AL-HADAF : Some observers say that you were elected as part of
a compromise and without real elections. They are referring to a lack of
democracy in the inner party life of the left-wing Palestinian groups. What is
your comment on this ?
SAADAT : If there was a compromise, that would not bother us
at all, if it contained a possible formula for the internal unity of the Party.
Compromise, as is legitimate, necessary, and appropriate in external political
relations, is also legitimate within the framework of relations of parties and
political forces. Compromise also does not invalidate the rules that govern the
work of the leading institutions of the Popular Front and neither does it harm
the democratic process. Any formulation, whoever proposes it, will in the final
analysis be submitted to the Central Committee for ratification.
Despite all that, there is no basis for concern regarding this
legitimate question, because the election process for the position of the
General Secretary and the Deputy General Secretary took place in accordance
with the Party statues for elections that are followed by the Popular Front and
that constitute one of the fundaments of its internal political system. If
there were complete agreement, why would we have competing candidates for the
post of General Secretary ? Why would ballots have been distributed, then
taken up and counted? If there had been agreement, it would have been possible
simply to vote by acclamation in less than an hour without any need for
administrative arrangements to bring together circles of the Central Committee
at the same time, spending a whole day just to carry out an election.
From another standpoint, the notion of compromise implies the existence
of full-blown factions with their own positions and members. These do not exist
in the Popular Front. Yes, there are different viewpoints on this or that
issue, and there are struggles between the different opinions, but there are
absolutely no groups that express their own opinions as factions inside the
bodies of the Front or outside them.
THE UNITY OF THE POPULAR FRONT
AL-HADAF : A lot has been said about the existence of different
trends within the Front, one moderate and the other extremist. How do you
respond to that ? Is the Front free from internal differences or different
orientations ? What are the mechanisms for internal dialogue within the
Popular Front on the different levels of its hierarchy ? Is there any
concern about the Front’s unity ?
SAADAT : It is not strange or wrong for there to be struggle
over politics and ideas inside the Front. In fact, that is the natural logic of
internal life for any democratic left-wing party. Stormy debate over ideas,
policies, and organizational matters gives life and liveliness to any party
that strives to renew itself and to follow the new developments in reality.
It is unnatural and inappropriate for there to be personal
struggles always tied to private interests of individuals that are expressed
most of the time in primitive, tribalistic ways, in the form of unprincipled
coteries that practice sabotage inside and outside the party, tossing aside the
organizational rules that govern relations of the members of the party with its
bodies, and the relations of the party bodies inside the hierarchy and
structure of the party. These bring the subject of struggles down to the lowest
level and prevent their development and elevation to a level where they respond
to the concerns and needs of the people and their national and democratic
cause. An end was put to this personal form of struggle in the life of the
Popular Front more than two decades ago, although features of it reappear in
times of stagnation and crisis. But these are only secondary and marginal manifestations
that do not affect the course of the Party.
The essential issue that we must emphasize is that the Popular
Front is the most inclined of any of the organizations in the Palestinian
national movement to muster the courage to address its situation, problems, and
contradictions. This is not only internally, but also realistically on the
political and public mass level. People who refer to the documents from the
Popular Front’s past congresses will see the depth and responsibility of the
political review that the Front has given itself at every stage. They will see
the courage in its self-criticism of mistaken points of view.
The documents of the Sixth National Congress in their various
political and organizational aspects did not depart from this basis. In the
basic political document, presented in a programmatic form, diverse points of
view were discussed on the subjects, details, and principle areas of difference
inside the Front. The convening of the Sixth National Congress resolved in
general the basic details of the Front’s viewpoint and working program for the
coming period. Everyone - cadres, leaders, and members - came together on the
basis of respect for the Congress’s resolutions. At the same time, they
practice their right to have distinct viewpoints and to maintain dialogue and
struggle over different ideas on the basis of commitment to these resolutions.
Finally I would like to say that we have not yet reached the level
of a model Party. I would say, however, and with conviction, that we are
proceeding after the Sixth National Congress on the path that will lead us
towards fulfilling this ambition, and to achieving qualitative changes in our
development, although we may never be able to attain an absolutely ideal
situation. The sea of life is always renewing itself and whoever wants to swim
in that sea must renew himself at every instant. What is ideal today will be
backward and lifeless tomorrow.
