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Palestinian National Council, Emergency Session: Resolutions
Palestinian National Council
Emergency Session
Resolutions
Amman, 28 August 1970
I. Referring to its previous resolutions, adopted at its fourth, fifth and sixth sessions, on rejection of Security Council resolution no. 242 of November 1967 – resolutions in which the Council declared and affirmed its rejection of the said resolution and set out in detail the reason for this rejection; and in which the Council declared and affirmed that the liberation of Palestine and the other occupied Arab territories could only be achieved through armed struggle and a long-term people’s war;
The Palestine National Council today declares its unequivocal rejection of and resolute opposition to the American conspiracy known as the Rogers Plan. It thereby confirms all the resolutions on this subject recently adopted by the Central Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, whether these are related to rejection of Security Council resolution no. 242 or to the Rogers Plan and all it involves in the way of a cease-fire and the start of negotiations with the occupying imperialist-Zionist enemy.
In the view of the National Council, the American imperialist proposals involve:
a. The cession, for the first time in Islamic and Arab history, of a part of Arab Palestinian territory to a usurping occupier.
b. Recognition of the legitimacy of the enemy's occupation, surrender to the Zionist-imperialist oppression that has been inflicted on the people of Palestine, and perpetuation of the presence of this enemy in the body of the Arab homeland.
c. The liquidation of the Palestinian entity, the problem of the people of Palestine being once more regarded as being a problem of refugees, and all Palestinian aspirations to revolution and liberation being constrained, so that any talk of the legitimate rights of the people of Palestine would be devoid of all national significance at both Palestinian and Arab levels.
d. The strengthening and expansion of imperialist influence and its exploitation throughout the whole of the Arab homeland. The door would be opened for world Zionism and Israel to implement their expansionist programs for the creation of a Greater Israel as a major industrial state constituting a base for Zionist and American capitalism in the Middle East. This would make the area a monopoly market, thereby killing all Arab initiatives in the field of industrialization and perpetuating the state of backwardness and fragmentation in the area.
II. In this historic, critical and decisive stage, during which all those quarters and organizations which conspire against and are hostile to our people and their cause are trying to give prominence to certain elements with suspect affiliations, on the pretext that they represent the people of Palestine, so that they may later be associated with surrender and settlements behind the back of the Palestinian armed resistance movement, the National Council declares:
a. That the Palestinian armed resistance movement, as represented by the Palestine National Council and the Central Committee of the Palestine Liberation Movement, and organically linked as it is with the national movement of the masses in Jordan, inasmuch as the Palestinian-Jordanian theater is a single theater of struggle, is the sole representative of the people of Palestine, on the strength of its natural right to be the revolution which expresses the authentic hopes and aspirations of our people to the total liberation of the soil of the homeland.
b. On the basis of the above, anyone who tries to speak on behalf of the people of Palestine or fraudulently claims to represent their command and their will, far from acting in accordance with their will, is a traitor to their cause and their revolution for liberation and deserves the severest penalties. This is to ensure the unity and continuation of our revolution for liberation and to protect our cause from the dangers constituted by those who want to tamper with it or liquidate it.
c. The bogus calls that have recently been launched in connection with the right of the people of Palestine to self-determination are no more than a desperate attempt to induce a group of weak-minded persons, whose affiliations arc only too well known, to engage in one form or another of activity which will be held against the Palestinian people, in a spurious attempt to suggest that they have taken part, or are prepared to take part, in the surrender settlement.
Scientifically speaking, self-determination at this stage can only mean one thing: the choice between surrender and the liquidation of the problem on the one hand, and continued struggle for national liberation on the other. Our people have chosen the course of a people’s national war as the only way in which their national aspirations can be realized.
d. Historical, economic, social and political factors all assert the unity of the people of the Jordanian-Palestinian theater. This is why our people reject imperialist and reactionary conspiracies aimed at smashing the unity of the people, their land and their destiny. They also emphatically refuse to accept that the country should be partitioned into petty states, one Palestinian, the other Jordanian, in an attempt to seduce the people of Palestine, to push through settlements involving liquidation and to establish petty states to be used by colonialism to strike at the Palestinian revolutionary movement and to act as a safety valve for Israel.
III. The Palestine National Council affirms that, at this decisive stage of the struggle, what is required of the people of Palestine and the Arab people is more than a mere declaration of their rejection of solutions involving surrender and of American imperialist conspiracies aimed at liquidation. They must draw up and implement practical plans for struggle to frustrate all colonialist schemes and projects aimed at liquidation, and to protect the armed revolution and ensure that it continues. The Council also affirms that it is in the Jordanian theater, by virtue of its political, national and social characteristics, that conditions are most favorable for launching the operation of frustrating solutions involving liquidation. The Palestine National Council therefore resolves the following:
a. That unity of command and unity of action in struggle for all sections of the Palestinian armed resistance is a vital and fundamental precondition for success in frustrating plans and projects for liquidation. It is therefore necessary to increase the powers of the Central Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and all the commands and organizations which are factors in the unification of all sections of the Palestinian armed resistance. This applies in particular to the military command, which must become capable of controlling and commanding the armed forces of all the organizations and deploying them effectively in accordance with a central plan.
