PFLP condemns Israeli killings at Nakba day commemoration
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Occupation crimes on Nakba Day at Ofer will spark increased resistance
The occupation’s crimes at Ofer on Nakba day open the door to the escalation of yet more crimes against the Palestinian people, said Comrade Khalida Jarrar, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She expressed the condolences of the PFLP for the martyrs, Mohammad Odeh Abu Zaher and Nadeem Nawara, who were killed by occupation forces during a demonstration marching towards Ofer commemorating the Nakba and in support of the administrative detainees engaged in an open hunger strike.
She wished a speedy recovery for the wounded injured in the confrontation. “It is clear that the terror of the occupation is increasing and expanding against the Palestinian people. Today a demonstration at Ofer was attacked, directly targeting Palestinian boys and shooting them with live fire at close range in cold blood, assassinating them, killing these two young men and injuring more,” said Jarrar. She called for the broadest participation in the martyrs’ funeral on Friday to make it clear that the young men who fall as martyrs are not alone. “The relationship between the occupation and the Palestinian people is that the occupation is a killer tyranny, and the Palestinian people defend themselves and resist this terror,” she said.
She noted that ongoing escalation by Zionist forces is expected, but that the Palestinian people will not be silent in the face of these crimes, confirmed by the confrontations throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem, especially in Ramallah, al-Khalil and entrances to Jerusalem city. Jarrar noted that this crime reinforces the Front’s conviction of the need to build a unified national resistance front of all factions to organize the strategy of the resistance in all of its forms.
“Popular resistance is a comprehensive concept which includes resistance in all forms to the occupation. It therefore should not exclude any form of resistance, as we are facing a settler colonial military occupation. As an occupied people we struggle in multiple fronts, at the head, armed resistance, civil disobedience and protests such as those against the wall. The struggle waged by the prisoners of freedom inside the occupation prisons is a form of resistance, as is anti-normalization with the occupation, and the political and economic boycott, as well as diplomatic and legal resistance, such as going to the International Criminal Court to put the occupation on trial for its crimes against the Palestinian people,” Jarrar said.
On the anniversary of the Nakba, she emphasized that the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their land from which they were expelled is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and is not subject to limitation. In fact, she noted that this is at the core of the conflict between the Zionist entity and our Palestinian people, stressing the need to uphold this right and reject any initiative that could affect this right.
Jarrar noted that the occupation and the Zionist movement have a clear strategy to make Palestine “the Jewish state,” which is no new strategy yet is repeatedly posed at the negotiating table with the blessing of the United States. “We reaffirm that the right of return is the essence of the struggle and that any demand for recognition of the Jewishness of the state or a national home for the Jewish people means the abolition of the historical fact that Palestinians were removed from their land. This is an attempt to liquidate the right of return. We must remain in open struggle with this occupation until it is swept entirely from our land,” she said.