My story is the same as that of many Palestinian women. I have been in exile for 30 years. While I could not enter my own country, I started to wage the struggle abroad, including taking part in armed resistance. I was the commander of a group of armed resistance in Lebanon. In Libya, Iraq, Syria, and anywhere where there are Palestinian refugee camps, there is no possibility of having a normal life. No matter what country we go, we don’t have the possibility of living and having stability. These are different countries, with different cultures, different contexts.
My natural reaction was to keep fighting. The hope I had left was not to die away from Palestine, not to be buried somewhere else. I was in prison for five years. When I was taken to prison, I was playing on the street, I was a girl. They asked me a few questions. I had written a few sentences of solidarity in a piece of paper. When they asked me about those statements, I said, “I don’t know, I don’t know anything.” My mom used to say, “If they make you talk, you are no longer my daughter—you will have never been.” These were the words that have resonated in my ears and have made me strong.
I was tried in a military court. I was fifteen, I was supposed to be in school, I was supposed to be playing with the other girls. But at that moment, I had to be older than 15. We always say that we are born older, we are born as grown-ups. We are born older because, since our childhood, tragedy and disaster are part of our lives.
With this war, with the genocide, they impose apartheid, racism. This way, Israel is trying to completely get rid of the Palestinian people. There are entire families that no longer exist in Gaza. Families that do not have a father, a mother, children, grandchildren left—nothing and no one is left. This is a world war. Gaza is the main title, but the war in Gaza is a war against all the free peoples of the world. Internationally, the goal of imperialism, under US leadership, is to rule what we call the Arab region. The US is the head of the snake, the country that sets everywhere on fire.
A people under occupation and domination must resist until death. But the invader has nothing to say about resistance, about self-defense. What self-defense could they talk about? Unfortunately, there is a lot of media manipulation around the world. There will be no freedom in the world as long as we are not allowed to have a free state. We need a cultural revolution that can convey the true narrative to the world, dodging the manipulation perpetrated by the media controlled by the Zionists and imperialists in several parts of the world. These are vampiric creatures that suck the blood of the free peoples.
There is a lot of natural gas in the sea of Gaza. One of the goals that they aim to achieve with this war is the control of natural resources. The imperialists want to wipe Palestine off the map and completely change geographic, morphological, historical, and cultural characteristics of the Middle East, so that this region becomes nothing but a source of oil and gas to them.
Many believe that Israel is the country that owns the land. Religious legends and lies sustain that they were already here for I don’t know how long. Sadly, this kind of myth has inspired the infamous deal between the UK and France in 1917, which created the Zionist state as a colonial project in Palestine. And now they say they are well-regarded by Donald Trump. Well, if Trump wants to offer them a gift, then give them Washington or any other piece of land over there, without meddling with other people’s land.
We don’t have anything against Jewish, Christian, or Muslim people—we are against the invasion. We are against colonization.
We are a people like all other peoples of the world. We have the right to have an independent state, with its capital in Jerusalem. Gaza is a revolution of everyone who is and wants to be free, a fundamental revolution. And this is why here, from Gaza, from Palestine, we want to express our gratitude to each and every one of our comrades from so many places around the world who have helped us raise our voice and speak up.
We greatly appreciate the role of Lebanon and so many other countries that have lost thousands of people due to their support to the Palestinian people.
Even if we only have one woman left with one embryo, from that embryo resistance will be born against Israel. This fabricated, artificial entity, this colonial project called State of Israel, will eventually come to an end. This is our dream. We fully trust and believe that victory will come.
Palestinian women see their roofs falling over their children’s heads and run to the streets, where there is nothing but aircrafts and shotguns. They have no food or medication for their children—they have nothing. Therefore, we need to establish an international feminist front against imperialism to support Palestinian women and put an end to the war.
Women are half of the community and society. It is Palestinian women who birth and educate the future society. Greetings to all mothers, to all women, and to all great leaders—Marwan Barghouti, Ahmed Sa’adat, and others—, to the 94 Palestinian women killed in prison, and to the 12,000 Palestinian prisoners who are kept in solitary confinement in Zionist prisons. The struggle is not only waged with weapons—it is also waged through other forms of resistance. Educating children is a way of struggling; teaching them about their identity, so that they identify as Palestinian—that is also a way of struggling.
Palestinian women are a source of terror for the Zionists. Palestinian women are struggling in all fields, in all areas, in all realms.
Democracy and freedom will not come from the occupied land. What we need is peace: just peace for the entire world, not peace based on domination or hegemons. We want a world with no fascism, no racism, no invasions, no colonization. A socialist world, a free world, a world of true democracy—not a fake, staged democracy. The unity- and solidarity-driven struggle of all women and men is the force against imperialism, against the block of evil, against fascism.
This is an edited version of Maryam Abu Daqqa’s speech delivered during a press conference held by ALBA Movements in November 2024.
