1. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the siege and bombing of Beirut, the horrible massacres of the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian camps are all part of a political operation aiming: to break up the Palestinian resistance as an independent political-military force; to stabilise the Zionist state as the imperialist policeman for the region and to consolidate the pro-imperialist Arab regimes shaken by the shock waves of the Iranian revolution.
Zionist aggression is part of the international imperialist counter-offensive. It was started with the complicity and support of the United States. It took advantage both of the passivity of the Soviet bureaucracy tied up with its own economic and political difficulties and the powerlessness of the 'non-aligned' movement institutions. During the two-month siege of Beirut the Arab League did not take the least initiative, the Organisation of African Unity summit had to be adjourned for lack of a quorum and the Bagdad Non-Aligned Movement conference had to be postponed because of the Iran-Iraq war.
The operation which started with the entry of Israeli tanks into Lebanon continued with the Phalangists' arrival in power, the presentation of Reagan's 'peace plan' and the results of the Fez Arab summit. Imperialism, Zionism and the Arab regimes combined efforts to work out a new 'American Peace' for the region.
2. The Zionist state has once again been the strike force for counter-revolution in the Middle East. For months the Begin government had wanted this war and openly prepared for it. The 'Litani' operation of 1978 today seems like a dress rehearsal for the June 4, 1982 aggression.
Signing the Camp David Agreement with Egypt left Begin's regime free to develop its annexationist policy for the occupied territories, to move against the strongholds of the Palestinian resistance and thereby impose by armed force a second Camp David with Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
The aims of the military offensive were clearly set out by the Zionist leaders:
- to break the backbone of the Palestinian resistance, facilitate the annexation of the occupied territories and prevent the link up between the rise of the mobilisations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the resistance as a whole;
- to install a strong state in Lebanon allied to Israel, impose the withdrawal of Syrian troops and force the Palestinian refugees out of Lebanon;
- to strike a strong blow against the Syrian army and thus weaken the last Soviet ally in the region.
Begin and Sharon in this way intended at the same time to prove Israel's irreplaceable role as the privileged ally of American imperialism in the region. An ally which, on the pretext of legitimate defence, is capable of militarily intervening when American imperialism, mobilised on several fronts and above all in Central America, finds it difficult to carry out many direct interventions. This is the context in which to understand Sharon's staggering declaration that Israel's zone of military interests will in the future stretch from Sudan to Pakistan and Turkey.
The Zionist leaders also want to restimulate national unity in Israel itself which is more and more eroded and threatened by the effects of the economic crisis, galloping inflation and the burden of military spending.
3. The Palestinian resistance and Lebanese progressive movement put up an admirable resistance to the armoured invasion and intensive bombardments. The 79 day long Beirut siege was an act of defiance against the Zionist war machine which no existing Arab regime has ever been capable of making.
By preventing a lightning victory of the Zionist army the tenacious defence of Beirut permitted the modification of the relationship of forces, the diplomatic isolation of Israel, the development of contradictions among the Zionist leaders and the affirmation of the legitimacy of Palestinian national demands.
Begin and Sharon hesitated over the military and political cost involved in an assault on Beirut. The repercussions of the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Israel and world-wide give an idea of the effects that would have been produced by the physical destruction of the Beirut 'ghetto'.
The Palestinian resistance was not physically crushed, but defeated, betrayed and abandoned by the Arab regimes and the Soviet bureaucracy. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leadership also bears part of the responsibility for the defeat. No one can contest this abandoned and besieged leadership's right to negotiate. But from the beginning of the siege it got involved in secret negotiations with a 'mediator' representing imperialism over the conditions for an 'honourable' surrender. In effect its aim was to obtain diplomatic recognition from the United States in exchange for the retreat of its fighters. By doing this it contributed to disorienting and demobilising the resistance.
This choice fits in with a long political trajectory.
4. The Arab League waited until June 26-27, three weeks after the invasion of Lebanon, before meeting. This meeting rejected en bloc the fourteen requests made by Yasser Arafat in the name of the PLO: aid for the armed struggle, radical condemnation of the USA, recall of ambassadors, freezing of contracts with the USA and withdrawal of funds placed in the American banks,
The Arab regimes showed themselves more preoccupied with the Iranian offensive against Iraq than by the invasion of Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates gave Iraq a credit of 23 billion dollars. Kuwait offered to provide rear-bases for its army. Jordan, North Yemen and Sudan sent volunteers and Egypt supplied Soviet arms taken from its stock. It is true that Israel did not waste any time reselling to Iran a good part of the arms and ammunition seized in the Palestinian camps.
For its part Syria speedily concluded a unilateral ceasefire with Israel in the Bekaa Valley, leaving the Zionist army free to concentrate its efforts on Beirut. Later it grudgingly bartered the acceptance of a Palestinian contingent evacuated from Beirut in exchange for an increase in Saudi financial aid.
