Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine

Summary

The Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, issued by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969 at the time of its second Congress (February 1969), defines the enemy camp as four forces — Israel, the world Zionist movement, world Imperialism led by the United States (the real and main enemy, with Israel as one of its bases), and Arab Reaction represented by feudalism and capitalism — and defines the forces of revolution on the Palestinian level from a class angle: workers and peasants, the inhabitants of the camps, villages and poor districts, are the mainstay, basic material and leadership of the revolution, in alliance with the Palestinian petit bourgeoisie (an ally, but one whose attempts to take leadership are to be fought), taking temporary advantage of sectors of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, which as a business and banking class linked to imperialism is strategically against the revolution (Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, PDF p.37-40, p.46, p.57, p.59-60). The organizational form proposed is a political party organization armed with Scientific Socialism to mobilize workers and peasants, together with a wide national front with Fateh and the Palestine Liberation Organization as the revolutionary realization of Palestinian national unity; on the Arab level the Palestinian revolution must coalesce with an Arab revolution on the same lines, in relations of alliance and conflict with the petit-bourgeois national regimes, whose June 1967 defeat the work reads as a defeat of their class programs (PDF p.61-67, p.81-84). On the world level the movement is to ally first with the enslaved peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America and with the People’s Republic of China, and also with the Soviet Union and the East European socialist powers despite the limits of their position on Israel, so as to encircle Israel, Zionism and imperialism (PDF p.90-93). The enemy’s technological superiority is to be faced not by conventional war — the formula that lost in 1948, 1956 and 1967 — but by guerrilla warfare developing into a protracted People’s Liberation War (PDF p.95-100). The war’s aim is stated as destruction of the state of Israel as a military, political and economic establishment, not a war against the Jews, and the establishment of a democratic national state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews live as citizens with equal rights and obligations (PDF p.102-103). The organizational strategy then builds the party on Marxism-Leninism as a working guide rather than a rigid doctrine, on a worker, peasant, toiler and revolutionary-intellectual class structure, on the mass line, as a single combatant party fusing fighting and political organization, governed by Democratic Centralism and by criticism and self-criticism; and the closing section directs the fusion of the Arab Nationalist Movement’s Palestinian branch and the Heroes of the Return into the Front, so that the Popular Front ceases to be a front in the usual sense and becomes itself the revolutionary party (PDF p.111-118, p.119-123, p.125-132, p.133-137, p.139-146, p.147-151, p.153-156).

What the file is

The file is the Foreign Languages Press edition (Collection “Colorful Classics” #8, English, Utrecht, 2017, ISBN 978-1-545142660 as printed) of a work originally published by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969; this book was published in a total of 4,400 copies (English 3,500 in 20 prints, French 600, Spanish 200, Swedish 100) under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence (PDF p.2). Access basis given with delivery: publisher-free, downloaded from the publisher’s site.
Length: 160 PDF pages, about 38,498 words in the text copy (38,492 words counted in the supplied text copy, a difference held under Open questions). Printed page numbers match PDF page numbers from printed p.7 onward; the 1969 Strategy itself begins at PDF p.20.
Text copy: the supplied text copy (raw/1969-pflp-strategy-for-the-liberation-of-palestine.txt) has a page marker for every page, 1-160, and is clean and readable throughout part 1. Its two-column Contents layout (PDF p.3-4) scrambles title/page alignment; the Contents page numbers were checked in the original. Blank pages: PDF p.5, 22, 32, 48, 56 and 68 in part 1, and PDF p.94, 124, 138 and 152 in part 2. PDF p.157-160 are the publisher’s catalogue lists of other Foreign Languages Press collections (Works of Maoism and New Roads on p.157, Foundations on p.158-159, Tales From the Front on p.159, Colorful Classics — with this work as item 8 — on p.160) and the printing notice (dépôt légal December 2021, printed in Italy); the text copy’s two-column layout scrambles column order on those pages, and they were read in the original.
Structure of the whole book, from the Contents (PDF p.3-4, checked in the original): PFLP Introduction to this Edition (printed p.6); Founding Document of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 11 December 1967 (p.12); Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine (1969) (p.20): Introduction (p.21), Importance of Political Thought (p.23), Who Are Our Enemies? (p.27), Who Are Our Enemies? (Part II) (p.33), Forces of the Revolution (p.41), The Palestinian Petit Bourgeoisie (p.49), The Palestinian Bourgeoisie (p.57), Organization and Mobilization of Palestinian Revolutionary Forces (p.61), Forces of the Revolution on the Arab Level (p.69), Forces of the Revolution on the World Level (p.85), Facing Imperialist Technological Superiority (p.95), The Aims and Significance of the Palestinian War of Liberation (p.101), General Remarks (p.105), Organizational Strategy (p.109), No Revolutionary Party Without Revolutionary Theory (p.111), Class Structure of the Revolutionary Party (p.119), The Party and the Masses (p.125), Building the Combatant Party (p.133), Democratic Centralism — Basis of Relations Within the Revolutionary Party (p.139), Criticism and Self-Criticism (p.147), The Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) and the PFLP (p.153).
In Arabic the document is known as the “Political and Organizational Strategy” of the Front (PDF p.7).

