For years American imperialism has been waging a determined military and political struggle against the Palestinian resistance with the aim of eliminating the major obstacle the resistance represents on the road to the imperialist reorganization of the Arab region. This counterrevolutionary undertaking was carried through in Jordan in 1970-71 by Hashemite reaction. In Lebanon, last base of independent action of the Palestinian fighters, the combined efforts of the Zionist army, the bourgeois army, and the reactionary Lebanese militias all failed between 1969 and 1975. It was then that American imperialism resorted to the hand that had been extended to it by the ruling Baathist regime in Damascus. This regime, after forging a close alliance with the Hashemite monarchy beginning in spring 1975, proposed the following deal to U.S. imperialism: Syrian repression of the Palestinian resistance and the Lebanese left in exchange for American acceptance of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon and American promises to work for a_ political settlement of the Arab-Zionist conflict that would preserve the interests of the Baathist regime.
The Syrian attempt suffered two successive defeats in March and June 1976. Each attempt was broken by the rising movement of the Lebanese and Palestinian masses assembled in a united front. The compromise between the Baathist regime and the alliance of the bourgeois Palestinian leadership and the Egyptian-Saudi axis then became inevitable. The Syrian offensive in the Lebanese mountains in September-October 1976 was waged in preparation for a compromise, with the aim of acquiring a position of strength. The Riyadh accords, concluded in October 1976 between the Egyptian, Saudi, Kuwaiti, Syrian, and Lebanese ruling classes and the Palestinian leadership, are the expression of this compromise: the Syrian occupation of Lebanon was approved and legitimized on condition that it preserve the traditional conservative leadership of the Palestinian resistance while further pressuring this leadership in its rightward evolution. The Syrian army was officially charged with strangling the living forces of the Palestinian resistance and with muzzling the Lebanese masses in preparation for an Arab-Israeli political settlement which the Arab ruling classes are trying to obtain under conditions that would soothe their political fears. It is this double operation that is now under way in the Arab East. The Fourth International, hailing its Lebanese section, which paid for its participation in the fight of the Lebanese and Palestinian masses with the martyrdom of five of its comrades, commits itself to actively supporting the struggle of these masses for the achievement of these objectives: Immediate withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon! Total freedom of action for the Palestinian fighters! Complete democratic Lebanese masses! It is now more evident than ever that the only road to the salvation of the Palestinian resistance and the Arab revolution is the extension of the struggle to the whole of the Arab masses against the closing of ranks of Arab reaction. Down with the conspiracy of reaction, Zionism, and imperialism! Long live the resistance of the Lebanese and Palestinian masses! Long live the Arab socialist revolution!