A contribution to the discussion
THE preceding interview with George Habash was conducted by fax. We sent Dr. Habash the themes that we wanted him to deal with and he sent us his replies. Thus it was not possible for reasons of distance to have a direct dialogue with the leader of the PFLP as we would have wished. In order to stimulate a discussion that we we would like to be able to
• What should be, in your opinion, the priorities for the international movement of solidarity with the Pal-
INTIFADA estinian people?
I think that in this phase of the Palestinian national struggle, all our friends in the world, after having proclaimed their sup- pursue in the future, here are some remarks on Dr. Habash's port for and solidarity with the Palestinian people, the PLO and the rights of the Pal- contribution. estinian people, must pass on to a higher level. They must denounce the repressive SALAH JABER and fascist Zionist practices, as well as the intransigent Israeli attitude which refuses to recognize the PLO, the international conference and the rights of the Palestinian people, first of all the right to return, to self-determination and to the Palestinian state. In sum, to denounce the Israeli attitude of refusing peace.
As Israeli intransigence persists and as it is anticipated that it will continue to defy international wishes and legality, all friendly forces must act, seriously and actively, to treat Israel as they treat South Africa today. I mean by this, to isolate Israel and boycott it, including demanding that all states boycott Israel economically so that it is dissuaded and submits to the desire for peace.
On this subject, I remind myself of what has been said by the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Edward Shevarnadze, who warned Israel, during a tour of the Middle East, not to find itself, in refusing to respond positively to the wishes of the international community, in a position identical to that of South Africa today, that is a position of condemnation, boy-
On the other hand, all our friends have the task of supporting the intifada by every means - political, material and at the level of information. I am not perhaps asking too much in demanding of our friends in the world to support the intifada, as they did in the course of its first months. Perhaps it is useful to underline that the intifada must not be transformed into an ordinary everyday event on the agendas of our friends, something with which they will occupy themselves only occasionally. The struggle of our people, their sacrifices and their suffering must encourage all our friends to find every means, original, everyday, unceasingly and repeatedly, to support the intifada. I am confident that this task will get all the attention it requires from our friends. For instance, broad and democratic organizational forms, supporting the rights of the Palestinian people and the PLO, and denouncing the Israeli and American policies, are an urgent and immediate task. *
T HE preceding interview with
George Habash was conducted by fax. We sent Dr. Habash the themes that we wanted him to deal with and he sent us his replies. Thus it was not possible for reasons of distance to have a direct dialogue with the leader of the PFLP as we would have wished. In order to stimulate a discussion that we would like to be able to pursue in the future, here are some remarks on Dr.
Needless to say, we did not choose to interview the PFLP by accident. It was a choice that reflected our assessment of that organization. PFLP is the main organization of the Palestinian left and contains the majority of the more radical Palestinian militants. That is why it is both possible and necessary to have a dialogue with the PFLP including its leadership.
Different theoretical and programmatic framework
It is clear, to be sure, that our programmatic and theoretical framework is not the same as that of Dr. Habash, and the same is true of our political orientation, beyond the inevitable areas of agreement between those struggling against imperialism, Zionism and the Arab regimes dependent on the United States. In an overall sense, the PFLP leader has a lot more in common methodologically with the currents traditionally tied to Moscow than with us. This is shown, for example by the way in which he rubs out the differences in the attitudes to the Intifada of the different classes and social layers of the occupied territories in the name of the national struggle. A comparison between his views and those of the Palestinian Marxist that we published last year (see IV 158) is eloquent in this respect.