THE NEW ROLE AND MISSION
AL-HADAF : Some people believe that your own personal
situation, as a man wanted by the occupation authorities, will prevent you from
fulfilling your new role and mission. How can you overcome that ?
SAADAT : I am surprised that this question is raised. Is it
necessary that there be one model or arrangement for work in the leadership,
for playing the role of top official that must apply to every Palestinian
organization ? Has not the history of world revolutionary movements
presented examples of leading bodies in parties, all of whom were fugitives,
outlaws, being pursued by the authorities ? In spite of that, they were
able to lead their people towards victory.
If the general secretary of any party can only work in easy
conditions that enable him to hold meetings, to communicate, to use modern
technology, and to move freely wherever his work takes him, that would mean
either that this leader would be out of the country, or that he be on the alert
against doing anything that would anger the Israelis. He would have to declare
the peaceful coexistence of his party with the occupation. In such a situation,
the enemy would facilitate his mission, and he might become even more famous in
the information media that have become adept at manufacturing leaders in our
contemporary world.
In the end, the natural condition of a General Secretary of the
Popular Front and of its leading bodies is to be wanted people, fugitives of
the occupation authorities, inasmuch as we adhere to the Front’s program of
collision with the occupation. At the same time, necessity dictates that the
leaders of the Front must contrive forms for working arrangements that allow
them to fulfill their national role and not lag behind in carrying out their
obligations to our people and their national and democratic cause. Just as
every disease has its cure, the revolutionary knowledge and abundant experience
of the Front are a guarantee that we will overcome all the challenges that the
reality of struggle with our Zionist enemy places before us.
THE PLACE AND ROLE OF THE POPULAR FRONT
AL-HADAF : The Martyrdom of Comrade Abu Ali Mustafa has
motivated many members of the Front who have been hanging back or who had left
the Front to come back to its ranks. The stage that followed Oslo and before
the intifada, on the other hand, witnessed a decline in the role and activity of
the Front. Do you have a plan to bring back the role and place of the Popular
Front, and what are its features ?
SAADAT : What I can say and what reflects reality is that the
Front has correct guidelines in this area, guidelines it has adopted at three stages :
the stage of holding the Sixth National Congress, the stage of the intifada,
and the latest and most outstanding stage when the crime of murdering Abu Ali
Mustafa inflamed the feelings of comrades and friends and of all Palestinian
patriots. It motivated them to return and join the ranks out of loyalty to
their leader, to their party, and to their people.
I say with optimism that our comrades, men and women, who were
officially outside the organizational ranks were never for one day outside of
general patriotic activity. Many of them did not wait for initiatives or plans
to be issued by the Party. Rather, they signed on and merged themselves and
their activity with party work, with the party program. Some of them are cadres
who possess gifts and a valuable stock of experience and who have the ability
also to participate in drawing up the arrangements and programs to win back
those who remain officially outside the ranks of the Party, and also to attract
those among the masses who are ready to join the activity of the Party, its
institutions, or its associated committees.
In the framework of a thorough evaluation and despite my optimism
that is derived from my knowing the strength of character and spirit of
responsibility that the members of the Party and its cadres possess, their
legacy, and militant history, I say that until now the arrangements and
programs that have been drawn up do not respond to what is demanded and
necessary to integrate the army of the Party into an actual organization and to
translate into reality its militant, patriotic, and democratic program. This
requires a serious examination by all levels of the general cadres in the
Popular Front.
THE PATRIOTIC DEMOCRATIC CURRENT
AL-HADAF : The Palestinian Patriotic Democratic Current remains
divided despite the efforts that have been made to bring it together and unite
it in the course of the past year. These efforts have had no reverberation in
the streets. What is your position on that ? When will we hear of a Union
of Palestinian democrats ?
