SENZA CENSURA n.11
Italy, June 2003

THE LAND'S DAY - PFLP PRESS RELEASE

Palestine - 30 March 2003

On the Occasion of the 27th Anniversary of the Day of the Land.

This anniversary of the glorious uprising of our people in 1976 comes as the Zionist enemy is renewing its efforts to usurp Arab land, displaying its insatiable appetite for Palestinian territory and its undisguised lust for Arab land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf. Our people have recorded and continue to record epics of heroism, glory, strength, and vigour in their ongoing defence of the sanctity of the land whose soil our grandfathers toiled. As ever this land remains the sacred tablet on which our people and our nation inscribe epics of defiance, courage, and martyrdom
in their unyielding struggle to defend Arab land and to assert the rights perpetually denied them by powers intoxicated by Judeo-Christian mythology and their own self-importance. The history of Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt - and of all our homelands - attests to our unrelenting commitment to reject the imposition of external values and colonial hegemony.

Today our children are held hostage to the intolerable cycle of violence brought to our shores over fifty years ago by a chosen people and their Western sponsors whom we never chose nor were asked to choose. As our children bleed for crimes not their own, our brothers and sisters in Palestine are forging their own destiny through acts of valour, sacrifice, and legendary defiance against the Zionist war machine and its many nefarious appendages.

As the last 31 months of renewed Intifada attest, the resiliency of our spirit and the valour of our resistance cannot be broken and our people do not hesitate to raise their few weapons of self-defence against the many weapons directed against them by the ferociously arrogant, vicious, and
fascist Zionist aggressors who spare no effort attempting to uproot them.

Upon the rock of our people's defiance the Israeli offensive has been shattered, along with its purpose to undermine our will to prolong the intifada and resistance movement despite every obstacle. This process has yielded undeniable proof of the consistency between our people's words and deeds. The defence of our legitimate rights is not mere rhetoric, but an inviolable principle that cannot be separated from the holiness of our land and every drop of blood shed by our comrades and martyrs to thwart the powers who concert their energies against us. The Anglo-American barbarians have confirmed our worst fears in their eagerness to wage an illegal and savage war of aggression against Iraq, a proud land rich in history, dignity, and culture. The neo-fascist English speakers dispatched by Washington, with the shameless consent of London, are the opposite of liberating troops, as the Bush Administration portrays them; instead they are forces of occupation advancing a global conspiracy to seize not only the land of Palestine and the land of Iraq, but also the land of the whole Arab Nation, in a futile attempt to replace our dignity with the notion to
surrender in the face of great adversity. By perpetrating unspeakable crimes and massacres against our people in Iraq, the Western soldiers expose their own and their governments' desire to eradicate the great achievements of the Iraqi people and to hasten a total Arab capitulation to Zionist-American designs.

In order to further the regional plans harboured by right-wing Israeli policymakers, as well as to subject the wealth of the Arab Nation to their own imperialist plundering, the Hawks in the American Administration are endeavouring to mould international opinion in favour of disregarding the most rudimentary sense of morality and human values in the relations between countries and peoples. But little do they realize that the fraternal Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iraqi people are motivated by their legendary defiance to surmount all obstacles placed before them - and that their defiance grows with the number of US troops, missiles, and bombers being used as proxies for the Zionist Entity. Our people will not stray from their own path or be misled to abandon their contempt for the menace now being posed and escalated by Washington, London and Tel Aviv.

In the deepest sanctuary of their hearts, our people cherish and revere the significance of the Day of the Land, which continues to symbolize their devotion to confront the savage imperialist ploys which for decades have been directed against them, and which currently have assumed unimaginable and intolerable proportions, jeopardizing our land, our rights and our very identity, even the identity of future generations. The US-led invasion must and will be crushed by the defiance and militancy of the Iraqi people and of all our Arab peoples who now more than ever are called upon to affirm the resoluteness of their commitment to their land and their sacred obligation to defend it by taking the following steps:

1. To march forward in pursuit of practical means to implement the will to defend every part of Arab territory. To take immediately useful, popular steps to assist Iraq's glorious defiance and valiant resistance, especially by arranging for the flow of Arab volunteers to fight in defence of Arab rights and honor.

2. To set up means for exerting continuous popular pressure on the Arab official regimes to push them to take practical steps against the savage aggression against fraternal Iraq, most importantly by denying any logistical concessions to the aggressor forces, such as by opening their territories or sharing water or oil supplies with them. It is impermissible that our wealth and our lands should be commandeered for the sake of aggression and for rationalizing this backslide into ancient European primitivism. All foreign bases must be expelled.

3. The connection of the Arab people with the worldwide popular campaign of opposition to the aggression must be deepened in every possible realm of political, academic, and informational exchanges so as to spawn a united effort to confront this loathsome McCarthyism against humanity.

4. We must develop the Islamic and Christian religious dimension of opposition to the aggression, exposing the internal discrepancies and purposeful manipulation of what might be termed Christian Zionism, which seeks to discredit and exploit the Arab region and the world at large.

5. Popular participation in the support of Iraqi steadfastness must be developed in terms of both moral and material support. We must be creative and efficient in our struggle to counteract the massive effort to subjugate the Arab Nation and its future to the aggressive plans America has drafted in conformity to Israeli advice.

6. A comprehensive Arab-Islamic front must be established to draw attention to, and to direct measures against the Zionist imperialist aggression in our region.

7. The international community and its mechanisms must be called upon to reprimand the war crimes being committed - as thoroughly documented in the press ­ by the Anglo-American forces of occupation. A blunt denunciation of these practices must be secured from international institutions and groups, as well as from civic and social organizations. There must be a coordinated appeal for humanity to abide its responsibility to demand an end to this illegal aggression.

8. Representatives of different nationalities must be organized to serve as human shields in Iraq. We are certain that our people and our Arab Nation will be able to defy this heinous aggression by means of our own solidarity, by focusing the efforts of all decent people in our Arab Nation and throughout the world, and by continuing to decry the wantonness of the US-led aggression.

The Day of the Land is a day of glory for our Arab Nation and indeed for all freedom-loving sectors of humanity. It is a day which affirms the sacred right of all people to choose their own future on their own terms and without external interference, far removed from the military threats and humiliating demands of powers obsessed with reshaping the world in their own image.

The Political Bureau
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine