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.