SAADAT : Before uniting the democratic patriotic current there
first must be unanimity on what it means, what its ideological identity is, on
its political and social program, in order to define the motivating forces of
this current and those who support its multifaceted program. This concept is
necessarily fluid, yet it provides the bases for leading our people’s
democratic and patriotic struggle.
As we see it in the Popular Front, for this union to be patriotic
and democratic in word and deed, it can only be leftist and radically and
seriously opposed to the program of the Palestinian Authority. Therefore, it
cannot be a part of a coalition within the Authority’s government. This is
because of the essential opposition of the interests of the popular classes
that a democratic union would represent, to the private interests of the class
coalition that leads the Palestine Authority. Here I am not just using empty
words. I am talking about a vision based on a reading of the program of the
Palestinian bourgeoisie that exercises hegemony over the leadership in the
Palestine Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the spheres of
national struggle and social construction.
The Palestinian bourgeoisie has chosen the path of negotiations and
conciliation with the Zionist entity keeping the struggle as a tactical option
that it uses to improve its position every time its negotiations with Israel
reach an impasse that aggravates its internal contradictions. Regardless of
their intentions, the strategic path that they have chosen for settling the
struggle of the Palestinian people with the Zionist enemy and for attempting to
attain the components of the national establishment - this chosen path, in
light of the real balance of forces on the ground locally, regionally, and
internationally, leads objectively to frittering away the national rights of
our people.
If, as a supposition, this choice in the beginning was by way of an
erroneous analysis, today after the emergence of the Authority and the concentration
of ruling class coalition interests it represents, the chosen path has come to
express a vital and strategic interest in remaining in power. Abandoning the
path of conciliation would threaten to destroy the agreements that brought the
bourgeoisie outside and inside the homeland to the pinnacle of the self-rule
government. Based on this, a position on the Oslo Agreements and on the
negotiations on the basis of Oslo, a position on participation in the Palestine
Authority, and a clear vision of the importance of the intifada and resistance
struggle and their tasks in the Palestinian National program of struggle, and
of the forms and methods of struggle in general - all of these are issues over
which unity should be achieved for us to talk about the birth of a new
framework for the unity of patriotic and democratic forces and organizations.
To put it briefly and concisely, we can say that what we have just
mentioned has not prevented the formation of a circle for dialogue between the
Palestinian democratic forces and individuals and social organizations. It has
gone a reasonable distance and arrived at a draft that still reflects the
continued differences and distinct positions on articulated political questions
such as those on our attitude toward the negotiations and on participating in
the Authority. The viewpoints of the different participating political forces
on these issues have been recorded, and every group has been permitted to bring
out the points on which it differs from what is articulated in the draft. In
the very near future this draft will be distributed and a call issued to attend
an enlarged meeting that we hope will embrace all those interested in the birth
of this new organization.
Although the ongoing discussion has not reached a solution to the
essential differences between the participants in the preparatory committee,
the orientation charted by the preparatory committee is bringing it to the
widest possible social circles for participation in correcting the views and
programs. This approach should be considered a qualitative move towards
activating dialogue to the furthest extent possible. This in itself also
reflects a real and serious beginning of the democracy of dialogue that can
lead to the birth of an appropriate form for Palestinian democratic work.
THE INTIFADA
AL-HADAF : The intifada still is in need of active leadership
in the field, not to mention its need for a political program and collective
political leadership. This situation has opened the door to the initiatives of
individuals and the spread of certain negative phenomena in its performance,
leading to fears that it may be undermined. How will the Popular Front work to
provide political protection for the intifada and to strengthen its leadership
in the field ?
SAADAT : Since the Palestinian people’s intifada broke out,
fed and strengthened by heroic attacks by resistance fighters, it has carried
within itself the possibility of rising and developing and moving on to more
advanced things further along the path of attaining the direct national goals
of our people at this stage. It also carried within itself the opposite
possibility : that it would spin its wheels without moving forward, that
it would fail, or take up a position as a tool for clearing away obstacles that
hinder negotiations between the Palestine Authority and Israel. To put it more
broadly and precisely, it carried within itself a contradiction between two
parallel political programs that dovetail to the extent that the programs
shared interests.
