For the defense of the
Palestine national movement confrontation among Palestinians, this political line is likely to uum. Israel remains its strategic ally in the region, whatever
EDITORIAL The bombing of the Palestinian camps in North Lebanon and the siege of Tripoli by Syrian troops and dissidents of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) could result in the liquidation of the PLO as the unified and representative organisation of the Palestinian national movement. The PLO as such an organisation - over and above its many links of dependence with different Arab regimes - constitutes a relatively autonmous political force in the regional confliets. This is inconvenient for more than one force on the regional political scene. Throwing the Palestinian resistance out of North Lebanon can be seen as completing the work started by the Israeli armed forces in the south of the country with its June 1982 invasion and siege of Beirut. Zionist leaders make no secret of their satisfaction at the new weakening of the PLO.
The Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza occupied territories instinctively understood that it was another deadly blow against their struggle. Their demonstrations against Syrian aggression at Tripoli, more than a defence of Yasser Arafat and his policy, show a desire for unity, for defending the PLO as the only instrument of effective struggle for their national demands. This sentiment is expressed in the communique issued by the professional associations (lawyers, doctors, etc.) of the occupied territories denouncing "the Syrian conspiracy against the independence of the PLO" and calling for "democratic discussion inside the organisation and for respecting the decisions of the Algiers Palestinian National Council meeting" which reaffirmed Yasser Arafat as chairperson of the
The open division of the PLO and the civil war in its ranks is the "delayed" political price for its defeat in Beirut and strikingly contradicts Yasser Arafat's claims that this military defeat could be transformed into a political victory at the negotiating table.
The positions taken by the leaders of the dissidents inside the PLO since the beginning of 1983 reflected legitimate criticisms and concerns, widely shared among Palestinian fighters after the evacuation of Beirut. Above all they represented a sharp opposition to diplomatic operations personally undertaken by Arafat.
Giving his own interpretation of the Palestinian National Council's (PNC) resolutions from the February 1983 Algiers meeting, Arafat in fact in March, through personal talks with King Hussein of Jordan, engaged in negotiating a 'protocol agreement' that constituted a threefold violation of the PNC
That is, Arafat gave up the demand for inclusion of the PLO in any negotiations with Israel. He abandoned in practice the right of the Palestinian people to sovereign state, prior to any form of association with Jordan.
explicitly mentioned the Reagan plan among the various projects that could lead to a negotiated solu-
This protocol which, to all intents and purposes, was accepted by Arafat, was rejected on April 10, both by the PLO Central Committee as well as by the Central Committee of his own organisation, the Fateh.
The public declarations of Abu Mussa and Abu Saleh, spokespersons for the dissidents, also draw on the strong desire of PLO members for a democratisation of the PLO leadership structures, against bureaucratisation, the influence of 'chiefs' and the personal power of Arafat, and even for a more scrupulous control over the organisation's finances.
However, by going from legitimate criticism to armed rebellion under the patronage of the Syrian regime and with Libyan support, the PLO dissidents rushed into a politically suicidal adventure. Whatever the immediate outcome of the International Viewpoint 28 November 1983 result in the destruction of the PLO as a united organisation of the Palestinian national movement. However, the existence of such an organisation is vital for the resistance and struggle of a people hounded out of its own homeland and condemned to dispersal and life in refugee camps in different Arab countries.
A 'new PLO' formed in Damascus under the political and military tutelage of Hafez el-Assad would only be a pawn in the overall negotiations on the situation in the region.
The political trajectory of the dissident Palestinian officers is not however surprising. After the Beirut defeat and the dispersal of Palestinian fighters in a half-dozen Arab countries, the only chance for a renewal of the PLO lay in a transfer of its centre of gravity to the occupied territories and the mass organisation of the population there, who had not directly suffered the Beirut defeat.
