Ramallah -

“Do not let your enemy feel pride in you, you are the one who should be dear to him, you are the one who makes your enemy feel strong, proud and dignified.” This is how the martyred Palestinian leader Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) wanted the relationship to be between an occupied country and an occupied people.

But the winds of politics went against what Abu Jihad sought, so he was the most prominent victim of the new transformations in the Palestinian cause towards settlement instead of the clash, which has proven its failure over decades, according to Palestinian analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera Net.

Today, April 16, marks the 34th anniversary of the assassination of Abu Jihad, and on this occasion, his words and writings return to circulation on social networks.

Abu Jihad was assassinated in his home in the Tunisian capital on April 16, 1988, by an Israeli special unit, with the participation of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and military leaders.

"Do not let your enemy feel pride in you!! You are the one who should be dear to him, you are the one who makes your enemy feel strong, honor and proud!!"

Among the commandments of the martyr Abu Jihad during the planning to storm the Zionist Ministry of Defense.

- Martyr Khalil al-Wazir Abu Jihad


, may God have mercy on him, #Operation_Tel_Aviv #Operation_Disen#Operation_Dizengoff pic.twitter.com/VrBwPOTmCg

— Mays (@MysaaMysaa3) April 8, 2022

tangled leader

The "clash" with the occupation was the secret point at which Khalil al-Wazir met with everyone, including his opponents on the Palestinian arena, but the Palestinian cause witnessed after him transformations contrary to what he was working for, and carrying convictions and visions.

“If I (Khalil al-Wazir) or (Salah Khalaf) Abu Iyad or (Yasser Arafat) Abu Ammar accept Resolution 242 or 338, then I am the first to dissent.” This was a phrase written by Abu Jihad in his pen in his first meeting with a number of Palestinians who defected from the movement Conquest and deportees from the occupied land in the Jordanian capital, Amman in 1985.

Resolution 242 calls for Israel's withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, while Resolution 338 calls for a cessation of hostilities.

The first person to call for the unity of the Palestinian ranks throughout the history of the Palestinian cause until today is the Fatah movement, and the leader Khalil al-Wazir "Abu Jihad" says,


"We will not win while we are factions, but victory is the result of national unity."


History and the present testify,


and deeds before words testify.

Long live free Arab Palestine 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/n6A6lkI5oY

— 𝐖 (@wafatu99) April 12, 2022

Resistance based relationship

Among those deported was the writer Younis Rajoub, who returned to Palestine in 2009, who says, "Abu Jihad was a man of conflict, and engagement and resistance were the basis of his relationship with others, even if they were dissidents from the Fatah movement, and he communicated and supported all workers in the struggle arena ".

And he added - in his speech to Al Jazeera Net - "Abu Jihad was a firm believer in military action, and resorting to the masses to protect and promote this option."

With the assassination of Abu Jihad and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad, who was assassinated in 1991), Arafat lost the two most important drivers of military action against the occupation, and consequently the emergence of the settlement movement later, according to Rajoub.

Khalil al-Wazir explained the law when planning the coastal operation,


a black day and a black night.


Tel Aviv became fire, bullets, bombs and blood.


This is the right approach, and nothing else.

pic.twitter.com/yQ70RbzcTz

— Alaa Shaat |

Alaa Shaath 🇵🇸 (@3laa_pal) April 7, 2022

military response

In a previous documentary broadcast by Al-Jazeera, Mahmoud Al-Aloul, deputy head of the Fatah movement, said, "Abu Jihad was not preoccupied with politics, but if he wanted to cancel a political process, he would carry out a major operation against the occupation."

On the mentality of the martyr’s clash, Muhammad Hamza conveys in his book “Abu Jihad.. Secrets of his Beginnings and the Reasons for his Assassination” from Khalil al-Wazir as saying, “We were busy planting in the Palestinian consciousness the idea of ​​military action and the use of weapons against the enemy.”

He points out that the beginning of Khalil al-Wazir's experience in working against the occupation was his association with the Muslim Brotherhood movement, whose volunteers became prominent in confronting the Israeli forces in 1948.

