Writers and specialists in the Palestinian cause who spoke to Mawazine agree that the Palestinians need all forms of resistance, including armed resistance, to defend themselves, and expected it to continue and escalate despite the wave of Arab normalization with Israel.

The episode (2023/5/31) of the program "Mawazine" focused on the Palestinian resistance. Its history, methods and development during the past decades, as well as the challenges it faces in light of regional and international changes, and the wave of Arab normalization with Israel within the so-called Abraham Accords.

According to Hani al-Masri, director of the Masarat Center for Policy Research, peaceful resistance played a major historical role in highlighting the Palestinian cause and the rights of the Palestinian people, especially through the first intifada that began in 1987.

But Masri stressed that the Palestinians need all forms of struggle, including armed resistance imposed by the nature of Israeli projects and the crimes committed by the occupation against the Palestinians, which are necessary for self-defense and to make the enemy deterred.

He explains that non-violent peaceful resistance is a major form of struggle at this stage, because it can get all the Palestinian people to participate in it, calling for a narrower use of armed resistance.

Al-Masri stressed that the most prominent methods of peaceful resistance in light of the current circumstances that the Palestinian resistance is going through are the boycott of Israel and its international siege at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, the boycott of occupation goods and convincing the countries of the world not to invest in settlements as occupied territories, in addition to the use of social media, which has become the focus of the world's attention.

Writer and researcher specialized in documenting the Palestinian cause, Muin al-Taher, believes that the Palestinian people have practiced throughout their history all forms of resistance against the occupation, including the overwhelming opposition to the Balfour Declaration and the great strike launched in 1936 that lasted 6 months.

"At the present time, there is a fulcrum for armed resistance in the Gaza Strip and other forms of resistance in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, such as sit-ins, demonstrations and marches, which are determined by the circumstances of each stage," al-Taher said.

Regarding the challenges faced by the Palestinian resistance today, Bassem Naim, head of Hamas' political and foreign relations department in the Gaza Strip, said that what he called the stampede at the international level between the United States, Russia, China, India, Iran and other major powers will be in the service of the Palestinian resistance and its project, by giving way to new relations and opportunities for resistance movements, in exchange for weakening the position of the Zionist entity at the regional and international levels, revealing that Hamas has begun knocking on doors regionally. and internationally within the framework of new changes.

However, Moeen al-Taher did not like to bet on the changes that will result from Russia's war on Ukraine, calling for the need to focus on the internal Palestinian situation and the legitimate right of the Palestinian people, which is recognized by all international laws and conventions.

Hamas is working – according to the intervention of its official – to strengthen its power in areas that impose itself in today's battles, most notably military power, cybersecurity and media power, and it does not hesitate to communicate with any party that can help its project.

The effect of the normalization wave

As for al-Masri, he called for not exaggerating the capabilities of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, and said that the unity of the squares is not achieved through the launching of rockets from Gaza or not firing them, but rather through the unity of the Palestinian program, the unity of the leadership, the national institution and the change of the Palestinian Authority, which was built within the failed Oslo agreement to be a tool to serve the national program.

He believes that the existence of an authority in the Gaza Strip trying to combine the authority and the armed resistance needs to be reconsidered, pointing out that this is not possible under the current circumstances, the balance of power and the geostrategic atmosphere surrounding the Strip, and "this raises the need to end the Palestinian division, restore national unity and agree on one political and struggle strategy," stressing that armed resistance is likely to escalate and continue under the current Israeli government.

Regarding the impact of the wave of normalization with the occupation on the Palestinian resistance, Mueen Al-Taher confirms that the Palestinian revolution had an Arab backer in the past, and the Palestinian fighter was moving between Arab capitals with his personal card, indicating that the Oslo Agreement opened the door wide for any Arab regime that wants to normalize with the Israeli occupier, given that the Palestinian Authority itself has normalized.