• Banning the payment of all kinds of taxes, boycotting Zionist goods—industrial or agricultural—and completely withholding labor from Zionist settlements.
• Refusal by our sons in the [Gaza] Strip to receive the new identity cards. The popular committees are called upon to play a mobilizing role toward that end to consolidate the boycott and in compliance with PLO resolutions—the Unified Leadership of the Uprising.
• An intensification of the formation and organization of popular committees, neighborhood committees, health committees, sentry committees, security committees, agricultural committees, mobilization guidance committees, information committees, and strike forces—the militant arm of the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising—as well as the economic committees, and encouraging, developing, and entrenching household agriculture and rationalized consumption and spending.
• Directing and intensifying blows to dissenters from the will of our people in the appointed village and city council committees, customs offices, and police and intensifying the use of the means of popular struggle beginning with the stone and ending with the gasoline bomb against all the enemies.
O masses of our struggling people, the PLO—the Unified National Leadership—calls on all segments of our people to mark the following days with sweeping mass anger coinciding with forthcoming political events by executing and implementing the following militant activities:
First, dedicating 28 and 29 May to massive marches and rallies involving all national cadres, organizations, and personalities so our voice—the voice of the uprising—may be heard loud and clear by the superpower leaders in Moscow.
Second, dedicating 30 May to an all-out strike and raising the pitch of the militant struggle to mark the Gorbachev-Reagan summit and increasing the writing of nationalist slogans and raising flags in all villages, cities and camps.
Third, dedicating 1 June—International Children’s Day—to children’s demonstrations raising Palestinian slogans and flags. In the meantime, various committees, especially committees of solidarity with victims of our people, will distribute gifts to the children of the martyrs, the wounded, detainees, and deportees.
Fourth, dedicating 3, 4, 5, and 6 June to full-scale strikes to mark the [Mideast] visit of Shultz, the Lebanese invasion, and the 22d [as heard] anniversary of the Zionist occupation. In the meantime, our masses and strike forces will stage demonstrations and confrontations with occupiers and their agents. May the land scorch the feet of the usurping occupiers and their agents.
Fifth, dedicating 7 June to Arab solidarity with the glorious uprising of our people, holding massive demonstrations, and urging Arab masses to stage rallies of sympathy with our victorious uprising.
Call No. 18 (May 12, 1988)
O masses of our heroic people, who have destroyed the illusions of occupation in more than 20 years, who have refuted the claims about our people’s coexistence with occupation, and who have destroyed all attempts to create feeble alternatives to our people’s sole legitimate representative, the PLO, through destroying alternatives to the right to repatriation, to self-determination, and to an independent national state: You continue to proceed on the road through your suffering, through the huge sacrifices, and through the constant flow of blood on the road to achieving freedom and independence for our militant people.
Here is the victorious uprising destroying the apparatus and tools of the fascist occupation, which were established to serve the occupation’s interests and to link the interests of our people’s masses with the occupation. On the ruins of these tools you are building the apparatus of the heroic people’s authority through the popular committees with their various tasks.
Here is the uprising restoring to our national cause its natural size as the cause of a people who are struggling for the sake of their legitimate national rights. This cause has thus become an important topic on the agenda of the Moscow summit as well as the major topic at the summit of the uprising in Algiers.
While saluting the combatants who returned to the ranks of the mother revolution, thereby rejecting the spilling of blood for the sake of achieving the objectives of those who reneged on our people’s will, as well as those of Abu Musa [Sa’id Musa Muraghah], the one who reneged on this will, and his clique, the uprising masses appeal to the Lebanese nationalist movement to unify its ranks to confront the Zionist enemy and end their narrow differences, thus unifying the militant endeavors of the militant and pan-Arab Lebanese-Palestinian parties to make them serve as a significant factor and a principal pillar conducive to the achievement of victory.
At the same time, these masses appeal to all those exerting sincere efforts to accelerate the process of inter-Palestinian dialogue, to bolster the militant relationship with Syria, and to build an Arab base of steadfastness capable of achieving our nation’s pan-Arab objectives. O you, masses of the valiant uprising. O you, people of martyrs. With steady and confident strides, we, along with you, are going through one phase after another in our popular uprising and revolt, strengthening the people’s rules and authority on the road to general and comprehensive civil disobedience, which will take the form of securing a complete boycott between our people and the institutions of the occupying authority in all spheres.
This requires that we display further observance of the program of the phase and of that of the phases of the popular uprising, as well as of the decisions made by the Unified National Leadership, the PLO leadership.
We call upon our masses to remain alert and display serious and studied readiness to meet the requirements of civil disobedience. This readiness can materialize through providing the necessary supplies which can provide citizens’ needs for at least one month. It includes enhancing selfsufficiency, displaying an eagerness to provide adequate quantities of water by preserving water wells, making available first aid, and enhancing the program of various committees—the popular, guard, information, and labor committees. Furthermore, this readiness can also materialize when emphasis is laid on the formation of further strike groups, the militant arm of our blessed popular revolution.
