The Popular Democratic Party in Lebanon issued a statement today, 10 June 2024, on the so-called “recognition of the Palestinian state”. The translated statement follows below:

The Palestinian people and their armed resistance took revolutionary action against the Zionist entity and its imperialist masters in the epic battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, as a continuation of the Palestinian struggle that has persisted for over a century.

The October 7 operation, which revealed the fragility of the entity and the failure of the international imperialist system to protect the colonial project, and charted the downward slope of its temporary existence, sparked direct and rapid intervention from the West in support of Zionism. Despite this, the entity is increasingly defeated on the battlefield, its structural crises are worsening, and it is losing its functional role in serving the global capitalist system. The loss of their ability to subjugate the Palestinian people and their armed resistance and to achieve decisive and clear victories requires the Western imperialist camp to circumvent these achievements of the people and the resistance forces in the region with the illusion of extracting gains for the Zionists in the political field after they failed to achieve them in combat.

It is within this context that we determine the revolutionary position on the maneuvers of the Atlantic West in “recognizing the state of Palestine.” The Western imperialist camp, which created the Zionist entity, armed it and provided it with all forms of support, knows it is a hopeless project to seek to defeat the Palestinian resistance. Instead, it seeks through recognition of the state to achieve several goals, which are:

• First, confirming the recognition of the Zionist entity as a “legitimate,” internationally legal entity, with all that remains to implement the remainder of the partition related to the Palestinians.
• Second, stripping the international legitimacy of the Palestinian armed resistance — guaranteed under international law — on the basis that recognition of statehood gives Palestinians their rights to a state on the 1967 borders and thus aiming to dismantle the right of return.
• Third, for some countries, this recognition is an expression of fear of the international popular position as exhibited by the massive movements and demonstrations that have filled the streets of American, European and Canadian capitals and cities, alongside the rest of the world. They wish to curtail this movement and suppress the clear position expressed by these masses, who have adopted the cause of the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine, through loud slogans and chants: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, with resistance and armed struggle.
• Fourth, promoting the possibility of rationalizing and humanizing the entity in public opinion by pressuring it to stop the most extreme massacres and genocide, dealing with the Palestinians as solely victims and not owners of the land, and presenting the entity as a war criminal at best and not an illegitimate settler-colonial entity occupying the land and persecuting its people.

Attempts to popularize the illusion of recognition of a Palestinian state, whether it is sovereign or lacking sovereignty, actually serve the interests of recognition of the “right” of the artificial, temporary state of the Zionist entity, and seek to undermine and liquidate the struggles, sacrifices and martyrs of the Palestinian people. This “recognition” is, in reality, a betrayal of the people of Palestine in the homeland and in the diaspora.

What is necessary today is the withdrawal of recognition of the Zionist entity by all countries of the world, not verbal recognition of a Palestinian state. For 30 years, our Palestinian people have suffered from the disastrous results of a so-called “political settlement” and have paid the price in the profits and strategic gains that the enemy achieved from that deceptive operation. The enemy’s rejection and anger at the European countries that “recognize the Palestinian state” does not mean anything and has no value.

The true Palestinian state will be established on the liberated land, inch by inch, through popular and armed struggle until the total liberation of all of Palestine from the river to the sea.

June 10, 2024
Beirut, Lebanon