THE UPRISING of the Palestinian population on the West Bank and in Gaza, which is in its fourth month, is already the most important stage in the struggle of the Palestinian people since the rising of 1936.
The main characteristics of the present uprising are the following:
• The spontaneous way it broke out and the massive proportions that it attained from its first days, involving the vast majority of the inhabitants of the occupied territories.
• The vanguard role played in the movement by three social categories:
1. A new generation of Palestinian youth has decided to take its fate into its own hands, particularly in the light of the dead-end into which the policy of the PLO leadership has led.
2. Women have been playing and will increasingly play a major role in the struggle of the Palestinian people, a role that is in no way reflected in the composition of the leaderships of the Palestinian organizations that came out of the post-1967 experience.
3. In particular, the inhabitants of the refugee camps (since 1948) have been in the vanguard of the uprising. This testifies to the fact that the national oppression of the Palestinian people is by no means limited to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in June 1967. Also, and above all, it is a product of the creation of the Zionist state in 1948 as a racist state founded on the expulsion and oppression of the Palestinian people.
Remarkable self-organization
• The remarkable self-organization of the uprising, which emerged in the very first weeks. Committees have been formed in the camps, cities and villages of the West Bank and Gaza, committees that are the expression of the spontaneous movement and are composed mainly of previously unorganized youth.
At the same time, a "united leadership" of the uprising has been established as a bloc of the main political currents involved in the movement. The role of this leadership is confined to calling central initiatives — that is, calls for days of general struggle, which are the high points of the uprising. Nevertheless, the main driving force of the uprising remains the fight of the local committees in a decentralized struggle embodied in "flying demonstrations" that throw the Zionist repressive apparatus off balance.
Deepgoing split in the Zionist movement
• The fact that within the territory on which the Zionist state was created in 1948 the uprising has not only evoked the active solidarity of the Palestinian and Arab populations who remained in this territory 40 years ago and hold Israeli citizenship. It has also produced a deepgoing split in the Zionist movement.
These features of the ongoing uprising described above are in contradiction to the call for for an "international conference" to be attended by the imperialist powers, the USSR, the Zionist state and the Arab states bordering on Israel to decide the "settlement" of the Israeli-Arab conflict and of the Palestinian question.
This contradiction is particularly clear since this conference is supposed to be called around a platform including UN Security Council resolution 242 (1967). This projects the recognition of the Zionist state's "right to exist within secure and recognized borders" in exchange for a possibly partial withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, as well as granting guarantees for its safety and security (among other things, the de-militarization of the regions bordering on this state).
This project contradicts the real right to even partial self-determination of the Palestinian people on the West Bank and in Gaza. An "international conference" can only be the framework of a diktat designed to create a Palestinian bantustan under the twofold control of the Zionist state and the Jordanian monarchy. The only slogan corresponding to the aspirations expressed by the Palestinian uprising, particularly its youthful vanguard, is that of an immediate, total and — most importantly — unconditional withdrawal of the Israeli army from the territories occupied since June 1967.
This is the only slogan in line with the partial self-determination of the Palestinian people on the West Bank and in Gaza. It is the immediate goal of the uprising which could take the form of the free democratic election by the inhabitants of these territories of governmental self-determination organs. It is around these slogans — combined with that for the right of the entire Palestinian people to self-determination — that we will fight to organize active solidarity with the struggling Palestinian masses.