Summary
The Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, called by Said the Popular Democratic Front and the Democratic Front (DPF), is one of the most prominent organizations grouped together in the Palestine Liberation Organization, an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and, with the Popular Front, a principal rival of Fateh. Born in 1969, it first articulated the transitional program the PLO adopted in 1974.
Details
- In Said, Chapter Three III: the most prominent organizations grouped together in the PLO are Fateh, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (an offshoot of the PFLP), Saiqa and a slew of considerably smaller units (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.180 / printed p.159).
- Fateh’s rivals, principally the Popular Front and later the impressive Popular Democratic Front, from the outset had a much more problematized awareness than Fateh seemed to have of the difficulties, the context, and the ideological issues surrounding the question of Palestine (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.182 / printed p.161).
- The Democratic Front (DPF) has formed the nucleus of what is now one of the leading Marxist-Leninist groupings in the region, argues a more subtle political line, and has traditionally been the vanguard of progressive change in collective Palestinian positions since its birth in 1969 (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.182 / printed p.161).
- It was the DPF that first articulated the transitional program adopted by the PLO in 1974 as an immediate goal considerably short of liberating all of Palestine; the program, refined further in 1977, accepted the idea of a Palestinian national authority (now a state) to be set up on any part of Palestine evacuated by Israel (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.182 / printed p.161).
- The DPF is not a rejectionist group; the real challenge of the rejectionists and the DPF together is that they are critics of Fateh’s more or less improvisatory, in some cases even family-style, politics, on ideological, organizational and strategical grounds, posing questions about PLO links with Saudi Arabia and Syria, conduct toward Jordan, the fall 1976 meetings between PLO members and Israeli public figures, the absence of a blanket condemnation of Sadat after his trip to Jerusalem, Fateh’s vision of the future Palestinian society, and its determination on imperialism (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.182-183 / printed p.161-162).
- The various political factions within the PLO — the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, and the other groups — were buffeted by, and in their turn buffeted, Palestinian (as well as other Arab) currents of ideas, while the deep and abiding legitimacy of the PLO remained constant (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.185-186 / printed p.164-165).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization, Fateh, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine