Int'l Quds Day this year turning point in Palestinian struggle for freedom

By Wesam Bahrani

This year’s International Quds Day will perhaps be remembered like no other in living memory amid the Zionist regime’s genocide in Gaza and various factors that include the Axis of Resistance embarrassing the occupying entity.

The annual event this year comes on the backdrop of the Al-Aqsa Storm (al-Aqsa flood) operation, which effectively exposed the fallacy of Zionist security and intelligence invincibility that the regime's war criminal leaders had been boasting about for decades.

From Gazan children flying incendiary balloons in the blockaded territory towards the heavily militarized separation barrier being shot down before reaching the other side to a long meticulously planned operation by the Gaza-based resistance group Hamas that crafted a new path in the Palestinian struggle for freedom from Zionist settler-colonialism.

The founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the greatest champion of the Palestinian cause, the late Imam Khomeini would have been proud to see widespread support for the cause he designated as the most important cause for Muslims worldwide.

It was Imam Khomeini who paved the way for these massive annual rallies in support of Palestine by establishing International Quds Day, the idea that his successor and the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei preserved and promoted.

Perhaps for the first time in history, the martyrs on the path to al-Quds are not limited solely to Palestinians fighting and destroying the Zionist occupation’s most elite forces and its military vehicles for nearly six months.

Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah joined the battle alongside the Palestinian resistance in Gaza on its second day.

The formidable Lebanese resistance movement has offered some 265 martyrs on the path to al-Quds in the past six months, disabling the Israeli regime’s military apparatus on its northern front and sending Israeli occupation forces into hiding while displacing hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers.

Yemen has rekindled its ancient tales of heroism and valor. Having just fought off an eight-year US-led Saudi-Emirati war, the brave people in Sana’a also entered the fray against the Zionist occupation by firing drones and missiles deep inside the occupied territories.

However, nobody even dreamt that the poorest nation in West Asia would go one major step further and impose a crippling embargo on Israel-linked ships and their affiliates from transiting the Red and Arabian seas or docking at the regime’s ports.

Nobody saw it coming. Nobody expected it. Yet that is exactly what the Ansarullah-led Yemeni military has accomplished, dealing a heavy blow to the illegitimate entity's economy.

American and British warships deployed to the regional waters to protect their Zionist proxy have also come under repeated attacks, with Yemenis brave hearts refusing to submit.

All the US and British bombing campaigns have done nothing to deter the Yemeni forces from expanding their range of fire against anything associated with the child-murdering Tel Aviv regime.

Yemen has, for the first time in history, offered martyrs on the path to al-Quds.

Imam Khomeini left behind an illustrious legacy that made it a moral duty for the Iraqi resistance against American occupation to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians.

In now almost daily operations that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq is waging against Zionist military sites, vital energy infrastructure and airports, the statements of responsibility that the Iraqi resistance has put out have one thing in common.

They all state its fighters targeted Zionist interests “in our occupied lands”, in a clear message that Iraqis consider Palestine and its holy sites occupied as much as Iraq soil is being illegally occupied by the US.

The resistance operations from Iraq, which mostly involve drones flying over Jordan or the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, have evaded the much-hyped Zionist missile systems that are supposed to intercept them.

The Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq have been bombed by the US occupation with its commanders being martyred on the path to al-Quds as well but that hasn't deterred them.

Inside Iraq itself, the resistance believes that the path to al-Quds runs through the holy city of Karbala.

In Jordan, the recent mass nightly protests by all sections of society outside the Israeli embassy in Amman, demanding its closure, must not be ignored and send a very important message along with shivers down the spine of Tel Aviv and its Western sponsors.

The popular protests started with hundreds pouring out into the streets. It then turned to thousands. Now, there have been tens of thousands. And it keeps growing.

The largest front that can potentially open against the Israeli occupation is from Jordan as it shares the longest border with occupied Palestine.

The borders of Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria with Palestine stretch no further than 100, 150 or 200 kilometers.

The Jordanian-Palestinian border is 360 kilometers. On the Palestinian side, there is little to protect this border. It must be protected by the Jordanians.

The lack of a resistance movement in Jordan (for now) is what allows Israeli settlers and soldiers to sleep at night in the occupied West Bank.

Should Jordan sever ties with the Zionist entity, one of the biggest resistance fronts can potentially open up there. It could essentially turn the occupied West Bank resistance stronger than that in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have an abundance of courage but a lack of arms. Jordan can be the answer to their problem with arms flooding the occupied West Bank.

The US is on the edge. Watching developments very closely. If Washington senses a change to the status quo, it will put an end to the Gaza genocide immediately.

Observing these pro-Palestine protests more closely, the younger generation that is leading them has been smart in their tactics. There are no chants to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom. They are not portraying the demonstrations as an uprising movement against the Jordanian government.

They are demanding an end to all ties with the Zionist regime and the ouster of its ambassador in Amman.

If the numbers on the Jordanian streets expand to the hundreds of thousands, it will effectively embarrass the government there and force it to answer the protesters’ demands and things could spiral out of the government’s hands turning the path to al-Quds from Amman.

As for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Zionist airstrikes in Syria and the regime’s terrorist attack on the Iranian consulate building in Damascus have led to the martyrdom of Iranian military advisors and Syrian soldiers who have, again, fallen on the path to al-Quds.

As people around the world take to the streets to mark International Quds Day on Friday, as they do annually, this time it feels different.

The proxy US-Zionist regime in West Asia has been militarily defeated in Gaza. Killing and starving women and children is not even defined as a war. This is a genocidal campaign.

War is waged between two armies. In the case of Gaza, the war is limited to ground combat between the Palestinian resistance and the invading Israeli occupation forces.

The Zionist occupation is too afraid to reveal the true extent of casualties that the Palestinian resistance in the besieged territory has inflicted on the invading ground troops.

The regime has imposed strict censorship on Israeli media outlets from announcing the true number of casualties, but some have cited hospital data which puts the number of dead and injured soldiers much higher than what is being officially declared.

Announcing the accurate casualty figure would, as one regime news outlet put it, affect “morale” among the Israeli occupation forces and the wider settler population.

If there is one lesson to be learned from this year’s International Quds Day, it is that the Axis of Resistance is not shy of announcing its martyrs, but rather feels a strong sense of pride, as they sacrifice themselves for the most noble and honorable cause on the planet today.

A concentration camp filled with women and children hungry, exhausted, and dying a slow, painful death is what the US and its proxy regime have done. If that’s not a cause to fight for, on the path to al-Quds, then nothing is.

This battle will go on until Palestine and its capital-occupied al-Quds are liberated and people from all Abrahamic faiths can pray at the holy site without Palestinians being shot at point-blank range by Zionist goons in uniform.

With Operation Al-Aqsa Storm in its sixth month, the resistance will continue until the demise of the Zionist occupation (and its apartheid colonial rule), which may occur sooner rather than later.

In a TV interview, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, a man whose respect extends to his enemies, noted “I have faith that I will be among the generation that prays at the al-Aqsa Mosque”.

That day isn't too far now.

Wesam Bahrani is an Iraqi journalist and commentator.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

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