Q. As a result of your experience and expertise
in the struggle against the treacherous occupation, how do you
evaluate the situation of the struggle through which the people
are living after a year and a half of intifada as they resist
the most arrogant military and technological power in the world?
A. I believe that
the Palestinian national struggle against the Zionist occupation
has entered a qualitatively new stage, the like of which has never
been seen before, on the internal Palestinian level.
The intifada of the Blessed al-Aqsa stands out for its
high level of militant struggle that has brought together the
struggle of the masses and the armed struggle.
As the mass intifada has continued, with the involvement
of the broadest sectors of the Palestinian people, at the same
time and nearly parallel with it, the military operations have
continued against the occupation army and the Israeli settlers
on the West Bank and in Gaza
In addition to that,
the martyrdom operations have continued inside the territories
occupied in 1948. These
operations emerged in the context of self-defense and in response
to the bloody, barbaric operations of murder, repression, and
terror practiced by the Zionist occupation forces, and the completely
open season that the enemy has declared on all the cities, villages,
and refugee camps with the aim of terrorizing people and destroying
the institutions, property, and infrastructure of the Palestinian
people.
It was and still
is noteworthy that the fighting spirit of the Palestinian people
is growing and escalating, despite the ferocity of the Israeli
military offensives, their widening scope and the enemy's use
of various types of arms: heavy and modern weapons such as tanks,
airplanes, artillery, rockets, gunboats, and ordinance that is
banned internationally.
It has become clear today that as the Palestinian resistance
grows more violent and widespread, it innovates new forms and
methods of confronting the enemy and breaking through the Israeli
barriers and security measures.
It appears clear today,
more than at any time in the past, that the Palestinian people
no longer will bear the occupation.
There is now no turning back to the negotiating table on
the basis of the Oslo agreements, after the long and bitter experience
of seeing the enemy follow a policy of dictates, delays, procrastination,
and circumventing the provisions of agreements signed.
The Palestinian people now agree that those accords were
wrong and harmful, as were those who signed the agreements for
the Palestinian side. The
Palestinian people no longer will bear the occupation, and they
are displaying a great deal of determination to continue struggling
until their aims of freedom and independence are attained.
In spite of all the forms of siege, destruction, enforced
starvation, killing, and terror; in spite of all the forms of
American political and propaganda aid the enemy receives; in spite
of the fact that the impotence and defeatism on the part of official
Arab regimes have reached unprecedented levels; the Palestinian
people are continuing their multifaceted struggle in many ways,
without hesitation, undeterred by the political, psychological,
and military pressures exerted by Israel, America, Europe, and
the official Arab regimes.
Let me clarify this
further so as to demonstrate the high level of resistance and
the growing fighting spirit among the Palestinians that our people
are now experiencing in the current conditions.
The first thing I can cite by way of clarification is that
the whole world can see that the level of Palestinian popular
steadfastness before the might of the Zionist military machine
is marked by a legendary character, despite all the difficulties
and bitterness, in spite of the draining off of their blood in
confrontations with the Zionist acts of violence.
The second thing I can cite is that the Palestinian armed
struggle is distinguished in the current conditions by qualitative
improvements. This
fact can be seen in the rising level of losses being sustained
by the Israelis - their military and their settlers, their security
and intelligence personnel - as a result of the qualitatively
new level of armed operations that are distinguished by their
unparalleled courage and daring.
It is appropriate
to mention here that the losses in manpower that the Israelis
are sustaining are very high.
The Zionist entity has not witnessed the likes of this
high rate of loses in any period of battle in any of the past
decades. According
to the latest figures, the rate is one Israeli killed for every
three Palestinian martyrs.
This is despite the great differential or the great imbalance
of power and the minimal fighting means and equipment available
to the Palestinian people.
If we add to those manpower
loses the enemy's economic losses, we will see the great difficulty
currently assailing the Zionist entity as the Palestinian armed
actions increase and the fighting spirit of the Palestinians grows.
Naturally the Zionist entity has begun to feel, more than
at any time in the past, the enormity of the real danger that
threatens its very existence now and in the future.
