Where is the PLO Questions of going? (Part II)
NOVEMBER 15, 1988, will go down in history as the day when the state of Palestine was proclaimed in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 — that is, on nearly 20% of Palestinian land.
But it was also the day when the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) - created in 1964 as its name
Suggests to liberate the 80% of Palestinian territory which the Zionist state has forcibly settled since
1948 — officially accepted United Nations
Resolutions 181 (1947) and 242 (1967). In other words, when the PLO recognized the Israeli state and its "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries" on four-fifths of Palestine.'
A FEW HOURS after the end of
the last session of the Palestine National Council (PNC) on NoGeorge Habash called a press conference. Habash is the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the main left faction in the PLO and the second largest Palestinian organization after Yasser Arafat's El Fatah. He explained to the press that his movement would stay in the PLO, in spite of its disagreement with the PNC's political resolution, in order "to preserve national unity". Conscious of the weakness of this argument, Habash added that he was convinced that the new policy of the Palestinian right would lead nowhere, in any case. "Frankly, we no longer fear an American or Israeli settlement, because the ceiling of such an agreement cannot be accepted by any Palestinian, be they right or left".
The pretext is threadbare. Fifteen years ago, the left of El Fatah used the same argument to justify its spinelessness towards a leadership who had de facto opted for a negotiated settlement with the Zionist state.? At that time, George Habash's PFLP argued against this pretext, withdrawing from the PLO's leading bodies in order to wage a political fight against the dominant
And here we are, so many years later, at the end of a sadly historic PNC that capitulated to American demands for the PLO's participation in a negotiated settlement process, with Habash using the same arguments that he fought previously, when the pretext was much more credible than it is today. But things should be judged on the evidence: what is the "ceiling" of a settlement from the standpoint of the US and
First of all, from Washington's viewpoint. Ronald Reagan said in his speech/ plan of September 1, 1982: "I ask the Palestinian people to accept the fact that their own political aspirations are inextricably linked to the recognition of Israel's right to a secure future....The best chance to arrive at a stable, lasting and just peace is to institute self-government for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in conjunction with Jordan....The Arab/Israeli conflict must be resolved by negotiations leading to a deal: territories in exchange for peace.... UN Resolution 242 remains the cornerstone of the efforts made by America..."
Understanding between Moscow and Washington
At the end of 1988, the floor of the PLO's positions, which had never stopped being lowered, had already essentially met this for a settlement envisaged by Washington. Admittedly, some nuances remained: the Reagan plan foresaw Palestinian "self-government" linked to Jordan, while the last PNC political resolution spoke of a Palestinian state (the term "independent" no longer appeared, as if by accident) in confederation with Jordan. Lawyers would appreciate the distinction. However, Jordan's King Hussein himself
MIDDLE EAST practical politics
SALAH JABER had already resolved the debate by officially detaching the West Bank from his king-
Is there then a disagreement on the framework of the negotiations, beyond the agreement on the principle of holding them? This is no longer the case, according to Arafat. He recently explained to the semi-official journal of his movement that an understanding had been reached between Moscow and Washington that the International Conference would meet in "ongoing" session and subdivide into bilateral commissions. (Al-Yom Assabeh, January 2, 1989.) The PLO chief made it clearly understood that he no longer considered there to be a divergence with the United States on this
What about the certainly fundamental question of Israeli withdrawal? In the framework of Resolution 242, the American government has always been for an ex1. In the first part of this article, published in the last issue of /V, the trajectory of the leadership of the El Fatah/PLO was described, which had led over the past twenty years from nationalist maximalism to political capitulation before the United States and their Zionist protégé. 2. At that time, Trotskyists on the ground retorted: "The timescale of a 'peaceful settlement' could be brief or long, but it would be absurd to build a political line on the hypothesis of the impossibility of this settlement. Those who adopt such a hypothesis find in it a cosy pretext for undertaking no action against the peactuade on Beir are pri 1915 paring it: 3
(Al-Mounadel 30, Beirut, March/April 1975.)
International Viewpoint #157 • February 20, 1989
MIDDLE EAST change - peace against the territories occupied in 1967 — without ever specifying that the Israeli retreat must be total. In fact, Washington deliberately left the matter vague so as to be able to arbitrate in any eventual negotiations between Arabs and Israelis, as it did at Camp David. The 1982 Reagan plan limited itself to affirming that when negotiations took place the United States would be able to assess "to what extent it would be possible to demand that territories be relinquished [by Israel]", depending on what was proposed in
Fear of the Arab "demographic peril"
With Washington reserving the role of arbiter on this question of withdrawal, the ball was in Israel's camp. Enlightened Zionists, led by Labour Party head Shimon have always put themselves in the framework of Resolution 242 and its basic principles as defended by the US government. At the beginning of the 1970s, one of the big guns of Zionist Labour, Ygal Allon (who has since died), worked out a plan for a settlement with Jordan calling for an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank. Some colonies and military bases were to be maintained at strategic points, notably along the Jordan river, which was considered as an inviolable security frontier for the Zionist state (the notion of "secure boundaries" contained in Resolution 242 lent itself to this sort of interpretation).
Since then, Labour's adhesion to the principle of withdrawal (partial, of course) has been strengthened - not for "noble" reasons, but through fear of the Arab "demographic peril". This fear, in turn, has been considerably boosted by the intifada (uprising), in which Peres has been able to see an illustration of his party's theses. On December 30, 1987, three weeks after the beginning of the uprising, he sounded the alarm. He publicly asserted that, in the year 2,000, "the entire population between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river (including the West Bank and Gaza) would be 45% Arab and 55% Jewish", because the Arab birth-rate is "double ours".
