Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Al-Nakba, Arabic for “the catastrophe” marks the 1948 Zionist expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

On the 69th anniversary of the Nakba, we mark the uprooting of the Palestinian people, forcing them to seek refuge and asylum in all corners of the earth, in a massive colonial crime of the twentieth century. The Zionist movement, with the support of the Western colonial powers, established its “statehood” on the ruins of 480 Palestinian destroyed villages, their people uprooted and displace, through the exercise of the worst forms of terror, torture and massacre.

The ongoing Nakba committed against the Palestinian people and their homeland is an ongoing crime, as is evident in the continued occupation practices and policies to suppress and terrorize the Palestinian people, refusing to recognize their most basic national rights and human rights. This confirms the continuation of the Zionist project in pursuit of its objectives, for which it was established and supported by the colonial and imperialist powers. First and foremost, it sought control of Palestine, as a mechanism of control over the Arab world, its ports and strategic crossing, and to ensure the continued fragmentation and subjugation of the Arab people. Today, it seems the Arab reality reflects this now more than ever. We are witnessing division, conflicts and wars, internal, civil, and proxy wars, that escalate sectarian conflict and seek to prioritize it above the Palestinian cause. There is an attempt to form a NATO-Zionist alliance with the so-called “Sunni Arab” states to escalate conflict with Iran as a replacement to the Arab-Zionist struggle. This is opening the door wider to normalization and recognition of the Zionist state, which we are also seeing reflected in the Arab-American conference taking place in Saudi Arabia in the coming days.

To the Palestinian and Arab masses…

The uprooting, dispossession and targeting of the Palestinian people and their very existence continues to be exercised in the ugliest forms. From the earliest days of the Zionist occupation in Palestine, the Zionist state and its multiple governments have sought to legitimize their racist colonialism through the creation of dozens of racist laws against the Palestinian Arab presence. These laws deal with Palestinian property, education, citizenship, Jerusalem, “incitement,” boycott, and the rights of prisoners engaged today in an open hunger strike in the battle for freedom and dignity. All of these racist laws are a collective continuation of the ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, aiming to abolish their very existence. The latest, which will not be the last, of these laws is the “nation-state law,” which recently passed the preliminary reading, which attempts to bring about material and legal action to strengthen the so-called “Jewish identity of the state.”

All of the above are combined with attempts to push ongoing regional solutions aimed at the liquidation of the Palestinian cause. These come in a context when the Arab states, their proposals, solutions and initiatives, do not live up to the minimum of the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people, and in particular the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands, the core issue of the Arab-Zionist struggle, and other critical issues related to Palestinian rights. In light of this fact, the catastrophe of the Nakba was not limited to the displacement and dispossession of our people and occupation of our land alone, but in the continuing abuse of the Arab powers of the Palestinian struggle for narrow factional interests. This puts the Arab system before a historical question of its role and function and the goals it aims to achieve in a framework of general subordination to the imperialist-Zionist project.

To the masses of our people…

We in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, with our national responsibility toward our people and our historical rights in our native land, we emphasize the following:

First, the preservation of the historical and national rights of the Palestinian people in their homeland without compromise. The collective memory of the Palestinian society holds strong against all attempts to falsify their consciousness or bury Palestine from the river to the sea.

Second, we uphold the unity of the Palestinian people, everywhere they are located, inside and outside the homeland. We reject all schemes aimed at liquidating the right of return or creating resettlement projects being revived again today, or to deepen the separation between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. We urge that all actions on both sides of the split that lead to its deepening be stopped and rejected, and we call for the unity of the Palestinian people and its political forces through an agreement on a unified, national vision and strategy. This is critical to ensure the integration and maximization of the energies of the Palestinian people to confront the military power and might of the enemy. This raises once again the necessity of ending the division and this negative era in the history of our people and to restore national unity on clear foundations of democracy, pluralism, partnership, and unified decision-making and determination.

Third, we emphasize our complete rejection and resistance to so-called regional solutions or a “golden deal” aimed at the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, the legitimization of the Zionist entity and Arab normalization with it. We call upon the Arab national liberation forces to unite to reject and resist these solutions and deals and to defend the rights and cause of the Palestinian people as the central Arab cause.

Fourth, we emphasize our explicit rejection of the road of negotiations and settlement and all of the consequent political, economic and security agreements with the Zionist enemy, including Palestinian Authority security coordination with the occupation. It has already been proven that any reliance on such approach leads only to failure. In confirmation of our rejection of this approach, we affirm our commitment to continue the struggle in all forms for freedom, return, independence and national liberation.

In this context, we emphasize once again our rejection to the return to bilateral negotiations under US auspices with Arab participation which aims to provide cover for large-scale Palestinian concessions required by the US and Israel. We reject any Palestinian participation in the three-way meeting being proposed between Trump, Netanyahu and Abu Mazen, which aims to overcome any obstacles to reach such a settlement.

Fifth, we emphasize our support of the prisoners in the open hunger strike in various forms, organizing local, regional and international efforts to build systematic pressure on the occupation to respond to the prisoners’ demands and to treat them as prisoners of freedom and independence.

Sixth, we emphasize that the Palestinian people and their national liberation movement are an integral part of the Arab nation and its progressive national movement, confronting all tendencies of fragmentation and division, and confirm that the core conflict is the Arab-Zionist struggle, at the forefront of which is the Palestinian people.

Seventh, there is growing popular and institutional support around the world for the struggle of the Palestinian people for our rights. This is expressing itself through economic, academic and cultural boycott of the Zionist enemy, and we must work to open new outlets to besiege and condemn this continuing colonial occupation.

Long live the struggle of the Palestinian people on the road of liberation and return!

Glory to the martyrs; salutes of freedom to the prisoners!

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