– Enver Hoxha, 1970 –
The brilliant victories achieved by the Palestinian resistance in the struggle against the Israeli occupiers mark the emergence of an entirely new and decisive factor in the reality of the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. We refer to the affirmation of the cause of the Palestinian nation, which, after the June war in 1967, in a completely autonomous manner, imposed recognition of its individuality and strength on the whole world.
It is true that “the Palestinian problem” has existed from the first day of the creation of the state of Israel, but up to recently, the big imperialist powers, taking advantage of the confusion and divisions in the Arab world, had succeeded in pushing it aside and treating it only as a problem of refugees who have to be given “assistance” and “settled” so that they forget their own homeland and their national identity. The imperialist powers sought to strengthen the state of Israel at all costs in order to have it as a gendarme to protect their interests in the Middle East and to divide the Arab countries, with the aim of exploiting their difficulties later for colonial penetration and domination in this zone. Innumerable resolutions, drafts, suggestions and schemes for mediations, etc., have been adopted and undertaken in the name of UNO by the great powers which manipulate and lead that organization. But in all these “documents” and “plans,” the Palestinian question as a national question, as a major problem of the Middle East, separate from the general Arab-Israeli conflict, is missing. This “oversight” can be seen in the notorious UNO resolution of November 22, 1967, manipulated by the American imperialists and the Soviet revisionists, which the Palestinian people, quite correctly, have rejected as totally unacceptable.
All this shows clearly that the United States of America and the Soviet Union, which are deeply involved in the Middle East conflict and have pretentions to place themselves in the position of the “international arbiter,” do not want the settlement of the Palestinian national problem, but, on the contrary, are doing everything to prevent it. It is not difficult to explain their stand. Both of them want to protect their own imperialist interests in this region, to extend them and to create favourable conditions for the further intensification of their expansionist and hegemonic plans.
Settlement of the Palestinian national question would certainly affect Israel, which the United States of America incites and employs as a tool for the realization of its hostile plans against the Arab countries and as the main support base for its imperialist penetration in the Middle East, while for the Soviet revisionists it would mean the elimination of the grave and complicated situation created in that zone, which they are exploiting for their hegemonic aims. The calculations of the Brezhnev-Kosygin clique are based on the permanent threat of Israel to the Arab countries, on the hope that need will drive the Arab countries to turn to Moscow and accept the conditions it dictates. The only thing the two imperialist powers really want to achieve is to extinguish the legitimate anti-imperialist and anti-zionist struggle of the Arab peoples, especially the national liberation war of the Palestinian people, to maintain the tense situation and to exploit the tragedy of the Arab peoples in order to plunder the natural wealth and utilize the strategic positions of the Middle East.
Now, however, the Palestinian people’s partisan war has terrified both the American imperialists and the Soviet revisionists. Now they are facing the fact that they can no longer keep silent about it, but neither can they defeat it. Although Israel is armed to the teeth with the most modern means by all international reaction, it is being shaken and defeated more and more each day by the liberation struggle which the valiant Palestinian partisans have launched all over the country. There is no doubt that the crisis which has gripped the state of Israel will become even deeper in the future. The fact is that despite the efforts that have been made to discredit and suppress it, the Palestinian resistance has steadily mounted and developed, dealing crushing blows to the whole imperialist and revisionist policy in the Middle East and defeating the manoeuvres and intrigues of this policy up to date. The growth of the Palestinian resistance into an organized national liberation war, with a clear program which responds to the national interests of the Palestinian people and which is closely linked with the anti-imperialist struggle of the Arab peoples, shows that the countries of the Middle East are now fully capable of coping successfully both with the force of arms of foreign invaders and with the diplomatic manoeuvres of imperialists and revisionists.
Nevertheless, it should not be thought that all the dangers which are threatening the Arab peoples, and the Palestinian people in particular, have been eliminated or even reduced. The imperialists and revisionists possess colossal means, and they know how to manoeuvre and to exploit any uncertainty or wavering. They will never give up their aim of forcing the Arab countries to capitulate, and especially their aim of wiping out the Palestinian armed forces and burying the Palestinian national problem once and for all. The resolutions of UNO and its plans for mediation, which are simply the fruit of the anti-Arab plot of the American and Soviet governments, or the bilateral and four-party talks which they organize allegedly to achieve a “political settlement” of the problem of the Middle East, serve these aims.
