AHMAD Sa”adat, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Marwan al-Barghouthi, member of the Fatah Central Committee, have both called for ending the ‘futile talks’ with Israel.
Sa’adat has been in prison for 30 years while Marwan Al-Barghouthi, one the main leaders of the Second Intifada has been in an Israeli prison since 2002.
They have called for activating resistance in all its forms and establishing Palestinian unity with Hamas along the lines of the policy document that has been adopted by the Palestinian prisoners.
Sa’adat thinks that the negotiations with Israel and the US must be stopped. He urges the forming a national consensus government immediately and holding regular meetings for the temporary leadership body that is in charge of activating and rebuilding the PLO in order to prepare for elections of the Legislative Council, the presidency, and the National Council and for a ‘unified national struggle programme that is based on resistance in all forms and methods.’
He warned: ‘Limiting popular resistance to the framework of peaceful struggle empties it of its revolutionary concept. The major Palestinian popular intifada was an example of popular resistance and a compass for a number of distinguished forms and methods of resistance: peaceful, violent, mass, factional, economic, political, and cultural. A scientific political approach refuses the logic of dividing the forms and methods of resistance.’
Marwan al-Barghouthi, considers that the negotiations have ‘failed miserably’, while settlement activity is eating up the remaining land in the West Bank and the few metres left in the narrow streets of Jerusalem.
He says: ‘Israel is using the negotiations to buy more time and break its international isolation. It is wagering on the state of weakness experienced by the Palestinian arena in light of the division and the current Arab situation, using this to intensify settlement activity and increase the number of settlers in a way that prevents the establishment of an independent and fully sovereign Palestinian state on the 4th June 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital.’
Al-Barghouthi stresses that ‘the first step for rebuilding the national movement is national reconciliation and rehabilitating the prisoners’ document on national accord.’
Al-Barghouthi urges the need for ‘activating popular resistance on the largest scale and the involvement of everybody in it, and working also to boycott Israeli products and goods and stopping all forms of security, negotiating, and administrative co-ordination with the occupation state.’ He says: ‘There is no contradiction between this and that form. All forms of struggle are links in one chain. The realm of resistance is wide. We should not reduce resistance to one form, whatever this form might be. The secret of the success of resistance lies in its inclusiveness and the variety of its forms and types without exception and without excluding this or that form or placing it in a state of contradiction.’
President Abbas however continues to base himself solely on the old diplomacy. He said yesterday that ‘The Palestinian leadership has voted unanimously in favour of joining the international organisations.’ He added however: ‘We do not want to use this right against anyone and we are especially not aiming to clash with the US administration. We wish to maintain good relations with the US because they are helping us and making serious efforts’.
President Abbas concluded: ‘We remain determined that the best way to achieve our rights is through negotiations and peaceful popular resistance. We will continue employing peaceful means to achieve our state on the 1967 border with a just and agreed upon solution to the refugee issue based on UN resolution 194.’
It is clear that the Palestinian masses must call Abbas and other leaders to order. The diplomatic ‘struggle’, with the Palestinian nation and the world looking on leads to defeats and demoralisation.
The Palestinian movements must be united at once to form a government capable of organising political and military resistance at home to defeat the occupiers, alongside an international movement to recognise Palestine and impose a worldwide boycott of Israel.
This united struggle is to last until the Palestinians have their state, with no settlements, with their own troops guarding their borders, with Jerusalem as their capital and with all Palestinians having the right to return.