The first program is the one that sees the path of negotiations as
having yielded the maximum possible during at the time of Camp David. This
maximum does not reflect the limit that is nationally acceptable in attaining
our people’s national goals within the framework delimited by the
"ceiling" of what United Nations resolutions permit. These national
goals are the right of Palestinians to return, to achieve self-determination,
and to establish an independent state in the borders of the land occupied in
1967, with Jerusalem as its capital. This program sees that persisting in the
negotiations will lead objectively to lowering that "ceiling," that
nationally acceptable minimum limit, regardless of what anyone intends or
desires. Therefore, this program sees the intifada and resistance struggle as
the alternative dictated by circumstances and by the arrival of the Oslo
negotiations at their destined dead end.
The other program, represented by the Palestine Authority, regards
the strategic path of the plan for attaining our people’s national goals to be
negotiations. It sees the intifada as a tactical means to improve the
"ceiling" of what the Israeli side proposes for a peace settlement.
In the framework of this contradiction, the intifada has continued
and the resistance struggle has escalated. Phases of negotiations have also
continued in Paris, Washington, Sharm al-Shaykh, and Taba. In addition it was
in the framework of this reality that there took place the acceptance of the
Mitchell report - although it was incapable of giving any practical form to a
peace settlement - and also the Tenet document on a cease-fire.
Without resolving this contradiction also, we will proceed talking
about a duality of political rhetoric, about the need to raise our unity in the
field to the level of national political unity, about concern that the intifada
might be overwhelmed by some crippled agreement emerging at a phase of the
negotiations, or a lack of symmetry between the Authority’s institutional
structure and the intifada’s need to develop.
To put it more clearly and exactly and using revolutionary
scientific language far removed from improvisation, we say that a key to the
solution of this problem, which keeps dark clouds covering the sky over the
intifada and threatens to cause the loss of its achievements, a key to this
solution lies with the Palestine Authority and the actual leadership of the
Palestine Liberation Organization. They have a key to unity and to elevating
the level of unity, a key to organizing the intifada and building its
institutions, a key to protecting it. This demands that they answer the
following question : can the Authority allow the intifada to be
transformed into an open clash with the occupation even if that leads to the
legal status of the Authority being taken away by America and the occupation
regime ?
The answer to this determines everything that is required
politically : breaking the ties to Oslo, ending the stage of self-rule and
moving on to the stage of establishing a state and extending its sovereignty in
the framework of a program of struggle that centers on the intifada and
resistance, building a national government or emergency leadership that
reflects the unity of our people on the inside [Palestine] and outside, and
preparation for rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization in accordance
with a democratic mechanism and by way of direct popular elections.
The other key lies with the opposition in its two parts, the
patriotic and democratic and the Islamic. What are the outlines of its vision
of the intifada and the resistance and, given their positions, which side will
they choose in case things come down to aquestion of continuing the intifada
and resistance or continuing the existence of the Palestine Authority? If the
intifada is their choice, then how will the opposition manage its contradiction
- as causes for struggle, or causes for diialogue, while there is no dialogue
inside the institutions of the PLO and the framework of the patriotic and
Islamic forces ?
Along those lines, the new international circumstances have
deepened the fears of the Palestine Authority, fears that have been with them
and never left them, that the continuation of the intifada and the resistance,
and their exceeding the bounds acceptable to Israel, will give the Sharon
government an opportunity really to threaten the existence of the Authority and
to raise a sharp contradiction between the interests of those associated with
the Authority, on the one hand, and the continuation of the intifada and resistance,
on the other.
The killing of the racist Zionist Ze’evi and the Sharon
government’s large-scale offensive that followed it set off urgent warning
alarms in the salons and parlors of the Palestine Authority, which moved
immediately and undertook what the masses consider, and what they themselves
used to consider, inappropriate or unacceptable, particularly after the land of
Palestine had been dyed red by the blood of more than seven hundred martyrs and
tens of thousands of wounded.
