Appendix 8: Statement of the People's Party Issued on 26/1/1957
The People's Party held a general meeting in Damascus, attended by the delegates of the branch bureaus, the members of the Executive Bureau and the members of the bureau of the parliamentary body. They studied the party's internal organization, its program and its domestic, Arab and foreign policy, and approved amendments to the internal rules and to the basic program, to be put before the General Congress at its regular session. Those present also decided to issue the following statement:
In these difficult days the Arab world stands face to face with two deadly enemies, colonialism and Zionism, battling their injustice and fighting their schemes, so as to win its right to an honorable and free life and to take its natural place in the march of civilization and progress, alongside the peoples of the earth who are struggling for a humane life over which fly the banners of brotherhood, freedom, justice and peace.
It is no longer a secret that colonialism set up its tyrannical foster child Israel, gave it the means of life and strength and rushed recklessly down this dangerous path, so that Israel would be a pliant tool in its hand with which to threaten Syria and its struggling sisters, so that the Arabs would submit, hand it the reins, and let it rob them of the riches of their fathers and forefathers..
On the other hand, the colonial powers persisted in denying the Arabs every means of self-defense, development and progress, until, having despaired of fair treatment from them, the Arabs looked for the means of strength elsewhere. When they found some of the arms they needed with the states that understood the extent of the injustice done to the Arabs and supported their just causes, colonialism attacked young, liberated Egypt with its planes, its fleets and its armies, pouring the fire of its deadly weapons with unparalleled savagery on women and children, on the houses of God and the hospitals, and on the homes of the peaceful and innocent. For colonialism, which has shown its open hostility to the Arabs by allying itself openly with Zionism against us, wants us to be nothing but its slaves and followers.
The aggression of the English and the French on Egypt, and their alliance with the Jews, stirred hatred in every Arab soul and opened every eye, even the wandering ones, to the fact that the Arabs will not be able to live an honorable life unless colonialism is broken and its calamities and miseries vanish from the Arab world, calamities that our people have borne in their long history as no other people on earth has borne.
It has become plain and clear that the Jews, who tried by deceit to win the sympathy of simple people in the world as victims whom Nazism subjected to humiliation and torment, have been exposed, in their repeated attacks on the Arabs and especially in their latest aggression on Egypt, as having been brought to Arab Palestine to make the part they usurped, unjustly and wrongfully, and whose people, who had lived there since time immemorial, they drove out in a dispossession without parallel in the dark history of mankind, into a base from which to pounce on the Arab countries, to expand at their expense and to threaten them on behalf of the colonialists.
So it has been proved that the covenants of colonialism cannot be trusted, for the English and the French, who in their Tripartite Declaration of 1950 grandly undertook to protect the status quo on Israel's borders, astonished the world by allying themselves with it and striking the country they claimed they would defend against Zionist aggression. The Arabs have likewise been convinced, once again, that unless they rely on their own strength and on themselves, a dark future awaits them, and awaits their children and descendants after them.
But this wicked assault on sister Egypt did not go without an Arab response. The Egyptian forces fought with the utmost courage, and on the first day of the battle in Sinai they exposed the myth of Israeli strength, which nearly melted away under the blows of the Egyptian forces fighting to the death in defense of the sacred things and the safety of Arabism. Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia hastened to put all their means at the disposal of the joint Arab command, to strike at the lair of danger in occupied Palestine and ward off the evils of this strange creature, which has shown that it is a danger that threatens world peace as a whole, and not merely the safety and security of the Arabs.
The whole Arab world, from the Sea of Darkness to the Arabian Gulf, stood condemning the aggression of the aggressors, supporting its big sister Egypt, and cutting off from the states of this aggression one of their means of life, Arab oil.. It is right that we should praise the stand of the states of the world that denounced and condemned the aggression and took decisions in the United Nations calling for the aggression to stop and its forces to withdraw at once. The Soviet Union's grave ultimatum descended on the aggressors, and the disapproving stand of the United States sapped their strength, so they had no choice but to bow their heads, waiting for the storm to pass so that they could resume their aggression.