Section by section

PFLP Introduction to this Edition — PDF p.6-11

The unsigned introduction (the PFLP’s, for this edition) presents the Strategy as a historical document and a living political program, issued in 1969 at the Front’s second Congress, laying out its analysis of the colonization of Palestine, the forces of revolution and the forces arrayed against the Palestinian people, and its organizational vision, to guide the national liberation movement toward freedom, return and liberation (PDF p.7). References to a global socialist camp and the Soviet Union no longer reflect current reality, but the negotiations and political settlement process beginning with Madrid and Oslo, and the Palestinian Authority it produced — representing certain sectors of the Palestinian capitalist class, engaging in security coordination with the Israeli occupation, and serving as an institutional framework for Palestinian capital as a subcontractor for occupation — are said to underline the analysis in “The Palestinian Bourgeoisie”; the Front upholds the position of Abu Ali Mustafa: liberation, not negotiations (PDF p.7-8). The document’s inspiration from Mao Zedong, the Chinese Revolution and the contemporaneous Vietnamese struggle, its analysis of Arab reactionary regimes (with Camp David shifting Egypt, and Saudi Arabia named as deeply enmeshed with U.S. imperialism), and the 2017 anniversaries — 100 years of the Balfour Declaration, 70 years of al-Nakba, in which over 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and lands, and 50 years of the 1967 occupation and of the PFLP’s founding — are set out (PDF p.8-10). Despite Black September, the Lebanese Civil War and Zionist invasion of Lebanon, the Intifadas and Oslo, the fundamental analysis is said to remain the guiding framework of a leftist, revolutionary approach; Israeli jails are named an arena of struggle, represented by the imprisoned General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat; Ghassan Kanafani participated in creating the document and was assassinated, with his niece Lamis, by a Mossad car bomb in 1972 (PDF p.10-11).

Founding Document of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (11 December 1967) — PDF p.12-19

The founding document addresses the Arab nation and Palestine: fifty years of assaults by Zionism and colonialism, crystallizing in commando work and refusal of submission, surrender and compromise, with the Palestinian masses taking the initiative for full emancipation as the responsibility of the entire Arab masses (PDF p.13). The military defeat of the Arab armies opens a new phase in which revolutionary violence is the only weapon left; after the fifth of June the slogan of popular armed struggle can be raised for a long and protracted battle; for the first time since the catastrophe of 1948 the entire Palestinian people live on completely occupied territory (PDF p.13-14). Armed resistance is declared the only effective method, the masses the authority, guide and leadership, to be recruited through systematic organization (PDF p.14-15). The uniting organizations are named: the Heroes of the Return, the Palestinian Liberation Front squads (Organization of martyr Abdul Latif Shrour, Organization of the martyr Qassam, Organization of the martyr Abdul-Qader Al-Husseini), the National Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Youth Organization for Vengeance), and several other groups, uniting under the banner of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is open to all Palestinian forces in a broad national revolutionary front (PDF p.15-16). Armed struggle is not confined to militants: it embraces military action plus a total boycott of the enemy’s economic, civil and political institutions; the land belongs to the masses, every rock and stone; collaborators and traitors share the occupier’s fate; settlements are rejected; the Front promises the masses the whole truth about achievements and obstacles; and the Palestinian struggle is organically linked to the Arab masses and to the world forces of revolution and progress (PDF p.16-19).

Introduction (1969) — PDF p.21

The PFLP, its political age barely one and a half years, has become a politico-military manifestation of wide interest, bearing factors of revolutionary growth and facing real subjective and objective dangers; its Congress in February 1969 studied the strategy of Palestinian revolutionary action and defined the general political, organizational and military steps to ensure its consistent growth (PDF p.21).

Importance of Political Thought — PDF p.23-26

A clear perspective of the enemy and of the revolutionary forces is a basic condition of success; since 1917 the people have fought in every form, and in 1936 took up arms with thousands of martyrs and a mass consciousness not less than today’s, yet have not triumphed — so taking up arms is not sufficient, and a frank, courageous, revolutionary scientific mentality is required (PDF p.23-24). Scientific revolutionary thought lets the masses understand the enemy’s strengths, weaknesses and allies, their own forces and how to mobilize them, and explains why the 1936 revolt and earlier attempts failed and what led to the 1967 defeat (PDF p.24-25). Fighting without political thought means improvised positions and dispersed forces; a trend confusing revolutionary political thought with political debauchery, outworn methods and intellectual sophistry is to be corrected. Political thought must be scientific, clear enough to be within the reach of the masses, and deep enough to penetrate strategy and tactics (PDF p.25-26).

Who Are Our Enemies? — PDF p.27-31

Opening with Mao Zedong’s March 1926 question — who are our enemies, who are our friends — the section rejects the masses’ emotional evaluation of the adversary (belittling after partial victories, imagining invincibility after severe blows) (PDF p.27-28). (1) Israel is a political, military and economic entity effecting maximum mobilization of its two and a half million nationals to defend its aggressive expansionist racial structure, with marked technological superiority and a life-or-death mobilization ability; past defeats are not by chance (PDF p.28-29). (2) The world Zionist movement: Israel is an integral part, indeed an offshoot, of it; Zionism as a racial-religious movement tries to organize and recruit 14 million Jews worldwide, and its support is basically material — people, money, arms, technical know-how, alliances, publicity and propaganda. A precise study of Israel and the movement is required, including their internal conflicts, which have not yet hampered their concentration for the coming battle (PDF p.29-31). A third force follows: world imperialism led by the United States of America (PDF p.31).

Who Are Our Enemies? (Part II) — PDF p.33-40

(3) World imperialism robs the riches of the underdeveloped countries, buying at the lowest prices and re-selling processed at the highest; the Arab world holds mainly petroleum and is a big consuming market, and imperialism will crush any revolutionary movement against this exploitation. Israel, having usurped a portion of this world, becomes the force and base through which imperialism fights the Arab revolutionary movement, creating an organic unity; imperialism means concretely more arms, support and money for Israel — Phantom jets, atomic bomb secrets, West German marks and American dollars — and the opinion that America could be won to the Arab side is erroneous and dangerous (PDF p.33-35). (4) Arab Reaction represented by feudalism and capitalism: Arab capitalism is not independent but a weak branch of world capitalism; its millionaires — merchants, bankers, feudal lords, owners of large estates, kings, emirs and sheikhs — hold their wealth through cooperation with world capitalism and can keep it only while the land remains a market for foreign goods and its oil is plundered, so in a real liberation battle it cannot side with the masses; its main conflict is with the masses’ movement, and failing to classify it as an enemy leaves real enemy bases living among us (PDF p.35-37). The strongest, real and main enemy is world imperialism; Arab reaction is one of its offshoots and Israel’s power lies in being one of its bases. After the First World War the Palestinian feudal forces and bourgeoisie pictured British colonialism as neutral and the enemy as only the Zionist movement and the Jews in Palestine — an error the masses’ vanguard later corrected (PDF p.37-38). The enemy’s main features are listed: its four components; technological and production superiority; long experience defeating liberation movements; and a life-or-death battle by Israel’s leadership. This perspective determines the need for revolutionary theory, a powerful vanguard political organization, the size of revolutionary alliances, and a course of armed struggle from guerrilla warfare toward a protracted People’s Liberation War (PDF p.38-40).

