AROUND THE WORLD
The position of the Lebanese Fourth Internationalists on the fighting in Tripoli
The following are major excerpts from a resolution adopted on November 22, 1983, by the Revolutionary Communist Group, Lebanese section of the Fourth International, on the fighting in the Tripoli area involving the factions in El Fateh and Syrian forces.
1. To formulate a correct revolutionary communist position toward the fighting in northern Lebanon between the supporters of the traditional leadership of El Fateh and those opposing it, these clashes have to be put in their overall factual and political context. This is necessary to avoid being misled by the allegations of the Palestinian right, which have been given a big play in the mass media in the imperialist countries. These statements were designed to give the impres sion that in these conflicts the rightist camp, which is a client of Arab reaction and a suppliant of world imperialism, was waging "national struggle." However, the attitude of the reactionary Arab governments, most prominently the Saudi and Egyptian regimes, and of the various imperialist governments, first and foremost the French but also the US administration, should be sufficient to put revolutionary militants throughout the world on their guard against any unthinking support of Arafat's claims....
2. The agreement by the rightist leadership of the Fateh-PLO to evacuate Beirut in August 1982 represented the final stage of its degeneration. It marked the transformation of this leadership from the leadership of a petty-bourgeois national liberation movement that it was in the 1960s to a bureaucratic bourgeois leadership endeavoring, in concert with the reactionary Arab regimes, to fit itself into the American plan for settling the Arab-Zionist conflict. The resolutions adopted at the meeting of the Palestinian National Congress in Algiers last February confirmed this transformation by accepting the plan for a Jordanian-Palestinian federation. This represented a major shift to the right, even by comparison with the 1974 resolutions that set the goal of creating an "independent" Palestinian ministate on the West Bank of the Jordan and in the Gaza Strip....
4. The behavior of the Arafat group after the interruption of its talks with the Hashemite regime last April is entirely consistent with the context we described. This group chose to act in a provocative way to create the split that it wanted, 26 knowing that it would risk nothing more than having to evacuate its forces from Lebanon, which it had decided to do anyway before the split, and which in fact was one of the causes of the break.
The first provocative step taken by Arafat was to remove the leaders of the patriotic current in El Fateh from their military responsibilities, which they had fulfilled with honor, as even Arafat's hacks did not dare to deny. He replaced them with members of his group, who had distinguished themselves by running away from the Zionist invaders in June 1982 in a way that in any army would deserve the severest penalties and not promotion!....
Arafat and his collaborators knew very well that accepting the rebels' primary demand, which called for organizing a democratic congress of El Fateh, would have put them in a very difficult situation with respect to the rank-and-file-fighters, since the political and organizational points raised by the rebels were very grave and quite well founded. In fact, the Arafat group cannot face having to account to the fighters for its actions and its financial management. The ground of political struggle, of public argument on the theses and demands of the rebels, was not at all favorable for this group. That is why it deliberately chose to shift the struggle onto another terrain, that of armed conflict, in order to obscure the terms of the debate.
In a nutshell, the responsibility for the recent fighting in northern Lebanon falls squarely on the rightist leadership of the Fateh-PLO. It acted as if it sought these clashes, behaving in conformity with the provocative attitude it adopted when it decided to break with the Palestinian and Arab parties opposed to its line. We should note in this respect that the members of the arbitration committee set up pursuant to a decision by the PLO executive committee during its last meeting in Tunis, declared last month that Arafat was responsible for the failure of their mission. He rejected all the proposals for democratic debate between himself and his opponents made by this committee, whereas the rebels said that they were prepared to accept this.