Everything happened, in the words of a high-ranking American official, 'as if the PLO had been condemned to death by the whole of the Arab world.'
It is true that this cold-blooded betrayal by the Arab bourgeoisies of the Palestinian people fits in with an already long tradition. It stretches from the Faisal-Weizman accords (January 3, 1919) opening up Palestine to the establishment of the Jewish national homeland, to the Camp David Agreement. In between there were the Abdallah-Ben Gurion agreement on the partition of Palestine, the massacres of the Palestinians ordered by King Hussein in 1970-1971 in Jordan and the new massacres of 1976 in Lebanon carried out by the Christian Phalangists with Syria's blessing.
5. For its part the Soviet bureaucracy does not go beyond formal protests, on the pretext that it could not be more Arab than the Arabs'!
The diplomatic support it gives to the PLO is still subordinated to the general interests of its alliances with the bourgeoisies of the region. It also has a long tradition of this from supporting the partition of Palestine in 1947 to the Gromyko-Vance 1977 declaration (with in between the UN Security Council Resolution 242 and the Geneva Conference).
One of the main PLO leaders, Abou Ayad, exclaimed during the Beirut siege: We resisted the Israeli army more than all the Arab armies ... The Soviet attitude is even more inexplicable. We questioned Moscow publicly and in secret. We only received symbolic encouragement. How can the Soviet Union allow such passivity when the United States takes sides in the battle in such a flagrant way? I don't understand it.' However, while the Soviet attitude is unpardonable, it is not surprising: the Soviet bureaucracy is quite disposed to sacrifice regional allies in exchange for imperialist counter-offers concerning the arms race, economic negotiations or its own problems in Afghanistan and Poland.
The attitude of the Soviet bureaucracy to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon shows once again that any strategy based on getting its support and not that of the militant solidarity of the international workers and anti-imperialist movements will always be at the mercy of a betrayal in the middle of the battle. The tragic lesson of Lebanon is valid for revolutionary movements of the whole world and particularly in Latin and Central America.
6. On the other hand American imperialism fully committed itself alongside its Zionist ally. Sharon publicly stated that Reagan was informed in advance of the Israeli government's intentions. The United States supported and covered the Israeli military expedition from the beginning to the end. It used its right of veto twice in the UN Security Council and unflinchingly maintained its diplomatic and military aid.
The European imperialist countries, which decided without batting an eyelid to boycott Argentina during the Malvinas war, did not take the slightest measure or lift a finger against Israeli aggression.
Only if one suffers from optical illusion can French government policy be seen as favourable to the PLO leadership. In fact Mitterrand was only opposed to the excessive zeal of Begin- Sharon's policy which he considered could place the proimperialist Arab regimes in difficulty and create an uncontrollable situation in the area.
Mitterrand began by declaring himself for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon, putting the Zionist invading army on the same level as the Palestinian resistance which has been forced out of its own country and condemned to exile. He finished up by supporting the Habib plan - a 100% imperialist diktat which organised the departure of the Palestinian fighters, the disarming of the resistance, set the conditions for the election of Bashir Gemayel and ratifies the prolongation of the Israeli occupation for an indefinite period. By its participation in the international intervention' force the French government has furthermore through its presence given its backing to the 'election' in a barracks protected by Israeli arms, of the fascist, Bashir Gemayel, to the Lebanese presidency.
With the departure of the Palestinian fighters and the dismantling of the West Beirut defences the Habib Plan 'sanctioned' the modification of the relationship of forces imposed by the Israeli army. It opened the way to a strong-arm regime in Lebanon and to the terror against the now defenceless refugee camps and progressive forces.
7. The presence of the multinational 'intervention' force in the framework of the Habib plan has served to dismantle the Beirut defence lines, to guarantee the election of Bashir Gemayel and to open access to the refugee camps to the Phalangist killers.
Whatever the identity of the Sabra and Shatila butchers they were only able to act with the agreement and complicity of the Israeli military command. And the imperialist governments knew perfectly well that this massacre was possible and probable after the evacuation of the PLO fighters.
The second mission of the multinational "intervention' force does not serve the interests of the Palestinians and Lebanese peoples any more than the first one did. Its presence aids the reconstruction of the Lebanese state around the Amin Gemayel Phalangists, storing up new threats for these peoples.
8. The Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Palestinian resistance has resulted in a serious defeat for the Arab revolution, the colonial revolution and the whole of the anti-imperialist movement on a world scale.
The stronghold of the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon has been dismantled. Its fighters have been dispersed in a dozen Arab countries whose governments are careful to exert an even stricter control over them since they fear the prestige of these resistance fighters among the oppressed masses of their own countries.
Nearly a half of Lebanon is still occupied by the Israeli army which is now also within firing range of the Syrian capital. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are left defenceless against Phalangist hegemony in Lebanon and the Israeli desire to force them into a new exile.
It is true that it is not a defeat without a fight - the very fact of having resisted limits the demoralisation and creates better conditions for drawing the lessons of the defeat and overcoming its consequences, as the mobilisations in the occupied territories show.