The question comes back to pose itself once again, "What is to
be done ?" It finds only one answer : whoever sees in the
intifada a way to the deliverance of the people must struggle first against
himself. Secondly, he must struggle to get the Authority to choose the option that
is in line with the program of the people, without excluding any democratic
means of struggle. Thirdly, he must struggle against the occupation with all
the power and resolve he has. The opportunities that are given to peoples in
each era are few and they might wait for dozens of years if they do not reach
out and grasp them with strength.
NATIONAL POLITICAL DECISION MAKING
AL-HADAF : How do you see the possibilities and paths to
participation in Palestinian national political decision making ? Will it be
through the Palestine Authority’s monopolization of decision making even in the
framework of a government of National Unity, or will it be through the
Palestine Liberation Organization ? And what will be the form and content
of the national emergency leadership for which you are calling ?
SAADAT : I answered part of this question in the course of my
answer to the previous question. On that basis, I would say in summary that the
leading institution that represents the unity of our people and embodies the content
of the aims of its national program is the Palestine Liberation Organization.
It is the PLO that must constitute the means for Palestinian decision making.
On this basis the first requirement for achieving the participation
of all groups and parties and the people in political decision making begins
with rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization. This must begin with the
Palestinian National Council, which still has the composition it was formed
with in 1968.
Today the "legality of the struggle" is no longer
sufficient to confer legitimacy on the PLO as the representative of our people.
It has come to require the support of popular legality through the direct,
popular election of representatives of the Palestinian guerrilla organizations
and institutions to the National Council insofar as that is possible. And that
is possible in most concentrations of the masses of our population. This would
also conform to the Basic Organization of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, second section, paragraph five.
By relying on the PLO as our authority in decision making, we will
have met the first of our conditions for an agreement on the outlines of a
political program for the period of the intifada, since it would mean the end
of the institutions of the self-rule authority, as expressed groups, for this
period. It would mean the transfer of authority to the PLO for a transitional
stage until elections for the institutions of the PLO are ready. This is what
we called for in the last session of the Central Council. It also formed the
basis for our resumption of participation in the Executive Committee.
With the launch and continuation of the intifada the need increased
for these steps and for building the institutions of the Palestinian people to
provide a conditional cohesiveness for supporting the development of the
intifada and developing it. At the time when the intifada came to push things
in this direction, it also threw down a number of complications besides,
providing a permit for the birth of a transitional form that prepares the way
to the implementation of these requirements.
On that basis, the proposal tabled by the Popular Front in November
sought the transfer of authority to the Palestine Liberation Organization and a
declaration of the end of the stage of administrative self-rule. We saw in the
Executive Committee, after it was expanded to include all the political forces
of our people, and all the popular and social organizations, a model for a
temporary national emergency leadership.
Its formation would be preceded by a comprehensive national
dialogue in which all the political and social representative groups of our
people would participate in laying out the political program of this
leadership. It would be a program that would focus on setting up the
Palestinian state and extending its sovereignty and on supporting the intifada
and the resistance as the basis for regaining sovereignty in the remainder of
the occupied territories. It would also focus on the sort of economic
development that would respond to the needs of developing the intifada and
resistance and that center on building an economy of steadfastness and
resistance, and radiating democracy in its various forms. As regards the
negotiations, it would declare its refusal to negotiate on the basis of the
Oslo Agreement and demand to take the file of the Palestinian cause to the
United Nations as a legal authority that focuses on the resolutions of
international law and as a framework that can force Israel to implement United
Nations resolutions that give our people their right to return, self
determination, and to their independent state.
Despite the fact that these outlines were ignored, they still
represent what is needed and constitute the bridge over which our people will
cross from a narrow passage out to the open road of securing the achievements
that will take them towards attaining their national program. At the same time
there remain subjects requiring popular discussion or struggle for their
attainment. Dialogue by itself changes these visions into rhetorical
expressions in a well with no walls. What can transform them into reality is
the combination of responsible dialogue and mass struggle that presses for the
creation of the equations that it throws out as working problems.
THE POPULAR CHARACTER OF THE INTIFADA
AL-HADAF : The popular character of the intifada is still
limited. What are the mechanisms for activating it, and what is the role of the
institutions of civil society in that ?
