Kifah Afifi: Palestinian Refugees Will Never Give Up Their Right of Return
Image by Dylan Shaw.
Although Israel strives to erase the Palestinian refugees’ right of return by dismantling UNRWA, Palestinians will never give up their rights, vows historical Palestinian resistance fighter Kifah Afifi.
The Palestinians residing in Lebanon (222,000, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees) did not lose their connection to the land they were deprived of, and are not willing to accept losing their rights, Kifah tells CounterPunch in Beirut.
“Zionism made us orphans of our land, still Palestinian refugees will never give up,” asseverates the former fighter in the Palestinian resistance, who was an 11-year-old when she lost her brothers in the Shatila massacre and was detained from 1982-1995 in Khiam prison in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon.
Born in Shatila Camp, Kifah began fighting at 14. In October 1988, at 17, she took up arms and led a squad of five Palestinians and two Lebanese on a mission to cross the border into Israel to seize Israelis for a hostage exchange.
Captured by an Israeli army unit and a battalion of the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army militias in the border village of Kfar Kila, Kifah was detained in the Khiam prison, where she was locked in solitary confinement and tortured with electric shocks.
“My parents were expelled from Palestine in 1948. And unfortunately, I don’t know my homeland,” she says. “I followed this path, I became involved in this operation against the Zionist enemy because the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the Sabra and Shatila massacres. It was so hard for me, at that age, an 11-year-old girl, to see children, to see the people I loved most, massacred before my eyes. And what made it even harder was the martyrdom of my three brothers, young men.”
The Palestinians face an enemy who has taken from them what they hold most dear: their land, Kifah stresses, adding that the fierce determination to resist “stems from our love for the land we were deprived of”.
“The suffering I endured in Khiam is beyond comprehension. I endured all kinds of torture there, but what I found most difficult was the psychological and physical humiliation women suffered during their periods,” recalls the Palestinian activist.
Among the many episodes of cruel torture she experienced there, she vividly remembers the moment when one of the interrogators sat on a chair placed on her back while she was handcuffed and gagged, soaked in blood.
She suffered from severe eczema, which caused her bleeding wounds. “And I will never forget the time when I was in cell number 24, a very difficult cell. It was winter, and the water kept running. My mattress was soaked, and my wounds became infected. So they started changing my dressing, and the investigator came in and asked me how I was. Then he slipped a lit cigarette into my bleeding kidney.”
The resilience and strength that allowed her to endure all the suffering in prison stemmed, she believes, from her love for the land. “Having endured the torments of prison, the Sabra and Shatila massacres, the Israeli aggression against southern Lebanon, the worst kind of psychological and physical torture, I still have hope.”
Resistance fighters are often caricatured as people who desire death. Nothing could be further from the truth, she emphasizes. “In fact, it’s the opposite. We are a people who love life, and we fervently believe that all efforts will not be in vain, that the resistance will continue, even in pain. Hope is our most powerful weapon, because it has forged in us an unshakeable will.”
Kifah is convinced that all the immense pressure being put on the Palestinians today will not break their will. Just as it will not bring about the normalization of relations with Israel, since few in Lebanon are fooled about the true intentions of Zionism.
“We will not normalize our relations with the Zionist enemy, despite everything we are going through and the difficulties in Lebanon, despite the differing opinions on normalizing relations,” she emphasizes, adding that the dream that guides the resistance is of a future of peace, independence, and dignity for future generations.
“We have a dream: the dream of survival, the dream of the return of all the lands of Lebanon and Palestine to their rightful owners. This is our project, our national project, the ideal to which we aspire. We persevere, and our hope is great, not only for our generation, but also for that of our children, for future generations, so that we may achieve victory for Lebanon, Palestine, and all the oppressed nations of the world,” Kifah sums up.
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