3) National Unity

Since its inception the DFLP has given importance to being one of the main pillars in the first national coalition, which unified guerrilla activities under the banner and leadership of "the armed struggle ", as well as in the membership of the PLO National Council and its Executive Committee established in September 1969. Moreover, in this session the DFLP presented "a plan to achieve the unity of Palestinian national forces and groups, in the Unified National Liberation Front". Also, the difficult circumstances resulting from the events of September 1970 led the DFLP to realize the necessity of promoting a new blueprint for the unity of the national movement, built upon all components of this movement in a more organized and consolidated manner, and based on proportional representation. This blueprint to build a "Unified National Liberation Front" was articulated within a project presented by the DFLP at the ninth session of the Palestine National Council (July 1971), and later, within a complete political and organizational project for achieving national unity in the framework of a unified democratic front, at the tenth session of the Palestine National Council (April 1972).

The experience of the DFLP in maintaining its ideological, political and organizational independence while simultaneously promoting national unity, affirms the vital role of the Palestinian Left within the heart of the Palestinian National Movement. Thus, this Left did not become independent and isolate itself, but instead incorporated itself within national unity as a true revolutionary actor taking part within the framework of this unity, and as a militant vanguard adhering to a correct political stance. Through it, the national slogan and the tasks of the stages of the struggle, respond to the unanimous interests of all Palestinian people.

The central importance of the question of national unity, within the thinking and practices of the DFLP, not only appeared during the first years of open struggle in Jordan (1970) as well as during the revolutionary experience in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria until the Israeli invasion 1982, but also during the period of severe divisions. These divisions appeared within the Palestinian political arena after the Israeli war, after regional conflicts that attempted to influence decisions of the PLO, and attempts by the dominant PLO leadership to find points of agreement with proposals presented at the start of the 1980's, especially the Reagan Plan (September 1982).

The DFLP adopted a decisive position against the Palestinian split throughout the years 1983 1987, playing a vanguard role in the Democratic Alliance which signed the agreement of Yemen (Aden) Algeria, June 28, 1984 and July 9, 1984, with leaders of Fatah's Central Committee. Although this agreement did not succeed in achieving reunification, or in preventing the domination of the official wing of the PLO to unilaterally call for the seventeenth session of the Palestinian National Council in Amman on November 7, 1984, it did set up a base from which to regain unity later, within the framework of the unifying council in Algeria (the eighteenth session, April 1987).

The DFLP rejected the political results of the Amman Council and the resulting organizational structures, and firmly opposed attempts to refute its legality, fearing and attempting to preclude the dangers of a deep and irreversible schism within the PLO.

The Oslo Agreement, which destroyed the framework of the political alliance of the PLO, was the second trial that confronted national unity. The DFLP presented a number of initiatives within the existing political context, consistently maintaining its policy of unification. Most of these initiatives concentrated on the need to have an all inclusive national dialogue to regain national consensus about current issues and permanent status negotiations (2/97, 5/97, 5/98, 4/99, 2/2000) "despite its (the National Movement) changing interrelationships after implementation of the Oslo agreements, in relation to the tasks of the democratic, political and social struggle". These initiatives took into consideration the fact that the essential aspect of the Palestinian National Movement is that it continues to promote the task of national liberation while committing itself to maintaining national unity within the framework of the PLO. The actual separation between the "Palestinian Authority" and the opposition does not essentially abolish this fact, although it may at times be distinguished by certain particularities.