PFLP Statement on Day of the Land
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on the 30th anniversary of the Day of the Land. Land Day commemorates those who were killed by Israeli troops while protesting the confiscation of land March 30, 1976.
Declaration issued by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Day of the Land.
To the masses in the land of Palestine and the Arab World!
Since the Sykes-Picot agreement was signed in 1916, Arab land has been subject to partition and expropriation. Since the first Zionist invasion, the people of the Arab Nation have struggled and fought for their independence and unity and for the integrity of Arab soil. In the course of this colonial invasion and with its absolute support, the Zionist movement strove to uproot and scatter a whole people from their land and seize their possessions under the mendacious slogan of "a land without a people for a people without a land." Thus the issue of the land, and sovereignty over it, has become the pivot of a struggle that has lasted for more than a century between the one whole nation and a racist colonialist project backed by the forces of renewed colonialism. After being partitioned, Arab land became the object of many plans for parceling it out and occupying it, and what is taking place in our beloved Iraq today is but one more example of this; though undoubtedly it will not be the last. Thus, the Day of the Land is no longer a day for Palestinians; it has in actuality become an Arab day, in the face of the dangers that now threaten all of the Arab homeland.
Masses of our People and our Nation!
Our people's uprising in Galilee, the Triangle, and the Negev thirty years ago was but the latest chapter in the struggle of our people to protect their land since the dispossession of the Arabs of al-Hawarith, the expulsion of the residents of the Negev, and the construction of the first settlements on Palestinian soil. It was an expression of the depth of the struggle and its roots, and it was also an expression of the tenacious adherence of the Palestinian people to their land and their steadfastness upon it, regardless of however disadvantageous the balance of power was for them. It was the will of a people embedded in the earth, fertilized with the blood of martyrs, who cannot be overcome, and cannot be prevented from carrying on their fight against racism, Israelization, and Judaization--until they gain their total freedom and independence.
Our People, Embedded in Your Land!
We observe the anniversary of the Day of the Land at a time when the arrogant racist enemy opens our land to colonial settlement, to racist division, and separation. The enemy applies its racist hatred to the very soil of this land, to its stones, trees, and people, without regard for international laws or the customs of humanity. "More land, fewer Arabs" has become its favourite slogan. To that end, the enemy is stealing the land of the Jordan Valley, building racist roads, and demolishing houses in Jerusalem and Lydda. It prohibits the extension of building areas in Arab villages. It destroys the farm fields of the people in the Negev and works to evict them. Yet in spite of all that, our people stand steadfast, defending their land and their right to remain upon it, deepening their ties to it, resisting all the racist calls for eviction and deportation.
You Who Stand Steadfast on the Land of the Martyrs!
An observation of the Day of the Land requires that we hail the martyrs who fell for its sake. It requires that we salute the hands that cultivate it, watering it with their sweat and determination, remaining faithful to the struggle of our people by according the land the utmost importance in patriotic work, whether in the sphere of politics, economics, or society. Politically, it is necessary to construct a comprehensive national plan to protect and defend the land as a matter of national rights and sovereignty. Socially and economically, it is necessary to follow a clear political course of supporting Palestinian agriculture, national agricultural production, and the farmers who constitute the guardians of the land. Legally, it is necessary to pass a law on the land that abrogates old regulations that facilitated confiscation and colonial settlement building, one that guards the rights of citizens' individual property, and relentlessly fights the policy of land confiscation, Judaization, house demolition, and Zionist ethnic cleansing policies.
To the Masses of our People Everywhere in the Homeland!
On the Day of the Land we reaffirm our hold on our land as a matter of our true sovereignty, and our clear line of upholding our permanent, legitimate right to the return of the refugees to their land and homes, the establishment of our independent national state on our national soil with Jerusalem as its capital. We affirm to you that we uphold the line of resistance to the occupation, its settlements, its racist wall, its roadblocks, and its fascist checkpoints, and we emphasize that any path other than that of Intifada, national steadfastness and resistance will lead nowhere except to a temporary state in which the enemy will expropriate more than half the West Bank and deny us our Jerusalem as the permanent capital of our state. We affirm to you that no occupation government will give anything more than unilateral solutions aimed at wiping out our cause, but that our national unity is all we need to defeat the plans of Olmert and his masters. This unity must be firmly laid down by a provisional national leadership on the basis of a program built around common denominators, energizing and constructing the Palestine Liberation Organization to represent everyone on a democratic basis, inasmuch as it is the moral entity that embodies the unity of our people and their struggle and is the sole, legitimate representative of this people.
So glory to the martyrs of the land on their eternal day!
Glory to the hands that work and steadfastly guard the land!
Freedom to the prisoners!
By Resistance we will build our sovereignty on our land!
30 March 2006.
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