Two months later, Itzhak Rabin - the Labour Party's number two and, as minister of defence, the main person responsible for the repression of the uprising — made this confession: "During the last two months I have learnt... that it is impossible to govern a million and a half Palestinians by force". (Le Monde, February 25, 1988.)
Indeed, outside of the heavy economic burden that this has meant for the Israeli state and the damage to its image in the
— two disastrous consequences for the Israeli "security" system — the intifada represents a direct and serious handicap for the Zionist army itself. It is mobilizing many thousands of soldiers to repress con4 The result is not only the diversion on a tinually resurging mass demonstrations.
considerable part of Israel's military potential, but also — and above all — a moral gangrene spreading through the ranks of the Lionist army. Although going back much further than the occupation of Lebanon (which ended in a quasi-debacle), the occupation of the 1967 territories has, in its turn, become more and more burdensome to maintain since the intifada.
So it is not surprising to note that the most passionate champions of a withdrawal are today to be found at the top of the Israeli military hierarchy. In March 1988, a group of retired Israeli generals (as such, free to act politically) founded the Council for Peace and Security. They included: Yariv, ex-head of Mossad (Israeli intelligence); Sneh, previously the administrator of the West Bank; and Orr, one time commander-in-chief of the northern region and, therefore, of the Israeli troops occupying Lebanon. Very quickly, the Council brought together more than 30 major generals and over 100 brigadier generals, altogether nearly half of Israel's retired general officers. Or said: "We are all agreed in our estimation that the occupation must be ended because its continuation represents a worse danger to our security than its end". (Le Monde, June 2, 1988.) A statement that is as clear as it is succinct. Sneh added: "Most senior officers, from Shomron (chief of staff) on down, would prefer a partial withdrawal from a demilitarized West Bank to Shamir's 'Greater Israel' ". (Newsweek, June 6, 1988.)
Demilitarization and partial withdrawal: two key elements of Israel's "ceiling" for a settlement. Ben Gal, another member of the generals' Council, said: "We want a demilitarized West Bank; we want to keep control of its air space, have some electronic warning stations, a military presence on the eastern slope of the hills overlooking the river Jordan, which, in any situation, will remain the military frontier". (Le Monde, 19 October, 1988.) As far as Gaza is concerned, the problem is much simpler: the sector is completely trapped between Israel, the sea and the Egyptian Sinai desert, itself demilitarized because of the Camp David accords. Different approach to Gaza and the West Bank
There is another major difference between the two territories. In Gaza, there are only around 2,000 Israeli colonists, compared to about 70,000 in the West Bank living in 124 colonies, and even the most "moderate" Zionists do not envisage dismantling all of them. These differences explain why Peres has several times come out in favour of a total evacuation of Gaza, while in the West Bank he only proposes a withdrawal from those parts "where Arabs are in a clear majority". Ben Gal is more precise: "We could give up 100% of Gaza and 85% of the West Bank".
Of course, there exists a large fraction of the electorate and the politico-military establishment in Israel who reject even the idea of withdrawal. The Likud (right-wing bloc), led by Yitzhak Shamir, is clinging obstinately to the Camp David accords, which they interpret to involve granting administrative "autonomy" to the Arab inhabitants of the 1967 territories, while maintaining them under Israeli occupation. This position is, however, less and less tenable, not simply because of the intifada but also because it is totally isolated internationally. If Peres agreed to renew his governmental pact with the Likud in December, it was only as a stop-gap measure while he waited for the completion of the transfer of power from Reagan to Bush, after which the American administration would again be in a position to intervene actively. Then Shamir, who has already begun to water down his position, would be obliged to yield or hold new elections.
Tanks and planes versus stones and bottles
Likud's argument — that if Israel "abandoned Judea and Samaria" (the biblical names for the West Bank), the result would place the security of the Zionist state in grave danger — took no account of the conditions laid out by Labour for a withdrawal. This is why it is totally meaningless. The US researcher Jerome Segal, Arafat's friend and counsellor and a strong advocate of a Palestinian state, replied to this argument as follows in Newsweek (September 12, 1988): "It's a total joke. We're talking about a pint-sized, demilitarized zone that has no access to the outside world except through two hostile and suspicious states that completely surround it - Israel and
The Israeli ex-minister of foreign affairs (Labour), Abba Eban, was in complete agreement in refuting the Likud theses. In the New York Times on January 2 this year, he compared Israel's resources with those of the PLO. On the one side, "3,800 tanks, 682 planes with an impressive bombing capacity, thousands of pieces of artillery and missiles, and a formidable electronic capacity"; on the other, "zero tanks or planes, a few guns and no missiles", with "an assortment of grenades, mortars, stones and bottles". Eban rightly concluded: "An entity run by Arabs in a large part of the West Bank and Gaza, or a separate state, or, preferably, in a confederation with Jordan, would be the weakest military entity on
Are the limits of Israel's "ceiling" for a settlement — a partial withdrawal and a demilitarization of the evacuated zones — unacceptable for the leadership of the El Fatah/PLO, as Habash said? Concerning the withdrawal, it is true that even the political resolution of the last PNC talks about "all the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied since 1967". It is also true that when one gets ready to do a deal, one demands
February 20, 1989 • #157 International Viewpoint the maximum. This is the case for all the Arab states, including Jordan and Egypt, for whom a total withdrawal is officially an inviolable principle.