It is also true that imperialism has not obtained all its objectives. The PLO is defeated but not annihilated. The restoration of a strong state in Lebanon will not take place without difficulties. Cracks are appearing in the Zionist edifice in Israel.
These fractures are expressed in the rise of the anti-war movement, the radicalisation of a current inside it and the protests which have arisen inside the army (Tsahal). In addition there is the economic cost of the war which already weighs over Israeli society as a whole.
These factors are not sufficient to transform the military defeat of the Palestinians into a political or diplomatic victory. The proof of this is that the PLO leadership at Fez accepted the principles of a solution similar to those of the Fahd plan which was not approved a year earlier. Arafat in person is reduced to calling on the protection by the imperialist armies of the refugee camps in Lebanon!
The 1982 war and the battle of Beirut register a radical evolution in the relationship of forces in favour of imperialism in the region.
9. An important period has thus come to an end. All its lessons must be drawn for the future. Nothing will be like it was before, either for the Palestinian resistance or for the Zionist state.
The Palestinian resistance is going to be led to re-define its relations with the Arab regimes in the context of a new relationship of forces. The capitulation of these regimes faced with the invasion of Lebanon opens a new chapter in the crisis of Arab nationalism and its leaderships. The powerful rise of Muslim fundamentalism represents one consequence of the decline of Arab nationalism, in the absence of a consistently revolutionary anti-imperialist leadership. The authority won by Palestinian fighters in the struggle can, at the price of internal clarifications and differentiations, permit them to play a motor role in the formation of such a leadership. The other road is that of a growing alignment with the diplomacy of the Arab bourgeoisies and the renunciation of the resistance as an autonomous political force.
As for the Zionist state it unleashed its war machine to crush a population of refugees, chased from their land, without country or state, an exiled people which throws back in the face of Israel an image of an oppression which was formerly that of the Jewish people itself. The demonstration, unmasked and without any alibis, of this state terrorism will inevitably begin to shake up the internal consensus established around the Zionist project since the foundation of the state of Israel.
The Palestinian movement at a crossroads
10. The PLO and its leadership now find themselves at a new crossroads in their history.
The Arab regimes are going to put on increasing pressure and use material aid as blackmail in order to push the Palestinian resistance definitively off the terrain of armed struggle and on to that of diplomatic compromise, to force it to recognise and accept the state of Israel and to be content in exchange with a formal administrative autonomy under Jordanian-Israeli tutelage with the patronage of American imperialism. This evolution will not proceed without conflicts within the Palestinian pesistance
The other road consists in drawing all the consequences of the internationalisation of the Palestinian question to link it organically to revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggles in the Arab countries.
11. The final impasse in which the besieged leadership of the PLO in Beirut ended up is not only the result of being 'dropped' by the USSR and the Arab countries. It is also the end result of its own political line. The particular characteristics of the Palestinian national liberation struggle pose two key strategic questions which this leadership has not been able to resolve.
On the one hand, in its struggles against the Zionist state the Palestinian resistance must find its main support in the antiimperialist mobilisation of the exploited and oppressed Arab masses. Only if their force is released can the relationship of forces with Zionism and its big imperialist patron be changed. Furthermore this mobilisation inevitably comes into contradic- 22 tion with the specific interests of the bourgeois Arab regimes, which for the most part are allied to American imperialism. On the pretext of a line of 'non-interference' in the internal affairs of Arab states, the PLO has always wanted to avoid the organic liaison between the Palestinian resistance and the struggle of the exploited masses of these countries. It is a fatal illusion - it has not prevented the most brutal 'interference' of these states into the history of the Palestinian resistance. From 1968 to 1982, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria continually intervened, including with armed force, against the resistance. The Arab regimes cannot tolerate on their territory the presence of a political and military force outside of their control and capable of encouraging the independent mobilisation of the oppressed people of their own countries. The conflict between the Arab anti-imperialist movement and the local bourgeoisies and oligarchies allied to imperialism is inevitable.
On the other hand the Palestinian resistance does not confront, with the state of Israel, a simple colonial occupation. The strength of the Zionist state does not relate only to the technical qualities of its armies. It relates also to the fact that Zionist chauvinism manages to divert the sentiment of self-defence of the Jewish population, which previously was still oppressed in its countries of origin, into setting up a national state on the basis of the expulsion of the Palestinian people and the denial of its rights. The war perspective, the permanent state of mobilisation and the spectre of anti-semitism constitute a necessary cement for national consensus and work against a development of class struggle in Israeli society. The struggle against Zionism on the contrary must mean the deepening of this struggle and the internationalist link up between the Arab national liberation movement and the Jewish working masses.
Arafat publicly recognised that one of the main weaknesses of the PLO has been its inability to resolve this question: "We have not been able to explain our cause to the Israelis, we have not understood the Israeli mentality'.