This fact has aroused a sense of fear, panic, and dismay
in the Israeli population, as currently reflected by the rising
rate of emigration away from the Zionist entity.
Q. The heroic epic
that unfolded in the Jenin refugee camp and in Nablus laid down
a line of opposition to surrender.
What would the results have been if the same line had been
followed in Bitounia and the Palestine Authority's headquarters
in Ramallah and in the Church of the Nativity?
A. The heroic epic
in the Jenin camp and in the old city of Nablus had very great
political, military, and security meaning and significance.
The battles that took place there demonstrated the extent
of the Palestinian people's readiness to fight and resist. They
revealed in a unique way the extent of their hidden energy and
the level of sacrifice that the brave Palestinian fighters do
not hesitate to render. As everyone knows, the Jenin camp, which is
but one kilometer and a few hundred square meters, stood steadfast
before the Zionist military juggernaut for twelve days, in spite
of all the destruction and ruin that rained down upon the defenders,
in spite of the great disparity in the balance of power, the cutting
off of water and electricity, and the exhaustion of food supplies.
The Israelis have acknowledged that they used every type
of weapon, including planes, tanks, missiles, and artillery, and
that they replaced their men and commanders in the assaulting
force several times over in order to subjugate the camp and the
old city and to inflict a defeat on the defenders of the masses
resident in the camp and in the center of the old city in Nablus. Despite that, the Israeli army was not able
to occupy the camp until after the Palestinian resistance fighters
had run out of ammunition.
By their courage, heroism, and sacrifice they were able
to inflict a large number of fatalities and wounded in the ranks
of the army of occupation.
The Israeli leadership has acknowledged that 23 of their
men and officers were killed and hundreds wounded.
Naturally, the grinding
battles that took place in the Jenin camp and the old city of
Nablus were not the first of their kind in the history of the
struggle with the Zionist enemy, whether before the establishment
of the Zionist entity in 1948 or afterward.
The 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s witnessed many battles in which
the Palestinians stood the test, despite their limited military
capability and their vastly inferior weapons.
The decades of the armed Palestinian struggle after 1948
and in particular after the defeat of June 1967 have witnessed
many heroic battles in which the Palestinian fighters demonstrated
courage, calm, and a high level of capability distinguished also
by their exceptional fighting spirit and unparalleled readiness
to make sacrifices in defense of Palestinian national rights,
in defense of the land, and in defense of the national honor.
In the battles that took place in southern Lebanon, across
the Jordan River, and during the siege that the Zionist forces
imposed on the city of Beirut in 1982, there are many examples
of epic bravery on the part of the Palestinians.
Along the same lines there are examples in the hundreds,
indeed the thousands of attacks that the Palestinian fighters
have carried out against the Israeli army from inside the country
and across the borders in the course of the contemporary Palestinian
revolution.
Proceeding from these
historical and current events and facts I am nearly positive that
the results of the organized military confrontations would have
been positively different in the other Palestinian cities, if
the official Palestinian leadership had abandoned its illusions,
adopted a firm resolve, and prepared for confrontation and resistance
in all its forms, if it had prepared the climate for the unification
of the Palestinians' national military energies and capabilities
so that they could be committed to the battle under the best possible
conditions.
The Palestinian
fighters in Jenin and Nablus are armed with the same will and
determination that the Palestinian fighters have in Gaza, Rafah,
Khan Younus, al-Khalil (Hebron), Ramallah,
Tulkarm, Qalqiliya, and the other Palestinian towns and
refugee camps. If an order to confront the enemy had been prepared
along the lines of what the defenders did in the Jenin camp and
in the old city of Nablus, they would have written a great epic
of heroism costing the Israelis heavy losses and teaching them
many lessons. The
problem, then, is not with the fighters, or the modest military
means at their disposal. The problem that we faced and are facing is
that the official Palestinian leadership is still betting on plans
for a political settlement involving American and European mediation.
The leadership is striving to return to the negotiating
table and the Oslo accords, in spite of the long and bitter experience
that accompanied that stage of negotiations.
