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Palestine National Council, 11th Session: Political Program

Palestine National Council

Eleventh Session

Political Program

(Excerpts)

Cairo, 12 January 1973

The Palestine Liberation Organization defines its tasks as follows:

 

  1. The Palestinian Theatre

1. To continue the battle and the armed struggle for the total liberation of the soil of the Palestinian homeland and for the establishment of the democratic Palestinian society in which all citizens will enjoy the right to work and to a decent life, so that they may live in equality, justice and brotherhood, and which will be opposed to all kinds of ethnic, racial and religious fanaticism.

This society will also ensure freedom of opinion, assembly, demonstration, and the freedom to strike and form political and trade union institutions and to practise all religions, inasmuch as this Palestinian society will be part of the comprehensive unified Arab democratic society.

2. To struggle against the settlement mentality and the projects it harbours either for the liquidation of our people's cause as far as the liberation of our homeland is concerned or for the distortion of this cause by proposals for entities and for the establishment of a Palestinian state – in part of the territory of Palestine; and to resist these proposals through armed struggle and through mass political conflict linked with it.

3. To strengthen the links of national unity and unity in struggle between the masses of our countrymen in the territory occupied in 1948 and those in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and outside the occupied territory.

4. To oppose the policy of evacuating the Arab population of the occupied territory, and to resist with violence the building of settlements and the Judaisation of parts of the occupied homeland.

5. To mobilize the masses in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the whole of Palestinian territory, to arm them to continue the struggle, and to increase their ability to struggle against Zionist settler colonialism.

6. To assist the organizations of the masses to resist the attempts by the Histadrut to attract Arab workers to join it and strengthen it, and with this end in view to support the trade unions of Palestine and Jordan and to resist the efforts of the Zionist parties to establish Arab branches in the occupied territories.

7. To support the endurance of workers working in Arab territory and institutions, to provide safeguards to protect them against the temptation to work in enemy projects, and to resist the enemy's attempts to take over or smash Arab production projects.

8. To support the peasant masses and to promote national economic and cultural institutions in the occupied homeland, so as to attach Arab citizens to the land and check the trend to emigration, and to resist Zionist economic and cultural aggression.

9. To show concern for the situation of our countrymen in the territory occupied in 1948 and to support their struggle to maintain their Arab national identity, to take up their problems, and to assist them to join the struggle for liberation.

10. To show concern for the interests of the masses of our people working in different parts of the Arab homeland, and to make every effort to ensure that they obtain economic and legal rights equal to those of the citizens of the societies they live in, especially as regards the right to work, compensation, indemnities, freedom for Palestinian action, both political and cul­tural, and freedom of travel and movement within the framework of maintaining their Palestinian personality.

11. To promote and develop the role of the Palestinian woman in the struggle at social, cultural and economic levels and to ensure that she plays her part in all fields of the struggle.

12. To show concern for the situation of our countrymen in the camps and to make every effort to raise their economic, social and civilizational levels, and to train them to manage their own affairs.

13. To regard anyone who cooperates with the enemy, joins him in his crimes against the people and the homeland, or neglects the established historical and natural rights of the people and the home­land, as a fit object for attack by the revolution, as regards both his person and his possessions, whether these be money, immovable property or land.

14. To show concern for the situation of our masses who live abroad as emigrants, and to make every effort to link them with their cause and their revolution.

15. In its official Arab relations the Liberation Organization concentrates on protecting the interests of Palestinian citizens in the Arab homeland and expressing the political will of the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian revolution, within the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization, will continue to be the highest command of the Palestinian people; it alone speaks on their behalf on all problems related to their destiny, and it alone, through its organizations for struggle, is responsible for everything related to the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

16. Therefore the Palestine Liberation Organization consists of all the sections of the armed Palestinian revolution, of the Palestinian mass organizations, both trade union and cultural, and of all nationalist groups and personalities that believe that armed struggle is the principal and fundamental course to the liberation of Palestine, and that adhere to the Palestinian National Charter.