Forces of the Revolution — PDF p.41-47

The forces of revolution on the Palestinian level must be defined from a class angle: although the people were driven out in 1948 into almost identical homelessness, twenty years have produced well-marked class conditions, and rightist arguments — that class is not crystallized in underdeveloped communities, that class struggle belongs only to socialist revolution, that Israel threatens all classes equally — are refuted: underdeveloped communities are also class communities, national liberation battles are also class battles, and the Zionist peril’s threat to the overwhelming majority does not erase different revolutionary roles, instanced by Amman’s Jebel-Luwaibdeh (a bourgeois residential quarter), Jebel-Nazif (a poor residential quarter) and the camps (PDF p.41-45). Workers and peasants are the mainstay of the revolution, its basic class material and its leadership: they fill the camps — a class situation of workers, peasants and the destitute sections of the petit bourgeoisie — villages and poor urban districts, form the majority, and are driven by daily conditions in which the difference between death and life is not much; arming them with political awareness, organization and fighting means creates the firm foundation enabling class alliances without vacillation (PDF p.45-47).

The Palestinian Petit Bourgeoisie — PDF p.49-55

The petit bourgeoisie comprises craftsmen, students, teachers, junior employees, small shopkeepers, lawyers, engineers and medical men; it is very numerous in underdeveloped countries, is not a clearly delineated class — one portion comfortable and aspiring upward, another barely ensuring basic requirements and closer to the revolution — and, unlike the working class, does not live within specific class conditions, which is the reason for its vacillation (PDF p.49-50). The governing position is twofold: it is an ally of the revolution in the stage of democratic national liberation, and it is not the basic material, so leadership must not be placed under its command or its programs; the law is alliance in the main conflict together with fighting its attempts to assume leadership — alliance at the appropriate time on the basis of a Programme, conflict at the appropriate time around a palpable position or issue the masses can feel and understand. The events of 4 November 1968 in Jordan, where the Popular Front foiled a reactionary scheme against commando action and unveiled middle-of-the-road organizations’ vacillation, are given as the example (PDF p.50-53). Its presence at the head of the Palestinian national movement today is explained objectively, including that, not being in power, it is more revolutionary than the Arab petit bourgeoisie heading Arab national regimes; the working class’s rise to leadership is contingent on its growth in awareness and organization and on the escalation of armed struggle (PDF p.53-55).

The Palestinian Bourgeoisie — PDF p.57-60

The Palestinian bourgeoisie is essentially a business and banking bourgeoisie whose wealth derives from brokerage in foreign goods, insurance and banking, linked with imperialism; strategically it stands with imperialism against a revolution that would destroy its sources of wealth. After June 5, 1967, camp and village young men took up arms while traditional bourgeois leaderships received Sassoon, Dayan and other Israeli leaders to discuss Israel’s planned Palestinian set-up, and West Bank merchants sought to re-link their interests with the enemy state; slogans such as “We are all commandos” are deceptive mottoes to be criticized (PDF p.57-58). The bourgeoisie under occupation is not among the forces of revolution and remains the class force through which the enemies will try to stop the revolution in the middle of the road; the bourgeoisie outside Palestine temporarily supports commando action with a small portion of its surplus, but revolutionary growth to a manifest clash with imperialism will bring it to its class stand, individual exceptions notwithstanding. The whole picture: workers and peasants in alliance with the petit bourgeoisie, with temporary use of any bourgeois sector, without ambiguity — and the bourgeoisie is only one-half percent or one percent of the community and does not take up arms, so the revolution loses no effective fighting force by this analysis (PDF p.58-60).

Organization and Mobilization of Palestinian Revolutionary Forces — PDF p.61-67

Political organization armed with the theory of Scientific Socialism is the highest form of organization of the working class, confirmed by China, Vietnam, Cuba and the October Revolution; Palestinian and Arab movements have failed because they have not adopted this organization theory. This form also mobilizes the peasantry (PDF p.61-62). The petit bourgeoisie in its majority will not enter such a party framework and will fill Fateh and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the first place; the complete form is therefore the scientific-socialist party mobilizing workers and peasants, calling at the same time for a national front with Fatah and the PLO — the revolutionary realization of Palestinian national unity, as against a unity that lets traditional leaderships, the bourgeoisie and reaction infiltrate. Five position lines are stated, ending with working for that national front while preserving each side’s right to plan according to its class horizon (PDF p.63-66). Strategic thought cannot stop at the Palestinian frontiers: the Palestinian revolution fused with the Arab revolution and allied with world revolution alone can achieve victory (PDF p.66-67).