SAADAT : The popular character of the intifada cannot be
activated by a bureaucratic political decree from above, issued by the
Patriotic and Islamic leadership. Rather, the institutions that represent the
different sectors of our people must undertake to draw up their programs and
activities so as to bring about the participation of all those sectors of our
people.
But the Palestinian mentality has developed according to the
principle "either black or white." I say this because some might
believe that the escalation of the resistance constitutes a substitute for or
an obstacle to that participation. This needs to be corrected. For popular
resistance in the broad sense of the term implies both armed resistance and
popular activities at the same time. Popular activities spur the escalation of the
resistance, and the reverse is also true and logical.
Therefore, it is necessary that the leadership of the political
forces - out of which branch the leaderships of the popular institutions that
represent all social sectors - push for the activation of our popular
institutions. This can produce the necessary integration between the work of
the vanguard (undertaken by the formations of the resistance) and the various,
indeed unlimited, forms of popular struggle. In this way our struggle can take
on the form and content of a comprehensive popular revolution.
RELATIONS OF POLITICAL PARTIES WITH CIVIL SOCIETY
AL-HADAF : How do you see the relationship between the
political parties and the organizations of civil society including
non-governmental organizations ? What is the mechanism for linking them
together ?
SAADAT : That mechanism requires a basis of productivity and
professionalism rather than membership in one of the political organizations or
in extended families, or patronage. The popular institutions - aside from the
aspects which could be criticized, such as their sources of funding, or the
role of this or that particular institution - with their general orientation on
the network’s activity and actions, serve to complement the role of the political
parties in supporting the intifada and resistance struggle. This is in addition
to their nominal roles in responding to the needs of the poor among the people,
whether that be in the area of health care, or agriculture, or human rights, or
family care, or help with household finance, or training for qualifications, or
other fields of endeavor.
This role has become prominent in the area of energizing the
struggle for the right of return, and energizing Europeans around the slogans
for international and popular protection, whereby groups of volunteers take up
positions in areas of confrontation. In addition, there was the outstanding
role played by the network of such groups in the Durban Conference and the
level of pressure and influence they exerted in cooperation with the Arab
popular institutions and friendly international institutions.
To sum up, we view with satisfaction the role of the popular
institutions and the maturation of their leaderships, but we should not stop at
just "being satisfied." We must reinforce the role of these
institutions by energizing the complementary, democratic relationship between
them and the political parties, and by impelling their leaders to advanced
positions in national decision making and in leading bodies of the intifada,
including their positions in the parties’ centers of political decision making,
in order to bring about a situation where there is mutual influence between
their role and the role of the political parties, and in order to bring about
the necessary development of the networks and channels of political activity in
Palestinian society.
SLOGANS
AL-HADAF : The Popular Front made a name for itself by its
innovation of popular strategic slogans. But these slogans have stopped short
of being translated into detailed practical slogans, whether nationally or
democratically and socially. Is there a plan to overcome this difficulty ?
How is the Popular Front working to create deeply rooted, detailed slogans that
also enjoy popularity ?
SAADAT : The description you gave in your question is correct,
and it reflects an organizational, structural, and programmatic defect. The
basis for this defect is that our leadership does not bring together in its
primary leading center all the preliminaries, outlines, and draft resolutions
of organizations, departments, and specialized committees that it needs in the
fields of national and social democratic struggle. In addition, the central
leadership has a weakness in the area of its role in the field. This is the
role that brings it close to feeling the concerns of the masses, to defining
their needs, and re-formulating them in the form of a slogan and a goal and in
laying down the mechanism to attain it.
Our comrade, the outstanding leader Abu Ali Mustafa felt this
defect and proposed two essential points for a program to organize our work.
The first focused on the need for the Central Committee to divide work among
specialized committees like parliamentary committees to energize it as a
comprehensive institution striving to achieve comprehensive development of the
Party’s mechanisms in all fields. The second point was a reorganization of the
specialized departments - the political and the organizational - as specialized
leading committees operating within the Political Bureau.
