Orinoco Tribune Special Interview with Khaled Barakat- Gaza Demands End of Genocide, Not ‘Ceasefire’

Caracas ()—Orinoco Tribune interviewed Palestinian activist and author Khaled Barakat about Palestine and the Palestinian struggle in the context of the Israeli occupation’s genocidal aggression against Gaza following the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. The ongoing genocidal attack on Palestine has killed more than 10,000 Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and wounded over 25,000, with 40% of the dead being children. Barakat, when consulted about the pertinence of the “Ceasefire Now!” slogan used by people sympathetic with the Palestinian Liberation cause worldwide as well as by many governments around the world, commented that no one in Gaza demands ceasefire because that plays into the narrative of two equal forces in a battlefield, when in reality the Palestinian Resistance can not be equated to the Israeli occupation in any way militarily, politically, or morally. However, he added that we have to look at who are demanding ceasefire in Gaza. “There are those who want this massacre to end; they want this genocide to stop,” he commented, referring to the demonstrations held worldwide in solidarity with the Palestinian people in recent days. “On an international level, in demonstrations, when someone chants ceasefire and people repeat that, our role, I think, is actually not to say we don’t want ceasefire, but to explain that the content of this is to stop the aggression, the Israeli aggression, and to ensure that the Palestinian resistance comes out victorious.” “For national liberation movements, for people being subjugated to ethnic cleansing and genocide, if you ask them to stop their fire, it’s just misleading,” Barakat continued. “And to be honest with you sometimes some groups that would adopt the ceasefire slogan, I think they care about the Israelis captured in Gaza. If there were no Israelis captured in Gaza, they would probably not demand ceasefire. Then again, some groups want ceasefire because they really want ceasefire. They’re buying into this ceasefire narrative… It depends who is saying this and how they are saying this. But as a movement, I won’t adopt or condone this slogan.” Additionally he pointed out “we cannot adopt slogans that don’t have content and meaning… we have to start giving content to these slogans.” Barakat is a Palestinian activist and thinker currently based in Canada. A leftist and revolutionary voice on Palestine, he has been the target of numerous smear campaigns in the West, aimed at silencing and criminalizing him and others like him fighting for Palestinian rights in the diaspora. In 2019, he was deported from Germany for his activism. In Canada also, he has been a target of threats and harassment coming from various quarters, including the parliament. On November 5, he was interviewed by Orinoco Tribune on the Palestinian Resistance’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation and its aftermath, the ongoing aggression of the Zionist entity on Palestinians in Gaza as well as in the West Bank and the 1948 Occupied Territories, and how the current situation in Palestine may impact the global geopolitical scenario. The interview was conducted by Orinoco Tribune co-editor Saheli Chowdhury and contributor Dalal. Palestinian Resistance: From 2006 to Al-Aqsa Flood According to Barakat, the Al-Aqsa Flood operation is a natural outcome of the way the Palestinian Resistance has developed since 2005-06, since “the end of the Arafat era and the beginning of… a reactionary, puppet Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas.” “It was a new era that called for elections of the Palestinian Authority, in which Hamas participated, and won,” Barakat explained, referring to the general elections of 2006 in which Hamas won with overwhelming majority in the Gaza Strip. He went on to describe that the United States and its satellite states did not recognize the election results, they “wanted Hamas to become a security agency” like the Palestinian Authority, “to commit to Oslo agreements” and “recognize Israel.” When Hamas refused to cede to the Western demands, “they waged a war against our people and against the resistance, and Gaza was immediately put under siege.” Gaza has been under a total blockade since then. “In my view, the resistance did the right thing when they ended the Oslo team in Gaza and fully controlled Gaza,” continued Barakat, “because it meant that the resistance now had, I don’t want to say a liberated land in Palestine… but it’s semi-liberated. I have been in Gaza after that, and you can actually go from Rafah all the way to Beit Hanoun without any checkpoint. If you try to do that in the West Bank, go from one village to another, you face an Israeli checkpoint.” Barakat also gave a view of how the Palestinian resistance works in Gaza. “Gaza is very small, it is 2.1 million Palestinians living in less than 360 km². So the idea was to build another Gaza under Gaza,” he explained. “These networks of tunnels extend almost …