Forces of the Revolution on the Arab Level — PDF p.69-84

Palestinian mobilization alone will not suffice; strategy requires mobilizing the forces of revolution in the Arab countries, especially those surrounding Israel, under the “Arab Hanoi” motto of coalescence between the Palestinian and Arab revolutions. The crisis of Palestinian resistance is that it exists under Arab conditions that hamper it and threaten liquidation through the Security Council’s resolution [of 22 November 1967]; the path is encirclement of Israel with people’s liberation war from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and inside the territory occupied before and after 5 June 1967 (PDF p.69-71). The Arab stage is democratic national revolution for all Arab countries, whose main lines — poor workers’ and peasants’ mobilization and leadership through a scientific-socialist organization in alliance with the petit bourgeoisie, and protracted armed struggle from guerrilla warfare to popular liberation war — are clear from Vietnam, Cuba and China (PDF p.71-72). Relations are defined: strategic conflict with the capitalist and reactionary regimes (Jordan, Lebanon and others, linked to United States-led imperialism); and the delicate question of the national regimes, particularly Egypt, Syria and Iraq, to be evaluated fearlessly from the June defeat, which occupied the whole of Palestine, the Golan Heights and Sinai and dispersed hundreds of thousands (PDF p.72-73). A historical account follows: bourgeois and feudal leadership of the post-First World War movement (Haj Amin Al-Husseini and the Arab Party in Palestine, Shukri Al-Kuwatli and the Nationalist Party in Syria are named), the petit bourgeoisie’s leadership of the masses’ new stage, the 1948 disaster, and the rise of petit-bourgeois national regimes — first the Nasser regime in Egypt, then Syria, Iraq, Algeria and South Yemen — assisted by the post-war Soviet victory and socialist expansion (PDF p.74-76). The Nasser regime’s major achievements are listed: ending the British occupation of the Suez Canal Zone, fighting colonialist military pacts, relations with the socialist camp, the first union achievement in modern Arab history, agrarian reform, nationalizations and public-ownership development, and the beginnings of a class view in revolutionary thought (PDF p.76-77). But the regimes preserved the petit bourgeoisie and produced a new interlocked class of military men, politicians and administrators forming the upper class, which kept the experiment within its interests, viewed confrontation through the military institution rather than a popular liberation war that would raise worker and peasant leadership able to call it to account, and stopped socialist transformation at existing limits; the June defeat is therefore a defeat for these regimes and their programs, not a mere military defeat, and after it they still aim, through alliance with the Soviet Union, at a tactical military battle or a settlement implementing the Security Council’s resolution with recognition of Israel’s right to exist within new safe frontiers, supporting commando action only as pressure toward that settlement (PDF p.77-80). Against this stands the Vietnamese example’s strategic lines. A seven-point evaluation concludes: the national regimes are antagonistic to imperialism, Zionism, Israel and Arab reaction and have accomplished revolutionary achievements, but their class structure makes them incapable of continuing on the revolutionary road, so relations with them must be alliance and conflict at the same time; two strategies — the petit bourgeoisie’s traditional-war strategy and the working class’s guerrilla and popular liberation war strategy — will move together until the working class strategy prevails (PDF p.80-84).

Forces of the Revolution on the World Level — PDF p.85-93

World imperialism now exploits peoples by new methods and the anti-imperialist camp holds a new position since before the Second World War; the Palestine and Arab liberation movement does not move in a vacuum, and international ground has always been a basic factor in peoples’ destinies. The First and, to some degree, the Second World War were wars among imperialist capitalist powers to redistribute markets, not revolutionary wars (PDF p.85-86). The Second World War’s consequences crystallized the world situation: colonialism concentrated into one imperialist camp led by the United States, against the camp of socialist forces and persecuted peoples; the Soviet Union emerged victorious, the socialist camp expanded in Eastern Europe, and the Chinese Revolution led by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party triumphed, while weakened Britain, France, Holland and Belgium and defeated Germany, Italy and Japan enabled United States capital’s penetration through post-war reconstruction. The crystallized imperialist picture’s features begin: one camp under United States leadership; United States capital’s size and interconnection with European capital as the basis of its unity and leadership; partner conflicts (colonialism against neo-colonialism, prominent in the Tripartite Aggression of 1956, the Algerian revolution and parts of Africa) remaining partial against the main conflict with the socialist camp and liberation movements; de Gaulle’s France’s attempts making no radical change; and technical and war-industry growth strengthening the camp — the fifth feature continuing past PDF p.87 (PDF p.86-87). The features conclude in part 2: the fifth feature’s discussion adds the United States’ internal crises, its inability to face a people’s movement as in Vietnam, and its aggravated conflicts with allies as the complementary side of technical advance and production growth; sixth, the United States defends its interests with the new techniques of neo-colonialism — pacts and defense treaties encircling the socialist camp, economic co-optation of local social forces as a bulwark, containment of liberation movements through co-existence and concessions, and the threat of nuclear war to force the Soviet Union to cease supporting peoples so they may be defeated in local wars; seventh, experience in Vietnam, Cuba and the Dominican Republic shows the United States reverting to armed force, invasion and landing armies when those techniques fail (PDF p.88-89). Requirements to face this are clarity of perspective, mobilization of all forces, political, economic and military programs, the course of popular liberation war, and full alliance with all revolutionary forces on the world level. The first friends are the enslaved peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the liberation movements in Vietnam, Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; the People’s Republic of China is a strong ally, facing the same United States peril and adopting the same analysis of the basic international contradiction and the same revolutionary strategy, and adopting the Palestinian Arab view of Israel as an imperialist base that must be destroyed; and the Soviet Union and East European powers, although their position is confined to preventing Israel from expanding its territory and does not involve the roots of Israel’s aggressive existence, stand in a contradiction with the Zionist and imperialist presence that creates ground for alliance which the movement must extend, the Soviet Union having been a major supporter of the Arab masses throughout the past period. With these alliances, and drawing in all liberation forces in Europe, America and every part of the world, Israel, Zionism and imperialism can be encircled; this completes the chart of enemies and friends on the Palestinian, Arab and world levels (PDF p.90-93).