Will there be new Palestinian concessions?
But to the question "Will there be new Palestinian concessions if the International Conference meets?" the El Fatah/PLO's number two, Abu Iyad, who is usually more forthright than Arafat, replied as follows after the last PNC in the semi-official journal of the PLO: "Any solution that does not include a state is unacceptable....After this, things become less complicated. Any negotiations will discuss practical questions, such as the definition of frontiers, relations and so on. Here I must remind you that all Palestinian soil is occupied. So if our leadership manages to rescue a section of Palestinian territory and proclaim an Arab Palestinian identity there, that would be very good." (Al-Yom Assabeh, November 28, 1988.)
The question of demilitarization is even less complicated. Resolution 242, now accepted by the PLO, already foresees "the establishment of demilitarized zones". And, secondly, the PLO leadership was itself the first to break the official Arab boycott of Egypt and establish a close coordination with the Mubarak regime, without demanding that the latter repudiate the peace treaty concluded with Israel in 1979, which was founded on the principle of the demilitarization of Egyptian territory evacuated by the Zionist army. Given all this, the Arafat leadership will have no trouble when the time comes in agreeing to let Israel impose a strict limitation on the categories of arms permitted in the West Bank and Gaza.
This, of course, does not mean limiting Palestinian armaments to kitchen knives. Demilitarization does not mean banning all firearms, even in Egyptian Sinai. Quite on the contrary, the Zionist state wants a situation where the authority that takes over in the zones it evacuates can assume "the normal functions of the police" (Egyptian/Israeli treaty), so as to guarantee that "no acts or threats of aggression, hostility or violence originate or are committed on its territory, or by forces under its control or stationed on its territory" (ibid). The authority that will replace the Israeli army, if ever they evacuate zones in the West Bank and Gaza, will certainly be authorized to have a police force equipped with light arms, as in the Sinai.
So, to pretend that the Palestinian right, after the last PNC, could not accept the Israeli/US "ceiling" for a settlement — to believe that after making their bed, they are not prepared to lie in it — is to wallow in illusions. But beyond the illusory character of this moral comfort that George Habash is trying to wrap himself in, the real question, the one that he is trying in some way to dodge, should be asked: What are unacceptable concessions? What would really constitute treason to the Palestinian national cause and capitulation to Zionism and imperialism?
The answer does not lie where the PFLP chief seems to situate it: either in the partial character of the withdrawal or in the demilitarization. Let us start with the latter. Is there anyone who is stupid or naive enough to believe that after a possible withdrawal of its troops from the West Bank and Gaza, the Zionist state would allow the inhabitants in these territories on its flanks to possess missiles, planes and tanks as they pleased? Geographical considerations and the relationship of forces being what they are, only a decisive military defeat of the Zionist state — which is not on the agenda in the near future - could ensure the Palestinians unfettered sovereignty, even if only on a small part of their territory. So who could blame them for settling for — provisionally, of course — an Israeli army withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, while they do not have the means to replace it with a real Palestinian army? This would be to put off such a withdrawal indefinitely.
The same reasoning can be applied to the question of a partial retreat. As soon as the maximalist logic of "all or nothing" is challenged, as soon as
MIDDLE EAST the necessity for tactical mediations and transitional objectives is affirmed, "all the West Bank or nothing" is no more valid than "all Palestine or nothing". It is evident that the masses of the intifada, whatever the scale and duration of their struggle, do not have the means to get more than a withdrawal of the Zionist army from the zones in which they are concentrated. To dislodge the Zionist colonies adjacent to, or outside of, these zones — and, with even more reason, the military bases - much more than an uprising is needed. What is needed is a war of movement, something that all the Arab armies put together are not in a position to win today, even supposing they had the intention to wage it.
It is therefore perfectly correct and legitimate that the Unified Leadership of the Intifada, in many of its communiques since the early ones, has put up front what it calls "immediate" demands such as "army withdrawal from the towns, the camps and the villages". This same objective figures in Communique 26 of the Unified Leadership (see the last issue of /V), alongside the transitional objective of a complete withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, in the following formulation: "army withdrawal from Palestinian agglomerations".
Not capitulation but revolutionary realism
Trying to obtain this objective through the struggle, in the knowledge that the evacuated zones will inevitably remain under close Israeli military surveillance, is not a capitulation but revolutionary realism. Realism, because this objective can be achieved through the intifada. The best proof that it is attainable is the mere fact that a decisive faction in the Zionist military hierarchy — under the pressure of the uprising and without being offered anything in return - has concluded that it is necessary, for security reasons, to withdraw the Isracli army from the Arab-populated zones - that is, from Gaza and most of the West Bank. Of course, the incomplete liberation (limited sovereignty) of a small portion of Palestinian territory would be a very partial gain. In a manner of speaking, it would mean the inhabitants in these arcas passing from a prison regime to house arrest. Such a gain would nevertheless be appreciable for those who are suffering the occupation. A revolutionary Palestinian leadership would be entirely justified in settling for this immediate objective, attainable through struggle, while continuing to fight under the banner of the transitional demand for a total and unconditional withdrawal of the Zionist army from the territories occupied in 1967. Such a leadership
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International Viewpoint #157 • February 20, 1989
MIDDLE EAST would aim to transform Gaza and the inhabited regions of the West Bank in the short term into "liberated zones", administered by the "people's committees" born out of the intifada, which are giving the uprising its direct organizational expression.
