Saad Yousef, a native of Lanzarote of Palestinian descent, tells Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero how he faces the situation of his compatriots in the Gaza Strip from Madrid. "I believe that not only all Palestinians, but all normal people are suffering a lot, even from thousands of kilometers away," he began in front of the microphones of the morning radio program.
"We eat badly, sleep badly, we are constantly looking at our mobiles, looking for updates, talking to our relatives. It's a genocide in real time," laments this member of Al-Yudur, Palestinian Youth. On the afternoon of this past Tuesday, a bombing at a hospital in Gaza caused at least 500 deaths.
The native of Lanzarote, who has been part of the Palestinian population in Madrid to take to the streets to protest against the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip, points out that "the international community, the European liberal democracies that guarantee democracy and freedoms, look the other way because they are Palestinians and they are Arabs and nothing happens."
Regarding the possibility of the European Union acting as "one voice" in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Sami Khalaf added that "Europe has active Zionists."
"Germany is going to make us Palestinians pay for the broken dishes of the German genocide against the Jews and, therefore, a political agreement will not be reached," confesses Sami Khalaf.
For this Spanish-Palestinian activist, whether or not Palestine is currently recognized as a State will not stop the genocide, but is simply "a mirage that contributes nothing." Khalaf reveals that this "will not make the prisoners leave the prisons, it will not stop bombs from falling, Palestine will not stop being colonized by Israel for 75 years, nor will it end any of the dynamics of Israeli colonialism."
Regarding how the conflict in Palestine and Israel is perceived, Sami Khalaf argues that it is not a conflict between two parties but a "colonial issue." For this young man, in "Israel, European whites have created a Jewish supremacist theocratic state in the territory of Palestine and, of course, they have done so at the expense of the indigenous population."
The Hamas attack in Israel
Saad Yousef defends before the microphones of the morning show Buenos días, Lanzarote that "Hamas is not a terrorist group", but "a group that carries out armed resistance operations and has every right to do so." Furthermore, he concludes that "Hamas did not start anything, the war did not start on October 7, we have been enduring a colonialism that is expelling us, massacring us and a trickle of murders and detentions for 75 years," adds Sami Khalaf.
"The Gaza Strip is a territory the size of the island of La Gomera, which is home to 2.3 million people, half of whom are children," he adds. "When we often talk about these things, we don't put it into perspective, what we saw was a great political and military victory for the resistance," he refers to the attack in Israel.
According to his perspective, international law supports "the right of colonized peoples to resist through all possible means, including armed struggle. So through that framework, there are movements of the Palestinian resistance." At this point, he adds that "Israel has no right to colonize, no right to murder, no right to bomb Gaza and no right to have set up a blockade by land, sea and air for 17 years."
Likewise, he points out that "in Israel there are no civilians, that it is a militarized state, it is a colonial state and the nature of the colonist is colonial." At the same time, he points out that the population does three years of military service in the army and then up to 50 years as reservists.
"The maintenance of this colony by Israel, with the support of the United States, will only be able to continue as long as it is profitable. However, we don't care if it is profitable, no, what we want is to live in peace, they murder for being there and we die for our land," he asserts.
For Saad Yousef, the struggle of the Palestinian people also involves weapons. "Colonized peoples have the right to resist by all means at their disposal, including armed struggle, according to the United Nations and International Law," he concludes. Specifically, he points to resolution 3070 of 1973.
"We have seen hoaxes that have even been spread by the White House, for example that 40 children have been beheaded," he continues. For Sami Khalaf, the only solution is for there to be equal rights for all citizens living in Palestine and Israel. "We are talking right now that there are first, second and third class citizens and that is an unsustainable situation. They have had to sign a government agreement with the Jewish Ku Klux Klan and we realize the situation that Israel is experiencing."
The Oslo Accords
"The Palestinian people already signed humiliating agreements 30 years ago, called the Oslo Accords, of which Israel has systematically failed to comply with each and every one of the points," begins the Palestinian native of Lanzarote.
"You sign humiliating peace agreements, you agree to make crumbs of your territory, to not have territorial continuity and to live in militarized ghettos by the State of Israel and on top of that nothing is fulfilled," he continues.
"What is the political way out of this situation? Well, obviously they only leave the option of armed struggle. They themselves are generating this situation," concludes Khalaf.