Facing Imperialist Technological Superiority — PDF p.95-100

Concentrating the revolutionary forces on the Palestinian, Arab and world levels gives a camp superior in size and numbers, but that alone is not sufficient: the enemy’s scientific and technological superiority, reflected in quick mobilization, training, high-quality military leadership, surprises in arms and plans and overall superiority in arms and modern warfare, is a basic point of strength, not a light or secondary matter (PDF p.95). A scientific study of the 1948, 1956 and 1967 wars would show that superiority’s role in the enemy’s triumphs; fifty years of failure is explained by a weak and meagre political, economic, social and military structure facing a superior movement and society, and by an erroneous view of the battle. A classical conventional confrontation would be won by Israel and imperialism, conventional warfare being the manner in which the enemy exercises its superiority and all the weaknesses of an underdeveloped society are revealed; reliance on the Soviet Union does not close the gap, because the basic requirement is not “modern arms and the procurement thereof” but the human element capable of controlling and using them, which depends on the carriers’ technological and scientific standard (PDF p.95-97). Weak peoples face this superiority with guerrilla warfare and popular liberation wars: avoiding direct confrontation, attacking weak points and withdrawing quickly, inflicting small losses that accumulate daily, so the balance shifts slowly at first, then accelerating, while the revolutionary forces gain experience, numbers and quality; guerrilla war is the first stage of a protracted war, not by itself full liberation. The conditions of triumph are a politically aware revolutionary army coalesced with the organized masses, allied with world revolutionary forces, and coalesced with the revolutionary party (PDF p.97-98). General Vo Nguyen Giap is quoted at length from People’s War, People’s Army on long-term resistance, accumulating thousands of small victories, and the worker-peasant-based national united front, and Mao Zedong from “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” on the disciplined Marxist-Leninist party, its army and its united front; the strategic headlines drawn are revolutionary theory, a strongly organized party, leadership by workers and peasants, a wide united national front, and people’s liberation war with long-term resistance (PDF p.99-100).

The Aims and Significance of the Palestinian War of Liberation — PDF p.101-104

Israel’s rise meant for the Palestinian people expulsion from home and lands, usurpation of what they had built, dispersal, and concentration of the greater portion in camps of misery and poverty in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon; its expansion ran from the “National Home” to the state within the 1947 Partition boundaries, to the pre-June boundaries, and finally to the whole of Palestine plus Sinai and the Golan Heights; and it is an imperialist and colonialist base, as experienced in the Tripartite Aggression of 1956 and the June 1967 war (PDF p.101-102). The truth about the liberation war has been distorted by the connection of Zionism’s rise with the persecution of the Jews in Europe, by the association of Israel’s rise with the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews, by imperialist and Zionist influence over world opinion, by forces in Israel claiming to be progressive and socialist, by the Soviet Union’s and some socialist countries’ support for Israel’s establishment, and by errors of Palestinian and Arab leaderships (PDF p.102). The movement “is not directed against the Jews”: its object is to destroy the state of Israel as a military, political and economic establishment resting on aggression, expansion and organic connection with imperialism, and its aim is a democratic national state in Palestine in which both Arabs and Jews live as citizens with equal rights and obligations. Israel’s portrayal of the war as a racial war aiming at throwing every Jewish citizen into the sea is to be unveiled by addressing the exploited and misled Jewish masses and revealing the conflict between their interest in living peacefully and the interests of the Zionist movement and the forces controlling Israel, isolating “the fascist clique in Israel” (PDF p.102-103). The struggle is also the struggle of one hundred million Arabs against neo-colonialism and imperialism, an introduction to all the linked aims of the Arab revolution, and for the Palestinian and Arab masses a gateway from underdevelopment to the culture of the age — including the emancipation of woman, half of society, from outworn customs and traditions, and the supremacy of the national bond over clan, tribal and regional bonds (PDF p.103-104).

General Remarks — PDF p.105-108

The strategy is adopted as a general guide, but the correctness of any theoretical analysis is contingent on success in practical application; thought and revolutionary action stand in a dialectical relation, and the view is not to be understood in fixed, static forms — experience will deepen, enrich, complete and may modify it (PDF p.105). The strategy gives the battle’s main trends, not its details: Israel is not a homogeneous unity (the present “hawks” and “doves” conflict leaves no appreciable effect, but more radical dormant conflicts may intensify), there are latent partial conflicts between Israel and imperialism, a present conflict between Israel and Jordan’s reactionary regime, conflicts among the Palestinian armed organizations, and for a long time a military role for the conventional Arab armies of the national regimes that may at times appear leading. The main line of conflict is “a crooked dialectical line”, each side a group of allied forces whose internal conflicts rise and fall; the detailed tactical view at each stage must be guided by the long-term strategic view (PDF p.106-108).

Organizational Strategy — PDF p.109-110

The people’s liberation war cannot come into existence, continue or triumph automatically or spontaneously; the revolutionary party that generates such wars and leads them to victory is a condition sine qua non for any true radical revolution. The party provides the proper view of the battle, its leadership, and the frame within which the masses’ potentialities are mobilized, so party matters — its understanding, construction, class structure, working technique, institutions and relations — are integral to the strategy of the battle. The failure of leftist national and communist parties in the Arab world is the failure of those parties’ structure, formation and strategies, not of the principle of the party: no revolution in this century has succeeded and achieved radical change without a party to lead it (PDF p.109-110).

No Revolutionary Party Without Revolutionary Theory — PDF p.111-118

The basis of the party’s structure is its revolutionary theory, and that theory is Marxism: dialectical materialism applied to nature, historical materialism applied to society, and the theory of surplus value and scientific socialism for modern capitalist society, completed by Lenin’s application to capitalism in its stage of centralization, monopoly and colonization, so that Marxism-Leninism has become the standard of revolution in this period, validated in the October Revolution and the revolutions in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Europe’s socialist countries (PDF p.111-113). Marxism is to be understood as a working guide, not a fixed, rigid doctrine: its essence is the dialectical method in a society in continuous motion and change, and contemporary capitalism, a backward society’s class structure and nationalism in backward countries all differ from their counterparts in Marx’s time or in Europe (PDF p.113-114). Mere declaration of adherence is no “fairy wand”: the Arab communist parties, formally and verbally committed to Marxism-Leninism, have been unable to lead the revolution because their commitment was verbal, their understanding rigid and fossilized, or the theory unapplied to actual living circumstances. Commitment means mature comprehension through long study, application to the struggle’s conditions to formulate strategy and tactics, and great efforts at sound application (PDF p.115-116). The masses will judge scientific socialist thought by its tangible results — when it converts the Palestinian and Arab field into a rising popular liberation war arena, as in Vietnam, obstacles to it will disappear; at present the prevailing thought among the masses is rightist, communist parties’ failures and attitudes toward unity, nationalism and Israel have confused Marxist thought with those attitudes, and immature infantile leftism presents a distorted picture of it (PDF p.116-117). Within this context the Popular Front adopts Marxist-Leninist theory as a basic strategic line for building the party (PDF p.118).

