EXECUTIVE Committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Zakaria al-Agha, said on Wednesday that the United States freeze of $65 million in its ‘aid’ to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) aims at liquidating the Palestinian cause.
Agha, who heads the PLO’s refugees department, said in a statement that the American decision was part of its blackmail policy of the Palestinian leadership because it categorically rejected the United States’ decision considering Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
He expressed surprise at the US decision saying that the US, which is the largest donor to UNRWA, knows very well that the UN agency provides services not only to refugees in the Palestinian territories, but also to hundreds of thousands of refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, all of which bear great financial burdens for hosting the Palestinian refugees.
He called for a concerted international effort to confront US plans to liquidate the UN agency. In fact, the US ruling class is punishing Palestinian and other Middle Eastern refugees because the PLO has had the courage to stand up to and fight its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and also its follow-up ‘deal of the century’, the American plan to hand over the occupied territories to Israel and to leave the tiny Gaza Strip and part of the Sinai desert for the Palestinian masses.
There is a plot involving Israel, the USA and Saudi Arabia to strengthen Israel through destroying Palestine, and then to do the same to the Lebanon, smashing its independence by destroying its backbone, Hezbollah, in order to organise all the counter-revolutionary forces for a war against Iran so as to organise another Sykes-Picot catastrophe for the Arab peoples.
The recent PLO Central Council in fact stood up to the USA and Israel on behalf of the Palestinian masses, the masses of the Middle East, and the working class of the world. It decided that the transitional period stipulated in the agreements signed in Oslo, Cairo and Washington, with its obligations, no longer stand.
The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation was assigned to revoke recognition of Israel until it recognises the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders and reverses the decision to annex East Jerusalem and expand settlements.
It was stressed that the Central Council rejects any ideas that are being circulated as part of the so-called ‘deal of the century’, because they violate international law and resolutions of the international community and seek to impose a deficient solution that does not meet the minimum of Palestinians’ legitimate rights.
The Central Council renewed its decision to stop security coordination in all its forms and to break away from the economic dependence that was enshrined in the Paris Economic Agreement to achieve the independence of the national economy.
It also affirmed the determination of the Palestinian people to resist by all means possible to bring the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime down and rejected any suggestions for interim solutions including a state with temporary borders as well as the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
It affirmed ‘the right of our people to exercise all forms of resistance against the occupation in accordance with the provisions of international law and to continue to activate, support and strengthen the peaceful popular resistance’.
It called for activating the resolution of the 1980 Amman Summit, which obliges the Arab states to sever all ties with any state that recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transfers its embassy to it.
The Central Council saluted the struggle and steadfastness of the prisoners in the Israeli jails and called for support for them in their daily confrontation and called on national and international institutions to bring up their cases in all forums until their release.
The Palestinian masses have taken their stand. The working people of the world must now give them 100% support. The trade unions must boycott Israel. As the struggle sharpens, workers must give the Palestinian masses their full support as requested!
