From Nablus…From the cultural centers where the resistances organizes itself
December 14, 2015

Interview to Abeer Enab, Coordinator in the Lighting (Tanweer) Cultural Center in Nablus (West Bank, Palestine)

The more the imperialist countries Grand Coalition is bombarding Syria and attacking Yemen, the more the fascist Zionist State of Israel has being imposing its regime of terror to the interior of Palestine. We spoke with one of the coordinators of the Lighting (Tanweer) Cultural Center; she tells us about the occupation regime and its political prisoners.

I came to the Tanweer Center in downtown Nablus city (West Bank). This is one of the largest cities in the Wesk bank, second only to Hebron. In this Center I could know several young, brave fighters. Now I ask for them, knowing their leader Wael S Faqeeh has been put prisoner. She tells me that all of them are now prisoners: Fadel Al Masri, a 21 years old student, Mohamed Yeshtye, 23, a worker, Gassan Naggar, 24, who was just to be married, Jihad Hendi, 23. In addition to them another 24 year old, Hassan, from a village near Nablus, has already been tried and sentenced 26 months plus 7000 shekels of bail.
Abeer Enab, who now coordinates many activities in this cultural center, tells me about the situation in Palestine: "This intifada is different from the first or the second; it has not been organized by any political organization. It is undeniable that an intifada needs the unity of a people. If this intifada had been organized, either by trade unions, political parties or national movements, something would have been possible, different from this in which young people are losing their lives. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is doing nothing; shame for both AP and other political parties that are leaving young people alone!"

We are already 25 years from the Oslo accords and neither our liberation, nor better living conditions were achieved. What make us weaker are the divisions that we have inside our people, and the youth are fighting because they don't have jobs, they cannot marry because they have no housing, they hardly can - through a terrible sacrifice of their parents- go to study any technical course or craft, as tuition prices are out of their reach generally."

She goes on to explain that the intifada needs someone to organize it; but AP and several other political parties want to control the youth because they themselves are carrying out the so called “peace process” with Israel, which is actually a process to more and more sell out the Palestinian nation. "They allow the current situation to be such as it is."
Abeer Enab cannot help thinking that the current situation of Palestine is related to the question of political prisoners, specially those arrested in this last time: "many of the young people resist, they believe in the popular resistance; they want to continue fighting. For this reason the invaders arrest them. In many cases the AP police also arrest our youth, with various excuses but in reality it is to maintain "order" to the interior of Palestine.  The occupying forces also arrest them, only because they are young, because they do not accept the occupation, because they decide to fight it. Since October to date, we have 121 killed and 13,000 arrested throughout Palestine; many of the latter have come out, but most do not and are waiting to be judged; this could take about 6 months or a year, plus two or more thousands of shekels to bail. The occupants want to give a lesson to young people so that they do not come out to fight, but there is no other possibility left for them. ”

"This is not all", she explains, "Many of the (local) political centers have also been attacked, for example Tanweer was raided last Wednesday (Dec 9, 2015); 20 occupation soldiers went directly to the room of machines and "confiscated" a notebook and the internal memories from each of the computers that we had. What does it mean? That they are upsetting our work. Last week, I do not remember the exact date; another cultural center near this Center was also raided and the soldiers confiscated all computers and cameras, that Center was new and so all things were new." Abeer Enab concludes: "We need a change and this is why the youth is getting up".

Pamela Parson,
Correspondent of International Worker Organizer