That experience demonstrated that successive Israeli governments,
whether lead by the Labour Party or the Likud, have not wanted
to end the occupation or to adhere to any of the agreements.
They have declared blatantly and openly that they are not
ready to implement the UN resolutions that relate to the Palestinian
right to return, to self-determination, and an independent state.
They have continued to change facts on the ground to serve
their interest in perpetuating the occupation and denying the
Palestinian people their established and legitimate national rights,
in the first place, their right to return to their homeland, to
exercise self-determination, and to set up their independent state
with Jerusalem as its capital.
It is probably obvious
to say that this situation with all the bitterness that it entails,
compels all the patriotic, democratic, and Islamic forces determined
to continue the struggle against the Israeli occupiers to exert
still greater effort to pressure the Palestine Authority to discard
its illusions, to push it to take matters firmly in hand to unite
the energies and potentialities of the Palestinians in an effort
to confront and resist in order to attain the aims of our people:
freedom, independence, and the right of return.
Q. Recently the
Deputy General Secretary of the Popular Front was arrested. Before that, the martyr Abu Ali Mustafa was
assassinated. Mr.
Ahmad Saadat is still in prison.
To what extent have these special campaigns, particularly
after the assassination of the terrorist Ze'evi, affected the
performance of the Popular Front, and do you believe that the
decision taken by the Popular Front to concentrate this amount
of leadership resources inside Palestine was a wise one?
A. I must say, first of all and before anything
else, that the assassinations, pursuits, manhunts, and arrests
to which the Popular Front has been subjected in these past months,
and in particular after the assassination of Ze'evi, are not the
first of their kind. During
the decades of the seventies and eighties and the early nineties,
the Zionist enemy devoted many of its massive military and security
operations to murdering, pursuing, and hunting down our men in
order to strike at the political and organizational presence of
the Popular Front among the masses and as an armed organization
inside Palestine as well as outside.
I believe that everyone remembers the massive campaign
that the enemy waged at the beginning of the seventies against
the Popular Front that resulted in the arrest of hundreds and
the martyrdom of the Comrade Muhammad al-Aswad, "the Guevara
of Gaza," a member of the Political Bureau of the Popular
Front; and Comrade Muhammad al-Amsi, a member of the Central Committee.
The same can be said about the campaigns led by the occupation
during the eighties and beginning of the nineties, leading to
the arrest of hundreds of military and organizational officials
in the PFLP, and to the deportation of dozens from the occupied
homeland - not to mention the enemy's murder of many military
and organizational cadres inside the prisons of the occupation
and in the confrontations that took place here and there. We all
also remember the military campaign that the occupation devoted
itself to with the aim of wiping out the practice of guerrilla
warfare, which the Front was waging at the end of the sixties
in the mountains of al-Khalil [Hebron] under the leadership of
the Martyr Abu Mansour.
But these continuous
operations have failed to eliminate the political, organizational,
mass, and military presence of the Popular Front inside Palestine.
The Front has been able every time it was subjected to
operations and campaigns of elimination, arrest, manhunts, pursuits,
and deportations, to rise anew and to continue the struggle in
its various forms and with various means and methods. I am convinced that the campaigns to which
the Front is being subjected in the current conditions, however
harsh and massive they are, will also not succeed in stopping
the march of the PFLP's struggle. Despite the great losses caused
by the Zionist enemy's success in assassinating the Martyr, Comrade
Abu Ali Mustafa, the General Secretary of the Front, the leading
bodies of the party were able quickly to reorganize their ranks
and elect a new general secretary, Comrade Ahmad Saadat; and his
deputy, Comrade Abd al-Rahim Malluh.
The Front has also been able to take revenge for the martyrdom
of its General Secretary within forty days, when it succeeded
in eliminating the Israeli minister Rehebam Ze'evi in the heart
of the City of Jerusalem.
This success in getting to Ze'evi was a hard and painful
blow to the Zionist enemy's security and to all its military and
security institutions. It was something regarded by Israeli security,
military, and political leaders as a qualitative step unprecedented
in the history of the Israeli entity, a step that posed a serious
and dangerous threat and that carried the battle to new levels
that Israel had not previously experienced.
