[News] Palestine will be freed by the people, not the elites
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Dec 12 10:55:22 EST 2018
https://samidoun.net/2018/12/ahmad-saadat-palestine-will-be-freed-by-the-people-not-the-elites/
Ahmad Sa'adat: Palestine will be freed by the people, not the elites
December 11, 2018
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The following interview with imprisoned Palestinian leftist leader,
Ahmad Sa’adat
<https://samidoun.net/2018/10/ahmad-saadat-prisons-the-black-liberation-movement-and-the-struggle-for-palestine/>,
the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine
<https://samidoun.net/2017/12/campaign-to-free-ahmad-saadat-statement-on-the-ninth-anniversary-of-his-sentencing-take-action-for-palestine/>,
was published first in the Italian newspaper /Il Manifesto/
<https://ilmanifesto.it/ahmed-saadat-la-palestina-sara-liberata-dal-popolo-escluso-dalle-elite/>
on November 9, 2018. Sa’adat has been imprisoned in Israeli prison since
2006, when he was seized along with several comrades in a violent
Israeli attack on the Palestinian Authority’s Jericho prison.
Prior to the Israeli attack, he had been imprisoned since 2002 by the
Palestinian Authority under U.S. and British guard. The imprisonment of
prominent Palestinians like Sa’adat played a role in the 2006
Palestinian Legislative Council elections in which the legislative party
associated with Hamas, the Change and Reform Bloc, prevailed. Less than
a week before the new PA officials were to be sworn in, Israeli armed
forces attacked the Jericho prison, killing two Palestinians.
Since that time, Sa’adat was sentenced to 30 years in Israeli prison,
even though he was not charged in the assassination of Rehavam Ze’evi.
The notoriously far-right Israeli tourism minister was assassinated by
PFLP fighters after the Israeli army assassinated PFLP General Secretary
Abu Ali Mustafa
<https://samidoun.net/2017/08/berlin-demonstration-urges-boycott-of-hewlett-packard-palestinian-community-commemorates-abu-ali-mustafa/>
in his Ramallah office, using a U.S.-made and –provided helicopter-fired
missile on August 29, 2001. Several of Sa’adat’s comrades were sentenced
to life imprisonment after the raid.
Israeli officials have repeatedly demonstrated their fear of Sa’adat’s
political influence. He was held under isolation for three years, an
isolation that ended as part of the 2012 Karameh mass hunger strike. He
writes and issues statements from prison, thanks to the creative work of
fellow prisoners and their comrades in making sure that the writing and
analysis of Palestinian prisoners are not isolated from the world. The
interview follows below:
*Q: How would you assess the current situation in Palestine and the
attitude of the U.S. administration under Donald Trump?*
First of all, I would like to thank you for this interview. It is
absolutely crucial to communicate with Italian readers and explain the
Palestinian left vision for the current situation in Palestine and in
the region. We view the United States, under the Trump administration,
as an extremely dangerous power, not only for the Palestinian people and
for our region, but for all of the people of the world. It is often said
that the only difference between Trump and previous administrations is
that Trump reveals the true, ugly face of capitalism and imperialism,
taking the use of plunder, hegemony and exploitation to an extreme level.
Trump’s declaration on recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the
Israeli state and the transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem is the natural continuation of 100 years of colonization in
Palestine and the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It is part and parcel of the
ongoing attempt to liquidate Palestinian rights and to accelerate the
ethnic cleansing of our people, especially in Jerusalem. Palestinians
across the board politically reject Trump’s attempt to eliminate the
Palestinian cause. Our people are resisting and rejecting this attempt
not only with words, but with action: the launch of a true, heroic
popular uprising in Gaza – the Great March of Return, in the spirit of
the first Intifada and with the participation of the PFLP and a broad
range of Palestinian political forces.
*2) What current strategy would allow for the rebuilding of a strong
Palestinian liberation movement?*
The main task facing us today is the project of rebuilding and
reconstructing the Palestinian national liberation movement. The primary
Palestinian national objective today is to place Palestine, once again,
on the road of liberation by restating and reaffirming the essence of
the Palestinian struggle. That is, the return of the refugees and
building the liberated, democratic secular society in Palestine – not
the “Palestinian state on 1967 borders alongside Israel.”
A historic and devastating rupture has taken place in the Palestinian
movement after the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993. This has
distorted the true meaning of our struggle and the essence of the
conflict. An entire Palestinian generation has been born and grown up
since the signing of that catastrophic document on 13 September 1993 in
Washington, D.C. Since then, the Palestinian movement has been
shattered, splintered and chaotic.
As for the immediate tasks, it is critical to reestablish the
Palestinian national liberation front, the PLO (Palestine Liberation
Organization) if you will, in order to provide the necessary conditions
for a renaissance of the Palestinian movement and the Palestinian
revolution. We come from a different perspective than both Fateh and
Hamas, and we are committed to a real national unity that includes our
progressive framework and which must be based on popular representation
and participation. All Palestinian classes must be a part of this
process, and the popular classes must not be excluded from the
leadership of the movement as they have been for the past 40 years. The
freedom of Palestine will be won by the people, not the elites.