5. Despite all the facts cited above, Arafat and his collaborators have succeeded in presenting the fighting in northern Lebanon as a struggle between a Palestinian lamb and a Syrian wolf with Palestinian fangs. They have succeeded in gaining acceptance for their presenta of the conflict as one that from the s was not between two Palestinian lin between Syrian domination on th hand and "autonomous Palestinian sion making" on the other. So, it is essary to examine the reasons for this cess, which was reflected in a dram way by the heroic demonstrations of th West Bank Palestinian masses in supp of Arafat, who they imagined was fighting his 1976 battle [against the Syrian intervention in Lebanon]. On the West Bank, of course, as elsewhere, then are bourgeois and rightist personalities who support Arafat in full cognizance of his rightist policy. However, the overwhelming majority of those who demonstrated for Arafat were misled about what was really at issue in the fight led by Arafat and blinded by the illusions that he has been adroitly sowing for severa months.
Two realities have to be taken into consideration in this respect. The first is that in taking part in the fighting that has been going on for several months the Syrian regime indeed is seeking to achieve its longstanding ambition of dominating the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon. This would considerably bolster its position in any negotiations with the imperialists and Zionists on the terms for settling its conflict with Israel....It is essential to take this reality into consideration in order to pursue a correct national revolutionary policy. To entertain any illusion that the Syrian regime is a "strategic" ally for a whole historic period would not only be extremely shortsighted as regards the foreseeable future, but means ignoring the most elementary lessons of the recent past and the clear signs of the present.
6. The second reality that has to be mentioned to understand Arafat's success in deluding very broad masses of people has to do with the rebel current. In this respect, it is useful to recall the position taken by the Revolutionary Communist Group, formulated in the political resolution adopted at its Fourth Congress last June:
"The duty of the Arab and international revolutionary forces today is to support the dissident current in El Fateh in its struggle to form a fighting organization for the liberation of Palestine by replacing the corrupt bureaucratic organizations that have abandoned this goal to go looking for a piece of territory under the sun of American imperialism and side by side with the state of Israel. However, we must offer this support to the patriotic current without any illusions. Revolutionary realism obliges us to take cognizance of the considerable dangers and dif-
International Viewpoint 27 February 1984
ficulties that lie on the path of the dissident current.
"In the first place, it is arising in a period of ebb in the Arab national revolutionary movement, in contrast to the conditions in which the Palestinian resistance first emerged at the end of the 1960s. This limits its possibilities for development, in particular since the Lebanese masses, to say nothing of the Palestinian masses in Lebanon are living in a climate of defeat and are not very receptive to revolutionary agitation....
The dissident 'current can succeed in overcoming its difficulties and establishing itself as a radical independent patriotic current, and this could be the point of departure for a new phase in the history
Arab revolutionary movement.
port the fight of the Lebanese Communists against the Islamic Unity Movement allied with the Arafat group, the fact remains that the participation of the Syrian forces in the fighting in northern Lebanon, marked by their indiscriminate bombardment of residential areas, compels us to assume a position of neutrality in these conflicts and to call on the Palestinian fighters to withdraw from them. Moreover, we support the general framework of the five points put forward in the joint statement of the leaderships of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on November 20, which call for an end to the fighting in northern Lebanon. We reiterate our warning to the patriotic current in El Fateh against pursuing its present line of dependence on the Syrian regime. we appeal to the revolutionary members of this current to fight for a change of line or to form a distinct revolutionary tendency within the very heterogeneous patriotic current in order to maintain the continuity of the Palestinian patriotic line, if not the very continuity of the Pal-
However, the condition for this is that On the Arafat-Mubarak meeting the dissidents make a radical revision of the whole past political line of the Palestinian resistance and its structures on the basis of a conception of their struggle that goes beyond "Palestine-centrism" to a correct understanding of the liberation of Palestine, which necessarily involves the revolutionary overthrow of the Arab regimes. If the dissident current does not manage to do this, it will fail and fall prey to cooption and bureaucratic degeneration, and finally this would lead it to accepting the role of a left "front," along with all the others, within the framework of the line and structures that have led to the failure of the Palestinian resistance as a whole. In any case, the dissident current has to be very wary of the Syrian regime, which is supporting it today and may turn against it tomorrow and become its fiercest enemy as soon as Damascus no longer needs a Palestinian opposition to the American settlement.
