Democratic Palestine : 36 (ص 16)
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- Democratic Palestine : 36 (ص 16)
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from his «holy Judea and Samaria.» It would be fatal to bet ona
qualitative change in the Israeli position regarding our rights.
Change is possible, but certain conditions must be met, first and
foremost, continuing and escalating the uprising, and inflicting
maximum losses on all levels.
Today’s international detente is an important factor mitigat-
ing for a solution to the Middle East crisis, but understanding
the effects of detente on the Middle East, in a mechanical way,
leads to inaccurate calculations. The effects of the international
atmosphere will always be relative to the local balance of forces.
In Namibia, the international factor was effective and the solu-
tion became possible, due to the balance of power between
SWAPO and the racist South African government.
In our view, the PLO must act so as to change the balance of
power. Our daily concern should be continuing and escalating
the intifada, using all means, for it is the decisive factor for mak-
ing the needed change. We must take advantage of the interna-
tional atmosphere, but not view it as an alternative (to our own
efforts). We must also activate the Arab masses and national
movements, while urging the Arab states to honor their commit-
ments to the Palestinian cause - financially, politically and
media-wise. We must not surrender to the Arab regime’s pres-
sure to give gratuitous concessions.
The PFLP’s view is not based on the idea that the uprising is
able to achieve all our strategic goals, i.e., liberating all our
national land. We do not burden the intifada with unbearable
tasks. Our slogans are realistic, based on an evaluation that the
maximum which can be achieved at this stage is implementing
the legitimate international resolutions concerning Palestine.
We objected to specifying 242 from among all these resolutions
at the 19th PNC, because 242 deals with our cause not as a
national issue, but one of refugees. It guarantees the recognition
of Israel, and views the problem as one of borders between
Israel and the neighboring Arab countries. For this reason, we
consider that the insistence of the right wing on including 242 in
the PNC’s resolutions, was an unjustified concession. This was
the start of subsequent gratuitous concessions.
Some say that the policies of the PLO leadership have
achieved some positive results, such as the developments in the
European and Japanese positions, and the start of the US-PLO
dialogue. We say that any policy has positive and negative
aspects, but one must judge the overall results.
The intifada and the Arab situation
How do you view the Arab situation in view of the
need for support to the intifada?
If we want to analyze the reasons that have so far prevented
the Palestinian intifada from a comensurate influence on the
whole Arab world, we must take two factors into considera-
tions: The first is the decline of the official Arab order; the sec-
ond is the aggravated crisis of the Arab national liberation
movement.
On the official level
Any review of the Arab official policy clearly reveals the fai-
lure of the national program of the ruling strata for liberation,
development and democracy. Review also shows that the Arab-
16
Zionist conflict has fallen trom being the top priority to being
the last. Of course, this decline is not a result of the current situa-
tion; it has its roots in a set of economic and social developments
which finally led to the collapse of most of the links of the Arab
confrontation against the imperialist-Zionist-reactionary pro-
ject. This was followed by the official Arab position in the
Casablanca Summit, where the Egyptian regime was restored to
Arab officialdom, burdened with the Camp David accords and
their humiliating terms. This regime can become a bridge for
spreading Camp David in the whole Arab area in the future.
The official Arab collapse was also manifested on many occa-
sions during the intifada. Most prominent is that the US has
exercised its veto in the UN Security Council six times during the
intifada, without having to fear any official Arab reaction to
this. On the contrary, the Arab states’ imports from the US
increased in 1988, as compared to 1987.
Because of this, we apply new criteria in evaluating the pre-
sent Arab situation and the degree of support to the intifada.
The Arab states must define their relations with the US and
other Western countries on the basis of whether or not they rec-
ognize the Palestinian state. This is the minimum needed to pro-
vide the PLO with more weight in the conflict with the US and
Israel. The PLO can force these two to give in to the demand for
freedom and independence, if the Palestinian people do not
have to wage their battle alone, whether in the occupied ter-
ritories or in the international arena. However, if we apply this
yardstick, we will find that the majority of Arab states, if not all,
still follow a policy which is below the acceptable minimum.
The Arab national liberation movement
During the intifada, it has become clear that the Arab
national liberation movement is suffering an aggravated crisis
which needs to be resolved quickly. A comparison between the
state of this movement as it was in the fifties and early sixties,
and today, reveals the features of this crisis. All of us remember
the battles which the Arab masses fought in Jordan, Lebanon,
Syria and other countries against the Baghdad Pact and other
plans which aimed to subordinate the Arab national to col-
onialism. History is full of Arab victories at that time. we
remember the vitality of the masses striving to define their rights
and achieve their goals.
Unfortunately, despite two years of the intifada, the situation
today is totally different. It is painful to say that the mass
demonstrations in some European cities, in support of the
intifada, were bigger than those in many Arab countries. The
crisis is clearly seen in the weakness of the Arab popular move-
ment, the weakness of Arab theoretical dialogue and the
unleashing of secondary contradictions at the expense of the
main one, promoting division rather than unity, etc.
In the view of the PFLP, there have been great qualitative
developments, from the fifties to the eighties, such as the oil
boom and its effect, and the replacement of the old colonialism
with neocolonialism, whereby imperialism practices a new
mechanism of exploitation. Despite all this, we consider the
subjective factor to be the the primary root of the crisis, after
which comes the effects of the objective factor. By the subjec-
tive factor, we mean the ideological and class nature of the
Democratic Palestine, December 1989 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 36
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- ديسمبر ١٩٨٩
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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