Class Structure of the Revolutionary Party — PDF p.119-123

Theoretical structure must conform to class structure: the party is the party of the classes of the revolution, workers and peasants in the first place, and a petit-bourgeois structure and leadership would reproduce that class’s vacillation, hesitancy and indecisiveness regardless of commitment to scientific socialism. Such a structure cannot come spontaneously — spontaneity gives preponderance to the petit bourgeoisie — and the Front does not at present conform to it: its political organization is a spontaneous extension of the Arab Nationalist Movement’s organization, the petit bourgeois structure prevails in it, and continued spontaneous growth would confine it mainly to Amman and the towns. The remedy is a comprehensive survey of the rural areas and camps, placing the most efficient leading elements there, and building rising young elements from camps and villages into most of the leading membership (PDF p.119-121). The organization is not closed to the petit bourgeoisie, but its basic material must come from workers, peasants and the poor. Revolutionary intellectuals are a basic and necessary material — modern socialist thought cites workers, peasants, soldiers and revolutionary intellectuals as the revolutionary forces in underdeveloped countries — provided they coalesce with the masses and combatants, learn from them as much as they teach them, share their living circumstances and avoid superior relations and material and moral privileges. The second strategic line in building the party is therefore party material from workers, peasants, toilers and revolutionary intellectuals (PDF p.121-123).

The Party and the Masses — PDF p.125-132

The party is the leadership of the masses — its members a vanguard in consciousness, activity, sacrifice and discipline — and at the same time an organization for the masses, emanating from them, living in their midst and realizing its aims through and with them; Mao is quoted on the leading group whose activity without the masses amounts to fruitless effort. The mass line is the third strategic line in building the Front: the final purpose of action is the masses — their freedom, dignity, life, needs and future — and an organization confined to internal activities (meetings, education, discussions, criticism) in isolation from the masses loses all capacity for revolutionary action. A successful branch sets up political forums and performs concrete services, instanced as opening a school to combat illiteracy, helping collect the harvest, advising on a co-operative, and leading demands for electricity, water or a road; the revolutionary organization is surrounded by student, labour and peasant unions and organizations for women, youth and cubs (pioneers) (PDF p.125-128). Leadership is not ensured by intention: it depends on the party’s analysis, mottos, choice and presentation of mass problems and its mobilization formulas. Mao is quoted on starting from the masses’ actual needs rather than what is fancied they need, and on waiting patiently until the masses are conscious and willing, and against both adventurism when the masses are not yet awakened and right opportunism when they demand advance (PDF p.129-130). But the mass line is not trailing behind the masses: the masses of underdeveloped countries carry outworn concepts and tribal, clan and communal connections, the party is the school in which they change them, and the masses are not always right on tactical positions; the relation is dialectical — the party teaches them and is taught by them, and from the facts they provide it gives back a sound assessment and working programs (PDF p.130-132).

Building the Combatant Party — PDF p.133-137

Armed struggle’s strategy must shape the party’s structure. Liberation can be achieved only through armed struggle and a protracted popular liberation war, and there is no continued escalation of the fighting except through mobilization of the masses to furnish, protect and replenish it; this dialectical coalescence of fighting and political action is the criterion of the work. Six points follow: the military organization must have a mature political structure, the combatant knowing why, against whom and for whom he has taken up arms; the political organization must have a military structure as an auxiliary to the fighting cadres, built for continuous efflux to the battle, on pain of becoming a burden seeking moral or political advantage, battledress and insignia from a merely formal connection with the struggle; leaderships must eventually be politico-military and be re-shuffled between the sectors; internal education must build the political and military structures at the same time, leadership training being simultaneously military and political; the leadership’s basic effort goes to the combat’s issues, requirements, steadfastness and growth, with all organizational, political, information and financial efforts linked to the combat and not at its expense; and internal regulation is laid down on the fusion and unity of the fighting and political organization (PDF p.133-136). The picture is the single fighting party: some members in actual fighting, others preparing, a third group the popular resistance protecting and supporting the fighting, a fourth working among the masses, a fifth performing financial, administrative and information tasks, all one organization under the same leadership. The motto: “every combatant is a party member and every party member is a combatant” (PDF p.136-137).

Democratic Centralism — Basis of Relations Within the Revolutionary Party — PDF p.139-146

Democratic Centralism is the basic principle on which all revolutionary parties that have led this age’s revolutions were established, its validity established by practice. Democracy inside the party has three aspects: every member’s protected right to know the party’s strategy, positions and main plans within the limits of party security, and to discuss, express opinions, criticize and stand in the face of error in full freedom; collective leadership, which prevents individual authoritarianism and deviation; and the members’ right to express their opinion of the leadership, grant or withhold confidence, and change leaderships proved to have failed, deviated or misconceived responsibility. Democracy is to become a revolutionary human life pattern — open forums, comradely relations, no responsibility converted into material or moral privilege, leaders encouraging criticism — before it is a collection of regulations (PDF p.140-143). Centralization also has three aspects: the minority’s submission to the majority, every view being presentable in full freedom within organizational channels but the adopted position then sponsored and defended by every element until another organizational occasion; subsidiary leadership ranks’ submission to the higher ranks, the central leadership being the decisive authority in basic matters and entitled to criticize any subsidiary decision; and the leadership’s absolute power during execution — “When execution begins democracy ends” — with full responsibility for executing what the party democratically decided. The principle and those emanating from it (collective leadership, minority submission to majority, no ideological contradictions and factions within the party, individuals’ submission to the Organization, all branches’ submission to the central committee) determine the internal regulation, powers, responsibilities, penalties and rewards (PDF p.144-146).

