Being Palestinian is a form of struggle, which shows which side of history you are on.

It was Sunday morning, October 19th. A few hours earlier, the news showed what would be Israel’s first attack on Gaza, with 26 Palestinians killed, after the ceasefire established nine days earlier. Even though caution indicates that Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump cannot be trusted — especially in pacification processes —, the fact is that for the first time that truce was like a small relief in the face of genocide and Palestinian suffering.

For Hisham Alqam, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — an organization with a Marxist-Leninist orientation created in 1967 — that tenuous peace seemed like an unsustainable promise that only time will tell if it was resisted.

Invited to participate in the 16th PCdoB Congress, in Brasília, Alqam spoke with the Red Portal. During the conversation, he reported that even after the ceasefire, there were other attacks by Israel, smaller and more specific, which had no repercussions, a situation that leaves the scenario even more uncertain.

He also spoke about the seriousness of the destruction in Gaza and the extreme right’s far-right plans to extirpate the Palestinians and profit from the natural resources that the region can offer. But it also highlighted the strength of the Palestinian people’s resistance, even in the face of the most inhumane deprivations and losses.

Also read: Bodies of 135 Palestinians returned by Israel show signs of torture

“We are sure that this ceasefire was not because Israel really wanted to do so to end the conflict. For us, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, came to the conclusion that Israel, over the course of two years, despite all the support it gave it in every way — military, financial and political —, was unable to achieve its objectives”, he highlighted.

He added that, for geopolitical and economic interests, if the attacks had not come as a response to Hamas’ action on October 7, 2023, “Netanyahu, Israel and the United States would look for other reasons to start this war. For them, it had to happen one way or another.”

At the same time, he emphasizes that being Palestinian is more than indicating the place where one was born: “being Palestinian is also an entity, a form of struggle, which shows which side of history a person is on”.

Check out the main excerpts from the interview below.

The real reasons for Israel’s attacks
“We are sure that this ceasefire was not because Israel really wanted to do so to end the conflict. For us, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, came to the conclusion that Israel, over the course of two years, despite all the support it gave it in every way — military, financial and political —, was unable to achieve its objectives.

On October 7, 2023, when its attack on Gaza began, Israel had some clear objectives: to end Palestinian resistance; completely destroy Gaza and expel the people who live there. This is because, for a long time, Israel has had a plan for Gaza: to open a canal from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. At the same time, in Gaza there is a lot of natural gas to be explored, meaning there are important economic issues involved.

We are sure that if the reaction had not begun on October 7, Netanyahu, Israel and the United States would have looked for other reasons to start this war. For them, it had to happen one way or another.”

Goals not achieved
“Now, as Israel was unable to achieve any of its objectives, President Trump presented this plan, with about 20 points. We are in the first of these points, but Israel has not stopped its attacks. Every day, there are four, five, six. And now this one (on Sunday), which had the greatest repercussion.

This first moment of the agreement began when the resistance handed over the prisoners alive to Israel, so that Israel could open the Gaza border, from Rafah, so that humanitarian aid could arrive and the injured could receive treatment. But that didn’t happen. The agreement was that 4,200 trucks should enter every week. And so far, what is arriving is about 70 per day, which is very insufficient. And they do not intend to open the entrance to Rafa because the resistance has not yet completed the delivery of the dead Israelis.”

World will be in for a big shock
“Through two years of bombing, everything was destroyed and a large part of Gaza is under Israeli military control. The world will have a huge shock when the international media enter Gaza and show the situation it is in: 90% of the houses have been destroyed, 100% of the hospitals, 100% of the schools, the mosques, the streets, the electricity, the water supply structure. There is no way to live in Gaza. More than 15% of population, which is 2 million, are injured or martyrs. And there are still thousands under the rubble. Every day, people rescue these bodies with their own hands. Nobody knows where these thousands of people are exactly.”

