A new blow against the Palestinian resistance
Claude DEVILLIERS
With the invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli army on Sunday, June 6, 1982, the Palestinian national movement found itself once more confronted with a military offensive. The avowed objective was nothing less than to remove them completely from the political map of the Middle East. now, succeeded in physically liquidating the Palestinian militants, penetrating into their general neighbourhood of West Beirut, does not indicate a lack of determination on the part of the Zionist leaders, or of imperialism in supporting them, but is a consequence of the relentless military resistance of the Palestinians.
the formula for disarming the Palestinian resistance, the exile of several thousands of its fighters into an Arab country in the region, proposed by the government of Menachem Begin, has no other aim than ob. taining a total capitulation of the PLO, given the military relationship of forces created by Zionist aggression
The fierce resistance of the Palestinians in West Beirut follows a struggle of several weeks against the progress of the Israeli army across south Lebanon. It illustrates, for the fourth time in a dozen years, the necessity for the Palestinian national movement to defend, arms in hand, its right to exist and the struggle for the national liberation of its people.
During all these years, the reactionary Arab bourgeoisies like the Zionist state, have taken turns each time with the blessing of imperialism-to try to put an end, militarily and politically, to the Palestine national movement.
The story of the struggle of the Palestinian people is intertwined therefore with the episodes of the resistance to these many reactionary attempts to liquidate them. Today, the Palestinian people are dispersed throughout the region, because of the creation of the Zionist state in 1948 and the Zionist policy of monopolising and colonising lands. Its political leadership finds itself once against confronted, in almost total political isolation, with a tragic test of strength, the outcome of which will be decisive for its
The struggle against the Zionist state represents an important element of the nationalist radicalisation of the Arab masses throughout the Middle East. This has forced the Arab states to lead a certain fight against Israel and to support the Palestinian people deprived of their national rights and in search of a homeland.
The Egypt of Gamal Abdel Nasser had thus taken an active part in the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. It was, in effect, at the first Arab summit in Cairo in January 1964, convened to 'organise the Palestinian people to allow them to play their role in the struggle for the liberation of their coun try. and to decide for themselves on their future'. Founded some months later, in May 1964, the PLO today organises several Palestinian organisations, the most important of which are: El-Fatah of Yas-
Arafat, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of George Habash, the Democractic Front for the Liberation of Palestine of Nayef Hawatmeh, the Arab Liberation Front (pro-Iraqian), and El-Saika (pro-Syrian).
The PLO rapidly asserted itself as the representative of the national aspirations of the Palestinian masses, despite their dispersion as disinherited migrants throughout the Middle East. Witness to this is the support that the PLO receives in the territories occupied by Israel since
This objective situation of a marginalised people, excluded from any productive process and thus subjected to extreme pauperisation, and assembled in refugee camps in states neighbouring Israel, has had an effect on the political development of the Palestine nationalist movement. The resistance has in fact been forced to develop and steel itself in the shelter of hostile Arab regimes, foreed to accept their presence after the military defeat of the Arab armies in June 1967.
In comparison with the other nationalist movements of the Arab workNassarite and Ba'athist-which historically preceded it, the Palestinian nationalist movement has introduced new methods of action and struggle against Zionism. The Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi states only conceived of their support for the Palestinian national demand, and their struggle against the Zionist state, in the framework of a war led by a conventional army and not in the course of a popular mobilisation against Zionism. Palestinian movement based itself on the political and military mobilisation of the Palestinian masses in the refugee camps themselves. This did
Palestinian leadership to break all links with bourgeois nationalism-notably on the question of relations with Arab bourgeois states who support
Despite this, and a militarist ap proach to the fight against Zionism, this mobilisation at the same time constituted a living contradiction to the policy of the bourgeois states, by the example which it represents in the eyes of the Arab masses of the region as well as in the anti-imperialist dynamic which it sparks off in the countires where the Palestinian refugee camps are situated.
This is one of the fundamental elements which explains the repeated participation of the armies of the Arab states in the repression of the nationalist Pales-
Each time that the armed mobilisation of the people is about to endanger the stability of an Arab bourgeois regime in the region, where the Zionist state cannot allow a direct military intervention for fear of stirring up the anti-imperialist feeling of the Arab masses, it is the Arab armies-in full complicity with Israel and imperialism-who do the dirty work
The Israeli aggression of June 1967 took place in the framework of an imcounter-offensive against the rise of the colonial revolution in the Arab world. It aimed to stamp out the growing anti-imperialist dynamic which was becoming obvious in the Near East. This represented, on one hand, the re-awakening of the struggle of the Palestinian people, the appearance of armed nuclei within it, and the upsurge of armed actions by these groups against the Zionist state, and on the other hand, the radicalisation of the Syrian regime established by the coup
The military victory of the Zionist army constituted a success for this imcounter-offensive, nevertheless tempered by the encouragement to the anti-imperialist mobilisations of the Arab masses and, most importantly, the rapid extension of the armed organisations of the Palestinian people which it led to.
