LEBANON
Amal's war on the Palestinians
Over the night of May 19-20, violent clashes broke out between members of the Lebanese Shite movement, Amal and the Palestinians in the Sabra refugee camp in the southern part of Beirut. They subsequently developed into a full-scale battle for control of the camp. On the following day, Amal launched a general offensive against the three camps on the outskirts of Beirut -Sabra, Shatila, and Bourj el-Brajneh. The fighting raged for nearly two weeks, causing heavy casualties, including amongs civilians. More than 400 people were reported killed and 1,000 wounded.
The Amal militia, joined by the Sixth Brigade (made up of Shiites) of the so-called Lebanese legal army, ran up against fierce resistance from the Palestinians, in which every tendency participated. While calling for an
Palestinian camps be disarmed. It put the responsibility for the clashes on Yasar Arafat. This accusation was denounced as a false pretext by the anti-Arafat Palestinian left, which has been allied with Syria. It is this Palestinian left that led the resistance in the camps. It categorically rejects the demand for disarming.
The Lebanese Democratic Progressive National Front - which includes the Progressive Socialist Party of Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Communist Party, the Social Nationalist Party, and the pro-Syrian Ba'ath Party - played the role of mediator. The Islamic fundamentalists, both Shiite (the Hezbollahis, etc.) and Sunni (the Islamic Unity Movement in Tripoli in northern Lebanon), deplored the 'fratricidal fighting, end to the fighting, the Syrian Amal's demands, in particular the Salah JABER
Once again the events in Lebanon have toppled the most stubborn political prejudices and disoriented the world press which went off on the wildest flights of conjecture in an attempt to interpret the meaning of the fighting and the reasons for the attitudes of the various contending forces.
It has to be acknowledged that it is in fact difficult to follow the strands of the Lebanese tangle. Besides the complexity of the situation in Lebanon itself, which is the result of the multiplicity of interests and forces involved, false allegations and disinformation are widely practised in Middle Eastern politics.
Therefore, in looking at events in the Middle East, more than in any other region of the world, it is necessary to beware of oversimplified schemas, which can be the source of great confusion.
To make it easier to understand the battle of the camps and the stakes involved, I will deal separately with the main parties to the fighting.
The offensive launched by Amal surprised those who see this organization as a pro-Khomeini or anti-Zionist one. In both respects, they were misled by the undeniable role that Amal played in defeating the Phalangists and forcing the withdrawal of the Israeli army.
In commenting on the debacle of the Amin Gemayel government in February 1984, I defined the Shiite current as follows: "Amal, or the 'Movement of the Outcast, of which Amal is the military wing, was formed in the 1970s. Its clear objective was to organize the poor Shiite masses under a bourgeois leadership that, unlike the regime supported demand that the taking the same tack as the Iranian regime. Libya resolutely supported the Palestinians against Amal.
traditional Shiite chiefs - who were the most backward hangovers from Lebanese Feudalism - was capable of using populist demogogy.
"In fact, the Amal operation was directed mainly against the Lebanese CP, whose spectacular growth in 1968-72 was based on the recruitment mainly among Shites. From 1975 to 1982, Amal did not fight a single battle against the camp of the Phalangists and its allies. Instead, it built itself through battles against the Lebanese CP and the Palestinian organizations on the basis of antiCommunist and anti-foreign propaganda mirroring that of the Phalange ...
"Today, Berri [the leader of Amal] is not showing any sign of 'radicalism' beyond his opposition to Gemayel in person, whom he blames for the recent events [attempts by the Christian forces to trample on the Shiite interests]. At the same time, he is showing a very great concern to keep things from going too far as regards a breakdown of the bourgeois state. He has insisted that the militarized police and the ordinary police, or even Lebanese army troops under the command of Muslim officers, take charge of restoring bourgeois order in West Beirut." (1)
This description remains entirely valid. The growing involvement of Amal in the resistance to Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon since 1984 has changed nothing of the reactionary nature of this movement's objectives. Its plan is to rebuild a strong Lebanese bourgeois state in which the Shiite bourgeoisie, whose militia Amal is, will be represented in accordance with the numerical preponderance of the Shiites in Lebanon.
In fact, Amal was dragged into the anti-Israeli struggle in southern Lebanon which is the main Shiite region and Amal's principal base. If it had not joined in, it would have been outflanked by the Communists, who were the initiators of the armed resistance, and by the Khomeini current. In participating in this resistance, Amal in no way went beyond the bounds of its narrow bourgeois patriotism. It simply involved itself in united-front activity to liberate southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation.
Once this objective was achieved, with the Israelis withdrawing, Amal's reactionary project came to the fore again. It brutally eliminated the Morabitoun, the Nasserite Sunnis in Beirut who are linked to Libya and avowed opponents of Arafat, despite the disinformation campaign portraying them as agents of Arafat. Moreover, in the liberated areas of southern Lebanon, the Shiite militia has established itself as "the force of order" and forbidden all other organizations to maintain their own armed forces.
This was the context for Amal's offensive against the rearmed Palestinian camps in southern Beirut, which was aimed at disarming them and forcing them to submit to the Lebanese army. That has also been the main demand of the Phalangist militias for 15 years. In fact, it was in the name of this demand that the Christian militias launched the Lebanese civil war in 1975.