Violated bodies
“Israel is also returning burned bodies of martyrs; bodies that were cut open and had their organs removed; bodies with serious signs of torture or with marks that indicate that battle tanks passed over them.

We are asking the Red Cross, doctors from abroad, to come in because, as they are independent, they need to testify and report all this because it is a serious crime. As President Lula said, it is a genocide, it is not a war between two armies. It is a very strong army attacking children and women. And things will continue like this.”

“Riviera of the Middle East”
“This idea of ​​creating a riviera in Gaza is Trump’s madness; he needs a psychiatrist. The Palestinians’ problem is not having a riviera, it’s living, it’s having food. They want to remove two million people, rebuild Gaza and then ‘give it back’? You can’t play with people’s lives like that.

In the last two years, Israel has done everything to get the population to leave Gaza permanently. They proposed putting these people on a plane to another place, with an American passport if they wanted, and $100,000 for each family. And no one left. People are returning to their homes, even though they are destroyed. They say: ‘we’re going to die here, we’re not going to leave here’”.

Worldwide support
“Despite everything we have suffered, today, fortunately, I believe that people in general already know the truth and are on our side. As of October 7th, we are no longer 6 million Palestinians; we are many millions spread across the world. Anyone who wears the Kufiya (the traditional scarf used in the Middle East, which has symbolized the Palestinian cause), who carries the Palestinian flag and goes out on the streets in demonstrations of support, is with us, He’s a Palestinian.”

Being Palestinian is not just a blood or family connection; Being Palestinian is an entity, a form of struggle, which shows which side of history a person is on: whether on the side of the exploiters or the exploited; whether on the side of Zionism, fascism, or the other side. And the majority of people are with us, on the right side of history.”

Foreign governance x Palestinian governance
“For us, now, the most important thing is the delivery of the bodies and prisoners who were at the forefront of the resistance. The second point is that they are talking about handing over the weapons of the resistance and establishing a regional or international government, under the command of Trump and Tony Blair — who, in Iraq, killed more than a million Iraqis and who is facing allegations of corruption in his country.

So on ‘day two’, as we say, the question is who will control local affairs. And this must be up to the Palestinian people. All Palestinians have to work together, have a national dialogue. Egypt is helping us so that all Palestinians sit together, with all Palestinian representations, to talk and decide on what Gaza will be like in the future, or who will govern Gaza, or what type of Palestinian government will be there. Our people will not stop fighting until they free our country (…). What Trump wants is to return to colonialism. No one in the world accepts that this system will return.”

Human losses
“It is very difficult to know the number of deaths of members of the PFLP. We have many, not just fighters, but leaders too. And every day we discover something new because we have a division of Gaza by brigades and each city has its own way of organizing and defending itself because Israel does not allow normal communication and meetings. So, every day we know that a certain brigade had losses.

A companion of ours, a student in Cuba, lost 150 members of his family. There are entire families that have been destroyed. This large number of deaths in the same family happens because the Arab way of life is not like it is here in Brazil. There, and especially in Gaza, families are large and numerous. A person has a house, gets married, has children, the children get married and get a room… and so on. There are communities of the same family with dozens of people living in the same building.

So, when Israel destroys a building, it often destroys an entire family. There are cases of siblings living in different parts of Gaza because their mother was forced to send each one to a different location to ensure that, in the event of an attack, at least one would remain alive. Can you imagine what it’s like for a human being to have to reason like that? Does a mother have to make that kind of choice?”

The future of the FPLP
“I assume that the PFLP will continue the armed struggle in Gaza and the West Bank; we also have members in Jerusalem and Lebanon. We used to have them in Syria as well. We have the hospitals and aid associations. For example, over these two years, we sent a lot of money from abroad to Gaza and the comrades used it there, setting up solidarity kitchens, to distribute food every day where the largest concentrations of refugees are. We have to Supporting the population so that they can also resist, this is one of our main tasks at the moment”.