An especially great danger for the anti-imperialist and liberation struggle of the Arab peoples is presented by the Soviet revisionists, who pose as their friends, while in reality they are their enemies, no less ferocious and cunning than the American imperialists. Their hostility to the Arab cause has always existed, at all times and in every stage of the long Arab-Israeli conflict. It has been displayed especially against the armed struggle and the national cause of the Palestinian people. Up until now, the Soviet revisionists have maintained a dead silence about the Palestinian national problem as though it did not exist at all, as if it were not a constituent part of a major international problem about which they claim they are greatly “worried,” because they are allegedly champions of the rights of peoples to self-determination, freedom and independence. Moreover, they have opposed the armed struggle of the Palestinian people with every means they possess, describing it, in chorus with the imperialist propaganda, as “terrorist actions,” “provocations,” “negative extremist acts,” etc. The chiefs of Moscow have tried in particular to create distrust towards the Palestinian resistance in the Arab countries, by suggesting that with its fighting actions against Israel it is allegedly hindering the settlement of the conflict, inciting the zionists to undertake reprisals, etc. They have been doing the same job as American imperialism which wants to impose a separate peace with Israel on the individual Arab countries, on condition that they prohibit the activity of the Palestinian partisans in their territories.
Now that the armed struggle of the Palestinian people has not been quelled, but has been further extended, becoming a decisive factor in the Middle East, the rulers of the Kremlin have changed their tactics. Recently, a one hundred and eighty degree turn has been seen in the Soviet revisionist press and the statements of the revisionist leaders. With unprecedented hypocrisy and demagogy, they are claiming that they “support” the Palestinian armed struggle and are ready to “assist” it. It is self-evident that they mean neither support nor assistance. Their objective in the new existing situation is to harness the Palestinian armed forces to their chariot, to deceive and exploit them. By providing a few weapons, they are trying to get control of the Palestinian national liberation war, to keep it within the framework which suits their hegemonic interests and the circumstances which arise in their collaboration and competition with American imperialism. It is part of the nature of the revisionists and their savage methods to make their supplies of arms dependent on their conditions, so that along with them they demand to send “advisers,” “experts,” spies, saboteurs, etc., to the recipient country through whom to achieve their aims. If they manage to shackle the Palestinian resistance, they will seek to use it later as a means of barter in their dirty deals with American imperialism in the Middle East and other zones of the world.
The thing that all the imperialists, revisionists and reactionaries fear most is people’s partisan war. When they do not succeed with pressure, threats and other means of intimidation, they try to hinder and extinguish it with demagogy and deception. This is what the Soviet revisionists are trying to do now with the Palestinian national liberation movement.
The Palestinian people, who are fighting for a just cause and who, during the last 20 years, experienced to their cost all the frauds, hypocrisy, lies and slanders of the big imperialist powers, cannot fail to understand that the hand which the Soviet revisionists are holding out to them today is a hand which wants to grab them by the throat and strangle them. They cannot fail to understand that the chiefs who are ruling in Moscow today are the allies of the American imperialists, who for their own imperialist interests, are ready to sacrifice the supreme interests of any people, including those of the Palestinian people. If the Soviet revisionists have now been obliged to “recognize” the armed struggle of the Palestinian people, this is because the heroic fight of the partisans, the men and women of Palestine, has imposed this on them. Likewise, it is this struggle which will bring about the failure of the revisionists’ new intrigues, their efforts to sabotage the Palestinian resistance from within and to transform it into an appendage of their hegemonic and enslaving policy.
The Albanian people, who are in solidarity with and warmly support the fraternal Palestinian people, are fully convinced that their people’s partisan war will triumph over their many imperialist and zionist enemies and make dust and ashes of all the intrigues and plots which they hatch up to leave the Palestinian people without a homeland and in perpetual slavery.
(Enver Hoxha, Speeches, Conservations and Articles, 1969-1970, “8 Nëntori,” Tirana 1980)