March 30th 2017, Tunes
The International Conference «Palestine: One hundred years of resistance», held in Tunes (Tunisia) on March 24th to 26th, promoted by the Arab Left Forum, counted upon the participation of two dozen communist parties, among which PCP, and other progressive organizations from Arab countries, as well as representatives of parties and organizations from Europe, Africa and Latin America.
The conference reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle for an independent Palestine, a century after the Balfour Declaration, in which England promised the Zionists the creation of a Jewish «national home» in Palestine, thus opening the path to the installation in its territory of the State of Israel which led to the expulsion of 700 000 Palestinians and the destruction of hundreds of towns, followed by the Zionist occupation of historic Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, which foresaw the partition of the Middle East between England and France, mark the beginning of a century of imperialist intervention in the region.
In the current framework, characterized by the continuation of violent imperialist encroachment, with wars of aggression and the attempt to redraw the map of the region, creating a «New Middle East», it is very important having the Conference reaffirm that the Palestinian cause remains the central struggle of the left and progressive forces of the region, thus rejecting the attempt to replace the political struggle of the national liberation of the Palestinian people against Zionist and imperialism with artificially created ethnic or religious conflicts, which merely aim to deviate the attention of the people from their real enemies. While Israel remains a privileged instrument of imperialist action in the region, the Palestinian people, expelled from their country and expropriated of their land, is thus forced to pursue their struggle for justice and the creation of an independent State.
In its intervention, PCP demonstrated its consistent solidarity «towards the Palestinian people; the political forces of their movement of national liberation and their heroic struggle for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people; the right to build the free, independent, sovereign and viable State of Palestine along the pre-1967 borders and with capital in East Jerusalem; as well as the right of return of the millions of Palestinian refugees (and their descendants), as stipulated in Resolution 194 of the UN Security Council».
Recalling that PCP «was always coherent with it ideals, in its direct opposition to wards, encroachments and destabilization operations promoted by imperialism, be it in the Middle East, North Africa or other regions of our planet», PCP's intervention identified the nature of the capitalist system as the deep cause of these aggressions and affirmed it will not hesitate to highlight the central role that social-democracy and other forces, who falsely call themselves «progressive», have played in conducting and «legitimizing» aggressions.
