PFLP official: We “made a mistake when it stopped the armed struggle in the international arena”

Headline: "Popular Front leadership member Badran Jaber: We made a mistake when we stopped the resistance outside of Palestine"

"Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leadership member Badran Jaber… emphasized in an interview with the Quds Press [international news agency) for the 49th anniversary of the establishment of the front, that 'There is no room for dialogue and a truce, and all of the wagering on discussion and dialogue without weapons and resistance against the Israeli occupation will not succeed.'

Jaber said that the front made a mistake when it stopped the armed struggle in the international arena, after the pressures that it was subjected to, and limited the confrontation to within the Palestinian territories. This caused the Palestinians to lose many supporters and defenders of the cause as well as people who fought by its side, and the cause ceased to be the central cause that burned permanently in the international arena as it was in the past.

Jaber clarified that 'The confrontation waged by the Popular Front against the occupation in the past turned the whole world into an arena of confrontation with the occupation. This did not find favor in the eyes of some of the Arab regimes, and placed the leaders of the front on the international wanted list, and many states tried to prevent their movement.'

According to his assessment, 'The armed struggle outside of Palestine, which was one of the branches of the Popular Front, fulfilled a clear role in the confrontation against the occupation, by raising the Palestinian cause to the UN and the regional and international organizations and in achieving a prominent position in the world, and led to the appearance of friends of the Palestinian revolution… such as the Red Army, the Japanese Red Army (a Communist terrorist organization responsible for the Lod airport attack in 1972, 24 murdered –Ed.), and forces from the world that joined the struggle against Zionism.'"

Lod Airport attack – on May 30, 1972, Takeshi Okudaira, Yasuyuki Yasuda and Kozo Okamoto – members of the Japanese Red Army who had been recruited by the Palestinian terror organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – carried out a terror attack at Israel’s Lod (Tel Aviv) airport. Throwing hand grenades and shooting, the terrorists murdered 24 (8 Israelis and 16 foreign tourists), and wounded over 70. Okudaira and Yasuda were killed during the attack, while Okamoto was arrested and sentenced to 3 life sentences, but was released in the Jibril Exchange in May 1985, after only 13 years of imprisonment, when Israel agreed to release 1,150 Palestinian prisoners, including terrorist murderers, in exchange for three Israeli soldiers who had been taken hostage by the terror organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP - GC).