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

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denounced the Palestinian Authority (PA) police and security forces’ assaults on protesters in Ramallah on July 28, 2013, as they marched against the PA’s return to negotiations with Israel, warning against dangerous concessions of Palestinian national rights.

PA security forces attacked demonstrators with batons as they marched toward the Muqata’, the PA presidential headquarters and injured dozens of marchers, who were participating in a peaceful, popular march against the negotiations. The PA decision – the individual act of President Mahmoud Abbas – was contrary to the decisions of Palestinian national institutions, including the PLO Central Council – and reflects a culture of recklessness, irresponsibility, lack of accountability, and disregard for the law and the national traditions of our people.

The PFLP demanded that those who ordered and implemented this violence be held accountable for their actions. The PFLP said that this protest against the resumption of negotiations is the beginning of a popular movement including the Palestinian people inside and outside Palestine to call for ending the absurd negotiations and the entire path of Oslo, holding accountable those who normalize with the occupation, returning to international institutions, including the UN, to struggle for Palestinian rights, ending the division, and creating an alternative national strategy of resistance, to achieve the rights of our people: to return, self-determination, independence, sovereignty and our capital in Jerusalem.

Hundreds of marchers joined in the protest in Ramallah and a simultaneous protest in Gaza. Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association reported that among the dozens of injured at the protest was Political Bureau member of the PFLP and Legislative Council deputy Comrade Khalida Jarrar. Injured demonstrators were further arrested from the hospital as well.

Comrade Maher al-Taher, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP and leader of its branch in exile, strongly condemned the PA’s suppression of the protests against the return to negotiations and said that it is the right of our people to express their free will and refuse the return to these absurd negotiations and to refuse submission to the dictates of the U.S. Taher said, “The primary goal of the US and Israel in this return to negotiations is to prevent the explosion of the situation in Palestine in the face of the occupation, and to cut the route to the United Nations and the International Criminal Court to prosecute the leaders of Zionist terrorism.” Taher called on Palestinians inside and outside Palestine everywhere to reject and condemn the return to negotiations because of the risk to our cause and the national rights of our people, which will only benefit the Zionist enemy and the United States of America.

Leaders, cadres and members of the Front, as well as other factions and community organizations joined in the protest in Palestine Square in Gaza City against the resumption of negotiations and the actions of the official Palestinian leadership in returning to those negotiations. Demonstrators chanted against security coordination and normalization and called for accountability for those who have been engaging in meetings with the Zionists and returning to negotiations that violate Palestinian red lines.

Comrade Dr. Mariam Abu Daqqa, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, encouraged the building of an ongoing campaign to reject the return to the negotiations, involving the masses of the Palestinian people and pressuring Palestinian officials to not go to Washington. Abu Daqqa said that the action of returning to negotiations is a serious concession that deeply damages Palestinian national consensus and threatens Palestinian rights. She said that Palestinian national rights are inalienable; that they will not be traded for money in a so-called “economic peace,” and that Palestine is Palestine from the river to the sea, and Palestinian refugees will return. Abu Daqqa also demanded an immediate halt to security coordination, and to hold accountable the figures of normalization that meet with Zionist leaders day and night, exposing them accountable in front of our people and their national institutions.

She also called upon all to confront and join in the struggle against the Zionist Prawer Plan which aims to displace Palestinian people and seize the Palestinian land of our people in the Naqab, and to build an alternative national democratic strategy that rejects the path of Oslo and instead is based on resistance to all of its forms. She saluted the prisoners in occupation jails and especially imprisoned PFLP General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat, saying that the Front will continue to confront all attempts to impose submission, settlement, normalization, and absurd negotiations.

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