Palestinians will not leave their homeland despite Israeli atrocities, says Palestinian politician

By Hassan Isilow

Palestinians will not leave their homeland despite continued Israeli atrocities and human rights violations against them, a Palestinian politician and human rights said on Friday.

“Israel failed in the ethnic cleansing it was going after. They did commit massacres, they did commit horrible genocide but they couldn’t break us and they will not break us and we will stay on our land in Palestine,” Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) party, told Anadolu on the sidelines of the first Global Anti-Apartheid Conference for Palestine being held in Johannesburg.

Barghouti said Palestinians will overcome the current situation of oppression and occupation they are facing given the current huge global support they are receiving especially from the younger generation in Europe, the United States, Africa and elsewhere in the world.

He said the three-day Global Anti-Apartheid Conference for Palestine held in South Africa could see the spark of the beginning of a global anti-apartheid movement against Israel and for the freedom and liberation of the Palestinian people.

Barghouti said he believes the conference will produce a strong anti-apartheid movement similar to that which existed against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

“It’s the beginning of something very important and this is very compatible with our struggle on the ground. We are there, we will not leave our country and we are determined to stay because of the resilience and steadfastness and heroism of the people of Gaza,” he said.

In an earlier address to delegates, Barghouti said: “We will not forgive what has happened to Palestinians. The dehumanization of Palestinians. They did not allow Palestinians to bury their loved ones,” he said.

He said what is happening in Palestine is a global injustice against a people. “What we face is not only apartheid, it’s an evil plan by the settler Israeli system to destroy Palestine. Over 70% of the Palestinian population has been displaced,” he added.

Barghouti also thanked South Africa for standing with the oppressed Palestinian people by taking Israel to the International Court of Justice, where Israel stands accused of genocide.

An interim ruling in January said it is "plausible" that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in the coastal enclave, and ordered Tel Aviv to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians.

South Africa on Friday filed an “urgent request” with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for additional measures amid Israel’s attacks on Gaza, particularly in the city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians are taking shelter.

“In its new request, South Africa states that the provisional measures previously indicated by the Court are not capable of ‘fully address[ing]’ the changed circumstances and new facts on which [its] Request is founded,” the ICJ said in a statement.

The Israeli army on Tuesday stormed and occupied the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, closing Gazan Palestinians' only gateway to the world.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip in retaliation for an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas which killed about 1,200 people.

More than 34,900 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and 78,514 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Over seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine, according to the UN.