Iran’s top general: Evolving from using ‘stones to rockets’; Palestinian intifada ready to uproot oppressors

The chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces says the Palestinian intifada (uprising) is more prepared than ever before to uproot the Israeli occupiers with support from the resistance front and the Islamic world.

“We warn the Zionist regime, which has recently suffered the bitter and deadly blows of the resistance front and the powerful Palestinian intifada, … that the [current] intifada, which has evolved from 'stone' [throwing] to 'rocket' [launching] and is on the verge of 'deterrence', is readier than ever to uproot the occupiers with the help of the resistance front and the Islamic Ummah,”  Major General Mohammad Baqeri said on Wednesday.

He made the remarks in a Wednesday message to mark the upcoming International Quds Day, the last Friday of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which was designated by the late founder of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 to express support for and solidarity with the people of Palestine in the face of Israeli aggression.

Baqeri said that Quds Day was a big test to prove support for the oppressed Palestinian nation and disavowal from the oppressors incarnate that is the “criminal America and usurper Israel.”

A durable legacy and a strategic initiative by Imam Khomeini, Baqeri said, Quds Day has been regarded as “one of the most important and influential events in the course of resistance and fight of the Muslim and oppressed people of Palestine against oppression, crime and occupation."

The event "has managed to form the global anti-Zionist movement and an awakening front in the regional and international arena through mobilizing and unifying power in the Islamic world,” he added.

The senior commander called into question Western countries’ claim of advocating human rights as they stood silent on the crimes against the Palestinian nation, asking, “Which global institution or power is responsible for responding to the myriad list of massacres, warmongering, bombings and other crimes in the Islamic world, especially in the occupied territories?”

“Today, the world monitors, counts and provides media coverage of … the number of coronavirus victims around the world, but no one asks who is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of those killed, held captive or gone missing from Palestine and other countries where the United States, Europe and the Zionist regime are waging war. And why are they indifferent to the oppression of the Palestinian people and the restoration of their rights, (while) on the contrary, they openly and brazenly support the Zionist aggressors,” he added.

He also took the US for brokering normalization agreements between Israel and certain Arab countries, and said the scheme will fail like other conspiracies, including the Greater Middle East.    

This year’s Quds Day falls on May 7 and coincides with Israel's ongoing escalated acts of aggression against Palestinians in the occupied territories.

In its latest surge of violence against Palestinians, Israeli forces have intensified the demolition of Palestinian homes and structures in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds to make way for a new settlement outpost in the area under an Israeli court ruling.

Israeli forces and settlers are trying to force the Palestinians to abandon their residences in that area, attacking their homes there, with several people having sustained injuries and several others arrested as a result.

The armed wing of the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, has warned Israel over its attacks against Palestinian residents in the occupied city, saying Israel will pay a “heavy price” for its actions.

“The Qassam Brigades will not stand idly by in the face of attacks on the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood,” Mohammed Deif, the brigades commander, said in a written statement on Tuesday night. “They will pay a heavy price if the aggression against our people in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood does not stop immediately,” he added.

In a report late last month, leading international human rights NGO Human Rights Watch accused Israel of “apartheid” in its occupation of Palestinian land and people.

To maintain control over “demographics, political power, and land,” Israeli “authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity,” the report said.

“In certain areas … these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution,” it added.

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