Democratic Palestine : 31 (ص 41)
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- Democratic Palestine : 31 (ص 41)
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have to examine the most outstanding points of this process.
As far as our particular experience is concerned, we will deal
with the two most significant lessons drawn from the ex-
perience of the ANM.
1. The required exact scientific balance was lacking in our
view of the dialectics of the Palestinian and Arab national
dimensions; we put greater emphasis on the Arab national fac-
tor. Then, after the 1967 defeat, we seriously reconsidered our
attitude and expressed our new outlook through the PFLP.
2. In the period of the ANM, we lacked a class view for
distinguishing among the classes of the people within the Arab
liberation movement, and the roles of these classes.
More than twenty years after our conversion into the PFLP,
we are increasingly convinced that we made the correct choice
and reached the proper conclusions on these matters. It is true
that we still are at the stage of the national democratic revolu-
tion, even at its elementary steps. It is also true that all the
classes of the people should be capable of participating in this
revolutionary process, including the bourgeoisie, However, it
is equally true that the different classes have different roles in
the struggle process. Any glance at contemporary historical
experience points without failure or ambiguity to the fact that
the class nature of the leadership of the Palestinian national
movement at its different stages has been at least partly
responsible for tne results we have had. That is what happened
in 1936-39 and was repeated in 1948. No one can deny that the
present class leadership bears part of the responsibility for
what has happened, whether negative or positive.
Out of our review of the lessons and mistakes in the course
of our struggle, we have clearly seen the essentiality of the
emergence and consolidation of a firm political line in the
confrontation against the enemy, both for checking right-wing
tendencies and for resisting the nihilist, adventurist orienta-
tion. The revolution as well as the PLO have, for more than
two decades, faced a series of stages and turns which have
shown the importance of such a firm line. The last five years
have witnessed the intensification of the tendencies of
squander of our people’s achievements on one hand, and the
emergence of the adventurist, nihilist orientation on the other.
Exactly at this juncture, the revolutionary democratic forces
have played a decisive and vital role. Further, the increased
role of the revolutionary democratic trend is the basis for
maintaining and consolidating the entire national line of the
revolution, and thus an indispensable condition for achieving
our ultimate goals.
WHAT THEN?
Forty years have elapsed since the occupation of Palestine
and the establishment of the Zionist entity in our homeland by
force of iron and fire, blood and massacres... Forty years have
passed with a record full of struggles and sacrifices on the part
of the Palestinian and the Arab people. As noted above, the
enemy has succeeded in scoring a whole series of strategic ob-
jectives, while the Palestinian and Arab militant movement
remained incapable of achieving comparable results.
We have mentioned the points of strength of this entity and
briefly specified the most salient ones. We have also referred to
the points of weakness which have accompanied our militant
process. Through both, we have aimed at refuting the
prevalent simplistic attitudes. At the same time, we have been
aware of the enemy’s weak points as well as our own strong
points. Due to the lack of space for broader discussion, we will
limit ourselves to two essential points:
1. While the Zionist entity has emerged and developed
because of the support of the West, as well as its own wise in-
vestment of this support according to a well-defined strategy,
there is no doubt that the same West will be this entity’s fatal
point of weakness. It has been possible for this entity to
develop throughout the last four decades in relatively favorable
conditions. It is true that it has waged six wars but most of
them, exept the 1973 and the 1982 wars, have been very cheap
compared to the results scored. The enemy has been capable of
making decisive advances in building a socioeconomic struc-
ture and reaching the level of a great regional power.
The reversal in the process is bound to begin when ‘Israel’
finds itself incabable of continuing the same path. Needless to
say, such a thing is not going to occur spontaneously or due to
the internal development of this entity. An action on the part
of the Palestinian liberation movement, closely interconnected
with the Arab national movement, is needed to contribute to
the frustration of the Israeli strategic schemes, rendering the
price of occupation unbearably high, so high that it cannot be
paid from the ‘Israeli pocket’. This would be a step towards
rendering the very existence of ‘Israel’ so costly as to be in-
tolerable even for the imperialists.
The enemy’s strong points are themselves the ones we can
convert into fatal points of weakness. Through their racist ag-
gressive policies, the enemy is digging its own grave. Even as
‘Israel’ tries to annihilate the Palestinian people and erase their
identity, play the role of imperialist gendarme in the region,
and work to be the spearhead against the camp of peace,
liberation, progress and socialism in the world; it is catalyzing
the energies of the Palestinian people who refuse to be an-
nihilated and adhere to their rights. The enemy is also catalyz-
ing the energies of the Arab nation whose development it tries
to arrest, as well as the energies of the forces of peace and
progress all over the world. By so doing, the enemy is in fact
creating its own grave and concretely proving that it is swimm-
ing against the current of history.
This obviously requires Palestinian, Arab and international
action different from what is going on now. This brings us to
the second point.
2. It is necessary to draw up a supreme Palestinian-Arab-
international strategy of confrontation, which makes use of all
the energies of the Palestinian people at home, in Jordan and
all other places of exile, at all the levels and in all fields
-political, military,diplomatic, economic, informational and
cultural, together with the energies of the Arab nation and na-
tional liberation forces, in close strategic alliance with all the
forces of freedom, progress, peace and socialism in the world.
The crystallization of such a strategy should be based on a
deeper and more exact understanding of the Zionist entity... as
well as a scientific comprehensive review of the process of our
struggle over the last forty years.
While referring to the most outstanding, though not all, of
the lessons/mistakes of our past experience, and without pin-
pointing all the aspects of the comprehensive confrontation
strategy, we do consider that the main features of such a
strategy are already present in the PFLP’s literature and the
documents of its successive congresses, especially the 4th Na-
tional Congress.
This article is only one effort in the process of enriching and
crystallizing the strategy... It is a call to a comprehensive and
deep dialogue among all forces and tendencies involved in
Palestinian and Arab national democratic action in order to
reach the stage of formulating such a common strategy. ®
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- Democratic Palestine : 31
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