Democratic Palestine : 30 (ص 5)
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- Democratic Palestine : 30 (ص 5)
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summit which was held in Algeria, I am justified in saying that
all Arab regimes must accept the PLO’s move related to this
issue. Concerning the non-aligned countries, we expect full
support to what the PLO decides, because they have been
essential supporters of our struggle for achieving a Palestinian
State.
Does what you said about a government-in-exile
mean that you accept its establishment to fill the
legal vacuum in the occupied territories caused by
the Jordanian decision?
The vacuum should not again be filled by Jordan. If a
Palestinian government-in-exile is the sole option to fill the
vacuum, we will be ready to accept this option, but we know
that it is not the sole option. As I mentioned, a meeting of the
Palestinian leaders will be held at the end of this month to
answer this question. There should be a united Palestinian
answer, and not only the PFLP’s answer.
Are you going to participate in the PNC meeting to
be held in Baghdad?
The place for convening the PNC has not been decided yet.
What happened in Baghdad is that the Palestinian Central
Council recommended to the PLO Executive Committee that
the PNC be convened as soon as possible, in order to support
the uprising. Naturally, the PFLP will participate in the PNC,
supporting and being loyal to the uprising and its martyrs. We
will participate in order to answer all questions which the
uprising and the Palestinian national struggle are facing at this
stage of the revolution. @
Did King Hussein Set
the West Bank Free?
King Hussein’s July 31st announcement that Jordan will end legal and administrative relations with the
Israeli-occupied West Bank is perhaps one of the most important moves in the history of the monarchy. It
is surely one of the most decisive political developments elicited by the Palestinian uprising. Still, there are
reasons to doubt that this is such a decisive break as the king presents it to be. It is rather the latest tactic in
his historical endeavor to undermine the Palestinian people’s adherence to the PLO and their right to an
independent state.
For the first time ever, the Jordanian
monarchy has publicly and officially
conceded its claim to the West Bank.
This means abrogation of the results of
the 1950 Jericho conference where a
small group of pro-Jordanian notables
rubber-stamped the monarchy’s claim,
whereafter the Jordanian parliament
legislated the annexation of the West
Bank. On this background, the Arab
League «entrusted» the West Bank to
the Jordanian kingdom until its libera-
tion. What followed, of course, was
instead the Israeli occupation of 1967.
This occurred before the definitive
rise of Arab nationalism and in the
absence of the organized Palestinian
national liberation movement. The
status quo has since been irreversibly
challenged by the rise of the Palestinian
armed resistance and the PLO. The
onset of the current Palestinian upris-
ing in the occupied territories shattered
the so-called Jordanian option for
resolving the Palestinian question. The
action and slogans of the masses, while
primarily directed against Israeli oc-
cupation, have made it unavoidably
clear that they will accept neither
alternatives to the PLO nor Jordanian
moves to contain their struggle for ge-
nuine freedom and independence. In
the climate of the uprising, pro-
Jordanian figures in the West Bank
have retreated, exposing the
monarchy’s isolation as never before.
REASONS FOR THE
JORDANIAN MOVE
The impact of the uprising was the
main factor, but there were other
reasons which contributed to the king’s
decision. Not least among these were
the decisions of the Algiers Summit in
June, which reasserted the PLO’s
representation of the Palestinian people
and official Arab support to their
rights, including the establishment of
an independent state. The summit also
asserted that Arab aid should be chan-
neled via the PLO and relevant inter-
national organizations, not through
Jordan. This marked a big defeat for
the Jordanian regime, overturning the
results of the 1987 Amman summit
which King Hussein had engineered to
eclipse the PLO’s role and the Palesti-
nian dimension of the Arab—Zionist
conflict altogether.
Another factor which drove the king
to his fateful decision was fear of the
Likud’s position. Not only does the
Likud reject the very idea of territorial
compromise needed to enact the Jor-
danian option; it goes farther, terming
Jordan «a Palestinian state» and thus
evoking the historic Zionist option of
«population transfer», i.e., driving
Palestinians en masse into Jordan. For
this reason, the speech in which King
Hussein announced his intention to
sever ties with the West Bank was
replete with statements such as: «Jor-
dan is not Palestine. The Palestinian
state should be established on Palesti-
nian land.»
The king’s decision was also the
culmination of a string of failures for
his various plans to foster the Jorda-
nian option. These aimed either to
reabsorb the West Bank or to share in >
5 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 30
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- سبتمبر ١٩٨٨
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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