The PLO leadership, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, treading on the path of realizing comprehensive civil disobedience, emphasizes the following: 1. All sectors and walks of life are to enhance the complete boycott [of Israeli authorities] through their failure to pay all forms of taxes to the suckers of our people’s blood.
2. The comprehensive boycott is to be enhanced and continued by our workers through their failure to head for their worksites inside the institutions of the Zionist entity and its crumbling organizations.
3. The Unified National Leadership calls upon our heroic masses in the proud Gaza Strip to boycott the receipt of identity cards, which the enemy authorities seek to force upon them with the objective of restricting the movement of citizens and forcing them to pay taxes. This hateful method seeks to weaken the growing flame of the uprising. Hence, we call upon you, our masses, to boycott completely this measure.
4. The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising calls upon the general directors working in the departments of the Civil Administration in the Gaza Strip to respond favorably to the call voiced by the uprising masses by tendering their resignations. We call upon the strike forces, the knights of the great clashes, and the faithful masses of our people to strike with an iron fist all those who refuse to carry out this decision. We also call upon the guard and security committees to maintain surveillance over these directors and to carry out their program in this regard.
5. The Unified National Leadership salutes the uprising masses and our valiant kinfolk in the camps of the Gaza Strip for their steadfastness and their legendary challenge, which took the form of breaking the curfews imposed on Palestinian camps and also the form of staging tumultuous demonstrations and violent clashes against the Nazi occupation troops.
6. The Unified Leadership of the Uprising calls upon our people’s masses to form solidarity committees inside the occupied ho
meland to bolster the ties of social solidarity, cooperation, and mutual aid among our well-off families and our families that have been harmed.
7. The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising calls upon the lawyer’s sector to form information and legal committees to work intensively to expose the Nazi methods being perpetrated by the occupation authorities against our masses, our prisoners, and our deportees—methods that contravene all international and human laws and norms. Special emphasis is to be laid on the methods being used by the occupation authorities in the new Nazi detention camps; namely, Ansar, the Negev desert prison, the Al-Zahiriyah prison, the Al-Fari’ah prison, and the remaining prisons.
8. The Unified National Leadership stresses the need to remain alert and to beware of forged statements which are being distributed by the well-known agent Hamadi al-Rishq by orders of Yitzhaq Rabin.
On the occasion of the blessed ’Id al-Fitr, the PLO leadership, the Unified National Leadership of the popular uprising, greets the masses of our people, detainees, wounded, and the families of our martyrs—the candles. It also greets the harmed families, our merchants, workers, deportees, and the revolution fighters in all arenas. It congratulates them on the blessed feast, which coincides with the escalation of our gigantic popular revolution and the victorious beginning of its 6th month. It greets our sons’ heroic stands in their struggle over the recent months and during the blessed Al-Qadr night [the night between the 26th and 27th of Ramadan in which the Koran was revealed].
Naturally, the Unified Leadership calls for concealing all celebrations and to confine them to performing religious rites, prayers, and chants of God is great. It calls for formation of further committees and intensification of the following militant programs and activities on the path to a comprehensive civil disobedience: 1. On 13 May, the masses of our people shall head for mosques, perform prayers over the souls of our righteous martyrs, and take to the streets in massive demonstrations against the occupation and the herds of its armed settlers.
2. The 15th of May, the ill-omened day of the catastrophe, shall be considered a day for a comprehensive strike, a day of distinctive anger, and a new beginning in which Palestinian flags shall be hoisted over houses, poles, village council buildings, appointed municipalities, and everywhere. On this day the heroic strike groups shall confront the occupiers and all those departing from the will of our people, including the members of the appointed municipal councils, taxes, police, and misled criminal agents.
3. The 1st day of the blessed ’Id al-Fitr shall be announced as a day for national mourning in protest of Arab and Islamic silence and impotence and to honor and glorify the blood of our revolutionary martyr and symbol, Brother Abu Jihad, and all the righteous uprising martyrs. On this day, our masses shall head [for mosques] to perform prayers and visit the tombs of martyrs and cemeteries and shall stage popular processions and massive, mammoth demonstrations in defiance of the Zionist means of repression and torture.
4. The Unified National Leadership calls on the masses of our people and various committees to pay solidarity visits to the families of our heroic martyrs, prisoners, wounded, and deportees on the 2d and 3d days of the blessed ’Id.
5. The 21st of May shall be declared a day of comprehensive strike and a day for enhancing popular teaching in all our cities, villages, and camps in protest of the inhuman arbitrary decisions of closing down various centers of learning. The teachers sector is called upon to organize protest processions.
