Syria entrenched in liberating Palestine

Press TV has conducted an interview with Saab Shaath, author and Middle East expert in Belfast, about the issue of a Palestinian group forming combat units to liberate occupied lands in the Golan Heights.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Let’s look at the significance of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s general command (PFLP). What has happened since we haven’t really heard from them for several decades and now all of a sudden they’re saying they are willing, ready and able to liberate the Golan Heights?

Shaath: Let me correct this fact: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s general command (PFLP) led by Ahmad Jabril was not idle for 40 years, not even for a day – they are engaged today in Damascus protecting the Palestinian refugees from the terror attacks in Syria.

For that matter its leader Ahmad Jabril lost his son just a few years ago, Jihad (Jabril), in a Zionist assassination, since Jihad was leading military operations for the group in the West Bank during the second Intifada.

The PFLP, as they call it, carried out many major attacks against the Zionist entity during the second Intifada. During the last war in Gaza last November, they attacked military posts inside Tel Aviv – which shows you and that was declared or claimed responsibility by the PFLP-GS. So, they weren’t’t idle.

Let me explain two important points here before I get into the significance of that: the occupied Golan Heights and the 1973 war. During that war according to Syrian, Egyptian and Zionist sources as well – and I want to repeat what they told the commander of the Egyptian second army….

He said during that war the Syrian army reached Huleh Lake and captured all of the Golan Heights and a significant part of northern Palestine including cities and Lake Tiberias, which surprised military planners on the Zionist and the American side at that time.

And the sources said the Egyptian army used to receive 900 air sorties a day while Syria Front used to receive 5,000 sorties a day. So we know what was going on.

And then the Egyptian President Sadat agreed to ceasefire with Israel without consulting his partners in that war, without even letting them know. And that’s why Israel since has focused all its capability at the Golan Heights and captured half of it.

Press TV: I want to get to the point of why now that they are announcing that they are definitely going to try and liberate the Golan Heights at this point in time?

Shaath: Palestine is part of something geographically and historically called Greater Syria. So the Palestinians and the Lebanese they know that they belong to this identity – their mother is Syria.

And the Palestinian resistance have a duty and feel their duty to liberate the Golan Heights as their duty to liberate Jerusalem or West Bank or Gaza or any part of Palestine for that matter.

And the same thing for the Lebanese resistance -Their mother is Syria and Syria directly is acting as a resistance movement more than a state within the Palestinian struggle for the liberation of Palestine. And that’s why sometimes you can see there are differences in the tactics between Syria as a government and some Palestinian resistance. But as a strategy Syria is entrenched in the Liberating of Palestine.

The PFLP central command, they’ve taken that step to prove they are a part and they belong to that strategy of liberating Golan and focusing on Golan as well. And they are in the Gaza Strip; they were part of defending the Gaza Strip during the last war.

Press TV: How do you think this announcement has affected Tel Aviv itself? Do you think it is having an effect on them – tell me your perspective on that aspect of this?

Shaath: The Zionist entity is terrified now. And the reasons for that are on the back of the meeting between the Russian foreign minister and Kerry, the United States foreign secretary.

They are scared now for a week the talk is going that the Golan Heights is going to be opened for the resistance and that’s going to bring a lot of trouble on them since a lot of the Palestinians and Lebanese and Syrians were itching to open this front that was sealed with the armistice agreement after the 1973 war.

And now they see there is a quality of a kind of weaponry in the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. They are worried and they are bringing many, many troops to the Golan Heights area.