The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine reiterated its firm position against negotiations, rejecting the Amman meeting between Palestinian officials and the occupation state, saying that such secretive meetings aim to lure the Palestinian cause back into the futile path of negotiations and are dangerous to Palestinian rights. The Front said that this meeting and its results pose a terrible threat of new Palestinian official concessions that serve only Israel, the U.S. and the Quartet at the expense of the Palestinian people and their national cause.
The Front said further that the Palestinian cause is being exploited to cover the occupation’s crimes: home demolitions, land confiscation, mosque burnings, ethnic cleansing, attacks on holy sites, exclusive Judaization of Jerusalem, the siege on Gaza, the 63 years of displacement of millions of Palestinian refugees, the denial of Palestinian rights to return, self-determination and independence.
The front called upon Palestinian officialdom to reject the results and immediately stop holding such new negotiations and meetings under any name, saying that they are deceptive and misleading. It said that the United Nations must take up its responsibilities to hold the occupation accountable for its crimes and violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
The meeting in Amman is an unforgivable action, said Comrade Jamil Mizher, member of the Central Committee of the PFLP. He said that this action only weakens the Palestinian position and delivers a dangerous political message to the international community regarding the rights of the Palestinian people. Mizher said that the Palestinian Authority “must not return in any way to this absurd and useless path…such actions bring us back to the dead end of futile negotiations…and only encourages the occupation policies and practices of aggression against the Palestinian people.”
Mizher dismissed the claims of Mahmoud Abbas and the PA that there was support among Palestinian factions for these actions, saying that the Front has rejected all of these useless and dangerous negotiations for over two decades, and demanded a total end to this path. He also challenged the claim that this meeting does not constitute negotiations, noting that the meeting will include border and security questions, which are clearly negotiations. Furthermore, he added that the Front has not and will never give any mandate for such absurd meetings, noting that they weaken the Palestinian position and serve only the occupation.
Mizher emphasized that all reliance must be on the Palestinian people and their strength, and never upon the Quartet and the United States, when all recognize that both parties have consistently stood firmly with the occupation and attempted to pressure the Palestinian side and undermine Palestinian rights. Mizher said that we must work by all means to raise the price of the occupation, in order to force it to respond to Palestinian national demands and rights.
Comrade Maher al-Taher, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP and leader of its branch outside Palestine, concurred that the meeting in Amman between the Palestinian Authority and Israeli representatives is a political violation, a major blow to efforts to restore Palestinian national unity, and in no way serves the interests of the Palestinian people. Comrade Taher emphasized that in order to build Palestinian national unity, it is essentially that all reliance on negotiations and the path of Oslo, which has proven repeatedly to be a destructive failure, be abandoned.
Taher said on Al-Alam TV that such actions serve only Israeli interests, as Israel continues to build settlements, ethnically cleanse Jerusalem and refuses to acknowledge any Palestinian rights and yet the Palestinian Authority – in violation of its own promises and statements – continues to meet with its representatives under the auspices of the Quartet. He noted that there was no agreement – or even discussion – of this meeting among Palestinian forces and that this unilateral and destrutive action by the Palestinian Authority has deeply damaged attempts to restore Palestinian national unity, saying that it appears that the PA continues to rely on the utterly failed political track of Oslo, for which the Palestinian people have paid a very heavy price.
Taher said that this is a decline even from the official position of the Palestinian Authority, noting that the Authority had promised to not return to negotiations unless there was a complete Israeli settlement freeze. He also pointed to the motives of the Quartet in arranging such a meeting, saying that the US seeks to stop any efforts to build meaningful Palestinian national unity, and also to attempt to restore the international image of Israel, and to make clear that the PA’s promise to not return to negotiations was empty. Taher said that the US and the Quartet “will not give us our rights; they will only be won by continuing all forms of resistance…we must look seriously at our options and delineate a new Palestinian strategy.”
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