But this new consciousness can also lead to two radically different ways forward. Either accommodation with the Zionist state as it exists in the framework of the Camp David Agreement or a revolutionary internationalist policy, the only one capable in the long term of winning the confidence of the Jewish proletariat.
12. The dual error of the PLO leadership in its relations with the Arab states and masses and in its approach to Zionism has led it inevitably to an impasse and a succession of defeats which are linked together and condition one another.
The 1967 Six Day war resulted in a debacle for the Arab states and a strengthening of the Zionist state - embodied in the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Sinai and the Golan Heights. This defeat brought about a renewal and reorientation of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation created by the Arab League. Its old leadership was subordinated to the Arab siates and was prodigious in declarations which were both irresponsible and inconsequential. It was replaced by a new leadership under the hegemony of Fatah.
This leadership showed its willingness to free itself from the tutelage of the Arab states and set up rather effective military organisations in order to launch armed struggles from bases in Jordan and Lebanon. The gains made between 1968 and 1970 did not flow from military operations but were due to the mass mobilisations which defeated the reactionary operations against the resistance in Jordan in 1968 and in Lebanon in 1969. The Palestinian resistance showed itself to be a vanguard for the whole of the Arab nationalist and revolutionary movement.
Neither imperialism nor the Arab bourgeoisies could let these developments pass without reacting. Their counter-attacks combined diplomatic manoeuvres and the most brutal repression. 1970 was thus marked by the Rodgers Plan proposal, first step on the road to Camp David, and by the massacre of the Palestinian fighters in Jordan (Black September).
The 1975-76 Lebanese civil war registered a new stage in which the PLO played a frontline role. Thanks to its support and the mass mobilisation the Lebanese progressive movement achieved control of two thirds of the country. Zionism and imperialism, but also the Arab regimes (both conservative and so-called progressive) were afraid of the dynamic of joint mobilisation of the Arab and Palestinian masses. Syria intervened to stop and control the progressive forces. Under its pressure the PLO leadership - looking for diplomatic recognition since - accepted the compromises which allowed the Phalangist counter-offensive exemplified in the Tell el-Zataar massacre of summer 1976.
The civil war and the Syrian occupation contributed to provoking the disintegration of the Lebanese state and its military apparatus. The Christian militias profited from it to reinforce their control over whole regions. But also the Palestinians were able to exploit the situation by maintaining and consolidating their positions in the south of Lebanon and West Beirut.
The 1975-76 events spurred the imperialists and Arab bourgeoisies to look for a negotiated compromise giving a neo-colonial answer to the Palestinian question. More than any other Arab state Egypt had to bear the costs of four disastrous wars and the threat of social explosions. It took the initiative of a rapprochement' with Israel under the patronage of the United States. Sadat signed the Camp David Agreement to obtain American aid and appear in the eyes of the masses as the one who freed them from the haunting fears of periodic war.
For the Zionist state Camp David neutralised the main enemy military force and introduced division in the Arab world without imposing any recognition of the PLO in exchange. The idea of a Palestinian state was ruled out and the autonomy of the occupied territories was seen in terms of a five year process whose outcome would be the subject of new negotiations. While the United States played the decisive role in the operation of the USSR, already weakened by Sadat's about turn ending their alliance, was even more marginalised and could only count on Assad's Syria as a dubious ally in the region.
The triple 'no' of Begin to the withdrawal from the occupied territories, to the restitution of East Jerusalem and to the Palestinian state, coupled with the resurgence of Jewish colonisation in the occupied territories, enabled all ambiguity over the meaning of Camp David to be lifted and gives the measure of the defeat suffered by the PLO and the Arab nationalist movement as a whole.
Between Sadat's trip to Tel Aviv and the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian agreement the Begin government launched a new military operation in Lebanon in March 1978. This operation permitted them to destroy the Palestinian bases and to push the resistance north while consolidating the positions of Commander Haddad in the frontier region. However the main Palestinian positions were maintained.
The June 1967 defeat sanctioned the bankruptcy of the petty-bourgeois radical nationalist leaderships, just as the 1948 defeat had sanctioned the bankruptcy of the traditional conservative leaderships. The new leadership of the PLO, animated by the Fatah, broke with the previous line which gave priority to the diplomatic terrain and proclaimed people's war against the Zionist state in the framework of the struggle of oppressed peoples against imperialism.
In practice it remained in the orbit of the Arab states, giving priority to one or the other of the states according to circumstances. It continued to function fundamentally thanks to the conditional aid and subsidies of the Arab governments, including from the most reactionary. It did not really try either to democratically organise the resistance or to link it up with the mass movements of the countries where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees were living. It subordinated its solidarity with the national movements of the different host countries to the imperatives of 'non-interference'. From 1972 it outlined a turn which was formalised in 1974 towards a compromise solution in the framework of an agreement between the Arab states and imperialism.
