The Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has suspended monthly payments to three Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) political groups to silence their criticisms, the groups disclosed in a joint statement on Sunday.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), formerly the Palestinian Communist Party, condemned the decision to stop the payments, claiming that it aims to “blackmail” them and “undermine their political positions.”
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— Jehad Abusalim جِهَاد أبو سليم (@JehadAbusalim) June 24, 2021
“The decision to suspend the payments constitutes a violation of the statute of the PLO and an infringement on the powers of its leading bodies. It also seriously damages internal relations between the PLO factions,” they revealed in the statement.
The decision, they stressed, “comes at a time when the responsibilities of the three factions are increasing in advancing the popular resistance and confronting the occupation’s policies of settlement expansion, Judaization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.”
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— Joe Catron (@jncatron) July 6, 2021
Meanwhile, the three factions highlighted that the suspension of the funds will not succeed in “blackmailing” them or dissuading them from “continuing their role in defending freedoms and democratic rights of the people in the face of the policies of oppression and authoritarianism.”
The groups have recently criticized the PA policies, especially regarding peace talks with the Israeli occupation and the meeting with Israeli officials.
They also criticized the security cooperation with the Israeli occupation, as well as the PA’s crackdown on political activists and opponents in the West Bank.
(MEMO, PC, Social Media)
