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Palestine National Council, 10th Session (Extraordinary): Political program
Palestine National Council
Political programme
(Excerpts)
Cairo, April 10, 1972
These vanguards, and along with them and supporting them, our Palestinian people, all the Arab masses and all free men in the world, believed that armed struggle is the right, inevitable, principal and fundamental way to liberate Palestine, because our conflict with the Zionist enemy is of such a nature that it can only be dealt with through armed revolutionary violence.
The pursuit of the course of armed struggle by the vanguards of the Palestine revolution has awakened the Palestinian masses and inspired them with the will to fight. This has brought about a profound change in the Arab situation, now marked by insistence on rejecting defeat, and moves to offensive positions in fighting the Zionist enemy and in thwarting the American imperialist conspiracy. Jordan has become a base for the armed revolution and for the escalation and protection of armed struggle in the territory of Palestine. Long fighting fronts have been opened against the enemy, covering the Suez Canal and all the frontiers of Palestine with East Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Armed popular resistance has been stepped up in the West Bank and in the Palestinian territory occupied before June 1967 while in the Gaza Strip, thanks to the many heroic feats of the armed resistance, sections of the town of Gaza itself have been practically liberated.
But the revolution is now facing an extremely dangerous situation thanks to American initiatives and the plans involved in them, such as the Rogers Plan, which was accompanied by a blockade of the revolution at the Arab level and the fostering of a spirit of surrender. This situation gave the anti-revolutionary forces in Jordan the chance to implement the American-Zionist-Hashemite plans aimed at striking a merciless blow at the Palestine revolution to pave the way for its liquidation and, at the same time, the liquidation of the Palestine problem.
Because of the blow directed against the Palestine revolution in Jordan in the middle of 1971, the intensification of the American imperialist and Zionist attacks on the Palestine revolution and the Palestinian masses both inside and outside the occupied areas, and the increasing trend towards surrender in official Arab circles, the Palestine revolution is confronted with a general crisis. It is also confronted with a series of conspiracies aimed at liquidating both the Palestine revolution and the unified national existence and cause of the Palestinian people. Those conspiracies include the Allon Plan, the project for a Palestinian statelet in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, annexation, Judaization and attempts to absorb the Palestinian people into the societies in which they live in the Diaspora.
The Jordanian arena differs from any other Arab arena as far as the Palestinian revolution and the problem of the liberation of Palestine are concerned since it consists of a Palestinian majority with national rights, in addition to their general rights, and this majority constitutes a principal part of the Palestinian people. Armed struggle against the Zionist enemy is inconceivable without this majority, not to mention the fact that its struggle is linked to the struggle of the people of Transjordan and has been organically linked to contemporary history, particularly during the last twenty-five years. Transjordan moreover constitutes the longest frontier with the Zionist enemy and the frontier nearest to his lines of communication and his military, economic, political and strategic positions and population centres, hence the extreme danger of the conspiracy of King Hussein's regime in Jordan with imperialism and Zionism. As a result the Palestine revolution has suffered under massacres and has not been ,allowed to operate in Jordan. Any activity directed against the Zionist enemy and imperialism was prevented and Jordan was made into a military insulator for the Zionist entity and a channel for its policies and influence in all fields. This means that the liberation of Jordan (the overthrow of the subservient regime) will play a decisive role in breaking the grip of the crisis, and constitutes a strategic necessity in the liberation of Palestine.
The building of an Arab front participating in the Palestine revolution, based on the belief that our cause can only be successful within the framework of the general victory of the national liberation struggle of our nation, will play its part in protecting the Palestine revolution and the Palestinian cause and ensuring the continuation and escalation of armed struggle. It will also be of assistance in the struggle to establish a democratic national regime in Jordan, in addition to the general part it plays in breaking the grip of the crisis.
Relations of solidarity and common struggle between the Palestine revolution and Arab struggle on the one hand and the world liberation movement and progressive and anti-imperialist forces throughout the world on the other must be strengthened. This, which derives essentially from the belief that the Palestine revolution and Arab struggle are part of the world liberation struggle, will play its part in supporting and escalating our revolutionary struggle. It will also play a positive part in the common struggle of peoples against imperialism, Zionism, racialism and reaction.
Faced with this new and dangerous situation and with the responsibility laid on the shoulders of the Palestine revolution, all sections of the Liberation Organization have unanimously agreed to announce the political programme for the present stage, which is based on the following four fundamental points:
1. Continued mobilization of all the energies of our people, both inside and outside the homeland, in a long-term people's war for complete liberation, and the establishment of a democratic society and state within the framework of the aspirations of the Arab nation to national liberation and comprehensive unity.
2. The fusion of the struggle of our people with the struggle of the Jordanian people in a Jordanian-Palestinian liberation front. This front, in addition to its tasks in the Palestinian arena, will engage in struggle to liberate Jordan from the subservient royalist regime which is a mask for the effective Zionist domination of the East Bank and acts as hired guardian of the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
3. The linking of Palestinian and Jordanian-Palestinian struggle with the general Arab struggle through a front including all nationalist and progressive forces opposed to imperialism, Zionism and neo-colonialism.
4. Fusion with the world movement of struggle against imperialism and Zionism on behalf of national liberation.
Source: International Documents on Palestine, 1972. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1975, p. 310-311.