P.L.O. speaks on self-determination

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The following are excerpts from an interview with Riyad H. Mansour, deputy permanent observer to the United Nations of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The interview was conducted by Socialist Action reporter Jonathan Halabi.

Question: All that is going on in Palestine raises the question of what sort of program you have. Twenty years ago, the P.L.O. was raising the slogan of a democratic, secular Palestine.

Answer: The P.L.O. has not abandoned that idea. On the contrary, the P.L.O. indicates that this is its strategic, ultimate solution. But since 1973, it has developed a transitional, specific solution moving in The following are excerpts from a letter the direction of the democratic state.

That transitional solution is the ment of inalienable national rights Palestinian people. This means that people should be allowed to return homeland. This is whether they wer area before 1967 or after 1967. attainfor the refugee to their e in the And it would allow the Palestinian people to exercise self-determination and to establish their own independent Palestinian state on their national soil under the leadership of the P.L.O.

The establishment of an independent Palestinian state on part of historic Palestine would constitute a historic, decisive development that will enable their situation to develop later on in the direction of a democratic state in all of historic Palestine.

¡The democratic state] would permit the two people to live together without one oppressing the other one, without one dominating the other one, and with sensitivity to all the things that are cherished by the Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish population in the same area.

Question: If you present this demand, what will be the reaction of those Palestinians whose homes are not in the West Bank or Gaza? Would they not say a partial state is no solution at all?

Answer: The struggle of the Palestinian people cannot be seen in the way that the person is struggling for a house in Jaffa or Haifa... The struggle is not only for these things.

The struggle is for having an independent political presence for the Palestinian people, to reflect itself in an independent Palestinian state for all Palestinians, regardless of where they are living, regardless of whether they would return to that state or not.

Because, for example, the Zionist movement, when it succeeded in establishing a Jewish state in PalestineIsrael—is said to be the defender of all Jews. Actually, they do not have more than 3 million Jews living in Israel. There are about 10 million additional Jews living outside. In fact, there are half-a-million Israelis living in other states.

Yet they look on Israel as being state. They can return to it any time that they wish, and they can look at it as fulfilling the dreams of the Jewish people from the point of view of the Zionist Now, for us it is the duty of all Palestinians, regardless of where they live-even Palestinians who are inside Israel—to allow our independent politicalnational being to be reflected in an independent Palestinian state on Palestinian national soil.

Once we succeed in doing that, then we will be creating a material base in order to actualize the rest of all our legitimate aspirations and rights in that area-taking into consideration that realities have been created there regardless of our wishes.

The biggest reality is the fact that there is another society that has been brought onto the same piece of land (and here I am talking about the Jewish population). A just solution to the conflict has to take into account that they are there and they have legitimate claims.

That is why we believe that the democratic state for the two people is the just and possible solution sometime in the future.

But that solution cannot be imposed by one party on the other. That solution needs the appropriate atmosphere to develop in order to create the necessary and sufficient material forces on both sides to struggle for it and to actualize it.

To put that process on the correct track, we need an independent Palestinian state. We need a massive material force to be on the ground to reflect the interests of the Palestinian people in order to set this process in the correct direction.

Without that, for even those who dream of having a democratic state inside Palestine—it will remain a dream.

Question: What are the positions of various currents in the P.L.O. on the feasibilty of such a mini-state?

Answer: We don't call it a mini-state. This is the dominant position of all sections of the P.L.O. This is the official position of the P.L.O. We had some discussions over this issue for a few years, but for the last 10 years it has been settled. All significant sections within our movement are united behind this program.

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