of about 18 years in Zionist occupation prisons, with his last arrest being in 2007, and he was released in 2010, where the occupation court decided to release him and expel him out of Palestine, deporting him to Syria.
"Mercy for the martyrs of Palestine and freedom for the prisoners."
The assassination of Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri, deputy chair of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, formerly imprisoned by the Zionist regime for 18 years and a national, Arab and international leader of the Palestinian struggle, reflects the same bankrupt policy of assassination that Zionism and imperialism have relied upon to undermine the cause of Palestinian and Arab liberation since the inception of the colonial project in the region.
While the occupation army is carrying out a genocidal rampage in Gaza, it has not been able to achieve military objectives or impose defeat upon the Palestinian resistance; rather, it has slaughtered over 22,000 Palestinian civilians, nearly half children, through aerial bombings and an unlimited supply of ammunition provided by the United States and its imperialist partners in the UK, France, Germany, and Canada. Instead, the Palestinian resistance has imposed serious consequences on the occupation army, forcing it to pull out ground troops, including the infamous Golani Brigade, and continues to fire missiles from all areas of Gaza.
In the Palestine Chronicle, Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud noted that the assassination is also an attempt by the Israeli regime "to redeem the tattered image of its intelligence community, namely the Shin Bet and the Mossad, which have failed to anticipate the October 7 attacks. The Israeli brand, in terms of intelligence, has also been greatly tarnished by the war. Killing Arouri was a direct response to that."
From Saleh al-Arouri to Fathi Shiqaqi, Abu Ali Mustafa, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abu Jihad, Kamal 'Udwan, Mohammed al-Najjar, Basil al-Kubaisi, Kamal Nasser, Wadie Haddad, Ghassan Kanafani, Mohammed Boudia, Basil al-Araj, Tariq Izzedine to Samir Kuntar; the Zionist regime relies on the assassination weapon against the liberation movement. In occupied Palestine, in Lebanon, in France, in Belgium, in Greece; this policy reflects the presence of the Palestinian people and movement everywhere in exile and diaspora. It marks a failed attempt to suppress the Palestinian and Arab people's unquenchable will by targeting leaders, scholars, resisters and strategists.
This assassination policy includes the attacks on the Palestinian prisoners' movement, from Ibrahim al-Rai, killed under torture, to the systematic denial of medical care to Sheikh Khader Adnan, martyred after 86 days of hunger strike, to the killing of at least seven prisoners behind bars since 7 October 2023, including Abdul-Rahman al-Bahsh, killed just yesterday by occupation prison guards. Arouri was directly involved in managing the negotiations for a prisoner exchange between the resistance and the occupation, akin to his role in the 2011 Wafa al-Ahrar exchange, and this assassination aims to prevent him from seeing and directly welcoming the prisoners freed by the Resistance. These negotiations have been suspended following the assassination.
In August 2023, in response to Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assassination threats, Arouri declared: "Does the occupation expect that after its assassination threats, we will announce our surrender? No, these threats do not frighten us. We in Hamas are martyred like our people, we are arrested as they are arrested, our homes are demolished and we are being chased and pursued. This is the normal situation under the occupation. We fight because we must."
(January 2, 2024)
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 2 - January 5, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54023.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca