Almost sixty years have passed since the occupation of Palestine, and the oppressed Palestinian people have endured hard times and undergone various trials, ranging from desperate empty-handed resistance following the occupation, homelessness and displacement, witnessing the destruction of their homes and the massacre of their relatives and dear ones to seeking assistance from international organizations and engaging in futile political deals and the gamble of negotiation with the occupier, a gamble that yielded nothing but a heavy loss, and the mediation of those powers that were the main culprits in the creation and continuation of their plight and suffering.
The outcome of this historic experience helped the new zealous generation of this valorous nation to reach the summit of awakening and broad-mindedness and caused the volcano of the Intifada to erupt.
On the opposite front also various steps were taken on a different path, ranging from merciless and unbridled ferocity, genocide and wrathful demolition, military aggression against neighbors and claims to the territories from the Nile to the Euphrates, to political and economic encroachment on the region by profiting from the weakness and betrayal on the part of certain politicians of the Islamic world and, all of a sudden, confronting the awakening of the sleeping lion of Palestine and the roaring Intifada of a nation fed up with and rising against oppression.
Ayatollah Khamenei, Apr 14, 2006