At the same time, Amal was fulfilling its part of its implicit bargain with Israel. It was showing the Zionist state that the latter could withdraw its troops 1. See 'A grave setback for world imperialism," in International Viewpoint, No 47. February 27, 1984, p. 7.
without having anything to fear, since Amal would take charge of assuring the security of its northern frontier.
The Damascus regime today has many reasons for satisfaction. Among the most important are the resounding defeat of the Israeli operation in Lebanon; the obeisance of all Lebanese political forces to Syria: and the overthrow of Numeiri, who was a supporter of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
However, the Syrians also have causes for concern. The advanced state of decay of the situation in Lebanon threatens to make the authority over the country that the Syrians have gained into a trap. At the same time, there are a number of developments that could cause them problems in the region: Preparations are speeding up for dialogue between the Jordanians and their Palestinian allies and the Americans, and through them the Israelis, in the framework of the Reagan Plan. There is the Hussein-Arafat accord; the reconciliation between Egypt and Israel; the tightening of the alliance between Iraq, Jordan, Arafat, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Along with this King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Hosni Mubarak, and King Hussein of Jordan have been making pressing appeals to the Reagan administration, and it has shown signs of offering a favourable response. Moreover, the Israell premier, Shimon Peres, has given indications of relative flexibility in this regard.
So, the Syrian regime is more than ever isolated by the Arab reactionary axis linked to American imperialism. It has less hope than ever of regaining the Golan Heights - the Syrian territory occupied by Israel in 1967 and formally annexed in 1981 - in the framework of some overall Israeli-Arab settlement under the aegis of the US and the Soviet Union. There is, in fact, a broad consensus within the Israeli ruling class that the annexation of the Golan should be permanent. The US administration has not really opposed this.
Everything is proceeding as if US imperialism and its Zionist fortress have decided to offer Lebanon to Syria in exhange for the Golan Heights. In fact, experience has shown that only Syria could impose bourgeois order in Lebanon, Syrian order to be sure, but this is preferable to the prevailing disorder, which favors the development of all sorts of subversive currents and is helping to destabilize the region as a whole.
However, the Syrian regime fears precisely that Lebanon may be a trap. Today the various warlords of the Lebanese bourgeoisie, in particular the Christians and the Sunnis, are pressing Syria to deploy its troops throughout the length and breadth of Lebanese territory. But Damascus is playing hard to get! It understands that while it is easy enough to destabilize a country with so many political and factions, it is quite another matter to restore a new stability that can last. 4
Amal militiamen (DR)
Obviously, the Damascus regime has nationalists, including some of his own denounced as involving an interest in seeing all the warring supporters, communalist factions neutralize each liquidation of the Palestinian people's other so that it can dominate them all.
struggle. This was quite in character for Arafat, who took advantage of the
This is why it has saved the reactionary
Christian forces from a decisive defeat battle of Tripoli at the end of 1983 to involving the removal of Amin Gemayel.
go and give the accolade to Hosni
Mubarak, thereby ending the five-year
This is why, also, while officially supporting the demands of the Shiite Amal move-
Arab boycott of Egypt for signing a ment for disarmament of the Palestinian peace treaty with Israel.
camps, with which all factions of the
The Palestinian national left - the
Lebanese bourgeoisie concur, the Syrian
El Fateh dissidents, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
regime has not really brought any not led by George Habash and the PFLP.
pressure to bear on its Palestinian allies.
General Command of Ahmed Jibril,
And it certainly has the means to do this, if it chose to.
which are united with the pro-Syrian
Saika in the Palestinian
National
In the final analysis, Syria probably
Salvation Front - today for the first hopes that Amal will draw the conclusion time stand clearly in opposition to the from its own experience that only the
Syrian regime.
Syrian army can restore order in the
It is quite revealing that this conflict
Palestinian refugee camp, as well as on has occurred over the question of the the scale of the country as a whole.
right of the Palestinian masses to arms
For Hafez el-Assad, the best outcome and to self-defense in Lebanon. This of the fighting underway in Lebanon shows all the opportunism of the soamong the factions is the various called strategic alliance with Syria, wakening of all of them. In order to which this left wing made so much of.
deploy his army throughout Lebanon,
They could not have been unaware he is demanding that all the Lebanese of the fact that the right they demanded factions get down on their hands and in Lebanon is not accorded to them in knees and beg him to, that they all
Syria itself.
agree to being disarmed, including the
The only support this left wing has left
Palestinians, and that the imperialists comes from Libya, which does not share give their blessing to the whole thing.
the specific objectives of the Syrian
So, could Syria annex Lebanon de regime. From the beginning, we warned facto? The Lebanese and Palestinian the Palestinian left against the illusions masses would certainly gain from this that it was helping to sow about its from the standpoint of security and
Syrian ally. (2) It is to be hoped that their social and economic interests. They it will be able to draw the lessons of its would lose their liberties.
bitter experience today. There is still
The crocodile
Yasar tears that time.
Arafat has shed over the
"war of
The revolutionary Marxists in Lebanon the camps" in Beirut will deceive only and Syria will do what they can to help the naive. In fact this has given him a the Palestinian militants who grapple golden opportunity to move another with these questions. At the same time, step toward the Reagan Plan. He took they will struggle alongside them and the occasion to get the Central evervwhere thev can for the fundamental everywhere they can for the fundamental
Council of his Palestine Liberation rights for which the Palestinian left has
Organization, which met in Amman on been fighting in the last weeks in Beirut.
with Hussein on February 11, 1985,
See "Crisis in the Palestinian movement," in
2.