Criticism and Self-Criticism — PDF p.147-151

The practice of criticism and self-criticism, and education in it, is a big guarantee for discovering and correcting errors and for the party’s continued growth: no party or individual can avoid mistakes, and error is converted into benefit. The leadership must listen to, think of and benefit from criticism, admit error when discovered rather than covering it up; sensitivity to criticism leads to isolationism and a wall between the party and the masses, while the self-confident leadership welcomes criticism. Criticism is the method by which the party breathes in new air and renews its vitality, and Mao is quoted from “On Coalition Government” on dust accumulating in an uncleaned room and the maxims “Say all you know and say it without reserve” and “Correct mistakes if you have committed them and guard against them if you have not” (PDF p.147-148). Three criteria make criticism strengthen rather than weaken the party: objectivity (Mao: statements based on facts, criticism centred on politics), orientation towards correction and not demolition — the approach of “curing the sickness to save the patient” — and dealing with basic matters rather than petty subjective issues and personal shortcomings unconnected with political and organizational mistakes (PDF p.149-151). Many of the Front’s present organizational difficulties are attributed to its not having originally been built under this strategy’s guidance; the ambition is to outgrow this stage’s problems for those of a more advanced and more revolutionary stage (PDF p.151).

The Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) and the PFLP — PDF p.153-156

At its inception the Popular Front was formed of the ANM’s Palestinian branch, the “Heroes of the Return”, the “Palestine Liberation Front” and independent elements which soon formed a fourth group; it was not designed at that stage to present a complete leftist political view based on scientific socialist theory, nor to be a unified party organization, but to present a general liberation thought with progressive features and to remain for some time a group of organizations each maintaining its independent existence, with coordination and unified educational material preparing eventual unification (PDF p.153). The objective distinction then: the Movement, per its Central Committee’s July 1967 session, possesses a socialist revolutionary concept of the liberation struggle’s strategy and is a unified party organization preparing to rebuild itself on a revolutionary organizational strategy, while the Front presented progressive liberation thought and was a group of organizations differing in structure, the Movement having a distinctive existence and role within the front (PDF p.153-154). Developments and schisms changed the picture: the “Palestine Liberation Front” separated from the Popular Front, with a group of independents, and the Front continued between the ANM’s Palestinian branch and the “Heroes of the Return”; the new situation enabled the ANM to present through the Front its complete political thought, so the picture is one of almost complete identity between the ANM and the Popular Front in thought, structure and size, the “Heroes of the Return“‘s origin, first leading cadre, intellectual atmosphere and comradely relations with the ANM taken into account (PDF p.154-155). No well-defined objective tangible distinction remains on which a separate existence for the ANM’s Palestinian branch could rest. The February Congress therefore drew the organizational strategic line: work for the fusion of the ANM’s Palestinian branch within the Front’s organization, and likewise for the fusion of the “Heroes of the Return” within the Front, raising the Front’s organizational life to the level of conscious, disciplined, revolutionary, committed party life. The Popular Front’s conception ceases to be a front in the usual political sense; it is the revolutionary party based on this report’s political and organizational strategy, under the motto “The Movement in the service of the Front, and not the Front in the service of the Movement” (PDF p.155-156).

Publisher’s back matter — PDF p.157-160

Catalogue lists of other Foreign Languages Press collections (Works of Maoism and New Roads, PDF p.157; Foundations, PDF p.158-159; Tales From the Front, PDF p.159; Colorful Classics, with Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine listed as item 8, PDF p.160), and the printing notice: dépôt légal December 2021, printed in Italy by Pixartprinting (PDF p.160).

Key passages

“The Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine is both a historical document and a living political program for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” (unsigned PFLP introduction, PDF p.7)
“Liberation, not Negotiations!” (the introduction, presenting Abu Ali Mustafa’s position, PDF p.8)
“The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever they are, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.” (Ghassan Kanafani, quoted in the unsigned introduction, PDF p.11)
“The only language that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence.” (Founding Document, PDF p.16)
“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.” (Mao Zedong, quoted in the Strategy, PDF p.27)
“Workers and peasants are the mainstay of the revolution, its basic class material and its leadership.” (PDF p.46)
“National liberation battles are also class battles.” (PDF p.44)
“Thus the June defeat does not for us constitute a mere military defeat. It is in reality a defeat for these regimes and their programs” (PDF p.79)
“The Palestinian liberation movement is not a racial movement with aggressive intentions against the Jews. It is not directed against the Jews.” (PDF p.102)
“every combatant is a party member and every party member is a combatant” (PDF p.137)
“When execution begins democracy ends” (PDF p.145)
“The Movement in the service of the Front, and not the Front in the service of the Movement.” (PDF p.156)
“A well-disciplined Party armed with the theory of Marxism—Leninism, using the method of self-criticism and linked with the masses of the people; an army under the leadership of such a Party; a united front of all revolutionary classes and all revolutionary groups under the leadership of such a Party.” (Mao Zedong, quoted in the Strategy, PDF p.100)

Evidence the work relies on

The work’s own programmatic texts: the Founding Document of 11 December 1967 (PDF p.12-19) and the resolutions and lines of the Front’s February 1969 Congress, including its organizational strategic line on fusion with the Arab Nationalist Movement (PDF p.156).
The history of the Palestinian and Arab struggles as the work presents it: the 1936 revolt and the defeats of 1948, 1956 and 1967 (PDF p.23-24, p.95-96), the events of 4 November 1968 in Jordan (PDF p.52), and the record of the petit-bourgeois national regimes, in particular Egypt under Nasser (PDF p.76-80).
Quoted authorities: Mao Zedong — “Analysis of the Classes of Chinese Society” (PDF p.27), “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (PDF p.100), “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership” (PDF p.125), “The United Front in Cultural Work” (PDF p.129-130), “A Talk to the Editorial Staff of the Shansi-Suiyuan Daily” (PDF p.130), “On Coalition Government” (PDF p.148), “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” (PDF p.149-150) and “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work” (PDF p.150) — and Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi, 1961) (PDF p.99-100).
The experiences of other revolutions and wars as the work presents them: the October Revolution, China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, Algeria and the Dominican Republic (PDF p.61-62, p.89, p.112-113).
The unsigned introduction to this edition adds the later record it reads the Strategy against: Madrid and Oslo, the Palestinian Authority’s security coordination, Camp David, the Intifadas and the imprisonment of Ahmad Sa’adat (PDF p.7-11).

