PART FOUR OF HALIFA SALLAH’S STATEMENT AT THE PDOIS PRESS CONFERENCE OF 9TH OCTOBER
The leadership of PDOIS held a press conference on the state of the nation on Wednesday, October 9 2024 at its headquarters in Churchill’s Town. The Secretary General, Halifa Sallah, spoke extensively on the state of the economy and PDOIS’ capacity to effect change as witnessed in 2016, cthe constitution building process and other pertinent issues. We have already published these in the past three editions. In this edition we bring you what he said on what he said on current developments in the world.
CONTINUATION
Chair, we are now together preparing this next journey. The journey is not going to be as it was. This is the final phase. Gambians must understand why PDOIS has been saying know your country and know the world.
ISRAEL AND PALESTINE: We have seen what is happening in Israel and Palestine, Russia and Ukraine. The world lacks leadership. When you select presidents of countries, they are leaders of the world. They go to the United Nations and speak. Are they being listened to? Should a country be proud of a leader who would go to the United Nations, speak and everybody disappears? Or you go and talk, and nobody knows what you have said. Or you go and do not help to solve the problems of Africa or the world.
So why is the world the way it is today, should be a question that all of us should ask. The world needs leaders. Africa needs leaders. These leaders must come from nations. There is absolutely no doubt if you look at Israeli-Palestinian (conflict), what happened? Hamas is not a government. Palestine is yet to be a state fully recognized to function as a normal state.
There is a reason. You will be reading it. A book is being produced on that so that you will know what happened. You will see that America created Israel. The resolution also created Palestine. If you follow their history, you will see that at the level of the League of Nations, only Palestine existed. Palestine as a country should have been given the right to self-determination and independence. But then, because the Jews were terribly oppressed, in fact they are doing injustice to their history because they were terribly oppressed. They could have been the moral guarantors of any struggle against injustice because of the injustice perpetrated to them. So they came to Israel in order to seek refuge, empowered by America to find a state. Instead of America proceeding to get Palestine to be a state, they ended up having governments after governments which refused to recognize the existence of the Palestinians.
That is the cause of the problem. If you oppress people, this is what happens. So you can see what happened on October 7 where Hamas did what it did, atrocities undoubtedly, but then we are saying; why didn’t you take that as a law and order problem, call on the Palestinian authority that; these group of people who did this must be seen to have done this particular act just like somebody trying to shoot the President of America. The whole world would have tried to solve the problem, but also tell you; unless you ensure the Palestinians have their state, you will continue not to be able to live in peace. That is the fact. But the world lacks that leadership. Today, they have destroyed the whole of Gaza. They are moving into Lebanon. No one appears to have the capacity to stop them. So where is world order? It doesn’t exist. We are saying that if we have leaders who would be able to come in the public forum and help to move the agenda forward. The ultimate solution is really to remove the Palestinian people and Israeli people from the hands of these people who are extremist. That is what is required, by demanding a referendum in Israel and Palestine to ask them whether they accept the two state solution. Once they accept, the people will have decided. That is really the ultimate solution.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE: The same thing with Ukraine. Russia is destroying and Ukraine says it is fighting, but more and more of its territory is being taken. What is the solution. The solution is to have peace agreement as follows:
Ensure that where Russia has not reached, will leave in peace and build up.
Demand that those people who are now in occupied territory to discuss, engage in peace to decide whether in the future they will not come back and stay in peace if Ukraine really becomes their homeland as it should be based on a government that accepts all of them. Ukraine will be united. That is the way forward.
So chair, I would say that we do have our views not only of the continent but also of the world. We must bear in mind that if the world is to serve the Gambia and the Gambia to serve the world, we the Gambian people must know ourselves, must know the continent, must know the world. We must have leaders who could show the same determination of knowing self, country and of the world in order to be able to shape a new destiny for our country, for our continent and for the world.
THANK YOU.
See the next edition for a selection of Questions and Answers
