The effects of the Middle East war
Even in the Litani River opera- do this in a thinly populated backward
The following interview was given to Gerry Foley in Paris on June 11 by Mikado, one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Communist League, Israel section of the Fourth International. The text has been translated and edited.
Question. What are the aims of the Begin government in the war it has launched against Lebanon and Syria?
The main aim is to liquidate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) politically and militarily. The present Israeli leadership has primarily a military conception of the PLO. It thinks that the PLO is essentially a relatively small group of terrorists that can be driven back and liquidated by military ope-
The second objective is to change the relationship of forces in the region by inflicting a severe political or military defeat on Syria. The relationship of forces started shifting against Israel after the
The third objective is to restore a feeling of national unity and confidence in the Jewish population of Israel itself, to show that the Zionist state can put an end to the pressures the Arab revolution has been bringing to bear on it. fidence of the Jewish population has been severely shaken in recent years.
How successful has the Begin government been in creating an atmosphere of national Israeli Jews?
The war has produced an appearance of national unity. plays military marches all day long. There is no news about the number of casualties. The government does not face massive opposition in the streets or large open political opposition.
We are not yet at the stage where the majority of the Israeli population is ready to confront their government while a war is going on.
But for the first time during a war itself, opposition voices have been raised from the first day, including the establishment. Some deputies, for example, abstained on the motion of censure presented in parliament by the Communist
This sort of thing has never hap. pened before during a war. working in the Committee for Solidarity with Bir Zeit University (a Palestinian school shut down by the Zionist authorities) have been circulating a petition against the war which has already been signed by dozens of liberal personalities. This is also something new in the context of a military confrontation.
There have already been some cases of refusal to obey orders in the army, refusal to cross the frontier. position we advocate, and other political currents have taken it up.
Moreover, there have already been a number of small demonstrations against the war including a few dozens of people and the writing of antiwar slogans on the
This reflects the activity of left oppositionists, but no one would have tried to do this during the 1968 war or slogans, written in Hebrew, are "Out of Lebanon Now!" "Down With the Barbarous War in Lebanon!" "The PLO is Indestructible!" "The PLO Is the Whole Palestinian People!"
The real test will come after the war. Our comrades estimate that already more than 150 Israeli soldiers have been killed. This is not insignificant for Israel. And we do not believe that the Israeli offensive can achieve its objectives. may deal blows to the Palestinian movement, even very severe ones, but it is inof destroying the movement. Therefore, after the offensive ends, it can have a boomerang effect on Israeli society itself, as a result of the ineffectiveness of this offensive, and the price that the Israeli army will have to
What impact has the war had on the Arab population of Israel and the occupied territories.
The immediate effect is shock. The Palestinians can see the results of the Israeli offensive on Arab TV-the destruction and death, the wounding of tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thouArabs also know that one of the government's plans is to take advantage situation such as the present one to drive the largest possible number of them out of Israel and the occupied territories.
What chance does Begin have to achieve a shift in the relationship of forces in the region?
If Israel does not succeed in dealing a mortal blow to the Palestinian resistance, the result of the war will in fact be a defeat. Nothing less than tion four years ago in southern Lebanon, Israel made military were destroyed. But the PLO came out of the confrontation stronger than begovernment says that its objective is to drive the Palestine resistance back to the level of 1948, that is, to total atomization of the Palestinian people and destruction of their national movement. If they don't achieve that, the operation could not achieve their second objective either, which is a change in the overall
And, they would not achieve their third objective either-the reconsolidation of Zionism among the Israeli Jews. Within a very short time after the end of the war, large sections of the Jewish population will start demanding an accounting for the cost.
How far are the Israelis prepared to go? Are they ready to occupy Beirut, the southern half of Lebanon, or
A. Trying to occupy Beirut would be simply madness. But Begin and Sharon have done several things that are hard to explain politically, such as the Golan Heights annexation and the attack on the Syrian helicopters in 1981, which led to the siting of Syrian missiles in the Bekaa valley and made no sense politicalnot certain that the whole military offensive has been thought out politically, that the government has a clear idea of when to stop. It is not excluded that the military operations will set off their own dynamic that will carry things far beyond what is politically acceptable. So, I don't exclude an occupation of Beirut, but that would be such a colossal error that I have difficulty believing that they would do it. The same goes for a prolonged occupation of the southern half of Lebanon.
What Israel will try to do before undertaking a general confrontation with Syria, is try to clear the territory under its control of all Palestinian bases, that is, the southwest of Lebanon up to the to set up rightist Arab militias trained and paid by Begin is very proud of the Christian militia commanded by Saab Haddad that it set up in the border area.
But it was one thing to be able to
It cannot wage a six-day war against ist regimes against the pressure of Syria area about fifteen kilometers deep along the southern Lebanese frontier. It is a qualitatively different thing to try to do it in an area that extends all the way to Beirut and includes cities of 100,000 or more inhabitants such as Tyre and Saida.
In the southern half of Lebanon, the possibility also has to be left open that Begin will decide to up the ante, including even a long occupation of the southern half of Lebanon. deepen the crisis in Israel rapidly. It would bring out the fundamental contradiction between Israel's striking power and its limited resources, especially in
Occupying the southern half of mobilization of several brigades and maintaining them as a standing force, even when there were no economic and social costs. army is a reserve army. It cannot take a prolonged mobilization.