6. The rest of the days and Fridays and Sundays shall be considered days for enhancing and intensifying the work of various militant activities, especially the strike forces, and for dealing painful blows to the flabby bodies of occupiers and their agents and setting ablaze the ground under the feet of the Zionist occupiers with fire and anger.
7. With the exception of what has been mentioned, our masses shall be committed to all the decisions declared in previous calls, especially regarding the hours of partial trade strike, which will be as usual.
O valiant sons of our people and makers of Palestinian glory. We will continue to resist with a strong will, profound belief, great sacrifices, and innovative and creative revolutionary action on the path of martyrs. We will continue to challenge all forms and means of systematic Zionist repression. O our heroic masses and strike forces, hurl more stones and flaming Molotov cocktails on all enemies and the forces of wickedness, injustice, and aggression. Continue using bows and arrows, poisoned nails, and all means of popular struggle.
Carry out further committee militant activities toward a stage of comprehensive civil disobedience on the path of an independent Palestinian state under the leadership of the PLO. Victory is undoubtedly imminent. Together, we will achieve our liberation and certain national independence on the soil of Palestine with Jerusalem as our everlasting capital. We will triumph.
King Hussein of Jordan: Disengagement from the West Bank (July 31, 1988)
Our decision as you know, comes after thirty-eight years of the unity of the two banks, and fourteen years after the Rabat summit resolution, designating the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. It also comes six years after the Fez summit resolution that agreed unanimously on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as one of the bases, and results of the peaceful settlement. . . .
We had never imagined that the preservation of the legal and administrative links between the two banks could constitute an obstacle to the liberation of the occupied Palestinian land. Consequently, during the period before adopting these measures we did not see a reason to do so, particularly since our position which calls for, and supports, the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination was clear beyond equivocation.
Lately, it has transpired that there is a general Palestinian and Arab orientation towards highlighting the Palestinian identity in a complete manner, in every effort or activity related to the Palestinian question and its developments. It has also become clear that there is a general conviction, that maintaining the legal and administrative links with the West Bank, and the ensuing Jordanian interaction with out Palestinian brothers under occupation, through Jordanian institutions in the occupied territories, contradicts this orientation. It is also viewed that these links hamper the Palestinian struggle to gain international support for the Palestinian cause, as the national cause of a people struggling against foreign occupation.
In view of this line of thought, which is certainly inspired by genuine Palestinian will, and Arab determination to support the Palestinian cause, it becomes our duty to be part of this direction, and to respond to its requirements. After all, we are a part of our nation, supportive of its causes, foremost among which is the Palestinian cause. Since there is a general conviction that the struggle to liberate the occupied Palestinian land could be enhanced by dismantling the legal and administrative links between the two banks, we have to fulfill our duty, and do what is required of us. At the Rabat summit of 1974 we responded to the Arab leaders appeal to us to continue our interaction with the occupied West Bank through the Jordanian institutions, to support the steadfastness of our brothers there. Today we respond to the wish of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and to the Arab orientation to affirm the Palestinian identity in all its aspects. We pray God that this step be a substantive addition to the intensifying Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence. . . .
At the same time it has to be understood in all clarity and without any ambiguity or equivocation, that our measures regarding the West Bank, concern only the occupied Palestinian land and its people. They naturally do not relate in any way to the Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. They all have the full rights of citizenship and all its obligations, the same as any other citizen irrespective of his origin. They are an integral part of the Jordanian state. They bel
ong to it, they live on its land and they participate in its life and all its activities. Jordan is not Palestine; and the independent Palestinian state will be established on the occupied Palestinian land after its liberation, God willing. There the Palestinian identity will be embodied, and there the Palestinian struggle shall come to fruition, as confirmed by the glorious uprising of the Palestinian people under occupation.
National unity is precious in any country; but in Jordan it is more than that. It is the basis of our stability, and the spring-board of our development and prosperity. It is the foundation of our national security and the source of our faith in the future. It is the living embodiment of the principles of the Great Arab Revolt, which we inherited, and whose banner we proudly bear. It is a living example of constructive plurality, and a sound nucleus for wider Arab unity.
Based on that, safeguarding national unity is a sacred duty that will not be compromised. Any attempt to undermine it, under any pretext, would only help the enemy carry out his policy of expansion at the expense of Palestine and Jordan alike. Consequently, true nationalism lies in bolstering and fortifying national unity. Moreover, the responsibility to safeguard it falls on every one of you, leaving no place in our midst for sedition or treachery. With God’s help, we shall be as always, a united cohesive family, whose members are joined by bonds of brotherhood, affection, awareness, and common national objectives.
It is most important to remember, as we emphasize the importance of safeguarding national unity, that stable and productive societies, are those where orderliness and discipline prevail. Discipline is the solid fabric that binds all members of a community in a solid, harmonious structure, blocking all avenues before the enemies, and opening horizons of hope for future generations.
The Israel-Arab Reader Page 49