While its 1969 programme traced out the perspective of a 'democratic, secular state for the whole of Palestine' it now accepted an independent state limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, presenting it as a first step. Consequently it increasingly displaced the axis of its activity onto the diplomatic level.
13. These vacillations of the PLO leadership express the powerful political and social contradictions which run through the movement.
The struggle of the Palestinian people began as a national liberation, democratic and revolutionary struggle against a Zionist state which is the agent of imperialism in the region. But to defend its national rights to the end the Palestinian resistance needs a class leadership and orientation (to link up with the Arab masses oppressed by their own bourgeoisies) which is internationalist (in order to take advantage of the class contradictions of Israeli society.)
Furthermore the PLO is the product of an experience of struggle which is that of the refugee camps and of a population dispersed throughout the Arab countries. The Palestinian bourgeoisie is integrated in these countries and plays a decisive role there. It has no unified and stable territorial base nor a social base facilitating the wide scale use of traditional proletarian methods of struggle.
Even after the 1967 turn the PLO remained the national movement of all classes of Palestinian society. It was to regroup both the mass of socially marginalised refugees, the disinherited masses from the occupied territories, the workers and artisans established in the various Arab countries and well off pettybourgeois layers and real bourgeois sectors economically active in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. It is a front of organisations and personalities which stretches from the Islamic right to a far left identifying with Marxism and Marxist- Leninism.
To ensure the coexistence of all these forces without coming into conflict with the Arab regimes it must stick to a democratic and anti-Zionist programme which does not challenge capitalist relations of production. The result is a contradiction between the needs and aspirations of the masses which con' ute the principal basis of its forces and the strategic objectives of its leadership. This contradiction is expressed by the formation and consolidation of an increasingly important military apparatus which also develops a logic of its own. The material and financial aid of the Arab states reinforces the crystallisation of this apparatus.
Diplomatically recognised by more than one hundred countries and observer at the UN, the movement led by the PLO has thus become a sort of state apparatus without a state or its own territory. The disproportion between the material force of its apparatus and the reality of its social base makes it particularly vulnerable to the pressures of its financial backers - whether Arab governments or rich Palestinians.
These are the material roots of the evolution of the PLO leadership. The combination between its social composition, its programmatic conceptions and the acceptance of the framework imposed by the Arab regimes aligned with imperialism or influenced by the Soviet bureaucracy, has pushed it into a dead end.
To win and affirm its political independence from the Arab states and to sustain it the PLO must reinforce its own social base by a dual turn, linking up with the Palestinian proletariat in Israel and the occupied territories on the one hand and with the exploited masses of the Arab countries on the other. The upsurge of struggles these last years on the West Bank and in Gaza, the election of Palestinian mayors and the difficulty the
Begin government has in finding puppet collaborators, constitute a challenge to the might of the state of Israel and show the potential militancy of this Palestinian population which has been progressively integrated since 1967 into the Israeli productive process. Its mobilisations combine the awakening of a Palestinian national consciousness and the emergence of a class current inside the Palestinian movement.
14. In Lebanon, with the dismantling of their strongholds, the election of Amin Gemayel as President of the Republic and the repressive role of an army moulded by American imperialism, the progressive forces are now paying the price for their conciliationist policies since the 1975-76 civil war.
Religious sectarianism then partially masked the social and anti-imperialist content of the civil war, permitting bourgeois Muslim leaders to place themselves in the so-called progressive front in order to preserve the support they had based on patronage, and to work for a compromise. The Palestinian-progressive front limited itself to acting defensively. Given the disintegration of the Lebanese state they were called upon to carry out growing social, administrative and military functions. But instead of presenting itself as an alternative power it was content to store up the breaches in the legal regime while backing up the legitimacy of the decrepit bourgeois state institutions.
The Lebanese Communist Party, whose responsibility was particularly large since it has a certain mass influence, is the consistent defender of this line. Faithful to a Stalinist conception of revolution by stages and alliances with the so-called national bourgeoisie, it fixed the framework of struggle as the defence of liberal capitalism. Constantly banking on the role the USSR might play, directly or by the intermediary of its ally Syria, it even went so far as to render homage to the body of the fascist Bashir Gemayel in the name of national unity.
In 1976 this policy of class collaboration allowed the Christian militias to regain the initiative. This time again the Lebanese National Movement remained attached to the respect and perpetuation of legal institutions - instead of making the Beirut resistance a springboard for sweeping away the collaborationist Elias Sarkis regime, in open collusion with the Zionist occupier instead of putting forward the perspective of a Government of National Resistance based on the unification and centralisation of the military forces resisting the occupation; and instead of developing a network of councils of peoples resistance.
This constitutional legality finished by spawning - in an electoral farce produced in a corner of a barracks — a fascist president at the head of an occupied Republic. The bourgeois forces of the so-called progressive camp ratified the election of Bashir Gemayel and directly contributed, still in the name of national unity, to that of Amin Gemayel, representative of the so-called moderate wing of the Phalangist party who is claiming a 'Bonapartist' role.