You said that a division was appearing in the Israeli bourgeoisie already over how far to carry the war.
Yes, you can see this by reading Ha'aretz, the serious bourgeois daily. Of course, it has not come out openly published since the start of the war that I have seen, it poses a whole series of ques-
Was this operation thought out politically? Does the government know how far it wants to go? Will it be able to stop in time? These questions express a skepticism about the advisability of the offensive, and this obviously retlects a feeling that exists within the Israeli bour-
What is the dividing line in the bourgeoisie? Is there a section more concerned about maintaining good relations
A. No. That is not the basis of it. There is a section of the Israeli bourgeoisie that has a more realistic reassessment of the relationship of forces in the region and which does not believe that the situation can be changed by military force
And there is also a section of the Israeli bourgeoisie that wants a generalized war in the region?
Yes, there is no doubt that there are people in the Israeli establishment who want a regionwide war. They want to settle accounts with Syria, no
What does settling accounts with Syria mean?
A general confrontation with the Syrian army, possibly including occupation of Damascus. Sharon has boasted several times that if necessary, Israel is capable of taking Damascus.
What are the chances that this section of the bourgeoisie can get the ball
A. There are two factors that make such a possibility unlikely. One is that a regionwide war is more than American imperialism can accept, because Israel cannot carry this off quickly and cleanly.
Secondly, it cannot quickly wipe out the Palestinian resistance. It could not do that four years ago during the Litani operation, and it cannot do it today.
Fi think that the U.S. imperialists gave Israel the green light for a few days only. The U.S. knows that if this offensive goes on for too long or becomes too extensive that it could have a profoundly destabilizing effect on the neocolonial regimes that have been built up in the region and on which its ability to control
What are the Begin government's objectives with respect to Syria? Do they conflict with the needs of U.S. imperialism?
Begin wants at least to humiliate Syria, to force it to accept a political defeat in Lebanon, to evacuate Beirut, to take its missiles out, to remain passive in the face of the massacre of the Palesti-
That is the minimum he wants to achieve. But a rapid campaign to break the back of the Syrian army cannot be
Here, on the other hand, an international factor comes into play. has a military assistance pact with the
The Soviets cannot let the Israeli offensive against Syria go beyond a certain limit, and this poses an acute problem for Washington.
However, already the political defeats the Syrians suffered in Lebanon in the first days may have put the final nail in the coffin of the Assad regime, which is faced with mass opposition. position has contlicting objectives. dominated by the traditionalist right, the Muslim brotherhood, which is supported by Iraq and Jordan.
From Israel's point of view, it is a secondary question what would place the Assad regime. There is a current in the government, represented by General Sharon, that would not mind even if a more militantly anti-imperialist regime replaced Assad.
From Sharon's point of view, anti-imperialist regimes are preferable in the Arab countries. This would mean that the imperialists would have to depend entirely on Israel, and therefore would have to give all their support to Israel and not maneuver at its expense with neocolonial
Do you think that the Iraqi defeat in the war with Iran played a role in the Begin government's decision to un-
Yes, that was very important, especially in Washington's approving such
From Israel's point of view, it saw that the war between Iran and Iraq was going to end, and that a realignment would take place in the region. It had to take advantage of the disarray in the Arab camp caused by the war before the situation could be restabilized, before the regime of Saddam Hussein could fall.
Q. Isn't it possible that the U.S. left Israel a certain space to carry out this war to reinforce Iraq and the Arab right-
Undoubtedly this is the main reason Washington has an interest in seeing Syria defeated, so long as limited defeat, or in seeing the PLO defeated right now, which would indirectly be a defeat for Syria and which would reinforce the regimes that imperialism counts on to maintain order in tion-Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Gulf Emi-
Q. Do you think that there is a imperialists achieve this objective?
Yes, there is a real danger of that, given the impasse in which the more anti-imperialist regimes find themselves.
What was the attitude of the Palestinians to the Iran-Iraq war?
There has been a great sympathy for the Iranian revolution. revolution to a considerable extent inspired the Palestinian masses in their upsurge against the occupation and against
However, this sympathy has been attenuated by two factors. One was the appeals made to Arab nationalism by the Iraqi regime at the start of the war. The Iraqis talked against the repression against the Khuzestan Arabs, which was real enough, and about the right of these people to belong to the
The second factor, which had a particular effect on the most politicized layer of Palestinians was the repression against the Mujahadeen, who have long the Palestinian They had very good relations with the PLO dating from well before the
So, the repression against them has deeply troubled a not insignificant vanguard among the Palestinians.
Could you describe a bit more League is doing in this crisis?
A. Our comrades are very active right now through the Committee for Solidarity with Bir Zeit. Everyday there are leaflet distributions and poster pasteups. We have participated in two demonstrations, one in Tel Aviv and the other in
We have to admit that on many occasions, our comrades have been attacked physically. But they are not falling into impressionism, saying that the masses are with Begin. obviously with Begin today, but we know that this support is not deep and will not
But so far there is no official No. the test will come in the A number of our comrades were called up, and they and representatives other currents have refused to cross the
We will see how the government reacts. Will they close their eyes or limit themselves to symbolic sanctions, as they have in the past, or will they take the opportunity to carry out a serious repres sion. It would be a big mistake for them to do that because it would increase the echo of these actions in the army and