It was this interpretation
of the significance of the Ze'evi assassination that led the Zionists
to react with violence on a massive scale that involved many different
techniques. The first
was that the Israeli army launched a massive military campaign
against the Palestine Authority, its institutions, and the Islamic
and patriotic Palestinian armed organizations.
The second was the application of the most intense political
pressure on the Palestine Authority to compel it to arrest Comrade
Ahmad Saadat and the four comrades who carried out the operation
of eliminating Ze'evi. This
came after Israel had failed to capture them by its own devices.
The third way was that Israel launched the most massive
political, diplomatic, and public relations campaign to push America,
Europe, and some Arab countries to pressure Arafat to act against
the Popular Front on the grounds that it is a "terrorist
organization." These
pressures resulted most unfortunately in the Palestine Authority
arresting Comrade Ahmad Saadat and the four heroes, while Israeli
military and security agencies carried out arrests of hundreds
of members and cadres of the Front, until they finally were able
to arrest Comrade Abd al-Rahim Malluh, the Deputy General Secretary.
Naturally, this
massive campaign targeting the Popular Front inside the occupied
homeland has negatively affected its level of performance.
But I am completely convinced that the Front will continue
with its militant task, as has become its custom.
It will rise anew with strength.
I believe that the intifada and military activities of
the Front during the past months indicate its ability to overcome
the blows to which it was subjected.
As to the second
part of your question, allow me to affirm that I was for the return
of all the comrades who could return to the homeland.
Despite the losses that we have suffered as a result of
the assassination of the Martyr Comrade Abu Ali and the arrest
of Comrade Malluh, I still believe that the Front made the correct
decision at that time. Naturally,
it is still early to rule on the extent of the correctness of
the decision. In
any case, the Popular Front is accustomed to reviewing its decisions
at each and every stage of the national struggle, to draw lessons
and inferences, and to lay down working plans for the coming stage.
The leading bodies will definitely pause to evaluate this
stage, not only from this angle but also as part of undertaking
a comprehensive evaluation of the Front's performance and of the
Palestinian national situation in general.
Q. Recently and under
international pressure, the Palestine Authority announced what
is called a reform program.
It announced names of ministers at a time when Israeli
tanks were still invading Palestinian cities and killing and destroying
and making arrests. Do
you not think that this Authority is experiencing a split from
reality as it grows more and more distant from the concerns and
problems of the Palestinian people?
A. Let me say at the very beginning that political
reform is a comprehensive Palestinian national demand.
It is supported by all of the Palestinian national forces,
whatever their political and intellectual orientations, and by
all the Palestinian people's organizations.
This demand has been and still is a vital Palestinian national
concern under the shadow of all the forms of hegemony, individual
rule, and authoritarianism that are practiced in the institutions
of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestine Authority
and over Palestinian national decision-making.
For the last three decades the PLO has undergone a real
and serious struggle to reform its institutions and to rebuild
its democratic foundation in a way that would serve the national
program and advance the struggle to recover Palestinian national
rights and to secure our people's goals of freedom and independence.
Despite some successes attained in the seventies and eighties
in reforming the structures of the PLO on all political, organizational,
and trade union levels, in final analysis the reforms have been
limited and provisional in nature.
They were ignored and then abandoned in order to bring
things back to the way they had been before - as characterized
by authoritarianism and decision-making processes that lacked
accountability - deepening concepts, habits, and traditions in
no way related to the common cause and genuine collective leadership. This all took place while the executive leadership
theoretically recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization
as a broad national coalition, and advocated its maintenance of
a comprehensive framework to unite all legitimate representatives
of the Palestinian people under a single umbrella.