But a partial gain — or anything resembling a compromise - is only legitimate from a revolutionary point of view if it is not in contradiction with the continuation of the struggle for the final objective. That it is, as Lenin said, a "compromise which in no way diminishes the revolutionary devotion and readiness for further struggle on the part of those who have agreed to such a compromise". ("Left-wing" Communism, an Infantile
As a matter of fact, it is not enough to quote Lenin on the need for compromises, as do the Stalinists in Nayef Hawatmeh's DFLP. Account must also be taken of his warning against those who "imagine that it is sufficient to admit the permissibility of compromises in general in order to obliterate the dividing line between opportunism, against which we wage and must wage an irreconcilable struggle, and revolutionary Marxism, or Communism....It is important to single out from the practical questions of politics... those which reveal the principal type of impermissible, treacherous compromises, compromises embodying the opportunism that is fatal to the revolutionary class, and to exert all efforts to explain them and combat them". (Ibid.) Fundamental objective of self-determination
In the case of "practical politics" that we are discussing here, the impermissible compromise, the "treacherous compromise", is not, as previously explained, in the inevitably partial and limited gain available today to the Palestinians. The "treacherous compromise", the capitulation, consists in renouncing the "readiness for further struggle" in exchange for this gain — and, moreover, without any reason, at a time when the Palestinian struggle is at its peak. The "readiness for further struggle" to achieve the fundamental objective: for real self-determination for the whole of the Palestinian people through the destruction of the Zionist state, which is intrinsically founded on the oppression of this people. For the destruction of this state, which the preamble to the last PNC's political resolution itself still described as a "fascist, racist, colonial state, founded on the usurpation of Palestinian soil and the extermination of the Palestinian people"!
However, the text proclaiming the Palestinian state that was adopted unanimously by the same PNC, is based on UN Resolution 181 - that is, on the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist state — and "rejects the threat of force, violence or terrorism, or their use against its own territorial integrity...or that of any other state". The political resolution, adopted by a majority of PNC votes against a small minority that included the PFLP, only dotted the "i's", given that the proclamation was equally based on "the international legitimacy embodied in UN resolutions since 1947"
These included not just Resolution 181, but also Resolution 242, explicitly accepted by the political resolution. It should be remembered that this means that the PLO is committed to cease "all claims or states of belligerency", to recognize the state of Israel and its "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force", with "the establishment of demilitarized zones" in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal "from [1967] occupied territories" (without even specifying the extent of the withdrawal).
A state under Israeli
In short, the PLO leadership has begun to implement the action plan advocated eight previously by its US adviser Jerome Segal, mentioned earlier, in The Washington Post (International Herald Tribune, May 27, 1988). The first steps in this plan are: 1) that the PLO proclaims the Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza - this has been done?; 2) that it turns itself into a provisional government — a measure that is postponed for the moment; 3) that it promulgates "law number one" proclaiming that "the Palestinian state declares itself at peace with the state of Israel" and "will not have an army"; as well as "law number two...banning all terrorist acts and instituting sanctions in the event of violations". The essence of these two "laws" is already contained in Resolution 242
What makes the state that the PLO leadership is preparing to sei up into a bantustan is not its size, nor even the fact that it will be under surveillance. It is the fact that it will be a state under tutelage, a state whose government will have as its main task the repression of any hint of Palestinians continuing the armed struggle against a state that has expelled the overwhelming majority of them from their lands at gun-
The principal means for which the PLO has opted is entirely and exclusively adapted to this end. Indeed, nothing else can emerge from direct negotiations with Isracl in the framework of an International Conference under the auspices of the big powers, which can only have Resolution 242 -worked out by these same powers - as its basis. It follows that, as far as the PLO leadership goes, the "treacherous compromise" is not an unlikely future hypothesis - as George Habash stated in selfjustification after the last PNC meeting — but clearly a choice already made explicitly by the same PNC, and which had been implicit since the 1983 PNC (see the last issue of IV).
Is this to say that we should abstain from demanding the recognition of the Palestinian state by those governments that have not already done so? Not at all, because the importance of this is its impact on the masses involved in the intifada. The majority of them only wanted to see the aspect of a "declaration of independence" PNC's proclamation. This is what they celebrated and what galvanized them.
Their demand for an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza is just and has to be supported. Right now, one expression of that support is fighting for the recognition of this state by governments, immediately and without conditions of any kind, such as the "security" of Israel and so on. Because the more the masses of the intifada have the feeling that their hour of liberation is approaching, especially because of the growing international pressure on Israel and the US, the more they will be determined to continue their struggle with-
However, as opposed to Moscow, which supported the proclamation of the state without recognizing it formally (for legalistic reasons), we fight for the formal recognition of the Palestinian state, though without approving the text of the proclamation adopted by the PNC. On the contrary, support for the struggle of the Palestinian people must remain, more than ever, centred around demands for a total and unconditional Zionist withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, and the right for Palestinian self-determination without any form of diktat. This orientation was reaffirmed in the statement on the intifada adopted by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International in March last year (see Support for the Palestinian masses in struggle
Likewise, today it is more harmful than ever to endorse the sacred formula "the PLO, sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". Indeed, this formula is not just recording the result of an opinion poll (in the absence of any direct democratic mechanisms for representing the whole 3. This shows that even someone like Jerome Segal could envisage this proclamation well before the Jordanian king took the initiative on July 31.
