His Highness Speech in Gaza

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Dear brothers and sisters,

My people in the Gaza Strip and Palestine,

This is truly a moment of mixed feelings to stand among you today on the land of a free, steadfast and blockaded Gaza. Throughout history, this city has been a bridge linking the wings of the Arab world, and through which Arabs of the Arab Peninsula, Iraq and the Levant would cross to the homes of their brothers in Egypt, the Nile Basin and North Africa.

It is really a moment in which any Arab should feel sad because this bridge between Arab countries neither exists nor is it effective. The historical injustice affecting our brothers in Palestine for over six decades is still a humanitarian calamity to which the international community has failed to bring an end until now.

Dear brothers,

The Palestinian cause, with its ramifications and concerns, has been a bleeding wound in the Arab body for decades. Every day, Israel goes too far in changing the face of the Palestinian land through settlement and judaization in the occupied West Bank and, in particular, Jerusalem due to the Arab world’s inability to engage in confrontation as a result of the division of its peoples and the dispersion of their attitudes, to the international community’s failure to protect international legitimacy through binding UN resolutions, and, on many occasions, to the great powers siding with Israel and following the double standard policy, which serves their interests and denies the Palestinian people their right to return and establish their independent state on their national territory.

Gaza Strip today is suffering the most. It is, since the Israeli aggression in 2008, still under a suffocating blockade, which doubles the pain of the Palestinians whose houses, schools, health facilities and means of livelihood were destroyed by this aggression which also badly damaged the already weak infrastructure of the Strip.

Dear brothers,

Your steadfastness in the face of the assault has been a source of glory for all Arabs when we see you confronting the invaders with your bare chests and high heads, afraid neither of their aircraft nor of their internationally-banned weapons nor of their queues of tanks. We have always been with you, through the least we can do, before and after the aggression. We insisted on having direct communication with our people in Palestine on their land; therefore, we opened an embassy for the State of Qatar in Gaza when the Palestinian Authority was established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During the aggression on Gaza by late 2008, we called for an Arab Summit holding the name of Gaza hoping that we would help push away the aggression on our people and provide them with whatever we could.

Gaza’s steadfastness has been the decisive factor that has unveiled cowardice through the staunchness of those who have been failed, given a lesson to the deluded about the resistance of the faithful, and revealed the fakeness of those who call for giving up to the poor and weak Arab reality.

I am certain that the chapters of Gaza’ steadfastness, which the Arab masses witnessed during the aggression, constitute an important stimulus for the Arab Spring which ushers in a better and more shining future with Allah’s permission. The steadfastness and sacrifices of the Palestinian people will remain the best motivation for the Arab peoples to restore their wasted dignity and recover their rights to freedom, decent life, development and prosperity.

Dear brothers,

While standing here among you on a free part of Palestine’s land, I do not want to advice you or give lessons on the unification of attitudes, but the Palestinian status quo, with the division between the West Bank and Gaza, makes it inevitable for you, the Palestinians, to reflect on your reality, undoubtedly knowing that your division is the major source of damage affecting your cause, which is the whole Arabs’ cause. This is particularly important because the strong winds of change, blowing on the Arab world nowadays, have made media and political focus shift away from the Palestinian cause. The time has come for the Palestinians to turn over the page of disagreement and open a broad chapter for reconciliation and agreement according to the principles agreed on in Doha and Cairo following faithful efforts by President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Political Bureau Chief, Khaled Mashaal. If the owners of a house do not fortify it, it will not be fortified by others.

We know that our brothers in Palestine are aware of this fact, which necessitates that all Palestinian actors make it their concern and higher goal to consolidate the rightful aspect of the Palestinian cause, a goal that goes beyond any other narrow faction-driven objective. Who among us does not deeply believe that the division among the Palestinians, first, and among Arabs, second, has harmed the Palestinian cause more than the repeated Israeli assaults have? Today, there are neither peace negotiations nor apparent resistance and liberation strategy. Then, why the division, and why do not the Palestinians sit together, unify their stands and face the world with a long-awaited aspiration: a fair peace that Israel either accepts or is obliged to?

Dear brothers,

The standing of your Arab brothers with you in all circumstances and times is not a favor made for you; it is the right thing to do and it is their duty. Realizing our nationalist and humanitarian duty, we, in Qatar, have always been among the first initiators and will not save any aid for our people in Gaza and Palestine. Helping the people of Gaza and Palestine is neither a favor nor verbal promises; it is a brother’s duty towards his brother.

Hence, Gaza reconstruction has to be given priority through implementing the Arab and international resolutions taken following the aggression, which are yet to be implemented despite the lapse of five years. After the aggression, many Arab and non-Arab countries pledged to offer aid to Gaza to lessen the suffering of our brothers, whose bodies bled because of the war and whom the blockade is depriving of decent life and the simplest human rights. The people of Gaza are still waiting for those who made pledges to fulfill their promises in order to start Gaza Strip reconstruction and alleviate the sufferings of its people who preferred facing the immense war machinery and bearing its disasters to giving up and submitting to the occupation stubbornness and arrogance, although they have been failed by their next of kin and those who falsely call for democracy and human rights.

Dear brothers and sisters in Palestine and Gaza,

Being here today on the land of Palestine in the glorious Gaza is a different thing: from here, the dream, we have always had since we were young, seems closer whenever an eye looks into the horizon towards the Mediterranean, or whenever one remembers the caravans of our forebears travelling from Gaza to the curves of the one Arab heart, in the middle of which, Palestine is located geographically and historically alike. Meeting today on the land of Palestine, we are sure that we will always have hopes and dreams that Palestine and its patient and steadfast people will attain freedom and independence, a dream that, with Allah’s permission, will come true very soon.

Today also, our thanks are due to the great people of Egypt, their glorified revolution and His Excellency, President Mohamed Morsi, because without their help we would not be here today.

To all of you, our people in Palestine, I pay the tribute that you deserve.

May the peace, mercy and blessings of Allah be with you.