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Fatah: The Palestine National Liberation Movement, Press Release
Al-Fatah
The Palestine National Liberation Movement,
Press Release
Beirut, January 1968
The following press release is issued by the Palestine National Liberation Movement, AL-FATAH, in order to clarify its stand vis-a-vis the Israeli occupation forces and enlighten world public opinion as to the present dimensions of its struggle for its liberation of Palestine.
• The Palestine Revolutionary Liberation Movement (Al-Fatah), in this first general international communiqué to the world press, wishes to clarify certain misunderstandings concerning its operations and the nature of the struggle now being waged by the Arab Palestinian people against the Israeli invader,
• The Palestine problem is essentially the problem of an entire people, the Arab majority of Palestine, uprooted and expelled from their homeland in order to permit the establishment of Israel. As a result, before the June aggression, nearly a million and a half Arab Palestinians were being forced to live as refugees in numerous camps throughout the Arab World, surviving on United Nations subsistence rations. The remaining 300,000 inside Israel have been grossly discriminated against by that regime and denied jobs and educational opportunities and every human right. For two decades Israel has denied the Arab refugees’ continual requests to return to their land.
• At first the expelled, suffering Palestinian people looked to the United Nations to resolve their tragedy. However in 20 years this international organisation has failed to resolve their problem. Moreover. its many resolutions stating that refugees should be allowed to return to their country or receive compensation were never implemented. All this time, Israel continued to elaborate and perfect its expansionist plans. These were expressed in the 1956 Tripartie aggression when Israel occupied Sinai and the Gaza Strip for four months in defiance of the U.N.'s admonition to withdraw. They were revealed beyond a doubt once again after the June aggression when Israel occupied and boasted of its unlawful annexation of the Western Bank of the Jordan River, the Gaza Strip, the southern portion of Syria and the Holy city of Jerusalem in defiance of all international law and in complete contempt of the Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions and the Declaration of Human Rights. Today the United Nations has revealed its inability to impose a just solution to the Palestinian tragedy, by failing to reach an agreement concerning the withdrawal of the aggressor from the occupied territories.
• It must be admitted that over the years several Arab leaders have exploited the Palestine problem for their own benefit. Moreover the successive Arab Summit Conferences have failed to give the Palestinian people their due support. Similarly, it must be acknowledged that the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) headed by Ahmed Shukairy failed to liberate Palestine. Although progressive Palestinian elements genuinely wanted the latter organisation to represent the Palestinian people, certain reactionary forces tried to use it to dominate the Palestinians. Today the PLO, this pseudo-liberation organisation, is no longer playing any significant role in the liberation of Palestine. The reason being that it did not spring from the masses themselves but was artificially imposed from above.
• The suffering and frustration of the Palestinian people over the years gave rise to a new, truly popular dynamic Palestinian liberation movement which expressed the people's revolt against the Israeli invader. Al Fatah (the Palestine National' Liberation Movement) which was forced to operate clandestinely in the occupied Iands began in 1965 to carry out overt guerilla operations sabotaging Israeli military and strategic installations in order to weaken and unnerve the oppressor who was threatening our people’s very existence as a nation as well as menacing the entire Arab World. Until the June 1967 aggression, these operations - which received immediately the enthusiastic support of the Palestinian Arabs throughout the Arab World - had to be waged from outside. However, the Six-Day War and the catastrophic effects it had on the entire Palestinian population inside and outside Israel brought about new conditions in their struggle to liberate their homeland. Ironically enough, due to the new borders which Israel now claims for itself, the Palestinians found themselves confronting a common Zionist enemy entirely within the territorial boundaries of former Palestine. Moreover, the fascist-type repression which Israel began to implement against the Arab inhabitants after the cease-fire engendered a resistance movement similar to that in Vietnam. This popular rebellion against repression is being admitted by Israel. Its proportions and concrete manifestations can no longer be ignored or denied by Israeli spokesmen.