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replies are more discreet. 'There will be a revolution, here and everywhere where they oppress us', insists an old man. 'All compromises must be rejected. If the revolution is sponsored by the Arab governments or the PLO, it will come to nothing...'"*
February 20, 1989 • #157 International Viewpoint of the Palestinian people). In the minds of those who invented it and as commonly interpreted, it is clearly a carte-blanche given to the PLO, and therefore to its leadership, to decide the Palestinian people's future in their name. At a time when the PLO has unambiguously embarked on the road of capitulation, the pernicious character of this formula can be measured.
Most Palestinians live outside of 1967 territories
The US administration began having direct talks with the PLO last December, while a growing section of the Zionist establishment - including the current Labour minister Ezer Weizman, a quarter of the deputies of the same party and its general secretary, who just resigned for this reason — are calling for a direct dialogue between the Israeli government and the PLO. Was all this to celebrate the first anniversary of the intifada? Or was it because, between mid-November and mid-December, the Arafat leadership took some decisive steps in submitting to US and Israeli conditions?
It should not be forgotten that the majority of Palestinians live outside of all Palestinian lands, the West Bank and Gaza included. The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination includes also its right to freely and democratically choose its representatives, with nobody having the right to decree from the outside who is its "sole legitimate representative". Admittedly, the PLO enjoys the support of the majority of Palestinians — for the time being, because representation in a democracy is not an eternal right. The majority of the people can be wrong. Revolutionaries have the right, and the responsibility, to tell them and to combat their illusions.
To support unconditionally the struggle the Jerusalem mufti, Haj Amin AlHusseini. He was the spokesperson of the great Palestinian intifada from 1936-39, and the person responsible for defusing it when he went looking for a compromise with the British mandatory authority at the expense of the Zionists.
In all confrontations between Zionism, the imperialist governments or Arab reaction on the one hand, and the PLO on the other, the PLO should be supported without a shadow of a doubt. On the ground, alliances should be made with the PLO against the common enemy. Thus, our comrades in Lebanon participated in the fight against the Lebanese reaction and the Israeli army for seven years, under the military leadership of the PLO. But it is necessary to know how to act with such an ally. As Trotsky said in relation to the left faction of the Chinese Kuomintang (which was much more radical than today's PLO): "Not by prostrating oneself before it at every one of its vacillations... supporting each step forward and relentlessly unmasking every vacillation, every step backwards". (The Chinese Revolution and the Theses of Stalin, 1927.)
Palestinian right-wing won prestige in 1960s
This latter task falls to the Palestinian revolutionaries and those in the Arab countries, whose most reactionary governments are the PLO leadership's main allies, sup porting fervently every step backwards. Of course, the same does not hold true for the public activity of those active inside the Jewish masses in the Israeli state or the imperialist countries that support it.
That said, there remains an apparent con-
MIDDLE EAST tradiction between our analysis of the PLO leadership and the fact it has enjoyed, up until now, widespread mass support. The contradiction does not come from the characterization of this leadership as bourgeois — a quantifiable and incontestable fact that the whole of the Palestinian left is agreed upon, including the Stalinist faction of the PLO. Because, after all, a bourgeois leadership can perfectly well embody the national aspirations of its people against a foreign yoke. The contradiction bears rather on our description of the PLO's trajectory in the last few years, if not since 1973, as a capitulatory course. George Habash, who shares the same analysis, quoted three reasons, in chronological order, to explain this apparent contradiction in a long interview/ assessment given to the PFLP's paper, AlHadaf, in December 1987.
First of all, he said, was the fact that the Palestinian right had taken the initiative of armed struggle in 1965, which had given it a great deal of prestige and allowed it to win, in the beginning, a leading position. Following that was the fact that "the Palestinian bourgeoisie, because of its class nature and its tendencies to compromise and accommodate, is closely linked to the reactionary and bourgeois Arab regimes. These have given it a large amount of political and material support, which contributed to its
Finally, still according to Habash, is the fact that "the national enemy replied to the political deviation that characterized the positions and practice of the Palestinian right by even more firmness and intransigence, such that the right-wing has appeared to follow acceptable tactics in the eyes of the masses"
These three explanations are true, if insufficient. The last one, which is absolutely of an oppressed people against its oppres- Two Palestinian views of the PLO sors means to support this struggle independently of the nature of its leadership West Bank — young militants of the intifada were met by Alain Gresh, (even if it is feudal or religious!). That does special correspondent for Le Monde diplomatique (May 1988): not mean unconditional support for such "Today, very little escapes their sarcasm, not even the PLO leaderleaderships, especially when they belong to ship that they loudly and vigorously proclaim is their 'sole representathe possessing classes. In this respect, the tive'. At the same time in private they deplore its incompetence and the attitude of revolutionaries must be based corruption of some of its cadres — the five-star PLO', they say, burston the distinction between measures that ing out laughing, - its lack of success....For Bassam in just a few should be supported and those that should months the Palestinians within have won more than the PLO in twenty years....But their attitude to the PLO is unambiguous: It's the PLO that be denounced.