The People's Party holds that Israel must evacuate the Gaza area and the Gulf of Aqaba, which it occupied after the tripartite aggression, so that security is not disturbed again, and that the states of this aggression must bear responsibility for the heavy damage in money, property and innocent lives.
We are certain that colonialism, having failed to bend our country to its will by force and direct aggression, will not easily lay down its arms, and will resort to the various methods it has mastered, first among them conspiracies against our constitutional order and the overthrow of our democratic life. Our party warns against such conspiracies, which it has condemned and always condemns; it has resisted in the past, and always resists, every attack on the Constitution and every infringement of democratic parliamentary life, which has proved to be the best safeguard of government, the strongest protector of independence and the furthest from the errors and mistakes of one-man rule.
Before anything else, the People's Party wishes to state at the outset of this statement that in its program and its creed it works by, and holds to, the following two principles:
First: that it is a democratic party that holds fast to parliamentary life and to the Constitution that defines its limits, respects the dignity of the citizen, his freedom, his right to an honorable life and to express his opinion freely, and establishes the principle of solidarity and cooperation between the community and the individual.
Second: that it is an evolutionary socialist party, which works to spread trust among citizens, resists class strife, condemns the domination of one group by another, and works to achieve social justice through legislation and its sound enforcement, through developing the nation's wealth and the fair distribution of its riches among its sons. Accordingly it sees it as its duty to protect labor and to look after and encourage capital in order to improve the general economy and raise individual income, on condition that capital does not become a means of political domination, and it believes in the need for close cooperation and an exchange of benefits between employer and labor, under the protection of the law, to guarantee a decent minimum standard of living for every individual.
And now: the present stage through which the country is passing is extremely dangerous, because the colonial ambitions that seek to drain our country's riches and monopolize their exploitation are still working against us, secretly and openly, to subdue us and drag us into their train. This requires the sons of our homeland, whatever their political and social beliefs, to make a truce among themselves, to stand together and to form a single line, alert and watchful, in the face of the dangers surrounding them, so that when God lifts this deadly distress from the Arabs, everyone who has worked hard in his own view will have his reward and his share. For this reason the People's Party, true to itself, repeats that it stands toward the present government as an observer and adviser, and that its opposition will be only honest and constructive. It renews the declaration of its unreserved commitment to the principles of the National Charter, which it drew up together with the parties and parliamentary bodies that signed it, and on the basis of which it entered the national cabinet, and it hopes that its articles will be given the chance to be applied, in the high spirit that dictated them.
In addition to the articles of the National Charter, the party wishes to make clear its position on some important questions, declaring that all the other questions of concern to the country and of help to it will remain the object of its care and attention.
First: the party favors adopting a methodical plan to exploit the homeland's riches and industrialize it, through the state, through individuals or through cooperation between them, to raise the standard of living in every family; to prepare a detailed project, to be carried out in stages, for distributing state lands to the peasants, protecting and maintaining them, and helping them to work them well; to organize the relations between peasant and landowner on fair foundations; and to establish collective security as the Constitution provides.
Second: the party, which played an active part in arming the Syrian army and giving it the means of strength and invulnerability so that it may defend the sacred things of the homeland and our existence, our being and our legitimate right to life, declares that continuing to strengthen and arm the country's army is a sacred national duty.
Third: the events of the latest aggression have shown the effect of Arab solidarity in repelling aggression. The party therefore holds that the military agreement concluded with our two sisters, Egypt and Jordan, must be turned into complete unity of the defense apparatus, so that the unified army can stand up to the surrounding dangers, which have shown their face in all their sharpness and force.
Fourth: recent world events have also shown that any hesitation or delay in setting up a union between Syria and the liberated Arab countries, beginning with sister Egypt, does the gravest harm to the interest of the Arab nation and may bring upon it calamities whose consequences cannot be undone. The party therefore urges that the edifice of this union be built quickly, and that it be followed at once by a union with Jordan, which stands guard before the mouths of the guns of evil, so that the Arab unity we seek may be achieved at a later stage, and the Arabs may stand as a formidable force on the side of the causes of freedom, justice and peace.
