The recent events in Lebanon have demonstrated, if any further proof were necessary, that the great majority of the Lebanese population are opposed to the Phalangist regime of Amin Gemayel that the multi-imperialist so-called Multi-National Force was sent in to prop up.
Under the hammer blows of the armed masses, Gemayel's state, which was laboriously rebuilt after October 1982 with the support of imperialist troops and under their supervision, has crumbled, leaving the true state of affairs starkly exposed: The troops of the "legal" army are as Phalangist as the militias fighting alongside them.
In view of the scope of the defeat suffered by their protege and the pressure of their own public opinion, some of the powers involved in the multi-imperialist force are pulling out their troops. Great Britain and Italy have done this. The Reagan administration has also found itself compelled to announce the withdrawal of its troops from Lebanese soil. But it is continuing to intervene by means of its naval artillery, savagely pounding the anti-Gemayel positions in the Lebanese mountains.
As for the French government, it is trying to extricate itself from the affair without losing face, asking that the multi-imperialist force be relieved by a UN one, in which French troops might participate and which would try to succeed where the Multi-National Force failed, that is, in consolidating the bourgeois order in Lebanon. Such a UN force could also favor the partitionist schemes of the Phalangist far right.
The victorious offensive of the Lebanese opposition calls for anti-imperialist forces throughout the world to redouble their efforts to mobilize opposition to imperialist policy in Lebanon under the following slogans:
All imperialist forces out of Lebanon, including its offshore waters!
Zionist troops out of Lebanon!
No UN intervention!
Solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinian masses in struggle!
United Secretariat Bureau of the Fourth International
February 16, 1984