To return to the
question of the present situation, let me say that, most unfortunately,
the democratic and political reforms currently proposed by the
Palestine Authority have arisen as the result of American-European-Israeli
and official Arab pressure devoted to the attainment of Israeli-American
security objectives. The
essence of these goals is the establishment of a Palestinian political
regime that responds to the political and security tasks and requirements
that serve the interests, inclinations, and plans of America and
Israel. The first
of these tasks is demonstrated by the repression of the Palestinian
patriotic opposition forces, the abortion of the intifada and
of all the forms of armed Palestinian national resistance that
the patriotic, democratic, and Islamic militant organizations
have been waging in confrontation with the Israeli occupiers.
I do not think that anybody,
whether Palestinian or Arab, believes the sincerity of tears being
shed by Americans, Europeans, and Israelis over the absence of
democracy in Palestine, or over the authoritarianism of the security
agencies, or their lack of subordination to rulings of the court
and the basic Palestinian rules, or the worsening corruption and
bureaucratization in the Authority's agencies and institutions.
Their claims to be concerned about these things lack any
form of credibility. In fact, history shows that these three groups
are always striving to push many countries and regimes in the
third world into deeper and deeper repression, terror, oppression,
and corruption, denying people their most basic democratic and
human rights. They
do this with the sole purpose of guaranteeing their own interests. It would be hard to count all the examples
of these policies and the numerous disguises that they have been
given. There have been many books written by Western
authors that expose the role of the American and European security
agencies in supporting and reinforcing many dictatorial regimes.
Nevertheless, and in spite
of the clear nature of the pressures that Israel, America and
some European and Arab states have brought to bear on the Palestine
Authority to carry out reforms that serve their interests as described,
we must not hesitate for one instant to wage the battle of reform
with all our energy and ability, in order that it might be a true
and radical reform carried out on an honest, free, and democratic
basis. It must be
a reform that encompasses the institutions of the Authority, the
institutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the municipalities,
and the village councils, as well as trade unions and popular
and professional organizations.
We have before us a real opportunity to implement a massive
reform operation that for many long years we have struggled to
accomplish. To succeed
in this means to impose a limit on all forms of hegemony, unaccountable
individual rule, and authoritarianism, and to establish transparent
institutions based on the tenet of proportional representation.
Naturally such reforms
and elections must take place in circumstances conducive to them
- far removed from the preconditions of the Oslo Agreement
and the direct or indirect influence of the occupation.
It is also natural that they must take place on the basis
of complete readiness and finished preparations, within the framework
of a new, contemporary electoral system.
Beside that, I must
say very clearly that it is necessary to emphasize the extreme
importance of coordinating the efforts of all the patriotic, democratic,
and Islamic fighting forces, and of all the Palestinian civil
forces, bodies, and institutions in order to insure that democratic
elections secure the necessary opportunity to bring about real
reform and to attain the conditions that will enable the Palestinian
masses and their vital forces to carry on their struggle against
the occupation, in order to attain our people's goals of freedom
and independence, to end their suffering and to regain their plundered
rights - the foremost of which are the rights to return, to self
determination, and to the establishment of an independent Palestinian
state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Q. The Palestinian
refugees over the years of struggle have played a big role in
the battle against the Zionist project.
This is natural inasmuch as the refugees are the crux of
the conflict. We
have seen how the refugee camps have been systematically targeted
- for example we remember the atrocious massacres in Sabra and
Shatila. In the current
al-Aqsa Intifada all the refugee camps have been targeted, and
then there was the butchery at Jenin refugee camp.
Why have the camps been targeted at every stage of the
conflict, in your opinion, and isn't it enough for them that our
people suffer from being refugees and from living in camps?
A. Yes, the Palestinian refugees over the years
have played a large role in the Palestinian national struggle
against the Zionist project.
This is very natural, as your question itself indicated,
because the cause of the return of the Palestinian refugees to
their homeland was and still is the crux of the conflict with
the Zionist-Western colonial vision.
So, when we speak about the Palestinian refugees, this
means that we are discussing about five million Palestinians who
live in the camps inside the occupied homeland and disbursed abroad
in areas where they sought refuge. The lives of these people have been defined
by primitive and inhumane conditions that also apply on various
levels to their livelihoods, health, education, housing, etc.
Their lives have also been defined by constant uncertainty,
for the Palestinian refugees took their house keys with them and
they have kept them in the hope of returning to their cities and
villages, to their property and homes.