*3) What alternative political direction does the PFLP suggest?*
We think that the main premise of change is popular participation that
allows Palestinians to participate in the struggle and in political
decision-making, in a manner that is effective and meaningful. This not
only requires struggle against occupation, but also struggle to regain
those Palestinian rights to participate in our own movement. For
example, in Jordan, there are over four million Palestinians whose
demands, needs and calls to action may seem to be absent. However, they
must be heard. The same is true for Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and
elsewhere, as well as those in Palestine.
Popular participation and leadership is necessary for rebuilding the
resistance movement against Zionist colonization and implementing a
strategy for the liberation of Palestine. This must also take place in
the diaspora as well as in Palestine, in Europe and elsewhere in the
world where there are Palestinians. If our communities are always
threatened by all kinds of criminalization, repressive laws and
right-wing attacks, then our tasks will be more difficult. The
cornerstone of our vision lies upon this – people’s right to participate
in developing their future. This is the most advanced, democratic
process of participation which we are fighting for, unlike those who
have imposed an elite hegemony on the Palestinian people.
*4) The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has marked the
fiftieth anniversary of its founding. How do you evaluate the situation
of the Front today?*
The Front concluded its seventh convention in early 2014, and we are now
approaching the eighth convention of the Front. This will be an
opportunity for all of our comrades inside and outside Palestine to
assess the strengths and weaknesses of our Front and evaluate its
advances and retreats.
In the last five years, we can say that the Front has faced tremendous
difficulties and challenges that have manifested political and financial
siege: repression, mass arrests of its cadres, the killing of cadres.
Yet we have advanced in our military capabilities in Gaza because we do
not face the same conditions that we do in the West Bank under
occupation and Palestinian Authority security coordination. Several
comrades – including myself – are imprisoned precisely because of this
security coordination between the PA and the occupier, but we are not
alone in this regard. Hundreds of cadres have been subject to oppression
and arrests as well.
In terms of the Front organizationally, we also have made progress in
terms of youth participation and renewal in various different aspects of
our work. It is always challenging to accumulate achievements due to our
circumstances, so we are always engaged in a process of building and
rebuilding.
*5) How has the PFLP changed since its foundation until now?*
The Front has changed tremendously in that time – we are talking about
half of a century. There are four stages in the life of our party. The
first, which could be identified as the “Jordan era,” from 1967 until
1972; the second, the experience of the Palestinian Revolution and the
PFLP in Lebanon, from 1973 until 1982; the third, the first great
Palestinian popular uprising from 1987 until 1993; and, since then, we
have been living the stage of the so-called Oslo process.
Now, these changes have affected the Front on many levels: political,
theoretical, organizational. These have affected us as they have others:
the wars in the region, the peace pacts between Arab regimes and Israel,
the fall of the Soviet Union and the larger socialist bloc and the
liquidation process (also labeled the “peace process.”) All of these
factors and many others have affected the Front, its strength and its
analysis.
Certain positions which we took in a time of retreat made the Front look
more “realist,” but that was due to internal contradictions in the
Front. We discussed this publicly in our documents from the Fifth, Sixth
and Seventh Conventions. The Front always engages in self-criticism and
we do not hesitate to point out our shortcomings. But the conclusion to
which we have arrived, from 1992 until today, is that the party, like
our people, is living through a comprehensive crisis, theoretically,
politically, financially and otherwise, and this crisis can only be
overcome through resistance and struggle at all levels.
*6) How do you see the role of the prisoners’ movement inside Israeli
prisons?*
The prisoners’ movement inside Israeli jails has, historically, played a
major and central role in the fight against Zionist oppression. This
comes not only in our daily confrontation of the occupier and prisoners’
responsibility as the first advanced rank of the revolution but also in
our role in the overall political scene in Palestine.
We must remember that the national consensus agreement for Palestinian
national unity has been called the Prisoners’ Document. It was drafted
inside prisons and formed the basis of all later discussions for the
Palestinian movement’s national unity. The prisoners’ movement has lived
through various experiences of campaigns, hunger strikes, and prisoners
lives’ being taken under torture.
We political prisoners have been called the vanguard and the heart of
the Palestinian revolution. This is because Israel always targets the
Palestinian movements and their leaders for imprisonment – student
movements, women’s movements, labor movements, youth movements. In
essence, prisons have been a place where all of these aspects of our
movement meet and engage in thorough discussions. That is why
Palestinians often call prisons “the schools of the revolution.”
We are not separated from the liberation movement outside prison.
Palestinian prisoners are from all of Palestine – the West Bank, Gaza,
Jerusalem, the Triangle, the Naqab, Galilee, all of our land. We also
consider Palestinian political prisoners in American and French jails as
part of our movement, particularly Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, imprisoned
in France for over 34 years.
--
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