The fact is that up until now the patriotic current in El Fateh has not demonstrated the capacity to meet these conditions, which we consider essential for establishing itself as an independent radical patriotic current. Its main failing so far has been in its relations with the Syrian regime. It is true that the patriotic current has not abased itself to the point of singing the praises of the Syrian regime, as Arafat himself did not so long ago, but it has missed several opportunities for differentiating itself from Damascus. patriotic current should have proclaimed its opposition forthrightly to any Arab regime interfering in its conflict with the Arafat group. It should have condemned any attack by the Syrian forces against any position held by Arafat....Last but not least, it should have categorically refused to let the Syrian regime interfere in its conflict with the Arafat group in the Tripoli region and refuse to take part in the fighting as long as Syrian forces were involved....
described above determine our position toward the battles in northern Lebanon. While we back, and continue to firmly support, the demands of the patriotic current that reagainst the rightist leadership of the Fateh-PLO and especially its demand for a democratic congress, just as we supInternational Viewpoint 27 February 1984
This article is from the December issue of Matzpen Marksisti, the Hebrew-language paper of the section of the Fourth International in the state of Israel.
The Israeli government was appalled at the meeting that took place in December between the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt.
"A stab in the back," a "gross violation of the Camp David Agreement, "a blow to the peace alternative' - these were only some of the characterizations of the Egyptian president's agreement to meet with Yasser Arafat.
There were more than a few people on the left in this country who drew a hasty conclusion from the furious reaction of Shamir and Arens. That is, if these people are unhappy, it must be a good thing. However, while the leaders of the government coalition (as well as of the although they did so in a more subdued way) attacked the Egyptian president, Reagan hailed his meeting with the PLO chairman. that we cannot just put a plus where our enemies put a minus.
The question that we have to pose is the following: Who is going to be strengthened by this meeting between Arafat and
Obviously, the Palestinian national movement has to take political and diplomatic initiaties. What is more, normal relations with a considerable number of Arab regimes has been a guarantee of the independence of the movement and a means of limiting the influence of any one Arab regime on the PLO.
However, in the present political context, it is hard to avoid the impression that the meeting in Cairo did not serve the interests of the Palestinian movement but rather those of its enemies.
What was President Reagan so pleased about? In the first place, the meeting increased the confusion in the PLO and the division in its ranks. Arafat must understand that his embracing the Egyptian president will be interpreted, and correctly so, as a gross violation of the decisions of all the leading bodies of the PLO, including those of the last Palestinian National Council meeting.
Secondly, despite the evasions of the PLO chairman, there are now clear signs that he is heading toward the Reagan Plan. This plan cannot provide a means for a just solution of the Palestinian question but rather is a scheme for reinforcing the position of Washington's allies in the region at the expense of the Palestin-
However, it is a great exaggeration to claim that the meeting between Arafat and Mubarak put an end to the militant and progressive charter of the PLO and
The PLO has gone through various turns in the past and still maintained its character as the national liberation movement of the Palestinian Arab people.
The achievement of a very large major ity for a vote of confidence in the leading bodies of El Fateh cannot conceal the fact that there is strong opposition in Arafat's organization, even if his rivals prefer to express this opposition behind closed doors.
The path that leads from Camp David to the Reagan plan is a steep and slippery slope with a yawning abyss below. What Arafat wants to do is perform acrobatic tricks on this slope, and this cannot help but upset the majority of the fighters, who understand very well the character of American policy in the region.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the PLO will be able to stop in time, and not just because of the many obstacles the Israeli government has put in the path of implementing the American plan. continued from page 28 a peace camp since December, in which they stay as 'Peace Witnesses.' And there are a lot of other Americans, West Germans, Austrians, Dutch and French.
"We hope that we will be able to get a common West European peace camp including prominent figures from a whole series of countries. That will attract a lot of attention both in Western Europe and North America. The Sandinistas have asked us if we can organize a Scandinavian peace camp.
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