When the waiting grew long for them, when the harsh life
of misfortune and human, economic, and social suffering dragged
on, they began to organize their ranks to struggle for the right
of return. This struggle
took various forms that we cannot go into here, until it reached
the stage of the outbreak of the contemporary Palestinian revolution
in 1965. It is no exaggeration to say that the Palestinian
revolution has always drawn its fighters and heroes from within
the camps.
When the revolution grew
and matured, the camps were its most natural source of vitality.
The Palestinian camps embraced the armed patriotic resistance
and they have made enormous sacrifices consistently over the decades.
This is an objective fact; it is not, I believe, something
that can be disputed or argued about.
There is no difference of opinion about it.
Based on this fact, and on this role, for all these decades
the Palestinian refugee camps have continued to be a permanent
target for the Zionist entity, for many of the Arab regimes, and
for all the political plots of America and the Western European
countries to resettle those in the camps in a manner that denies
their rights to return to their homeland.
On the political
level, the Zionist, American, and Western European circles have
proposed dozens of plans for resettling the Palestinian refugees.
But these plans have failed to convince the Palestinians
to abandon their right to return to their homes and properties,
despite all the enticements.
On the contrary, the Palestinians have clung fast to their
rights and have insisted on returning to their homeland despite
the harsh circumstances surrounding their daily lives. On the
level of security and military affairs, before the Palestinian
revolution broke out, the Palestinian refugee camps were subjected
to many repressive, terrorist operations, and to campaigns of
arrests at the hands of the Arab police and security agencies.
The purpose of this repression was to curtail the Palestinians'
political activity. After
the outbreak of the revolution the camps were subjected, as it
is widely known, to a series of vicious military attacks, to campaigns
of encirclement and siege - which are very hard to dwell on -
in such camps as Sabra and Shatila, Jenin, and Tell al-Zaatar.
These are the most obvious and famous examples of massacres
in the camps. Our
memories of the atrocities to which the Palestinian camps have
been subjected are too numerous for even several volumes to contain.
That said, and despite
our sorrow, the Palestinian camps have remained a basic source
for the flow of fighters to the Palestinian revolution, for protracting
the struggle in all its forms with the Zionist enemy.
In my opinion, this is the basic reason that lies behind
the targeting of the refugee camps by the Zionist enemy and by
the Arab and foreign security agencies.
In addition, the
Palestinian refugee camps have represented and still represent
the most obvious example of the tragedy of the age, of the tragedy
that the Palestinian people have lived for more than fifty years.
It is unsurprising for the Zionist and Western colonialists
to strive to be rid of this example, to be rid of one of the most
important reasons for the continuing struggle for the right of
return that Israel regards as contrary to its own existence and
ongoing subjugation of the Palestinians, and therefore categorically
rejects.
Here it is important to
point out the very revealing fact that there exists an Israeli
consensus to reject the right of the Palestinian refugees to return
to their homes and houses, to the cities and villages from which
they were displaced unjustly and by force.
There is also an Israeli consensus to refuse the implementation
of United Nations Resolution 194.
This consensus extends to many political parties and movements
and the civil and popular institutions of various political tendencies
from right-wing to left-wing to centrist, and even including the
peace movements.
Since the refugee camps
are the residence of those who have the right of return and who
represent - in practical, palpable reality - fortresses of Palestinian
national steadfastness and an inexhaustible spring from which
flow the forces of the revolution, its fighters, its martyrdom
warriors, these camps remain a permanent target for the hostile
forces at every stage of the struggle, a permanent target for
all the political, social, and developmental projects that strive
to resettle the Palestinians outside Palestine and to eliminate
legitimate and established Palestinian national rights.