The point also provided for the addition of two departments :
the first for democratic and social work that was to be an incubator for
preparing resolutions and drafts by specialists in those areas. The second new
department was to be the Department for our People’s Affairs in the part of
Palestine occupied in 1948, which would pay careful attention to the specifics
of the struggle of our people in this part of the homeland and would have the
ability to set priorities in defining goals and giving direct guidance in the
struggle. This was so that our vision would be realistic and able to amass the
factors needed to arouse the hidden strengths to bring about the necessary
militant action and to achieve a comprehensiveness in the mechanisms of our
party for all the communities of our people in all the areas where they live.
When conditions did not promote the formation of the first proposed
committees, our programmatic planning turned to the formation of the
specialized departments, with the intent to re-energize the Political Bureau
and Central Committee as contemporary institutions to step-by-step strengthen
the relations of the leading bodies with the communications channels to the
masses and the departments and committees that branch out from them. By grasping
that second ring we can grasp all the necessary links to overcome our
shortcomings. I believe that we have taken steps forward along these lines
under the leadership of our comrade and leader, the martyr Abu Ali, and we must
complete the task, and move our feet on the ground firmly and with confidence.
THE ARAB EMBRACE
AL-HADAF : One of the weak points of the intifada has been the
lack of an official Arab embrace of it, and the weakness of the embrace of the
Arab people. Do you have an idea of how to move on this level ?
SAADAT : To grasp this subject at its first and most basic
level, I would say that before the intifada needs an official Arab embrace, it
requires an official Palestinian embrace. Until now, and as I indicated
earlier, the official Palestinian leadership has not defined the position of
the intifada in its program. This justifies us in referring to a lack of a
unified national program to protect and support the intifada. Therefore,
providing an official Palestinian embrace to the intifada will at the same time
provide the premises for an official Arab embrace.
If the official Palestinian position does not hold together when it
is presented in Arab official circles, that fact will provide a cover for the
incapacity of many of the Arab regimes, allowing them to slip out of their
national duty to the intifada. The simplest example is the issue of breaking
diplomatic relations and stopping all forms of normalization with the enemy.
How can such a decision be taken when open and secret political meetings
[between the Palestinian leadership and the Israelis] have continued all
throughout the course of the intifada including in its most intensely escalated
periods ? Or, how can we insist upon a resolution reaffirming our stand
for a comprehensive solution of all the issues of the struggle with Israel, and
on all the fronts - Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian - while the smoke that
rises from the kitchens that cooked up the agreements of Taba, Washington, and
Cairo hasn’t cleared for a moment ?
The point of beginning and the tie that makes our position solid
and firm is securing a solid Palestinian national embrace for the intifada.
This in turn will transform us into a body to exert real pressure, in addition
to the pressure of the Arab people, to work for solid and firm official Arab
resolve.
As to the popular embrace throughout the whole Arab Homeland, this
matter requires effort and a systematic plan in order to activate all the forms
and frameworks of popular Arab activity, so as to supply them with a solid
position derived from the field of confrontation, and with the means of support
that we need. This is apart from the fact that it is a project of the forces
that are in agreement with the option of the intifada and resistance as a basis
for achieving our Palestinian people’s goals at this stage. It is also a basic
task for our people’s political forces beyond Palestine.
THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION
AL-HADAF : Since 1990 the situation has been hard on the
Palestinian cause. That situation was made more complicated after the
explosions in New York and Washington and the ensuing war against Afghanistan
and other candidate countries. How will you handle these circumstances in a way
that serves the Palestinian cause ?
SAADAT : If we agree that the intifada and the resistance
constitute a situation wherein our people are defending their national rights,
their land, their holy places, their national identity, and their culture and
dignity, then based on that we must demand a solution that goes beyond the declared
Israeli maximum.
This approach leads to the consecration of the logic of pragmatism
while it obscures the principled opposition that we must take toward the new
imperialist hegemony of globalism being forced upon the countries and peoples
of the world. This approach also leads objectively, under the mantle of warding
off dangers and denying Sharon opportunities to profit from the international
situation under American cover, to pressure on the Palestinian Authority to
stop the resistance and the intifada, lest it be consigned to the
"terrorist" category.