For example, the unconditional support decides; they must negotiate; we refuse to set up an alternative for the struggle of the Indian people against British imperialism had to be combined with a critical attitude vis-à-vis Gandhi and Jordan — Bakaa, one of the biggest Palestinian refugee camps, visited the Congress Party, in spite of their enor- by Véronique Maurus, special correspondent for Le Monde (February mous popularity and the fact that they had 17, he uprising... is felt as the expression of an authentic and fierce led some struggles such as the campaigns of civil disobedience — very similar to Palestinian self-determination, after years of manipulation by Israel, those of the intifada in Palestine today. the Arab states, and even the PLO, which is clearly accused of impoMany examples like this could be bor- tence and collusion with the 'politicians'....A dream is repeated endrowed from other countries (China, Ethio- lessly: that a new leadership emerges from the revolution. Who? The pia, Tunisia, Iran, the Philippines and so on). But the history of Palestine itself is sufficiently eloquent. Up until the 1948 defeat, the only leadership followed by the large majority of Palestinians was that of leadership'."
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International Viewpoint #157 • February 20, 1989
MIDDLE EAST basic, could in the long term become outdated. But it throws light on two things that are often overshadowed regarding the attitude of the Palestinian masses to the PLO. The first is that this attitude varies, in degree if not in nature, not only in accordance with social status, but also to a large extent with origin and territorial situation: Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship, who remained in the territory taken over by the Zionists in 1948; Palestinians originating from the West Bank and Gaza, and living there; refugees from 1948 living in various places (the 1967 territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria) and so on. It is natural that the limit of tactics perceived as "acceptable" should be different for each category. Similarly, the attitude of their immediate op pressor vis-à-vis the PLO is decisive for and refusing any idea of building an alternative framework for the leadership of the Palestinian struggle. The reply that he gives to this inevitable question is not new, it is even more than 60 years old! For the sake of the cause, it is necessary to decorate the "bourgeoisie" with the title "national"!
In the interview previously quoted, he said that in "the first of the stages of national liberation... the national bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, workers and peasants" are united. Thus, "the PLO, in addition to being the framework that embodies the independent Palestinian personality, is this front including all these classes... although it is currently led by the bourgeoisie".
Here are the well-known ingredients of the Stalinist theory forged around the debate on China in 1926-27. Everything is leadership can pass from the hands of one class to another (DFLP and PFLP theses), advancing as an argument the social composition of its base and its influence over the masses, means "consolidating the strength and power of the [bourgeois] 'top' " and "helping to transform more and more of the masses into 'cattle'..."
This is even truer in the case of the PLO than for the Kuomintang. Indeed, the statutes adopted in 1924 by the latter (inspired by the Comintern's envoy!) designated, in principle, the national congress — with its members elected from local congresses — as the supreme leading body, which in turn elected the Executive Committee. On the other hand, the Arab states that founded the PLO in 1964 took great care to create it in their image, that is, as a bureaucratic institution essentially based on
RENOUNCED TERRORISM... the 1967 territories, where the Israeli occupiers have traditionally considered Arafat as the devil himself, naturally tend to have a lot more sympathy for him than the Palestinian refugees in Jordan, who are at least as numerous. The latter have appointment and cooption, and not on the basis of direct representation via elected
It is by means of this antidemocratic mechanism that the PNC has mainly renewed itself since its members were first appointed at the first session, in 1964, swallowing the fact that this same Arafat has AND ACCEPTED UN never missed a chance to RESOLUTIONS 242 AND 338 tenderly embrace his "brother" King Hussein, who has as much Palestinian blood on his hands as the Zionist leaders, and who subjects Palestinians in his kingdom to such a repressive regime that it makes the Israeli occupation look humanitarian and democratic by comparison.
So if the PLO can appear, in the eyes of the masses, as an acceptable representative of their struggle against the Zionist occupation of the 1967 territories, it is not seen as the representative of the just as necessary struggle against the Jordanian oppressor
The second aspect that is often overlooked regarding the attitude of Palestinians to the PLO, which is linked to the first, is that even among the masses who identify with the PLO there exists widespread mistrust of its leadership. Nevertheless, these masses support the PLO because they see in it the only available, and vaguely credible, force that can focus their struggles against the "national enemy". Noting this leads us to the fourth, and perhaps most important, reason for the persistent dominance of the Palestinian right: that is, the deficiencies of the left and, primarily, those of the traditional left of the PLO.
Knowing the analysis of the PLO leadership made by George Habash, leader of the main fraction of this left, one can only ask oneself how, in the same breath, he can proclaim his attachment to the PLO, describing it himself as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people"
HOW MUCH WORSE there: stages, the bloc of four classes and its organizational expression, here the PLO, in China the Kuomintang (which at the time personified the independent Chinese "personality" even more than the PLO does of Palestinians today). The critique of these conceptions is also more than 60 years old, and it is just as pertinent and judicious.
"Considering the Kuomintang not as a bourgeois party, but as a neutral arena in which you fight to carry the masses with you, putting to the fore, as an asset, the 90% left base in order to cover up the question of who is the master of the house, meant consolidating the strength and power of the 'top'; it helped to transform more and more of the masses into 'cattle'....The bourgeois "top' only tolerates (or tolerated) •90% leftists (and leftists of that kind, moreover) insofar as they do not attack the army, the bureaucracy, the press or capital. Thanks to its strength, the upper bourgeois sphere maintains its power not only over the 90% of so-called "left' members of the party, but over the popular masses in their totality." (The Third International after Lenin, Leon Trotsky.)
