I am Jerusalemite and the Zionist Jerusalem prize is a grief for me

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By: Ambassador Suhail Hani Daher Akel (*)

How difficult it is when a democratic President and particularly somebody from the popular and the revolutionary field is incommoded by such a prize that does not represent the popular fight for dignity and freedom.

Companion President Jose (Pepe) Mujica, was nominated by the Uruguayan Zionist Organization and was awarded the Prize Jerusalem 2010. It has been his axiomatic decision to accept this prize as the first Uruguayan President rewarded. Far from this nominee, I would like to emphasize his wise militancy, his words when he received this prize, “I belong to those who have dreamed a new way and one day we have put a gun in our belt”. He remembered the “anguish that every war means” and he added in the simplicity of the big ones, his “humble search of peace and harmony”

His words brought me memories when my master, commander leader and martyr Yasser Arafat, as an engineer constructor, put his gun into his belt to recover our Homeland Palestine and our Capital Jerusalem, usurped by the Zionists during the forties last century. As time goes by, and the painful tear, in the same way than President Mujica, Arafat anguished by the war, had the heroic attitude in the lecture during the General Assembly of United Nations Organization in 1974, to emphasize and tell the Israeli people, facing the charming clapping of the countries representatives, except Israel that withdrew away, “Today I have brought an olive branch for peace in my right hand, and in the other one a combat gun for freedom, I hope you don’t let the olive branch to fall down from my hand”.

The strength of Yasser Arafat to move the war away and recover the national Palestinian pride, was further, and he gave his firm hand to Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin to impose “the peace of Brave”. Rabin was killed by Israeli Yigal Amir, member of the religious Zionist youth. Arafat was poisoned by the Zionist Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (today in a vegetative state), braking the olive branch and deepening the Palestinian submission under occupation.

It is worth to tell you that in my personal note due to the assumption of the Presidency of companion Mujica, in march the 1st 2010, I have mentioned: “The bullets which wounded your body and the jail iron bars strengthened the revolution during the ’60 and crowned with the strength of will and democracy those philosophical and freedom principles with dignity for the Uruguayan friendly people”. Feeling that I inscribe for my dead leader and for my Palestinian people who, from Jerusalem to Gaza, live every day a difficult situation since more than six decades ago due to the torments of Zionist occupation, the nowadays walls of apartheid, illegal settlement, and the ethnic cleaning of the Israeli government.

I am from Jerusalem. I was born in the Old Holy City and in the home of an antique Palestinian Jerusalemite family. The eyes and heart of my ancestors lived the pain caused by many of the different occupiers who have submitted us. I know my own and silent pain of uprooting and mutilation when in 1948 Zionists tore me off from Jerusalem and made me a refugee along with my parents. Without the right to come back. No right to my dead family. No right to my home. No right to live in the land where I was born.

I am not going to relate the illegitimacy of Israel to keep Jerusalem crucified. Neither am I going to mention dozens of UN resolutions and international juridical laws which demand to the Israeli Occupying Power to withdraw from Jerusalem. Nor I am going to develop the before-the-bible history which awarded us the legitimate ownership of the city because it was founded by the Palestinian Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites 3500 BC. I am just going to make my Palestinian right worth of having born in Jerusalem. Reminiscence that is not neither for allowances or acknowledging concessions, nor titles or rewards which are not legitimate in my country and my city.

I respect companion Mujica, his revolution and the martyrs who allowed the Uruguayan people proud to live in freedom. I also belong to a revolutionary people for freedom and anguished by the imposed war. I am from Jerusalem and I have my heart broken between my hometown and my country of exile.

I am Jerusalemite and I cannot, or should not hide the great grief that I have since the Organization that took my country, my city and my home away, also looks upon in disdain to grant an prize named Jerusalem.

(*) – He was the First Ambassador of the State of Palestine in Argentina.

– International analyst about Palestinian situation.