In our series of articles of last year (See IV 156 and 157), we have already criticized the way in which the PFLP, as well as the other left-wing currents in the PLO have swallowed bitter pills handed to them by the rightist leadership of the PLO in the name of national unity. In this regard we would have liked to be able to ask Dr. Habash how he imagines the carrying out of the fifth of the tasks he mentions, that is, the democratic reform of the PLO. It seems like nothing more than a pious wish, given the institutionalized and immovable character of the Arafat leadership's majority in the PLO. In the same way, when Dr. Habash talks "in all seriousness and responsibility" of his desire to see a change in the attitude of the PLO's leadership, it is hard to see things as more than a powerless wish, since he has deprived himself of the means for
Muffled criticisms from left-wing factions
If the only price that the Arafat leadership has to pay for its endless concessions to the enemies of the Palestinian people from the ranks of this people is these muffled criticisms from the left-wing factions, they will not be too bothered. The Palestinian left must show its determination to become an alternative leadership for the mass struggle, while maintaining unity in action with the right wherever possible. It is not enough moreover to try simply to put pressure on the right; what is needed is to break its hegemony over the mass movement and move towards the construction of a majority leadership totally independent of the feudal and bourgeois Arab regimes and expressing the point of proletarian masses who make up the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian peo-
Therefore it seems to us completely contrary to the real interests of the Palestinian left for it to dissolve its ambitions to lead the struggle of the masses into a framework that it knows to be solidly dominated by the right. This applies to the PLO. 25 But is also true of the United National.
sham-ir (shameer \n
1: one who perpetuates,
International Viewpoint #77 • January 29, 1990
INTIFADA a sham, fraud or hoax 2: a put-on, a fakeras in "There will be free and democratic elections in the West Bank"
see also : Joe suzu
Leadership (UNL) of the Intifada inside the occupied territories, which has been placed under the control of the external leadership of the PLO.
Nonetheless, Dr. Habash puts much more emphasis on the role of the UNL than on that of the People's Committees although it is these latter that are the real driving force of the Intifada at the grassroot level and are, furthermore, the most democratic form of organization that the Palestinian mass movement has ever giv-
Besides, we consider the urgent invitation from the PFLP leader for the Islamic fundamentalist movement Hamas to join the UNLas politically short-sighted and stemming from an attitude which threatens dire consequences in the medium term. Hamas has a fiercely reactionary and fanatical, not to say racist, ideology, and has refused until now to participate in the UNL because, among other reasons, the Palestinian Communist Party is a part of it! This current represents a grave danger for the future of the Palestinian strugpresented by the traditional right. Hamas carefully exploits all the concessions and capitulations of the latter and puts itself forward as an alternative leadership that will replace all other currents.
Through its anti-Israeli radicalism allied with its mediaeval fanaticism, and the sharp and loud criticisms that it makes of the PLO, the fundamentalist movement is gaining more and more ground among the Palestinians, even outside Palestine. It represents potentially a mortal enemy for the Palestinian left as has been Shown by similar movements in other countries in the region. It is also the ideal enemy for the Zionist right, an enemy that will make it a lot easier to solidify the Israeli population into a compact antiPalestinian bloc.
While not rejecting a priori occasional 26 unity in action with Hamas in the framework of the Intifada, it is of vital impor-
Flan
Palestinia
*SIGN HERE tance for the Palestinian left to conduct a no-holds-barred ideological and political struggle with this current. This also means denouncing the ambiguous relations that have taken place both in the past and now between Hamas (and the Muslim Brothers from which it derives) and the Zionist authorities. It is necessary to warn the Palestinian masses against the mystifications peddled by the fundamentalists rather than giving them added credibility by getting them to participate in the leadership of the struggle. Habash may believe that, on a number of questions, Hamas' attitude seems closer to that of the PFLP than that of the PLO leadership. But this would be to give priority to what both reject rather than the basic ideas underlying the different posi-
Fundamentalists reject international conference
Unfortunately and paradoxically, some of the positions that mark Hamas off among the forces on the ground work to its advantage in the long term. This is true, for example, of the fundamentalists' rejection of the "international conference" as a way of solving the Palestinian problem.
The conference project, which, according to the PLO's concept, would see the negotiations between the Palestinians and the Arab states on the one side, and the Israeli government on the other take place under the aegis of the five great powers, is in contradiction with the most elementary right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. It would not lead to the independent state to which the Palestinians aspire.