In the same way, to consider the PLO not as a bourgeois organization, but as a "neutral arena", a "front of four classes" whose under the control of the Arab states. It is by this same mechanism that El Fatah, following a decision of the Arab sponsors, took control of the PLO in 1969, as is explicitly admitted by Abu Iyad in his autobiography: "All the Arab coun tries... warmly welcomed the taking over of the PLO by the Resistance. The main reason for this was that El Fatah, which enjoyed the confidence of most these coun tries, secured, as is proper, a predominant influence in both the PNC and its Executive Committee [EC]". (Palestinian without a homeland, Fayolle, Paris, 1978.)
Since then, El Fatah's dominance inside the PLO has been strictly speaking unmovable — because the organization's functioning rests on the vicious circle PNC-ECPNC, the two bodies mutually assure the simple (and sometimes enlarged) reproduction of El Fatah's dominance. Thus, El Fatah had no great difficulty in mustering the two-thirds quorum for the PNC at the Amman session in 1984, in spite of the boycott by all the other Palestinian politico-military groups with the exception of two tiny proIraqi organizations.
At this same session, in response to the growing dissension in the Palestinian movement since 1983, the leadership of the El Fatah/PLO decided to modify the composition of the PNC. According to a journal sponsored by the PLO4, "the number of representatives of socio-professional associations favourable to Mr. Arafat has more 4. Revue d'études palestiniennes 25, Autumn 1987,
----- photo credits and running heads -----
8
A sample of Palestinian fundamentalist talk
"We will establish our fighting Islamic state on every inch of liberated territory.
But nobody can force us either to recognize the so-called entity on the rest of our sacred land, or to recognize its frontiers. We ask nobody to recognize ours,
February 20, 1989 • #157 International Viewpoint than doubled (to 26% of the total), just as those of the diaspora have grown by nearly a third (to 44.5% of seats)". Added to this are 10% of the seats reserved for representatives of the army (the PLA), who are directly appointed by the "commander-in-
MIDDLE EAST which will remain open until all the usurped land has been cleansed.... Those chief"
Yasser Arafat - in person, as who are hoping to set up a state through peace negotiations are dreaming and well as 7.5% reserved for El Fatah's delepulling the wool over the eyes of their people in having them believe that this gates. The other organizations have to be state will solve the problems of the Palestinian people.....
content with sharing 11.5% of the seats.
"This state, or mini-state, will have its hands and feet tied, its eyes blindfolded and its will paralyzed by the constraints and guarantees that it will have to assume before the International Conference.... The Palestinian people dying today,
Bureaucratic manipulation who have risen up in this blessed fighting revolution, have not done this so that of the PNC
PLO officers can raise themselves to the rank of ambassadors or to set up an illusory state with its will and its sovereignty paralyzed.....
A good illustration of both the bourgeois character of the PNC and the manipulations
Sheikh Khalil Al-Quqa, Moslem preacher expelled from Gaza by the occupying of its composition is given by comparing forces in April 1988. This declaration was made in the name of the islamic the representatives of the PFLP, the main
Resistance Movement, Hamas, in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas in October
Palestinian organization after El Fatah, with other "representatives". The ratio is 2-
5 with those of the Palestinian diaspora from the Arab oil-producing countries (the
Gulf emirates and Saudi Arabia); 3-5 with those of the diaspora in North and South
America; nearly 1-5 with the group of "independent personalities", who represent only themselves, and often their wallets;
and 3-2 with the Arab Liberation Front, a grouplet controlled by Iraq, the big ally of
Arafat. Moreover, the last PNC session, where only 15% of the voters came out against accepting Resolution 242, is the undeniable proof of the fact that this body in no way reflects the real divisions in Palestinian public opinion.
These statutory methods of maintaining the dominance of the bourgeois leadership of the PLO are combined, of course, with the classic means mentioned by Trotsky, and notably by bureaucracy and finances.
The PLO's bureaucratic apparatus is abundant: thousands of functionaries, whose highest layer lives in a luxurious style that is an insult to the living conditions of the vast majority of Palestinians; an apparatus that has some branches, such as the "political" or diplomatic department (with 85 offices in the world), that would make many third world states green with envy. In addition, either regularly or occasionally, the
PLO subsidizes tens of thousands of people who represent an important pool of social support. As for finances, the PLO's treasury is, of course, considerable: an immense capital in liquid assets and real estate, and a working budget mainly sustained by the
Arab oil-producers that can be counted in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
From this it can be understood why the
PLO left, in spite of its leaders' protestations, only has a token role — that of a left cover for the eminently rightist policy of the bourgeois leadership of El Fatah. This is shown by the pathetic spectacle offered by this left for the last two years: barely a few days after the two last PNC meetings
(1987 and 1988) in which it participated under the slogan of "national unity", it was forced to publish communiques denouncing Arafat and company's positions as contrary to the PNC's decisions (in fact, to its
1988. * particular interpretation of those decisions). This shows to what extent the national consensus on which the left claims to base its participation in the PLO's structures is illusory.
As Habash candidly acknowledged in the interview already mentioned: "We won the battle in theory, on paper. But the dominant faction in the PLO leadership, owing to its bourgeois nature, in its subsequent political practice did not respect this. In fact, it is this political behaviour that explains the opposition of this right-wing faction to carrying out organizational democratic reforms in the bodies and institutions of the PLO, because they would limit its political maneuvering room for knocking at the doors of capitulation, in the reactionary Arab capitals".
A platform for political agitation
Does all this add up to the conclusion that the Palestinian left should have abstained from joining the PLO on principle? Not necessarily. But it is its very conception of membership of the PLO that should have been radically different. The Palestinian left should have been able to stay in the PLO on a tactical basis, as it did during the early years of its participation, with its banner held high and without sparing the rightist leadership. It should have been able to use the PNC as a platform for political agitation, while denouncing loudly and forcefully its anti-democratic makeup and demanding that its central leadership bodies be elected by the Palestinian masses, including in the form of delegates from the people's committees in the refugee camps.