The defeat of the Arab armies by Israel in June 1967 brought the young Palestinian movement to the forefront. By its heroic struggle within and outside the
The Palestinians are a people of around 4.5 million. Some 1.2 million are in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967 the West Bank, and the Gaza strip, 500 thousand within the 1948 frontiers of the Israeli state, the rest being divided, often due to political migrations and blows struck against the Palestinian resistance, gion (220,000 in in most of the Arab countries in the re- Syria, 299,000 in Kuwait, and 136,000 in Saudi Arabia).
territories occupied by the Zionist army it rapidly won the support and the respect of the Arab masses from Morocco to Iraq. In order to regain credibility in the popular movement, and lessen the consequences of the crisis provoked by their defeat, the Arab regimes then decided to support financially and militarily the Palestinian national movement in exchange for its non-interference in the internal affairs of the Arab regimes. This signified among other things, the appearance and development of the Palestinian resistance on Lebanese territory.
### 'BLACK SEPTEMBER'
IN JORDAN A conjunction of interests between imperialism, the state of Israel, and the Lebanese bourgeoisie brought a first but unfruitful attempt to liquidate the Palestinian resistance by the Lebanese army in 1969. This action ended in failure because of the weakness of the Lebanese was concentrated before 1970. The advanced experiences of popular mobilisation began even to overflow the Palestinian refugee camps, like Irbid in the North, near the Syrian frontier. this town, these advanced experiences of mass mobilisation involved the Palestinian and Jordanian masses in neighbourhood organisations, which had a dynamic towards true people's councils.
It was to save his regime, deeply shaken by the strength of the Palestinian movement in Jordan, that King Hussein launched a bloody military offensive against the Palestinian camps in September 1970. Helped in this by the Israeli army, and profiting from the criminal passivity of the other Arab regimes, the Hashemite king, at the cost of massacring several tens of thousands of people, dismantled the Palestine Liberation Organisation on Jordanian territory. 'Black September' was the first serious defeat of the Palestinian resistance. The PLO leadership did not draw the lessons
Following 'Black September' the PLO had nevertheless succeeded in restructuring its forces in reorganising its political and military apparatus, primarily on the Lebanese territory where, since the 1969 agreement, the right of free movement and action had been granted to the guerrillas. The Palestinian resistance rapidly became the main political force in Lebanon, thus modifying radical. ly the unstable equilibrium between the Muslim and Christian population which is the basis of the crisis of the Lebanese state artificially created by imperialism, and between the progressive forces and the reactionary camp. President Soleiman Franjieh reacted by attempting to impose a strong state in Lebanon and repressing any social struggles. Nevertheless, he had to retreat after the big demonstration of April 1973 where 250 thousand people protested against the murder in Beirut by the Zionists of three Palestinian leaders. From then on, the military confrontations between the Palesarmy itself and the rising of the Muslim of this, notably on its attitude on nonmasses in Lebanon in support of the Pa- interference and of compromise with the lestinian resistance.
Following that, the bourgeois Arab regimes which support it.
secret agreement of Cairo at the end of Is it not this attitude which led the PLO
Palestinian prisoners of the Zionist army (DR)
1969 between the President of the PLO and the Commander in Chief of the Lebanese army, under the auspices of the representatives of the United Arab Republic, established the legitimacy of the armed Palestinian presence in Lebanon,
*posts of the armed Palestinian struggle within the camps, and delimited the where the
Palestinian guerrillas zones could act as the 'Fatahland'.
But the existence of the Palestinian resistance, the armed struggle which it led against Zionism, the permanent mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of refugees in different Arab states of the region had, independently of the line of non-interference defended by the leadership of the
Palestinian national movement, an increasingly destabilizing dynamic in the
Arab states.
This was particularly so in Jordan where the essential Palestinian resistance leadership, in order to remain on good terms with the Saudi regime, to condemn publicly the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979?
The crushing of the Palestinian resistance in Jordan in September 1970 completed the imperialist victory started by the war of June 1967. This opened the way for a greater reorganisation of the relationship of forces on a regional scale which took a number of forms: one month after the Jordan massacres the radical petit-bourgeois team in power in Syria was overthrown by a military coup; in 1971 the regime of Anwar Sadat in Egypt started to methodically and progressively dismantle the nationalisations carried out by Nasser; in the course of that year the Nemeiry dictatorship liquidated the Sudanese Communist Party by brutal repression and began open collaboration with imperialism.
tinian and the Lebanese forces throughout that year did not give the advantage to the 'legal' government in Lebanon.