All the imperialist governments have given good character references to this new strong-arm regime which is looking to be a zealous partner of the United States.
To set up a strong state in Lebanon and to assure the return to order sought by the commercial bourgeoisie, Amin Gemayel has a hard task of reasserting an uncontested bourgeois regime. That is why given the threat that the military regime established in Beirut will be extended to the whole country, the defence of democratic rights, above all the right of the workers movement to organise, is a priority.
Contradictions and cracks in Zionism
15. The Zionist project meant that the State of Israel from its formation was an advance post of imperialism, founded on the expropriation and expulsion of the Palestinian people.
After the bombing of Beirut and the Sabra/Shatila massacres the imperialist governments tried hard to minimise the cruelty and responsibility of the Israeli state by presenting it as a model of democracy. In fact it is a confessional state defined by its own declaration of independence as 'the Jewish state in the land 24 of Israel'. It is a state founded on anti-Arab discrimination and deformed by the weight of its enormous military-industrial apparatus and largely subsidised by imperialism. Israel is the seventh biggest arms supplier in the world - in this line it is the privileged partner of dictatorships in Latin America and South Africa. With its 20 billion dollar debt Israel is one of the countries with the biggest per capital debt in the world.
While the state of Israel is organically tied to imperialism in its very structure and functions it is not reduced for all that to a simple colonial detachment of an imperialist metropole. The originality of the Zionist colonial operation is that its initial aims were not to exploit native Arab labour but to replace it with Jewish labour to form a completely Jewish society with its institutions and also its division into antagonistic social classes. It is the collaborationist agreement made between the social classes of Israeli society in the framework of the Zionist project which gives it its force against the Palestinian resistance and which permits the Zionist state to ensure a bourgeois democracy for the Jews on the basis of a negation of rights for the Palestinians.
Any attempt or project to expel en bloc the Jewish Israeli population from the region or to deny its national existence can only help to weld it together and mobilise it behind the most aggressive and chauvinist Zionist leaderships. On the other hand the class conflicts within this community give the possibility to the Palestinian resistance and the Arab revolution to intervene in these contradictions, on the condition that it sees the Jewish proletariat as a potential ally.
16. After the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 a new chapter in the history of Zionism opened up. Originally Zionism meant the formation of an exclusively Jewish society by the expulsion of the Arab people. For that it had to impose 'Jewish labour' and 'freedom of the land'. This operation was the basis of an alliance between the Jewish bourgeoisie and a powerful colonial "labourist' movement of which the trade union confederation, Histadrut, is the symbol.
The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza territories poses Zionism with a new dilemma between the annexation of new territory in the name of never-relieved security imperatives and bringing into Israeli society more than a million Palestinian Arabs in open contradiction with the Zionist project.
Israeli capitalists opt for using this cheap Arab labour (wages are about a half that of Jewish workers on average) who have no social security or other protection combined with increased privatisation of the economy.
With the Camp David Agreement Begin gave his response to the problem posed in 1967 with a line of annexation of the occupied territories under the form of a supposed 'administrative autonomy' permitting the continued exploitation of Arab workers while excluding them from Israeli citizenship.
But no formal stratagem can prevent the proletarianisation of the Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories, which combined with the awakening of their Palestinian national consciousness stores up an explosive contradiction for the Zionist state.
17. Zionist mythology maintains a permanent confusion between the existence of a national 'Jewish'-Israeli community in Palestine and the existence of the Zionist state. It also tries to concoct a permanent equation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
By claiming that the existence of an Israeli national community in Palestine cannot avoid having a state based on racial discrimination, an organic alliance with imperialism and permanent expansionism, the Zionist leaders themselves feed the idea that the destruction of the Zionist state implies the liquidation of the community as such. Thus they are the people who risk to create a resurgence of anti-seminism as the 'anti-Zionism of idiots' after having been the 'socialism of idiots' (Bebel).
It is up to Jewish workers to unmask this mystification in Israel by opposing the infamies committed by the Zionist leaders, not only in the name of the state of Israel but in the name of the Jewish people as a whole. Unrelenting struggle against Zionist crimes is not at all contradictory with a tenacious struggle against any form of anti-semitism which targets not particularly the state of Israel but all Jews in their national identity.
In recent years divisions have emerged in Israeli society and fractures have appeared in the edifice of Zionism. This has accentuated since the war of aggression in Lebanon. From the first days the Begin/Sharon policy has been challenged on a significant scale.
Broad layers of the population were troubled by the fact that the army was not able to carry out a blitzkrieg type war, that it met stubborn resistance from the Palestinians (who were moreover isolated) and that losses were proportionally heavier than during previous campaigns. The invasion of West Beirut and the direct complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacres provoked a wave of indignation which shook Israeli society and stirred its conscience.