 

II. The Jordanian-Palestinian Theatre

It is the duty of the Jordanian-Palestinian national front to direct the struggle of the two people towards the following strategic objectives:

a) To establish a national democratic regime in Jordan, and to liberate the whole of Palestinian soil from Zionist occupation and establish a national democratic regime that will ensure the protection of the national sovereignty of the Jordanian and Palestinian peoples and guarantee the renewal and restoration of the unity of the two banks on the basis of regional national equality between the two peoples. In this way it will fully safeguard the historical national rights of the Palestinian people and the established national rights of the two peoples, ensure their joint national development at econo­mic, social and civilizational levels and strengthen brotherly relations and equality between the two peoples through equality of constitutional, legal, cultural and economic rights and by placing the human, economic and civilizational resources of each of the two peoples at the disposal of their joint development.

b) To weld the struggle of the Palestinian and Jordanian peoples to the struggle of the Arab nation for national liberation and against imperialist projects designed to impose solutions and situations involving surrender of the Arab homeland, the struggle to liquidate the Zionist and imperialist presence in all its forms, economic, military and cultural, and all forces linked thereto, which play the role of go-between for neo-colonialist infiltration.

So that the Jordanian-Palestinian na­tional front may be effectively established and be strengthened and grow, it is essential that an immediate start should be made on activating all kinds of day-by-day mass struggle, so that the movement of the masses on behalf of both their day-by-day and general demands may lead to the emergence among them of organized leaderships and organizations that will express the interests of their various groups – leaderships and organizations that have been absent from the day-by-day battles of the masses in recent years.

Also, for the objectives of the Jordanian-Palestinian national front to be achieved, there must be a long and hard struggle, so that through day-by-day struggle and partial battles the masses may surmount all regional and social obstacles and be fused in a joint struggle. Such a struggle will enable the masses to play their part as strugglers for the national cause, and will expose the subservient royalist regime whose basic support lies in the tribal relationships and regional bigotry which it employs as a mask to disguise its subservience to Zionism and colonialism.

The Jordanian-Palestinian national front which is striving to establish a national democratic regime in Jordan and to liberate Palestine must activate and direct the popular struggle on all the different fronts of the clash between the masses and the Jordanian authorities, employing appropriate slogans in the day-by-day battles, so as to forge a permanent link between these partial battles and its general objectives and so as to direct both the bayonets with which it fights and the consequences it achieves into the channel of the general struggle of the two peoples.

The Palestine Liberation Organization adopts the programme of action in the Jordanian theatre and submits it as a subject for serious comradely dialogue with the organizations in Jordan which are engaged in the struggle for the building of the Jordanian-Palestinian front, and which must engage in struggle:

1. To mobilize and organize the masses with a view to establishing a national democratic regime which will ensure that the revolution in Jordan is provided with all the means necessary for engaging in mass struggle.

2. To bring the members of the Jordanian people into the armed struggle against the Zionist enemy, this being a right at both local and Arab levels, and essential for the protection of Eastern Jordan in particular.

3. To struggle to achieve freedom for the Palestinian revolution to act in and from Jordan and to establish its bases in Jordanian territory, and to expose the conspiracies of the subservient regime and its misrepresentations in this connection, and to ensure protection by the masses of combatants who operate from and return to the territory west of the River.

4. To resist terrorist police measures and all aggressions against the freedoms and rights of citizens to expose and resist imperialist capitalists; to show up and resist the infiltration of Zionist political, economic and cultural domination; to resist all increases in taxes and prices; to expose the laws which disseminate a spirit of separatism between members of the two peoples; to disclose the deliberately repressive role of the army; to show up subservient and hostile elements and plans directed against the masses and other Arab countries instead of such efforts being directed to the battle of liberation; to make every effort to activate mass struggles of all kinds; to encourage the struggle of the workers, the agricultural, industrial, commercial and nationalist sectors, the peasants, the Bedouins, the wage-earners, the intellectuals and students.

5. To make every effort to ensure that the Jordanian-Palestinian front has an active share in a single front of struggle to strengthen relations between the Palestinian and Jordanian national struggle and world revolutionary forces.