Abu Jihad in the middle of Abu Ammar (right) and Abu Iyad, the most prominent leaders of the Fatah movement (Al-Jazeera)

Remove obstacles to settlement

For his part, the director of Al-Quds Open University in Bethlehem, Asaad Al-Awiwi, believes that the most prominent transformation was after the assassination of Abu Jihad, the direction of the settlement path, "which has proven to be a failure for decades."

And he adds - in his speech to Al Jazeera Net - that the assassination of Khalil al-Wazir, and after him Salah Khalaf, "was a prelude to entering into political negotiations that led to the Oslo Agreement in 1993."

According to the Palestinian academic, Abu Jihad represented a current that did not believe in political negotiations, "a path to a solution with the Western Zionist project of substitution in Palestine."

He points to a pivotal role for the Palestinian leader during the Stone Intifada, and the qualitative operations that took place during it, "so his assassination was programmed for a transitional phase, the transition of the Palestinian national liberation movement from a movement whose essence is the struggle in all its forms against the occupation, to a political negotiation process that proved fruitless after more than 3 decades."

The Oslo Accords and the Absence of Arafat

According to Al-Awiwi, the most prominent manifestations of the post-Abu Jihad phase and the liquidation of the leaders of the clash with the occupation were the signing of the Oslo Agreement and the subsequent negotiations that reached a dead end.

The Palestinian analyst continues that another transformation witnessed the Palestinian cause with the absence of the late President Yasser Arafat in 2004, "who was considered an obstacle to peace, when he refused to touch the core of the Palestinian cause, specifically Jerusalem and the refugees in the Camp David negotiations in 2000."

Al-Owiwi believes that Israel wants the Palestinians "a voluntary security tool against their people, and this cannot be at all."

From resistance to cooperation

In his turn, Professor of Political Science at Hebron University Bilal Al-Shobaki mentioned - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that one of the most important transformations that the Palestinian cause witnessed after the assassination of Abu Jihad is the shift from the "resisting" act to the "cooperating" act with the occupation, although it is marketed in other words.

Al-Shobaki explains that the process of giving priority to one approach over another in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict "indirectly introduced a new concept to the Palestinian collective mind, which is the concept of cooperation with the colonizer."

Here it is shown that the colonizer interacts with the colonized's environment in two contexts: the resistive context, and the cooperative context.

According to the political science professor, the context of cooperation is not presented by removing its national character, but rather by “weakening the resistance interaction with the colonizer, and giving priority to the new interaction.”

Al-Shobaki: The assassination of Abu Jihad transformed the act of "resisting" into the act of "cooperating" with the occupation (communication sites)

Interact with the colonizer

In the absence of Abu Jihad, who was addressing the Palestinian consciousness, over the years, gradually "the community was brought to a state in which it is convinced that interaction with the colonizer is in the interest of the community."

Al-Shobaki says that the most important transformation after the assassination of Abu Jihad is that "Fatah and the PLO were able to create a new value in society, with which adaptation is considered part of the national achievement."

He added, "The occupation seeks to pave the way and push the Palestinians to adapt to settler colonialism instead of opposing it, by assassinating many personalities who stand in the way of this trend."

The Storm Forces - Fatah took revenge in Operation Savoy, planned by the founder and martyr leader Khalil al-Wazir, in response to the assassination of the most prominent leaders of the Palestinian political and military action, where 11 Zionists were killed, including Colonel Uzi Yairi, a senior officer of the Zionist military intelligence responsible for killing leaders and wounding between 50-100 Zionists pic. twitter.com/6ZT2bxrWWg

- Fatah Media - Astoria (@palestfateh1965) April 10, 2022

Who is Khalil Al-Wazir?

Khalil al-Wazir was born in the occupied city of Ramle in 1935, and left it as a refugee for Gaza during the Nakba. He is one of the most prominent founders of the (Fatah) movement, and the architect of the first intifada in 1987.

Abu Jihad was buried after his martyrdom, on April 20, 1988, in the Martyrs' Cemetery in Yarmouk camp in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Israel accuses Khalil al-Wazir of being behind dozens of operations that killed dozens of Israelis, including the Savoy Hotel operation in Tel Aviv in 1975, in which 10 Israelis were killed, and the Martyr Dalal al-Mughrabi operation in which more than 37 Israelis were killed in 1978.