The Right of Return
Allow me to say
that the Palestinian right of return has entered a new stage in
the last few years, specifically after the Madrid Conference and
the Oslo Agreements. The
agreements and the multi-faceted movements and changes after the
Oslo Agreements have aroused a feeling among the Palestinians
that there are serious currents aimed at disposing of their right
of return, and replacing it with political solutions that involve
resettling the Palestinians elsewhere and compensating them while
denying them their natural right to return to their homeland,
to the cities, villages, lands and homes from which they were
driven out. This
right, enshrined in resolutions of international legality, in
the legitimacy of human rights, and in numerous documents and
international conventions, is an unassailable individual and collective
right that cannot be delegated to anyone else.
It seems clear that
the Zionist, American, and Western European circles have increased
their enthusiasm to disavow Resolution 194 and all the resolutions
that affirm the right of the Palestinians who were forcibly expelled,
by systematic ethnic cleansing, from their lands and homes, cities
and villages, in order to attain the Zionist lie that "Palestine
is a land without a people for a people without a land."
Zionists and their Western supporters continually propose projects
for resettling the refugees wherever they might be, or to resettle
them in new places, that is, to expel them once again.
These outside elements have attempted to popularize their
particular understanding of Resolution 194, negating its intention
by falsely claiming that it calls for return or compensation.
On occasion we hear
voices that reinforce these American, European, and Israeli plans,
these voices belonging to Palestinian officials who suggest partial
solutions that would in essence forfeit the right of the Palestinians
to return. Although
these voices remain few and isolated from the masses, they reveal
a dangerous problem related to the wretchedness of options available
and not available to Palestinian decision-makers.
This problem also brings with it a need to confront the
trend of intolerable and self-defeating over-compromise, and to
challenge disreputable statements such as those recently uttered
by Sari Nuseibeh.
Certainly, confronting
these movements and influencing international opinion cannot take
place except through an escalation of the national struggle, and
by expending greater effort to organize the ranks of the Palestinian
refugees wherever they are located: in the territory of Palestine
occupied in 1948, in the territories occupied in 1967, or disbursed
abroad. Here it is
appropriate to reinforce the mass movement that intends to defend
the right of return by contesting all maneuvers designed to annul
that right. Wherever
their territorial concentration, the Palestinians have formed
committees and bodies and clubs based on people working together
with utter conviction that the right of return is sacred, legal,
and possible. Allow
me here to acclaim their center, the Center for Palestinian Return,
that constitutes an important link in the chain of the movement
in defense of the Palestinian right of return.
It is important
to point out too that these popular societies and committees are
necessary to assist the efforts of the Palestinian political parties
and organizations to achieve a comprehensiveness in their work
for the defense of the right of return so that we can reach the
point of acting upon this right.
The ability of the
organizations, parties, bodies, committees, and institutions to
raise the level of their political, informational, mass, and militant
activities and to organize their ranks is the guarantee that we
can frustrate the efforts that are being made to replace the right
of return with projects to resettle the Palestinians outside or,
according to the latest expression of this, to quarantine them
in settlements.
On this subject,
I would like to point out the need for greater unity in the efforts
of all the workers in the field of defending the right of return.
They should work to unify their efforts in all of the places
where our people are located in order to create a single movement
in defense of the right of return, so that it will function like
an well-rehearsed orchestra in which each member works in harmony
with the the others.
Although it is premature
to propose final images for the specific structural forms of the
work of our Palestinian masses in the homeland or disbursed abroad,
I firmly believe that our people will be able to devise the best
and most efficient forms that serve this basic and just cause.
Allow me to say
in summary that the congresses that have been convened, the committees
that have formed, and the activities that have been instituted
in the four corners of the globe constitute a real turning point
in the path of the Palestinian national struggle for the sacred
right of return. Personally
I highly evaluate all these efforts.
I see in them a new awakening that is of the utmost importance.
I call for their continuation with greater ardor and with
serious diligence so that we may defeat all the hostile attempts
that aim to annul the right of return using false pretenses that
the Palestinian people absolutely reject.
We are passing through
difficult and upsetting conditions.
But the Palestinian people with their sincere leaderships,
their cadres, intellectuals, and academics, and with all their
popular institutions, are able to overcome these conditions and
firmly establish their sacred right, and to continue the struggle
to attain it. So,
let us go forward, and we will win!
29 June 2002.