Fifth: it is one of our most sacred duties to stand by the Arab countries that are fighting colonialism and its helpers to win their freedom and save their Arabism. The People's Party holds that the free Arabs of Algeria must be supported in their struggle against brutal French colonialism, which sets no value on their right to life and freedom and slaughters them most cruelly and savagely; and it stands by Yemen in its struggle against British colonialism, and by every Arab land afflicted by the miseries of the colonizer and fighting to be rid of him.
Sixth: the party holds that our foreign policy should be drawn on the basis of respect for the principles of the United Nations and the resolutions of the Bandung Conference, and of strengthening brotherly relations with the peoples of Asia and Africa who have struggled, and are still struggling, for their freedom.
The Arab nation, which has tasted the miseries of colonialism and still fears its aggression, and which has struggled and fought to free itself from it and rid itself of foreign influence, will continue its struggle and its fight to resist colonial ambitions and attempts at foreign domination, whether in the form of military pacts, bilateral treaties, joint defense, a tripartite statement, the filling of a so-called vacuum or the defense of the region's security; for the removal of foreign influence from some Arab countries, as a result of the bloody struggle and continuing fight of their peoples, has created no vacuum in them, and this so-called vacuum will not be filled by influence of another kind; rather, the Arabs alone, who hold sovereignty in their own land, will fill every vacuum by themselves, and they are worthy of governing their countries themselves, of enjoying alone their wealth and riches, and of resisting every influence in them other than their own.
For Arab nationalism exists in this part of the world, and it has the right and the duty to use every means to defend its being and its existence, and it is able to do so; it did not fight to free itself from the yoke of colonialism and foreign domination only to accept another foreign domination.
Seventh: in the light of the facts, the party holds that the participation of one of the members of the Baghdad Pact, Britain, in the aggression on Egypt has once again confirmed the Arabs' suspicion and fear of this pact, and that it was created only to serve the interests of colonialism, divide the Arabs and isolate a proud sister country from its sisters in nationhood.
The party holds that this aggressive pact must be resisted, for the latest aggression has proved that it was not created to guarantee the security of this sensitive region, as its founders claimed, but rather to disturb the security of the region and attack it. The failure of the other members of the pact to take part in putting down the aggression on Egypt, or at least to withdraw from the pact, which is the very least they could do, is proof that the pact is a pillar of colonialism and an instrument of its aggression against free peoples. The party therefore holds that a helping hand should be extended to the valiant people of Iraq, who have written the brightest and purest pages in their struggle against colonialism, so that they may break their chains and join the liberated Arab caravan fighting for dignity, honor and unity.
Eighth: there is no doubt that the external currents have become quite clear, and so have their direction and aim. In this world struggle, the party holds that the best policy for the country to follow is the policy of positive neutrality between the Western and Eastern camps, and that it is our duty to base our international relations on our supreme interest alone, to preserve our independence and our dignity, and not to allow foreign influence to seep into our lands in any of its shapes and forms.
Syria therefore cannot but be grateful to the states that stood by the Arabs in their recent ordeal and helped them defend themselves and their homelands against the aggressors, and the party wishes that the other states would understand our reality and our wishes, extend to us the hand of innocent friendship, free of restrictions or conditions, and stop sponsoring our Zionist enemies and supplying them with the means of aggression, so that we might meet them sincerely, as we meet our friends.
In setting out in this statement its position on the great questions of the day, the People's Party declares, strongly and frankly, its firm resolve to go on working to raise the standard of the people and unite its ranks, to establish true social justice, and to continue fighting colonialism, its followers and its schemes. It pledges that it will always work to reach an Arab unity free of all foreign influence, and its men pray to God Almighty to protect the homeland and its people and to help those working for its advancement, dignity and unity; and He, glory be to Him, is the giver of success.
The People's Party