Palestinian Communist Party

International Relations Central Committee Palestinian Communist Party

Dear comrades

The pandemic that struck the world, Covid-19 pandemic, has collectively affected the peoples of the world and their working class, in two directions, the first is healthy and the second economically.

In the health direction, the pandemic came to show the fragility of the health system that depends on the profit-oriented private sector at the expense of the needs of the working class. Thus, the hard-working people were not able to receive the necessary treatment to confront the pandemic. In Palestine, our situation is no different from the rest of the world’s people, but rather worsens for the following reasons:

First: The systematic role that the occupation plays against our people, deliberately exploiting the health situation, whether inside or outside detention centers, as it prevents medical personnel from reaching the sick, and conducts barbaric raids on our cities and villages.

Second: The rampant corruption of the authority’s apparatus, which has reached the point of distributing aid collected through donations from the people to family and friends through “popular” committees formed by the authority’s organization, in ways and methods that are not related to transparency.

Third: Using the state of emergency to pass political positions by force through the arrests made by the authority against the demanding movements on ridiculous charges that have nothing to do with the pandemic.

Economically, the economic crisis in which the peoples of the world are going through a crisis of surplus wealth has clearly accelerated and the barbarism of the bourgeoisie has emerged through the closures that hit the working class, which caused the collapse of the social structure. Poverty, and at the same time the profits of the bourgeoisie increased, according to studies, billions increased in the hands of a few bourgeois, including 20 Arabs. This is how clearly the decline of the middle class and the increase in the number of the unemployed army, not to mention the increase in the poverty of the already poor.

To counter the indignation of the people and the discontent of the working class, they used the emergency laws from preventing assembly to preventing any organized activity, such as using emergency laws to confront the mass movement in the United States against racism and Trump’s barbaric policies prove that the bourgeoisie wants to pass its plans by force without taking into account neither the will nor the needs of the people. .

What happened in the United States was circulated throughout the world. In Palestine, under the pretext of the pandemic first, and with other pretexts, secondly, curfews were banned. Government institutions closed schools, medium and small craft establishments, which increased the number of unemployed on the one hand, and under the slogan of stopping security coordination, the Israeli side stopped paying Palestinian dues From the tax clearance revenues originally paid by the Palestinians according to the Paris Economic Protocol, the payment of government employees ’salaries was halted, which exacerbated the crisis.

It is worth noting here that the sectors that have benefited from this pandemic are the food and medicine sector. The banking sector has been one of the biggest beneficiaries. The successive Palestinian governments’ monetary policy since the government of Salam Fayyad, which linked the public to banks, led to an exacerbation of debts, which led to the inability to repay due to the financial failure of the authority and small Craftsmen.

The policy of linking the people to the banks benefited two banks and the occupation. The banks increased their profits and the occupation ensured the crowd’s preoccupation with fulfilling its obligations. As for the authority, it is the responsible and partner for this farce.

Our party’s role in these circumstances is difficult and complicated. On the one hand it faces the occupation and the authority of Oslo compatible with it, and it faces with our people these exceptional circumstances related to the pandemic on the other hand. Party committees were formed to follow up the needs of the workers and assist them as much as possible. The situation, and financial and moral support was provided, according to our modest capabilities, to the largest possible number of the working class and the poor peasants.

As we mentioned earlier, our people are facing the occupation and the authority consistent with it, this means that we are still in the stage of national liberation, in addition to the daily confrontation of the racist practices of occupation at the places of contact, we are working to organize the masses for a great confrontation for the sake of national liberation, this is taking place side by side with the battle to confront the fierce attack The people’s strength and the working class, therefore, the party works to form a broad national front to confront the occupation and the authority of Oslo, providing support and participating in the demanding movements against corruption and all forms of authoritarian abuse. Reaching the stage of building socialism requires ending the stage of national liberation.