16 May 2002

In the name of Allah the most Gracious the most Merciful

Fifty four years and resistance remains the only road

Our steadfast, patient people:

Fifty four years have elapsed since the Zionist gangs declared their usurping entity on more than three quarters of the land of Palestine. Fifty four years and our people are still sacrificing soul, blood and all precious worldly matters for the sake of defending their rights, lands and country. Fifty four years and the resistance program kept on preserving the cause and protecting it from fading away. Fifty four years made the Zionist project sense its real crisis under the yoke of resistance strikes and martyrdom operations. Fifty four years of our Mujahideen and people’s heroic legend despite the latest decade’s negative points that witnessed so-called peace settlements.

This year’s anniversary falls at a time when our people are healing their wounds following the Zionist sweeping aggression on all Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps. Our people are adamant on continuation of resistance without paying much attention to events that deviated from our people’s will and determination. Our people are convinced that this enemy only understands the language of force. Our people’s blood is still hot in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Khalil, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Gaza and Rafah and the enemy’s crimes are still a clear evidence on what could happen after surrendering to the enemy and its dictates and conditions.

Our people and Ummah:

The fifty fourth anniversary of the usurpation of Palestine falls at a time when our cause is passing through a sensitive stage in which the entire Ummah and our people are at a crossroad. They should choose either Jihad along with its sacrifices and patience but which leads to victory or choose capitulation, which the American administration is picturing as an easy path of sure results. However, the experience since the Madrid conference passing through the Oslo agreement and what followed till the Camp David negotiations and finally the Tenet agreement indicated that such a path was open-ended as far as our people’s interests and cause are concerned. We have rather lost in this period more than double our losses in the forty years that preceded it.

We in the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, on this painful anniversary would like to affirm the following:

1- This bitter experience should serve as an impetus for us to re-consider the political program in the past period and to restore the Palestinian march to the correct path.

2- The real start should be a comprehensive national reform based on redrafting of the Palestinian national program on the basis of Jihad and resistance with the participation of all Palestinian forces and factions and to get rid of the settlement crisis and its negative repercussions on our people.

3- We affirm that national unity is a popular demand and a practical and an inevitable path to restore our rights. This unity is only possible through a political program emanating from the national program. The Palestinian Authority today is called upon not to bow to occupation’s orders in harming the field unity endorsed by our people’s blood.

4- Our people have known that the only road leading to liberating and returning to their lands in dignity was none else than resistance and Jihad. Today we are in need more than ever before to support this option as the sole means to liberation. The whole Ummah is called upon today to back our people and even to participate in Jihad and resistance until victory God willing.

“O ye who believe! what is the matter with you, that, when ye are asked to go forth in the Cause of Allah, ye cling heavily to the earth?”

“And Allah hath full power and control over His affairs; but most among mankind know it not.”

And it is a Jihad until either victory or martyrdom

The Islamic Resistance Movement
Hamas – Palestine
Thursday 4^th Rabee Awal 1423H
16/5/2002AD