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EDITORIAL
Long live Palestine!
The death of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat marks the beginning of a new stage in the struggle of a heroic occupied people who have faced incredible odds. The strategists for U.S. imperialism, along with Ariel Sharon and the client state of Israel, are doing everything they can to divide the Palestinian movement and frustrate its long struggle for national self-determination.
Progressives everywhere have a duty to defend the right of the Palestinians to choose their own leaders and conduct their struggle in whatever way they deem necessary. In that spirit, Workers World Party sent the following message of solidarity to the Palestine Liberation Organization on hearing news of Arafat's death:
"The National Committee of Workers World Party extends our heartfelt condolences to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the entire Palestinian nation on the death of Yasir Arafat, President of the Palestinian Authority, President of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and for more than four decades the leader and symbol of the Palestinian people's struggle for self-determination and national sovereignty.
"In all his years at the helm of the Palestinian struggle, years during which he faced hardship, siege, assassination attempts, unending efforts to silence him, President Arafat never wavered in his devotion to the cause. He showed great courage. All the world recognized him as the personification of the Pales tinians' determination to never surrender their rights as a people, no matter how mighty the force arrayed against them.
"That force--U.S. imperialism, via its proxy, the Israeli settler state, which the United States arms, finances, and sponsors--has waged a relentless war to defeat the Palestinians, to isolate them, and to drive a wedge between them and the other oppressed peoples of the Middle East and the world. All in the effort, as with the U.S. war on Iraq, to gain complete control of the region for the profits of Big Oil.
"That will never happen. Nothing can stop the Palestinian struggle. For nothing can crush the Palestinian spirit. Not occupation, not massacre, not racist vilification, not demolitions, not walls, checkpoints, curfews, mass arrests. There may be many organizations, many voices among the Palestinian people, but Palestine is a nation united. A nation whose will is unbendable. This is a nation that will struggle until victory--and this above all is what President Yasir Arafat's long service signified to all the world.
"Now, on the sad occasion of his death, and on behalf of every member of Workers World Party, we reaffirm our own determination to carry on our work in unwavering solidarity with the heroic Palestinian nation. We stand with you in the struggle, today and every day.
"Long live the PLO! Long live Palestine!"
Reprinted from the Nov. 25, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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