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On September 13, 2020, Palestine TV aired an interview with Saleh Al-Arouri, the Deputy Chairman of Hamas' Political Bureau and senior Islamic Jihad official Muhammad Al-Hindi, along with the Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub. Saleh Al-Arouri said that any future popular struggle would resemble the first Intifada, in which he said all the Palestinian factions had followed the same path. He added that the First Intifada had been peaceful until Israel's reactions forced it to escalate. Al-Arouri elaborated that today's Palestinian factions would work in unison to defend the Palestinian people from the Israeli occupation and from betrayal. Muhammad Al-Hindi then said that Israel is in retreat and that, unlike in the first Intifada, the Palestinians today have weapons and locally made missiles. He added that Gaza is the basis of the Palestinian nation.
Saleh Al-Arouri: "Regarding the popular struggle, like our brother Jibril [Rajoub] said, this isn't something new to us. The first Intifada was a popular resistance. It was even peaceful. But with the enemy, with its aggression and criminal behavior against our people and the resistance, forced the escalation in this Intifada. In the first Intifada... I would like to remind the brothers who have been through that period... After all, we have a new generation of people who were not there. We had all followed the same path, despite belonging to various factions. There wasn't a national leadership that represented all the factions and the people, and despite this, we all followed the same path. We are now learning from the past. We want to once again follow the same path and operate within the same framework, as long as we all agree regarding the goals: We will defend our nation from the occupation, from the criminal settlements, and from the abandonment and betrayal of the [Palestinian] cause [by others]. We are together for these reasons.
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Al-Arouri: "I am telling the occupation that our nation – the fathers and the mothers – have raised a new generation. If you think that because of a few [Arab rulers] who turn their backs on us, you can simply ignore the rights of our people, and swallow up our land and holy places, you should know that we have a new generation that can drag you through the mud and bring us victory. Before the year 2000, the train of normalization with the enemy was more advanced than it is today. There were several embassies, representatives, trade offices, and so forth that had been opened in Tel Aviv, and the second Intifada closed all of them and stopped the process of normalization."
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Muhammad Al-Hindi: "In order to see the situation in its entirety, we see that Israel, which has consistently been on the rise and has delivered crushing defeats in the wars against the Arab regimes, is now in retreat. It is true that some people are normalizing relations with it, and bow down before it, but the Palestinian people is currently in a good shape. In 1987, when the Palestinians launched the Intifada against this enemy – what did we have? We had rage and stones, but today we have our weapons and the missiles that we manufacture with our very hands."