Analysis

Method: the work is a party program, not a history or an empirical study. Its method is class analysis applied in sequence — enemy camp, then forces of revolution on the Palestinian, Arab and world levels, then the military formula that follows from the enemy’s technological superiority, then the party form that follows from all of it. Figures are illustrative rather than systematic (Israel’s two and a half million nationals, 14 million Jews worldwide, one hundred million Arabs, the Palestinian bourgeoisie at one-half percent or one percent), and no statistical apparatus is offered for them.
Sources: authority rests chiefly on Mao Zedong and on the Vietnamese and Chinese revolutionary experiences, quoted and generalized; Lenin and Marx are presented as theory rather than quoted at length. The work’s claims about allied and enemy forces (the limits of the Soviet position on Israel, China’s adoption of the Palestinian Arab view, the national regimes’ aims after June 1967) are asserted as the Front’s analysis, without documents cited for them in the text.
Perspective and limits: the work is written from inside the Front at February 1969, and its organizational sections are partly self-diagnosis — the Front’s present petit-bourgeois structure, spontaneous growth and organizational diseases are stated as plainly as its program. Its General Remarks qualify its own strategy as a general view whose correctness is contingent on practical application and which experience may modify. The unsigned introduction to this edition, written decades later, concedes that references to a global socialist camp and the Soviet Union no longer reflect current reality while holding that the fundamental analysis remains the Front’s guiding framework.

People, organizations, places and events (links)

Concepts (links)

Imperialism, Zionism, Arab Reaction, Scientific Socialism, People’s Liberation War, Socialism, Marxism-Leninism, Democratic Centralism, Secular Democratic State

How it relates to other sources

The Strategy is the PFLP’s own founding-era program, and the unsigned introduction frames it as still the Front’s guiding framework; its account of the Arab Nationalist Movement — a distinctive existence at the Front’s formation, then fusion directed by the February 1969 Congress — differs in emphasis from Parkinson’s narrative, in which Habash, Haddad and their followers split from the ANM to form the PFLP in 1967 (Beyond the Lines — Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon, PDF p.59); both accounts are kept on the ANM page.
Its aim of a democratic national state in Palestine with equal rights for Arabs and Jews (PDF p.102-103) is the PFLP statement of the position treated on the Secular Democratic State page.
Its class account of the Palestinian bourgeoisie is the analysis the unsigned introduction says the Palestinian Authority produced by Oslo underlines (PDF p.7-8).

Open questions

Slips as printed, held unreconciled (all checked in the original): PDF p.31 “if we allow and our perspective to stop at this limit”; PDF p.34 “word imperialism” for world imperialism; PDF p.45 “if it is intended deny the meeting of interests” (missing “to”); PDF p.52 “the worker’s, peasants and poor classes”; PDF p.53 “our ally the revolution” (missing “of”); PDF p.69 “adhering to and guide by scientific socialism” (for “guided by”); PDF p.70 “the mobilization of the of revolution in the Arab field” (missing a word) and “does not only from its failure” (missing a verb); PDF p.74 the doubled phrase “the determination of its contingents and the potentialities of each of these contingents”; PDF p.79 “it being understood that purports at the same time to obtain recognition” (missing a subject); PDF p.81 “Vietnamese reactionary” where the sense requires “reaction”; PDF p.83 “with a working class ideology at programs” (missing a word).
Mao’s article is named “Analysis of the Classes of Chinese Society” in the body (PDF p.27) and “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” in footnote 1 on the same page.
The work is described with delivery as about 38,498 words; the supplied text copy counts 38,492 words.
In the Founding Document, one uniting squad is the “Organization of martyr Abdul Latif Shrour” (PDF p.15); the name occurs only there, and no other spelling appears anywhere in the work.
The Sassoon named at PDF p.57-58, received by traditional bourgeois leaderships with Dayan and other Israeli leaders after June 5, 1967, is given no first name and is not further identified anywhere in the work.
Slips as printed in part 2, held unreconciled (checked against the original where noted): PDF p.88 “Moreover. By its neo-colonialist technique”; PDF p.106 “sinusitis” where the sense requires a word for windings; PDF p.109 “Organizational strategy here become an integral part”; PDF p.121 “determined to revolt, too main in their revolution”; PDF p.128 “lives in seclusion away frothy masses” (for away from the masses); PDF p.140 “paralyses it and prevent it”; PDF p.145 central leadership intervention “to protect the workers’ interest” (for the party’s interest, by sense); PDF p.151 the sentence ending “to drive our organizational problems which in reality are general and common in varying degrees to all the political organizations which now rally around commando action”, which has no completed main clause as printed; PDF p.154 “Consequently;”; PDF p.160 “Quarto D’albinos” in the printing notice, as printed in the original.
Mao’s 1949 article is entitled “People’s Democratic Dictatorship” in the body (PDF p.100) and “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” in its footnote 5 on the same page — the same title discrepancy pattern as for the classes article in part 1.
The Foreign Languages Press catalogue list on PDF p.157 (New Roads) skips item 13 as printed, and the “Works of Maoism” list’s ordering of Mao’s Selected Works volumes (VI, VII, VIII, IX, I, II, III, IV, V) is as printed.

Coverage

PDF p.1-160 of 160, read in full in parts 1-2 of 2.

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