The protest movements, whether peace demonstrations or soldiers' initiatives, expressed uneven levels of consciousness. All components of the anti-war movement are coming into contradiction with the logic of Zionism. It emerged at the end of the 70s as a pressure group in the framework of diplomatic negotiations and today it is mobilising against a war while it is taking place.
The great majority of this current, as the gigantic September 25 demonstration after the Sabra and Shatila massacres showed, rallied around the slogans: "Withdraw the troops from Beirut', 'Mutual recognition between Jews and Palestinians' and 'Resignation of the Begin/Sharon government'. But a radical pole was formed around the Committee Against the War in Lebanon which demanded the 'immediate withdrawal of troops from Lebanon' (and not only from Beirut) and unconditional recognition of the PLO.
The Labour Party, which openly supported the Peace for Galilee' operation was not at the origin of the anti-war movement. On the contrary it has done all it can to oppose mobilisations during the war. But after the Sabra and Shatila massacres it was obliged to channel the movement and to draw the best advantage it could from it. 'Saving the honour of Israel' in this way means for it preparing an alternative leadership not implicated in the massacres and capable of taking over the baton from Begin in negotiations with imperialism. This position responds to the preoccupations of Zionist sectors more conscious of the real relationship of forces in the region and the global interests of imperialism. From the beginning of the war these sectors have displayed their worries concerning the Begin/ Sharon adventures and their consequences.
Over and above these manoeuvres the breadth of the anti-war movement is a major event in Israel even if this movement remains by and large within the framework of defence of Israel's security and is characterised above all by the absence of organised working class participation. Its future is closely linked to the victories and defeats of the Palestinian resistance. After the Beirut defeat its immediate perspectives fundamentally depend on the continuation of mobilisations in the occupied territories and the capacity of its most conscious sectors to link up with these struggles.
In Israel the following democratic demands are in contradiction with the Zionist project and the foundations of the state of Israel: the abolition of all repressive and discriminatory legislation against the Palestinians, the de-confessionalisation of the state, the recognition of the right of return of all Palestinians expelled since 1948 and the recognition of the Palestinians right to self-determination.
International solidarity and imperialist plans
18. After the Israeli armed aggression modified the relationship of forces the diplomatic stage of the imperialist offensive started. The United States wanted to draw the best advantage from the military victory by preventing Begin putting those Arab regimes willing to negotiate too much in a corner. The Egyptian president Mubarak furthermore did not fail to remind Reagan what the real interests of the United States were: As a superpower it has overall interests and responsibilities; it must not forget it is the main deposite holder of the oil producers funds; in brief, the United States is the first to suffer from the extension of instability and insecurity in the region." (International Herald Tribune, August 25, 1982).
The plan proposed on September 1 by President Reagan sets out in complete clarity the hierarchy of imperialist pre-occupations: first the stabilisation of the region, then the security of Israel and in third place only the Palestinian rights. Furthermore these 'rights' do not include the right to self-determination of an independent state but only the perspective of an autonomous government of Palestinians in association with Jordan.' This perspective, with a transition period of five years could result in the possibility of a Palestinian protectorate under the control of the Jordanian state and army or in a Jordanian-Israeli condominium on territories 'granted' a formal 'autonomy'.
19. By unanimously adopting a project which recognises the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and calls for the 'creation of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital', the Fez summit wanted to save the face of the Arab regimes tarnished by their passivity at the Beirut siege.
Appearances suggest it is a project unacceptable to Israel and Begin quickly rejected it. But the imperialist governments are not mistaken about its real significance. The important bourgeois press echoed their satisfaction: 'It is still too soon to define the Fez Summit as an historic turning point for the Middle East, but it represents at least a considerable victory for common sense over empty rhetoric. The Fez declaration seems for the first time since 1948 to recognise that the Palestinian people will never obtain self-determination through a military victory? (Financial Times, September 11, 1982). Newsweek underlined the point that at this summit meeting, 'the moderates finished by winning out over the radicals' (September 20, 1982). And International Herald Tribune headlined, *Fez: Victory for the Arab moderates'. (September 13, 1982)
Everybody underlines the continuity of this project with respect to the Fahd plan rejected a year earlier. Everyone draws out point 7, according to which the UN Security Council guarantees peace between all the states of the area, including the independent Palestinian state' - implying a de facto recognition of the state of Israel. Most opinion considers the Fez plan, of which Saudi Arabia was the architect, constitutes the starting point and not the last word in a negotiation which is only beginning.
By stating on several occasions during the siege of Beirut that he recognised all the UN declarations, including those on the partition of Palestine, Yasser Arafat had himself announced his acceptance of the negotiating framework. To eliminate any ambiguity on this, Naif Hawatmeh (Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine - PDFLP) publicly committed himself to support of the Franco-Egyptian proposition at the UN which is along the same lines.
