And it is this truth, already evident in the Israeli diktat about Palestinian representation at the conference, that explains the tone of the new Palestinian "Rejection Front" formed by the alliance for the first time of the two main left factions of the PLO and the "Hamas" Islamic fundamentalist movement*. 4 organizations (sc p. 5), Leaving aside The joint declaration of the three concessions to the characteristic fundamentalist vocabulary, gives an overall correct analysis of the objectives that Washington is pursuing at the Madrid conference. Indeed, it is paradoxical that the Zionist right is so blinded by its fanaticism that it is obstructing an American policy that promises much to the Zionist state. This is why "enlightened" Zionists are furious. This is also why, when the Palestinian right stakes all on this same American policy, this is not naivety but pure and simple capitulation and compromise with the enemy. The argument that they have no choice is the same that has been used by all the Pétains of history.
However, the three-party declaration presents three problems that have been and remain important in the debate inside the Palestinian and Arab left: the acceptability of an alliance with the fundamentalists, the legitimacy of the PLO's institutions and the programme of the Palestinian struggle.
Dangers of collaboration with fundamentalists
On the first, we have already had occasion to underline the dangers of any illusion in a political united front with religious fanaticism, whatever convergences in action might occur on the ground. It is essential never to mix banners with the fundamentalists; it is necessary to march quite separately, even if from time to time we may strike together in concrete struggles.
Even then, it is necessary to be extremely vigilant in the face of such a current, which is basically reactionary on the socio-cultural plane and viscerally opposed to the left, and which will not hesitate to wipe out the latter if it considers this possible and opportune. The Lebanese Communist Party found this out the hard way in the course of the resistance to the Israeli occupation in 1982-85.
A direct political alliance with the fundamentalists works almost always to their advantage. It is inevitably accompanied by an ideological truce that facilitates their recruitment on the same groufid from which the left tends to recruit its militants, or even in the ranks of the left itself.
There is also another price to pay: that of repelling all those who have good reason to fear the fundamentalists - in the Palestinian contest, Christians and women° — into the arms of the classical right. And this is not to mention the disastrous effects of such an alliance on anti-Zionist and radical pacifist milieux in Israel.
As far as the institutions of the PLO are concerned, there is a striking similarity between the arguments used in the tripartite declaration and what we have repeatedly said about the bureaucratic
International Viewpoint #216 • November 11, 1991 nature and non-democratic composition of these institutions.? The PLO's refrain that it is "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" now rebounds once more against those who have chanted it most loudly - that is to say the two fronts of the left in the PLO, who have signed the declaration. Only yesterday they considered the Executive Committee and the National Council as the exclusive holders of the legitimate representation of their people. Now they are challenging both the exclusivity and the legitimacy of these institutions and demand their democratic recasting. Better late than never!
The third problem is manifested in what is missing from the tripartite declaration; that is, a programme of a transitional nature corresponding to concrete and feasible medium-term objectives. This is the old defect of Arab nationalism and its Palestinian offshoots: maximalism. Under the impact of the accumulating defeats since 1970, this political defect had given way to a series of slippages to the right, in the tradition of Realpolitik.
The present break with the Palestinian bourgeois right, as well as the alliance with the fundamentalist champions of maximalism (who now have the direct support of Iran), and probably the fear of being outbid by the latter in a climate where raising the stakes is the order of the day, have suddenly sent the left of the PLO back to their political point of departure.
An impasse is just around the corner. The despair that may result could have a demobilizing and demoralizing effect and thus favour the capitulationist bourgeoisie.
Then the left will lose on two levels: that of the "realism" pursued by the rightist PLO leadership and that of the maximalism incarnated by Hamas. It is urgent that the militants of the Palestinian left and the radical wing of Fatah in the Occupied Territories retake the leadership of their own struggle and put forward again the programme they worked out in the communiqués of the first months of the intifada, before the PLO leadership imposes its control. Only if this is done will the intifada survive and regain the dynamism of its first year. * 3. See the comment by Michel Warshawsky on p.6. 4. The third faction of the PLO left, the pro-Moscow Communist Party, is, of course, taking part in the "Madrid Conference" operation. 5. See, for example, the debate with George Habash in International Viewpoint, no. 177, January 29, 1990. 6. While Hanan Ashrawi, the notable that the Palestinian bourgeois leadership has chosen to put forward alongside Faisal al-Husseini, is both a Christian and a woman. 7. See International Viewpoint no. 157, February 20, 1989. 8. See IV nos. 156 and 158, February 6 and March 6, 1989.