• Immediately after the aggression, Al-Fatah began clandestinely organising the Arab people in the newly occupied as well as formerly occupied territories, and encouraged them to have confidence in their own ability to liberate their homeland. Led by their vanguard, the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Al-Fatah), they are now resisting a vastly superior militarily enemy in their midst by every means at their disposal: strikes, non-cooperation, boycotts of Israeli goods, denunciation of repressive measures and annexations, etc. Under Al-Fatah's coordination, political and religious personalities have refused to implement the enemy's decrees, teachers are refusing to reopen the schools and school-children are staying away from classes so long as their homeland is dominated by this hostile power.
• During this post-aggression period, Al-Fatah’s armed wing, Al-Assifa, has also been intensifying its military and sabotage operations against Israeli installations including military camps and stores, electric power plants and railways, in order to undermine the enemy's economy and weaken its ability to dominate our people. Israel's industrial plants, printing-presses, administrative centres and paramilitary kibbutzim now being implanted in the newly occupied zones are also being attacked by Al-Fatah's commandos causing great damage and casualties and increasing tension in Israel. Our people have realized that no other course is open to them if they are not to live in slavery.
• The occupation of all Palestine by Israel made possible one of Al-Fatah's most important long-range objectives - the transference of all its military bases into the occupied homeland. This transference has now been completed. From these many well-hidden, well-stocked bases, Palestinian commandos - most of them dedicated peasants and students - are now operating dozens of times daily throughout the old and newly occupied areas. No part of Israel, no Israeli installation, no Israeli target is out of their reach and that regime may henceforth expect the steadily increasing disruption of its colonialist existence in the weeks and months to come. This undermining of the Israeli Zionist existence will continue until Palestine has been restored to its rightful owners, the Palestine Arabs, who have lived on this land alongside Jewish minority uninterruptedly for 4,000 years.
• Al-Fatah, the Palestine National Liberation Movement, wishes to point out, however, that its operations - which today enjoy the support of the entire Palestinian people, - are in no way aimed at the Jewish people as such with whom they lived in harmony in the past for so many centuries. Nor does it intend to “push them into the sea”. This resistance and the liberation movement Al-Fatah is coordinating is aimed solely at the Zionist-military-fascist regime which has usurped our homeland and expelled and repressed our two million people, condemning them to a life of destitution and misery.
• Al-Fatah also wishes to correct once and for all the Zionist insinuation that this “terrorist” movement is inspired and directed from outside by such countries as Syria, Jordan and Algeria. Under the conditions existing in the Middle East today, no such foreign-imposed “movement” could long survive for it would soon be rejected by the people. On the other hand, the Palestinian people’s liberation movement has arisen out of their desperate frustration and deep aspirations for liberty, justice and dignity in their own self-administered historical homeland. To this it owes its strength.
• The world should recall that those who have suffered most of all from the Israeli existence for the last two decades are the Palestinian people. And the world should note that those who are today taking up arms to engage wholeheartedly, unitedly and courageously in combating the brutal Israeli oppressor in guerilla warfare, under the leadership of Al-Fatah, are the Palestinian people. Their reaction to the napalm bombings, strafings, evictions, summary executions, plundering, brutality, imprisonment, desecration violations and countless other crimes of fascist Israel in recent months has been this spontaneous people's armed upsurge in defence of their dignity and their usurped rights. The movement Al-Fatah is leading is the organised expression of this people's liberation struggle whose counterparts are to be found throughout the world, wherever fascist and imperialist aggression is being waged - in Vietnam, South Africa, Angola, Bolivia or elsewhere. In occupied Palestine as in these countries the humble, ordinary subjugated people are taking up arms in self-defence and for the eventual liberation of their homeland.
• Today, the Arab people of Palestine have decided to take their destiny into their own hands. Today, with arms and courage they are restoring their own lost dignity. Tomorrow, following a long tenacious struggle at the cost of many martyrs, - a struggle which will undoubtedly have the support of the entire Arab liberation movement and the progressive peoples of the world - they will restore their beloved homeland, Palestine. Al-Fatah and the entire Palestinian people wholely believe in their just cause and their ultimate victory. And they also know that on the day the flag of Palestine is hoisted over their freed, democratic, peaceful land, a new era will begin in which the Palestinian Jews will again live in harmony, side by side with the original owners of the land, the Arab Palestinians.
Source: Al-Fatah, The Palestine National Liberation Movement. “Press Release number 1”. Beirut: Author, 1968 (Brochure).