20. On the other hand Begin has vigorously denounced the Fez plan as well as the Reagan plan. He continually repeats that there is no question of Israel withdrawing from the occupied territories. On the contrary he encourages the implantation of new colonies. Sharon and the foreign affairs minister Shamir release statements for their part that the Palestinians "have already exerted their right to self-determination and have a state in Jordan'. They all consider a sovereign Palestinian state in the occupied territories as a threat to the vital interests of Israel. They do not mean to go beyond the 'autonomy' envisaged in five years of the Camp David Agreement, and exclude the PLO from all negotiations.
The Labour Party, which presents itself as a 'presentable' alternative leadership for the Zionist state, has been implicated in its colonial expeditions since the creation of Israel. They still supported the 'Peace for Galilee' operation and limited themselves to criticising the siege of Beirut. They voted the war budget in the Knesset (parliament) and Shimon Peres accepted - at the height of the war - a special mission of going to present the Begin government's case to the imperialist governments. To cool Peres' indignation over the Sabra/Shatila massacre Sharon did not miss the opportunity in the Knesset to remind him that the Labour Party lent a hand in the 1976 Tell el-Zataar massacre.
Shimon Peres stated that the Labour Party supports overall the Reagan Plan (about 70% of it) pointing out that the plan does not propose the self-determination of the Palestinians but only a leading role' in the choice of their future. Fearing the disruptive effect on Israeli society of annexing the occupied territories it declares itself resolutely for what is called the *Jordan option'. Shimon Peres makes it clear — not without a dose of cynicism if one recalls the 1970 massacres: 'Jordan has no interest in having a state within a state, an army within an army.' (Le Monde, April 2, 1980)
21. The perspective of setting up a sovereign Palestinian state in the occupied territories has been raised since 1972-4. The creation of such a state, limited to the occupied territories but really sovereign, would presuppose a significant defeat of the Zionist state and its imperialist ally and place decisive confrontations on the agenda.
Today in the framework of negotiations opened by the Beirut defeat such a state would not constitute a spring board for the anti-imperialist struggle of the Arab masses. Neither American imperialism, not Mitterrand and Mubarak, nor Saudi Arabia and Jordan envisage for a single moment the possibility of a really sovereign Palestinian state in the occupied territories. 26 No Zionist leader, including the Labour ones, is ready to accept it. They all want to get the Palestinian resistance, submitted to increased pressure by the Arab states, to accept a formal autonomy under the direct tutelage of Jordan and Israel, with the guarantee of the Arab bourgeoisies and American imperialism. 22. The isolation of the Palestinian resistance and the Lebanese National Movement faced with Zionist aggression highlights the irreplaceable role of international solidarity from the worken and anti-imperialist movement.
While the Arab regimes and the Soviet bureaucracy remained compliantly passive there were many support demonstrations delegations and public meetings in the imperialist countries, in certain Arab countries (despite the repression) and even in Latin America. However these mobilisations as a whole, including in the Arab countries, were insufficient given the challenge posed by Zionist and imperialist aggression, by the bombing and massacres of Beirut.
The social democratic parties are openly committed to the discussion and setting up of imperialist plans. The communist parties, in most cases, were content to denounce the evils of the imperialist warmonger without getting involved in really active solidarity with the Palestinian movement.
Revolutionary organisations and sections of the Fourth International played a dynamic role in these solidarity mobilisations.
This solidarity remains today very much an immediate task. Imperialism is continuing with the implementation of its projects for the Middle East. Thus on October 6 the French contingent of the multinational 'intervention' forces was involved in 'sweep' and disarming operations alongside the Lebanese army in Beirut. For their part the Arab regimes are doing everything to reinforce their hold over the Palestinian resistance. The breadth of internation solidarity is therefore an important element in the relationship of forces which can safeguard the freedom of action of this resistance.
The axis of this solidarity remains the demand for the immediate and total withdrawal of Zionist troops from Lebanon and the unconditional support of the Palestinian resistance struggle.
Imperialism and Zionism are making more and more manoeuvres to deny or reduce the representativity of the PLO or to impose on it the recognition of the state of Israel on the pretext of 'mutual recognition'. The demand for the recognition without preconditions of the PLO as legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in Israel and in those imperialist countries where it is not yet the case, is, in the present circumstances part and parcel of the unconditional support of the Palestinian resistance struggle against imperialism.
The Fourth International and its sections will play an active part in this solidarity campaign with the Palestinian people's struggle against Zionism and imperialism. It will support and publicise the activity of its sections in Israel and Lebanon.
— Immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Zionist troops from all Lebanon!
— Total and unconditional withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territories occupied since 1967!
— Recognition of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination, i.e. its right to form a sovereign state on its territory!
— Solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist state! Freedom of action for the Palestinian resistance in all the Arab states! Recognition of the PLO as legitimate representative of the Palestinian people!
— Solidarity with the struggles of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories and with the anti-war movement in Israel!
— Solidarity with the Palestinian masses in Lebanon and with the Lebanese anti-imperialist movement!
United Secretariat of the Fourth International October 10, 1982