MIDDLE EAST
390
"An attempt to liquidate our cause"
WE PUBLISH BELOW the Joint
Political Declaration of The Popular
Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, The Islamic Resistance
Movement - Hamas, and The
Democratic Front for the Liberation
Arab and Islamic markets to its products and the opening up of the treasures of the Gulf in order to plunder the oil riches of our Arab nation.
3. To liquidate the Palestinian cause, the heart of the conflict, by emptying it of its content as a cause of a people having religious, national and historic rights in Palestine and transforming it into a demographic problem that can be resolved at this stage by the establishment of an administrative autonomy tied to the Zionist state. In the best of cases, Israeli sovereignty will be replaced by the formal sovereignty of Jordan, serving as a cover for the maintenance and hardening of the occupation through a military and police presence in certain zones of the West Bank and Gaza.
4. To strike at and abort the Islamica does not even try to hide what it is expecting, the preliminary and free concessions and the submission to American pressures have continued and have led to a new unrequited concession that does grave harm to our national rights. This amounts to a blow to the jihad and the struggle of our people, to its decades of
East "peace" conference. DOCUMENT
HE political aftermath of the Gulf War, preceded by America's victory in the Cold War on the global scale, which has made her in fact the only hegemonic great power in the world, has meant that the US is now striving, followed by the dependent and servile regimes of the Arab world, to liquidate our cause and wipe it out of the minds of the Arab and Islamic masses. This is because they know that this open wound incites our Palestinian people, as well as the Arab and Islamic nation, to strive to recover their dignity and cast down the thrones of those who have been bought, whose yoke weighs on the nation. Although America is opposed to the aspirations of the Palestinian masses, has encouraged and supported Zionist intransigence, and given military and material support to its state, the US is now pretending that it is working to resolve the ArabIsraeli conflict on its terms, by means of the American liquidationist plot which aims to:
1. Consecrate American imperialistcolonialist hegemony in the region, by setting up a regional alliance tied to it politically, economically, militarily and culturally, of which the Zionist state will be the hard core and the dominant strike force in the region.
2. To consolidate the Zionist cancerous presence in the body of our nation and on our land by the normalization of its relations with the Arab regimes and recognition of a sort that gives it an economic as well as a military function. This state will thus grow in strength, security and stability above all after the opening up of the ic and Arab liberation movements struggling against American imperialism and its interests in the region, to consecrate the absolute hegemony of America and Israel and to preserve and root its pliable and to preserve and root its liable instruments in the region with all that this implies in terms of the destruction of our nation's identity sacrifice, to the martyrs it has laid down on the altar of its faith in the justice of its cause and its attachment to its rights, and to the pain and suffering of the wounded, the prisoners and those who have been forcefully expelled from their country.
Starting from what all this represents as a threat to our jihad, our struggle and our rights we — the Popular Front, the Hamas Movement and the Democratic Front -affirm the following:
1. While respecting freedom of belief,
To our militant and resistant Palestinian people!
To all free and honourable men in the world!
Although the reality and the aims of the new American plot are clear, since Ameropinion and difference in thought, we do not see in this affront to our historic, religious and national rights, a simple exercise in freedom of political opinion, but the embezzlement of our sacred and nonnegotiable national rights. We proclaim
### Arrests in Tunisia
ON OCTOBER 13, 1991, six youth were arrested in Sidi Bouzld In central Tunisia while distributing a leaflet signed "revolutionary Marxist high schools students" calling for the formation of a high schools students union. The six were physically attacked by the police and are being kept in detention. They have been charged under two headings: illegal association and illegal meeting. Among them are to be found two students, Ayache Ammami and Saleh Ammaml as well as a teacher, Mil-
Had Ammaml.
The first hearing of their case took place on Tuesday October 22, without conclusion, the next is set for November 13. The charges carry a possible sentence of five years in jail. At the court exit, Sadri Khiara, a well-known militant of the Tunisian left, who had come from Tunis for the trial, was held. He was released, but his papers were kept by the commissariat af Sidi Bouzid.
At a time when the Tunisian authoritles are undertaking a huge offensive against the Ennahdha fundamentalist movement (See International Viewpoint, no. 208, June 10, 1991) which is accused of wanting to overthrow the regime, intimidation and repression against any democratic expression seem bound to Increase. Thousands of arrests have taken place on campuses.
Democratic and progressive organizations throughout the world need to mobilize to demand the Immediate liberation of the Sidi Bouzid six as well as freedom of opinion and organization in Tunisia.
Send protests to the Interior Ministry in Tunis, with a copy to the Tuni-
Asian League for Human Rights (fax 1-79 54 66). * 5 November 11, 1991 • #216 International Viewpoint of Palestine on the Madrid Middle on the cultural, economic and military levels.