For American imperialism, attached to advancing a political settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as the Lebanese bourgeoisie wanting to put an end to this counter-power, or for Israel, it meant therefore an attempt to repeat King Hussein's operation in Jordan. This was all the more important as the convergence between the Palestinian mobilisation and the struggles of the Lebanese masses increased. The Saida insurrection at the end of February 1975, when Palestinian militants from a refugee camp situated near the south Lebanese town joined forces with the population against a repressive intervention by the Lebanese military forces, was somehow a detonator for the Lebanese ruling power. With the use of the Falangist Christian militias headed by Pierre and Bechir Gemayel, that it had helped to strengthen, the ruling power organised a vast provocation against the Palestinian resistance and the
Lebanese mass movement. forces set an ambush for a bus carrying Palestinian militants from the Rejection
This action served as a pretext for an intervention of the Lebanese army against the Palestinian resistance. the repressive Lebanese forces were neutralised by the reaction of the Lebanese
The Falangist provocation accelerated the convergence in the strugglesincluding the armed struggle-of the Palestinian forces and the Lebanese progressive movement. 1975/6, starting with this provocation, led to an even greater destabilisation of the Lebanese state. It was the intervention of the Syrian armed forces which prevented the victory of the Palestinian and progressive forces over the Christian Falangists. The Arab Dissuasion Force, essentially composed of Syrian troops was settled in Lebanon in 1976 with the blessing of imperialism, which could not see any other way to prevent the victory of the Palestinian progressive forces in Lebanon.
Yet at the outcome of the civil war in Lebanon, despite the Falangist massacres, like that at the Tell-el-Zatar refugee camp, which fell on August 12, 1976, after a siege of 52 days, and the repression by the Syrian armed forces, the Palestinian resistance found itself faced with a disintegrating Lebanese state, and thus more and more directly confronted with the Zionist army.
The maintenance of the political and military potential of the PLO forces in Ugha by the e diplomatice secesses ship of forces between Israel and the Arab states after the 1973 war, the new wave of mobilisation of the Palestinian occupied territories, pushed the Zionist state to launch a new total offensive against the
For Israel, the essential aim of the Camp David agreement signed between and 1979 with Egypt, under the aegis of the American president, Jimmy Carter, was not in any way to find a just solution to 'the legitimate demands of the Palestinian people'-as is explicitly stated in the agreement-but to create a favourable political situation, isolating the PLO with a view to a military confrontation on the initiative of the Zionist forces.
### 'FINAL SOLUTION'
'Operation Litani' (the name of a river in Lebanon), launched in 1978 before the Camp David agreement had been definitively ratified, should have been a mortal blow to the Palestinian resistance; sweeping clean a 10 kilometre strip of territory in south Lebanon with a military force of thirty thousand Israeli soldiers and the Zionist airforce in a
Despite the massacres of the popuIsraeli army, this policy did not achieve
The PLO succeeded in holding out against Israeli aggression and its military apparatus remained intact. Certainly, it was not over for Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon. Thus for four years the Israeli army never stopped its military attacks on the Palestinian movement: bombarding refugee camps, assassinating Palestinian leaders, commando operations on Lebanese territory, destroying PLO military bases. Yet the Palestinian leader ship succeeded overall in keeping its military position in Lebanon, while the state of Israel found itself confronted with a qualitative strengthening of the resistance of the Palestinian masses in the occupied territories, which it had controlled since
The effectiveness of the Palestinian bombardment in reply to the bombing of the camps and bases in south Lebanon even forced the Zionist state to sign a ceasefire in July 1981 with the PLO, whose existence it has still never formally
The Zionist state had to react to the worsening relationship of forces between itself and the PLO. During the last six months Israel did everything possible to make the PLO break the ceasefire in order to be able to launch what the Zionist leaders called 'the final offensive' to destroy the PLO. Finally, weary of waiting, the Zionist army invaded Lebanon on Sunday June 6. Despite the presentation of this new anti-Palestinian action as a simple cleaning-up operation in south Lebanon, the scope of military forces used, nearly 100 thousand soldiers, very quickly showed the real objective of the Begin-Sharon duo. In invading Lebanon as far as Beirut, in causing thousands of dead and wounded, tens of thousands of refugees and homeless-Palestinians and Lebanese-the Israeli government has demonstrated its intention to wipe out the Palestinian resistance for ever. Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, has not for a long time hidden the fact that the Israeli authorities were 'decided that the PLO could no longer exist. vasion of Lebanon, Israel benefited from both the consent of American imperialism and the passivity of the Western bourgeoisie and the Arab states. weak opposition of the USSR, simply concerned to retrieve the situation for its Syrian ally, tragically illustrated the
Palestinian people. But as the PLO in reality represents the Palestinian people in arms, the 'final envisaged by Israel can only The first struggles have shown that this fact will not make Begin thing is to know if the Palestinians are ready today to accept an identical tragedy to that which they knew in 1948.