Dr. Habash does not seem to see that there is a contradiction between, on the one hand, his pointing out that it is the Intifada, not the PLO's concessions, that has allowed gains to be made, and calling on the PLO leadership to concentrate its ly, that the conference would be naturally inclined to confirm the gains made by the Intifada....
We were also very surprised to see Dr. Habash avoid our question on the tasks of the Palestinian movement in Jordan, on the pretext that King Hussein's regime no longer represents an immediate danger "for the Palestinian cause" since it has pulled out of the West Bank.
This is a strange reply from someone who was politically active in Jordan for a long time and who knows perfectly well that there are more Palestinians living there than on the West Bank and that there is even worse repression there than is exercised by the Zionist occupiers. It is a strange reply too from someone who was a direct participant of the battles in 1970 when the Jordanian state massacred many more Palestinians than the Zionist power did in 1948. It is, finally, a strange reply from someone who aspires to an independent Palestinian state without abandoning the anti-Zionist struggle: is it not obvious, if only for geographical reasons, that the West Bank cannot be independent of the Zionist state without relying on Jordan?
Let us remark, finally, that, if the PFLP leader feels it right to ask the organizations of the Arab liberation movement "why have they not been equal to the Intifada?" and throw the responsibility for this deficiency onto them, these organizations have just as much right to throw a large part of the responsibility back onto the Palestinian liberation movement, that has privileged, and continues to privilege, its relations with the Arab regimes, even the most repulsive.
Let us recall, in this respect, how the PLO National Council, meeting in Algiers in November 1988, less than a month after the Algerian Intifada was drowned in blood, greeted with touching unanimity the "president and fighter Chadli Bendjedid"! This is not to mention the solid support to the Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein or the big service rendered to the Egyptian regime by the PLO leadership which was the first to break the official Arab boycott that followed on Cairo's peace treaty with Israel. It is here, in fact, that we find what is perhaps the main difference that we have with all the factions of the PLO including the dissident wing. We think that the real interests of the Palestinian struggle lie in linking up with the revolutionary struggles of the masses in the countries of the Arab region and not with the governments that oppress them. In the short term that would mean less money in the coffers of the Palestinian organizations, but the Palestinian people would thereby gain the only strategically it could really and directly rely on. *
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efforts on stepping up the uprising, and on the other his appeal for "unifying efforts with regard to an international confer- ence". This being furthermore, with Mit- terrand and his European partners thrown in! Unless one believes, extremely naive-
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MEXICO Solidarity with Mexican Ford Workers ON January 10 comrade Cleto Benigno Urbina, died from two bullet wounds fired by thugs working for the general secretary of the Ford workers' union, Hector Uriarte Martinez, and protected by the bosses and the hierarchy of CTM union confedera-
Previously, on January 8, eight other comrades were wounded by bullets and a further three by other weapons in an attack carried out in front of the enterprise. On that day some 100 armed thugs entered the plant, dressed in overalls and carrying company passes with the aim of intimidating workers so that they would "get down demands and their idea of democratizing
These threats had the opposite effect to the one intended. The angry workers confronted the hired killers, described. Now the struggle has entered a critical phase, since until now neither the firm nor the authorities has shown any inclination to negotiate or give a satisfactory reply to the workers' demands. On the contrary, on the very morning of January 10, the firm announced that it no longer had any legal relations with these workers. The situation demands urgent solidarity from the international workers'
Protests must be organized in every country in front of Ford factories, and messages demanding respect for the rights of Mexican workers sent to Ford Motor Company, Mexico at Paseo de la Reforma #333, Mexico, DF. Messages should also be sent to the official residence of Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, at Los Pinos; to the labour secretary, Arsenio Farrell Cubillas at Periferico Sur #4271 Zona Postal 20. Messages in support of the Ford workers' struggle should be sent to Dr. Lucio #103 Edificio Orion A-4 Despacho 103, Mexico DF or