This position has had ramifications, beginning with the repression
of the student demonstration in Gaza, and going as far as opening fire on them.
There has been an attack on the Popular Front because it undertook to kill one
of the most prominent symbols of racism and criminality in the Zionist
government in response to its policy of assassinations and its targeting of the
first political ranks of the Palestinian leadership. I hope that this does not
continue, because a policy that is not built on a principled basis, that
focuses on illusions, will only lead to frittering away our factors of strength
and our means of self-defense, leaving us exhausted and incapable even of
achieving the kind of solutions that were offered to us in the past.
The second approach [to the intifada] centers on the principled
position that is based on the place occupied by the Palestinian struggle on the
map of global contradictions and the international and Arab revolutionary
effort. This leads us to stake out a position that condemns the form of
terrorism exported by Americans as globalism, the latest form of their
imperialism ; to use this position to forge alliances between the Arab
regimes and the Arab popular forces that are opposed to the latest war of
aggression against the peoples ; and to strive to form the broadest
possible world front to stand in the face of the new imperialism.
Of overarching importance is that this three-fold tactic be applied
in tandem with an escalation of the intifada and the resistance. Otherewise, if
the intifada and the resistance decline while more moderate parallel activities
are being pursued, the self-interest of our Palestinian people will be
forfeited. One may choose to avoid confronting a bull while it is stampeding
around him, but avoiding confrontation at such a moment does not allevieate the
eventual or present danger of falling under its hooves. Avoiding confrontation
might appear "wise" and "logical" to one who draws up his
policies in the coffee houses, offices, and parlors of diplomatic activity. But
this approach appears impotent to one who builds his political position on the
results of battles in the field. The contrast likens that between a slave who
sees his master angry and breaks his strike out of fear of punishment and the
free man who works as a slave, confronts his master, and starts a slave revolt
that sweeps away his master’s authority, liberating all slaves and returning
bread, humanity, and dignity to each one of them. The point of departure in
this situation is in defining the goals of the mad bull. We all agree that
these goals are evident in America’s efforts to achieve total world hegemony.
This hegemony means that even if the bull does not trample us today, it will
trample us under its hooves and finish us off tomorrow. So which is the more
useful policy, then, to resist this bull, or to throw ourselves under its
hooves ?
WORLD EXPERIENCE
AL-HADAF : There exist international situations that in many
ways parallel the Palestinian situation, such as Ireland, the Basques, and
South Africa. Is the Popular Front clearly familiar with these situations,
especially as regards secret and open work, forms of struggle, and
organization ? What can you derive from these situations that can be
applied to the work of the Popular Front ?
SAADAT : I agree that there are broad parallels between the
conditions of the struggle of our people and the struggle of the Irish and
Basque peoples, particularly after the birth of the Oslo Authority and the
deepening of linkages between our national and our social democratic goals.
This conclusion leads to the need for organizational forms of work that are
appropriate to the actual conditions of our struggle.
What is needed is a solid apparatus for struggle that is able to
resist and to achieve the successes that lead to victory, the successes that we
need for our national struggle against the occupation. In addition we need an
open political and mass organization to lead the masses to play a national role
and defend their democratic and social democratic rights.
The preliminaries for this form of struggle were there in the years
of struggle against the occupation, and it was possible to effect a qualitative
leap in the mass organization, to unite it into a mass political apparatus that
constitutes the open side of the party organization. What happened, in fact,
was that things were turned over and we walked on our heads, rather than on our
feet. This caused great damage in the form of losing mass support and great
power in the conditions of an explosion of the national struggle with the
occupation, and in past times it resulted in lagging behind in the social
democratic struggle.
Nevertheless, argument is still taking place within leading circles
of the party with the aim of arriving at the most correct organizational work
forms, and with the aim of building all the necessary organizational forms to
lead the complex struggle of our people in the national and social democratic
spheres. I believe that reality and the ramifications of struggle with the
occupation will bring us closer to building ourselves up according to the most
correct form, the one most appropriate for our work.
From an interview with al-Hadaf magazine, at the web site of Agence Presse
Association.
Return to Ahmad
Saadat biography.