PFLP statement on 40th anniversary of 1967 war

July 29, 2009

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

On the 40th anniversary of the `Naksah' defeat, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) calls for the renewal of the effort of national resistance

On the 40th anniversary of the 1967 defeat, known as the Naksah (“setback” in Arabic), the PFLP calls for the renewal of the Palestinian national resistance effort, an effort that was born and grew as a reaction to the defeat of the Arab regimes, and as a militant choice of the Palestinian people and the peoples of the Arab Nation — to confront settler colonialism, conquest, occupation, aggression, hegemony, and dependence.

The PFLP states that the path of resistance is the only path guaranteed, tested and able to recover our rights and honor and to safeguard our identity – a fact that has been proven by the historic resistance of the Arab masses; and today by the resistance of the Iraqi masses in the Land of the Two Rivers, in addition to the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance that has established, in spite of all the difficult regional and international conditions, the ability of the Arab fighter and soldier to defeat the occupation army and “indefatigable” Zionist terror.

Resistance has shattered the Zionists' traditional strength and deterrent power and undermined their faith in the Zionist leadership, its army, and security agencies. At the same time it has exposed the reality of the war “efforts” of the Arab regimes, which, despite the triumphs of the Arab soldier, capitulated to U.S. imperialism even after the resistance freed the Arab homeland of foreign control and external factors of manipulation and pressure.

The PFLP believes that the regression from the slogans proclaimed at the Khartoum Summit after the 1967 defeat – “No peace accord, no recognition, no negotiations!” – to the total reversal of that position as expressed by the Riyadh Summit in March 2007 is proof of how far the “official” Arab level has declined, and of how far it is willing to go to deny the resistance, to circumvent and undermine it — pursuing instead policies of compliance, servility, and dependence on the colonial powers and American globalism and imperialism.

The PFLP regards it as supremely ironic that 40 years of Zionist/American arrogance and Arab degradation are still not enough to convince the official Arab regimes of the efficacy of the course of resistance; when, in fact, resistance is the only real strategic peace option.

Today we see that the Zionist state of occupation and terror, after 40 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and 14 years after the Oslo Declarations, is still establishing settlements and deploying settlers all over the lands of Jerusalem and the West Bank. There are now almost half a million settlers there who have gobbled up nearly half of the land of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and who squander more than 80 percent of its water resources.

At the same time, the Zionist state perpetrates the most atrocious violations, acts of piracy, abductions, war crimes, and blockades against the land and people with impunity and with absolute support from its strategic ally in Washington, from where the U.S. controls the resources and markets of the Arabs, plants military bases on their soil, and fills their waters with its naval fleets — carrying out open aggression while imposing its humiliating and repressive rule upon them.

The PFLP notes that in the 40 years that have passed, the Palestinian people have made legendary sacrifices, waged an armed revolution and successive intifadas, and carried on a continuous resistance — reasserting their political identity and raising their national cause from an issue of refugees to that of a people struggling, under the banners of its militant vanguard and sole legitimate representative, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), for freedom, independence, return, and self-determination.

Today, after 40 years in a battle for national liberation and democracy, we see the struggle flaring up again between the course of steadfastness and resistance on one end and that of Palestinian and Arab alienation, and a vain chase after the mirage of empty American promises and peace plans on the other.

Our people are threatened with the danger that their national cause will be eliminated by the replacement of the goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state with a regime of self-rule for its inhabitants, set up within temporary limits under the guard and at the mercy of the security of Israel and its economy — abandoning the Right of Return and relegating our people in exile to the fate of exclusion and denationalization in other countries as we spin in an orbit around a phantom solution, engaged in impotent bilateral negotiations under American-Israeli supervision.

The home front is under attack in various ways and through numerous means of interference from abroad, and it should instead be uniting and strengthening its national ranks, embarking on a course of democracy and pluralistic, participatory national politics which would, in word and deed, lay down the clear political basis on which national, popular, official, regional, and international forces could rally around the goals of the Palestinian people and their just, legitimate struggle.

On this occasion, the PFLP warns that any call for a critical review of our situation loses its real value if it is not linked with national self criticism of the course traversed by the revolution and all the organizations and social forces of the PLO, and a critique of the outcome of negotiations, especially the Oslo Agreements – the Palestinian people's verdict on which has already been pronounced by the daily reality of intifada and at the election polls as well.

At this critical time, in which a national disaster and great calamity are threatening, the Popular Front demands that the Fateh and Hamas movements put an absolute end to solving differences within the national ranks by any means other than democratic dialogue, using reason and supreme national interests as the methodology.

The PFLP demands the initiation of a comprehensive national dialogue among all the Palestinian political and social forces, on the basis of the Prisoners' Document (the “National Accord”) that lays out the firm programmatic foundation for reasserting the spirit of resistance, security, stability, comprehensive democratic reform, national unity, and the activation and reconstruction of the PLO and its popular bases.

This must happen on democratic foundations, through elections (in accordance with the principle of proportional representation) and with a clear time-table, inasmuch as the PLO is the leader, authority, and sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, wherever they are found.