 

Ill. Relations with the Arab Masses and Revolutionary Forces

The stage through which the Arab revolution is now passing is the stage of the achievement of the national democratic revolution which struggles for the following:

a) To achieve full political and economic independence and to eliminate all forms of fragmentation and subservience to colonialism and imperialism.

b) To liquidate all forms of imperialist presence – political influence, military bases, economic investments and cultural institutions, and to defeat all the local forces linked with them.

c) To liberate Palestine from the Zionist-imperialist entity which has not only usurped the territory of Palestine and evicted its original people but also, throughout its existence, given evidence that it is one of imperialism's principal instruments for striking at the Arab revolution and protecting the imperialist presence in the area. The liberation of Palestine is not only a Palestinian national duty, but also the national duty of all Arabs, because it will be possible for the struggle to achieve the Arab national democratic revolution to be united, to grow more profound, and to expand, only through the liquidation of the Zionist imperialist bases which aim to strike at its roots and its plans.

d) To strengthen the freedom of the Arab masses to perform their role in political life and to become a solid base for firm Arab democratic unity.

e) To place the material and human resources of the Arab nation at the disposal of economic, social and cultural advancement with a view to strengthening political and economic independence, achieving Arab economic and civilizational integration, putting an end to all aspects of backward­ness and divisiveness.

The Palestinian revolution and the Palestinian-Jordanian struggle in their amalgamated form cannot but be an inseparable part of the Arab national democratic revolution and one of its main axes.

Therefore the task of the Palestinian revolution and its command and the Jordanian-Palestinian national front, is to strive to amalgamate with all sections of the Arab national democratic struggle wherever they may be found and, by their struggle, to ensure an atmosphere of combat which will assist the emergence of these forces, and to open its ranks to Arab combatants, because the struggle in the Palestinian theatre against the Zionist-imperialist enemy is one of the principal strategic struggles of the Arab revolution as a whole.

The Arab nationalist and progressive forces, whose duty it is to come together in an Arab national front, are required:

1. To enforce positive support to the Palestinian national revolution and the Jordanian-Palestinian national democratic struggle.

2. To struggle against all plans of liquidation and partial settlements, not only because they involve perpetuation of Zionist usurpation and liquidation of the Palestinian national cause, but also because there can be no doubt that they lead to manoeuvres and conspiracies by imperialism and the Arab forces loyal to it and to reactionary forces to smash the unity of Arab national forces and to liquidate the Arab national revolution, and to attempts to impose total imperialist domination of the area.

3. To struggle to liquidate all current forms of imperialist presence in the Arab nation (political influence, military bases, investments, cultural activities and institutions) and to struggle against imperialist economic domination over the Arab national economy and against Arab forces that promote and work for such attachment.

The continued existence of American interests in Arab territory and the organic relationships of these interests require that action be taken to liquidate and destroy these American imperialist interests.

4. To encourage and support all institutions and activities which are striving to revive and protect the Arab national heritage, and to support and disseminate the national and revolutionary values and virtues whose task it is to oppose Zionist-imperialist cultural aggression and the dissolute and debased values that it promotes.

5. To cooperate with Arab nationalist and progressive combatants against any physical or political day-to-day intellectual pressure to which they may be subjected.

 

IV. Relations with the Forces of Liberation Throughout the World

The Palestinian national struggle and the Arab national democratic struggle are an indivisible part of the movement of the world struggle against imperialism and racialism and for national liberation. Solidarity and mutual support between the Arab national struggle and the revolutionary national struggle at world level are essential and important conditions for our Arab struggle. The Arab nationalist and progressive forces as regards worldwide solidarity are based on the following principles:

1. That the Palestinian Arab national struggle is decisively and permanently on the side of the unity of all the forces of the world revolution.

2. That the Arab national struggle can best play a part in deciding any differences in the world revolutionary movement by dealing effectively and successfully with its own problems and with the challenges that confront it.

3. That the aims and methods of the Arab struggle, based as they are on the general laws of the revolution, which are the essence of the experiences of world national liberation movements, are the concern of the Arab nationalist and pro­gressive forces. This does not preclude avoiding the observations and advice of friends.

 

Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, vol ii, no 3, Spring 1973.