In any case, under no circumstances should the left have agreed to endorse the PLO's Executive Committee — at least not after 1974, the year in which the PFLP, then much more radical than today, correctly suspended its participation in the EC (it asked to be reintegrated four years later). Moreover, even from the point of view of the PFLP's own political limitations, logically they should have again withdrawn from the EC after the last PNC, which accepted Resolution 242. In 1974, the PFLP withdrew for much less than that!
Nationalist opposition allied to Syria
Such are the shortcomings of the PLO's left. What about the dissident opposition then? The main organizations in this category - El Fatah-Provisional Command (a 1983 split from El Fatah), led by Musa, and Ahmad Jibril's PFLP-General Command (a split from the PFLP in 1968) - represent a predominantly nationalist opposition allied to the Syrian government's Palestinian instrument, the Saika, in the framework of the Palestinian National Salvation Front (PNSF). After the last PNC, these organizations published denunciatory communiques together with other groups, including the Palestinian Revolutionary Communist Party, a left dissident group of the PCP. Today, they are calling for the setting up of a new PLO. According to Abu Musa, this should include the Islamic fundamentalist current, which is also violently opposed to the PLO's last turn for its
However, the PNSF has very little credibility in the eyes of the Palestinian masses. It appears for what it really is: a grouping under the tutelage of Damascus that was totally discredited when it claimed responsibility for the bombing of Palestinian camps in Lebanon as part of its struggle against Arafat's El Fatah. In addition, the advances being made today by Abu Musa to the fundamentalist current have all the hallmarks of pathetic political shortsightedness and a pitiful bankruptcy.
In fact, this fundamentalist current is profiting in the Palestinian milieu from the same combination that impelled its considerable growth in other countries in the regionran explosive situation, no cake es of 9 the traditional bourgeoisie and the short-
Cárdenas creates new
Mexican party
International Viewpoint #157 • February 20, 1989
MIDDLE EAST • MEXICO comings of the left. In the Palestinian milieu, as elsewhere, the bourgeoisie has played the role of sorcerer's apprentice. Initially, the El Fatah leadership deliberately encouraged the growth of a fundamentalist Palestinian current, in particular after 1979, and up until 1987 for some of its components. Today, this current has profited from the intifada to build itself, to the point where over the last few months the Zionist authorities have become seriously worried.
THE CURRENT CRISIS in Mexico is deepening, above all
Previously, for a long time they had taken a because, after the fraudulent July elections, the ruling laissez-faire attitude, hoping in this way to better "divide and rule".
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has lost all
The fundamentalist current is in a very credibility (see IV 147). Its control over the masses is good position to attract those disappointed weakening. The party is confronted with an internal crisis by the PLO, who have been growing in number since the last PNC. Today, the funbetween various sectors that have widely varying damentalists are projecting a very radical political projects. The only apparent unity they can tone that is likely to convince large sections of the masses and young people (sce box muster is in their struggle against the mass current now p.9). Even Habash confirms this. In Delined up behind Cuautémoc Cárdenas.
cember 1987, he made what seemed to be a confession of his own weakness: "I think that the religious current could take over the leadership if the PLO stopped the armed struggle and went down the road of capitulation and deviation".
A curse for the Palestinian mass movement
It goes without saying that the growth of this current represents a real curse for the
Palestinian mass movement. Its fanatical religious talk reinforces Zionist cohesion in
Jewish/Israeli society on the one hand, and on the other it repels the Palestinian Christian minority, whose role is far from negligible. Finally, it represents an enormous regression for a population that was, and still is, in the forefront of a progressive struggle on a regional scale.
However, the Palestinian revolutionary left, although not organized in a single and centralizing political framework, is happily clearly bigger in relative terms than in other Arab countrics. Mainly, it involves the left of the PFLP
- and it is no secret that debates have been going on within it for some time.
The branch of the PFLP active in the
1967 occupied territories scems, judging by its communiques, to be much more radicai than the external leadership. On the other hand, the People's Committees set up in the Palestinian camps in Syria — close to the Communist Action Party (CAP)
brought together several hundred, mostly young, people. They were, however, decimated by repression from 1986 on and are now in Syrian jails.
Certainly, the revolutionary left is not massive. But in the sprint being run on the scale of the Arab region between the revolutionary left and radical fundamentalism,
Palestinian revolutionaries are better placed than their comrades in other countries. This is especially important since the
Palestinian political scene is a focal point
10 for all the other countries. *
SERGIO RODRIGUEZ
T HE SECTOR of the Mexican
bourgeoisie represented by President Salinas de Gortari — sworn in on December 1, 1989 lieves that the whole economic and political framework of the traditionally populist PRI must be changed, or "modernized". However, Salinas lacks the necessary support for realizing his project because the long-time peasant and trade-union structures linked to the PRI are opposed to it. This sharp contradiction burst into the open after the elections and Cárdenas' success.
But the modernization project is running up against economic obstacles as well. It is one thing to embark on such a project in a period of prosperity, and quite another to try and modernize in the midst of a fullyblown economic crisis. And Mexico is one of the Latin American countries hardest hit by the crisis - by the fall in oil prices and the prices of raw materials, and especially by the weight of the foreign debt.