However, an opposite path was taken. By responding to Arafat's diplomatic concessions just by a reaffirmation of the principles of the movement and a return to the pre-1974 tradition of the 'armed struggle', the uprooted dissidents of the South Lebanese refugee camps were inevitably pushed to turn to Damascus for the material support they needed for their
However, for a long time Syria, like the other Arab states of the region, has shown in practice what its notion is of defending the Palestinian cause. It has always sought to subordinate the activity of the Palestinian liberation movement to its own interests. That has been a constant thread in its policies - from setting up an armed Palestinian organisation directly controlled by Damascus (the Saika) to intervening, alongside the Lebanese Phalangists in 1976, against the Tall-el-Zatar Palestinian camp, and then more recently its blocking of arms supplies during the 1982 Beirut seige, and finally today to its military involvement in the siege of Tripoli.
For Syria, the important thing is holding the maximum number of cards in the regional diplomatic game - that is, a part of Lebanese territory and the Palestinian movement. Its objective is to bring the greatest possible influence to bear in the negotiations and extract the best possible price for any rapprochment with the United States. That is, it wants to pressure Washington to force Israel to make substantial concessions, particularly over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
In such a framework there is hardly any place for even a 'relatively' independent Palestinian movement. ideology of the Ba'athist party, which holds power in Damascus, is a cover for its real diplomatic interests in the region. solves the specificity of the Palestinian liberation struggle in the overall Arab cause, whose banner is supposedly carried most resolutely by the Syrian regime.
As the commentator of the Financial Times (October 18, 1983) notes:
"Their [i.e. the Israelis.] invasion, and the subsequent military and political imbroglio, have gradually forced the Americans to recognise the special nature of Syria's historical relationship with Lebanon, and the consequent need for Washington to engage in real diplomacy with Damascus if there is to be any chance of stability in Lebanon." Since Robert Mac Farlane was named as American special envoy for the Middle East, these diplomatic relations are said to have improved to the point that, according to the Syrian Foreign minister: "they [the Americans] admit that the Syrian military presence in Lebanon is different in kind from that of Israel (because it was invited in by the Lebanese government in 1976), and they admit that Syria is not a Communist country nor a Soviet puppet"
However, the Uni.ed States is not manoeuvring in a vac-
tensions Washington may have with the Zionist regime. In this complex situation each force can raise the stakes. Reagan may be led, for a time, to step up pressure against Syria. The deployment of American forces in the region could lead to a 'punitive expedition'. This could be a means of enabling the U.S. to further improve the relationship of forces on the ground, in order to either obtain a satisfactory negotiated agreement or to roll back Syrian ambitions.
In the short term, the struggle against imperialist and Zionist plans, and against the specific manoeuvres of the Syrian regime means that defending the Palestinian national movement -i.e., the unity and integrity of the PLO — is a priority. Concretely this means demanding an immediate halt to the fighting between Palestinian forces and defending the Palestinian fighters against Syrian aggression.
This position implies no particular allegiance to Arafat himself, nor support for his past policies (which are largely responsible for the deadend in which the Palestinian resistance got trapped) and even less a blank cheque for future policy. In fact, Arafat could be tempted to try to get out of his predica-
The European governments and reactionary Arab regimes would be favorable to such an approach.
The fighting between PLO factions can still be stopped on the basis of maintaining PLO unity and reaffirming the national right of Palestinians to return to their homeland, for self-determination and the establishment of an independent state under the leadership of the PLO. Outside of these widely recognised elementary principles, many gaps and ambiguous formulations of the Algiers' PNC leave the door open to all sorts of interpretations, including the plan for a Jordanian-Palestinian federation within the framework of the Reagan plan -that is, the establishment of a Palestinian homeland directly subordinated to the Jordanian state.
Today these questions cannot be resolved They must be dealt with democratically in an extraordinary PLO congress. Such a congress is being demanded by several sectors of the PLO as well as by the population of the occupied territories. But the pre-condition for preparing such a congress is the lifting of the siege of Tripoli by the Fateh dissidents and Syrian ment by starting negotiations again with Hussein of Jordan. and Libyan troops.