b. The Central Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, inasmuch as it constitutes a revolutionary command for our people, must take all necessary steps and measures to prevent the continuation of the negotiations now in progress with the enemy within the framework of the plans and projects involving liquidation. It must take these steps in the light of the fact that the Jordanian-Palestinian theater is a single theater of struggle in which it is totally unacceptable that any authority should be permitted to deal with our cause and our future contrary to the wishes and real aspirations of our people. The Central Committee must also make every effort to turn the whole of the Jordanian-Palestinian theater into a fortress for the over-all popular revolution, in which the armed forces of the popular revolution can join with the soldiers in ensuring the continuation of popular combat for the total liberation of Palestinian and Arab occupied territories, and the mobilization of all Arab resources for the achievement of this objective.
c. The Central Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization must take all effective steps and measures, both locally in Jordan and within the framework of the Arab world as a whole, to protect continued armed struggle against the enemy, so as to protect the forces of the popular revolution from the conspiracies and the moves that are at present being made, at both military and non-military levels, with the object of striking at and liquidating the Palestinian armed resistance movement. In this field it is not only the right, but also the duty of the Central Committee not to hesitate, waver or delay in initiating action to frustrate all the conspiracies and unconcealed preparations that are now m progress.
d. As far as our people in the East Bank are concerned, the surrender solution means the destruction of all the gains people have seized through their struggle and sacrifices in the last three years. Its inevitable result will be that the masses will be deprived of their arms, and their right to freedom of assembly, publication, expression, demonstration and political affiliation, that there will be a return to the era of black terror to which they were so long subjected before June 1967, and to which hundreds of them fell victims.
e. In the field of Arab action aimed at frustrating solutions involving liquidation and at protecting the Palestinian armed resistance movement and ensuring that it continues, the Palestine National Council resolves:
1. That the Palestinian armed resistance, inasmuch as it provides the Arab people with a new impulse towards revolution, liberation, union and progress, should today, and through this Council, take action to establish organic organizational links with all Arab popular movements and bodies that have adopted the principle of rejection of solutions involving liquidation. A start should be made with those that are attending this Council with us, in such a way as to ensure that the meetings of this Council may be an important turning point that will ensure that this Palestinian revolution acquires its true national and popular dimensions.
In this field it is not enough that the Arab popular progressive movements should merely be movements which support the Palestinian revolution; on the contrary, we must all fuse in a single Arab popular revolutionary front which regards armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine as the first item on its program for struggle.
The Council therefore charges the Central Committee to take action to form an Arab popular command body which will embody the activity of the Arab people and lead it in its struggle against imperialism, Zionism and agents.
2. In order to mobilize all our revolutionary resources to ensure that surrender solutions are frustrated and that our armed struggle against the occupying enemy is escalated, the National Council calls on the Arab countries concerned to release the Palestine Liberation Army and place it at the disposal of the command of the Palestine Liberation Organization, so that the latter may perform its role of directing and deploying this army and moving it to the localities where it ought to be, especially in Jordan, to enable it to play the combatant role that is required of it.
3. To call on Arab regimes which have announced their rejection of the American initiative to give expression to their attitude in direct support for the resistance and for its freedom of action in all fields.
4. To call on all anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist Arab countries to provide effective support for the forces of the armed Palestinian revolution and to pay such sums as they have undertaken to contribute to the Palestinian National Fund.
5. To call on the Arab people in all regions to engage in effective struggle against colonialist interests and positions and against the agents of colonialism and imperialism, because in our view the struggle against imperialism in the Arab countries provides support to the Palestinian revolution which is part of the Arab revolutionary movement.
IV. a. Inasmuch as the Palestinian resistance movement is part of the world national liberation movement and the world revolution against imperialism, we call on all forces of national liberation everywhere to support the legitimate struggle of our people for the liberation of their country.
b. The Palestine National Council calls on the Central Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, along with all its institutions and organizations, to engage in extensive activity in the information field at world level, and to make direct contact with all national liberation movements and progressive movements. In this their object must be to make clear both the attitude of the resistance movement in rejecting surrender solutions and the necessity for the revolution to continue, and to refute all hostile propaganda aimed at misrepresenting this attitude. The Council must stress the importance of information at this stage, whether it is directed to the Palestinian people in the occupied territory and elsewhere, to the Arab people everywhere, or aimed at world level.
The immense information machines of a number of foreign and Arab countries are at present engaged in propaganda which is injurious to the Palestinian cause and supports surrender solutions. It is directed first and foremost at the Palestinian people, with the object of making surrender solutions attractive to them and of misrepresenting commando action, thereby confusing their views and softening their attitude. This underlines the importance of revolutionary propaganda in the present stage in no uncertain manner.
The Council therefore believes that it is essential that broadcasts by The Voice of Palestine-the Voice of the Palestine Liberation Organization-should be resumed and that all information machinery should be unified and engage in as much information activity as possible.
V. The National Council entrusts a joint committee drawn from the Central Committee and the Planning Council with the task of devising a detailed formula for the confrontation of all eventualities that may arise from the present situation.
VI. The National Council entrusts the Central Committee with the task of taking all measures necessary for the implementation of its recommendations and resolutions.
Source: International Documents on Palestine, 1970. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1973, p. 895-99.