Debate on the
Interposition Force they proposed an international force that would interpose itself between their forces and the Israelis as the only way to ensure that they would not be slaughtered during the withdrawal."
The joint statement of the French and in Lebanon We publish below two articles. The first appeared in the issue dated October 15, 1982 of The Militant, weekly socialist newspaper published in New York by the Socialist Workers Party, signed by Cindy Jaquith and Doug Jenness, response by the Ligue Communiste RevoComunista Rivoluzionaria of Italy to the
The original declaration was in International Viewpoint Issue no 14, October 4, 1982.
### SWP position on PLO withdrawal A statement on Lebanon appeared in the October 1 issue of the Militant. The introduction identified it as a joint statement by the French Revolutionary Communist League, the Italian Revolutionary Com-
Group, and the U.S. Socialist Workers Party.
The appearance of the SWP's name on this statement was an editorial error. The SWP had not signed it, and it did not reflect the views of the SWP. The SWP's position was most clearly expressed in the front-page article signed by David Frankel that appeared in the October 8 issue of
The joint French and Italian statement implied that it was an error for the Pale-
Liberation Organisation to have organized the withdrawal of its forces from West Beirut last August under an agreement that included the presence of a multinational force of U.S., French and the disengagement force sent to Lebanon in late August under the Habib plan? It organized the departure of the units of Palestinian fighters, legitimizing the Zionist military presence in Lebanon. By its presence it guaranteed the election of the murderer Bashir Gemayel to Lebanese presidency by a rump parliament that met in a barracks under the guard of Israeli bayonets. It dismantled the Palestinian defense lines in
An imperialist army of 70,000 troops - the Israeli army, armed with the most advanced and destructive military equipment financed or directly provided by U.S. imperialism — was already occupying
Lebanon before any members of the international force arrived. Its presence was "legitimized" by naked force, and it was that same military power than enabled the Israeli army to dictate the election of Gemayel to the Lebanese presi-
Furthermore, it is not true that the U.S.-French-Italian force organized the PLO's departure and dismantled its de-
The PLO organized its own departure and dismantled its own defense lines in the face of the overwhelming military force that was threatening to pulverize West Beirut and kill thousands more civilians. To help ensure that its fighters would not be massacred by the Israeli army during the withdrawal, the PLO proposed that a multinational force be brought into Beirut to serve as a buffer between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops encircling the city.
Of course, as always, the U.S., French and Italian capitalist governments had nothing progressive in mind in agreeing to the multinational force. By its political and heroic resistance throughout onslaught, however, the PLO had made the political cost for imperialism of any slaughter of the PLO fighters during the withdrawal very high.
the Militant pointed out in the October 8 article by David Frankel, "an analogy could be made to the organizers a progressive demonstration faced with an attack by a superior force of armed rightist thugs, call on the police to defend the democratic rights of the demonstrators. Such an action does not support to the cops, approval of their role in society, or abandonment of the need for self-defense."
The article also stated that the PLO's to a negotiated withdrawal was to make a futile last stand in
"Such a decision would have led to casualties than even the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee
. The only thing a fight to the end would have accomplished would have been to help the Israelis in their aim of destroying the PLO and its forces."
Therefore, the article continued, the PLO "correctly rejected this suicidal course and chose instead to organize and lead a retreat....
Once this decision had been made, the tactics the PLO chose in carrying out its retreat were - like the decision itself -dictated by the relationship of military forces. As the October 8 article explain-
"Since the Palestinians were not in a position to force a pullback of Israeli
Italian sections of the Fourth International further asserts that U.S., French and Italian troops that returned in September, following the massacre in West
"will not serve the interests of the Palestinian and Lebanese people than the troops that went in
This confuses the concrete role of an international force that the PLO had to accept in order to obtain a withdrawal of its military forces from Beirut, with a military occupation force that will stay as long as necessary to prop up the most proimperialist, anti-Palestinian, working-class government possible. attempting to establish a stable, rightist government in Lebanon. That was one of the objectives of the U.S.-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon. That is the purpose current so-called peacekeeping force — to help the Phalangist killers that carried out the massacre in Sabra and
If it were true, as the joint French and Italian statement implies, that the agreement the PLO accepted for the drawal of its troops, rather than the U.S.-Israeli onslaught, was responsible for ensuring Phalangist control of the Lebanese government; for forcing the departure of the Palestinian fighters; and for the dismantling of PLO defense lines - then it would also follow that the PLO was in large part responsible for the massacre in
But this is false. A position that implies that the PLO's policies in any way contributed to the massacre in West Beirut is scandalous. The truth is that the PLO's policies were designed to prevent a much more devastating massacre.
We condemn the genocidal U.S.-Israeli policy that inevitably led to the holocaust in Lebanon. And we demand the withdrawal of all imperialist occupying forces
French, Italian, Israeli and United States - from Lebanon.
Response of French LCR and Italian LCR 1. The article by comrades Cindy Jaquith and Doug Jenness describes the publicaof the joint declaration League, the Italian Revolutionary Communist League and the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, on the role of the Multinational Interposition Force as an 'editorial error'. However this declaration was duly signed on September 21, and published in Militant on October 1, and
in Intercontinental Press on October 4. The comrades have the right to consider that they were wrong to sign it. But it is then a political error that they claim to be correcting today, and not a simple 'editorial error'.
2. The comrades reproach the joint declaration for 'implying' that the PLO bears part of the responsibility for the Sabra and Chatila massacres, for having accepted withdrawal from Beirut. They themselves imply" that we have mistaken the enemy. This is a grossly polemical and demagogic argument.
The sections of the Fourth International have not mistaken the enemy. All during the siege of Beirut we mobilised against Zionist and imperialist aggression and for unconditional support of the PLO. We are absolutely in agreement in saluting the heroic resistance of the Palestinian which went seventy-nine This resistance did much to diplomatically isolate the Zionist state, to expose its criminal character and to popularise the national demands of the Palestinian people. relief the passivity of the Arab states and the Soviet bureaucracy, which amounted to betrayal.
But this is not a reason for covering up the character of the Habib plan. We have described it as a thoroughly imperialist diktat. It was drawn up by a 'mediator' who, from the first day, was implicated in the Zionist aggression. It has been implemented with the aid of a 'multinational' force, which is itself thoroughly imperialist.
The Habib plan did not give anything in exchange for the withdrawal of 9,000 defenders from Beirut. The Zionist army did not withdraw an inch. The fighters left under the surveillance of Sharon, to be disarmed on their arrival in the host countries, and put into camps. They left behind them a defenceless civilian population. troops into West Beirut, the searches, the systematic disarming of the population, the massacres, and the installation of the Phalangists in power follow up to the implementation of the Habib Plan. And this is unfortunately not the end. The Zionists and Phalangists are not hiding their desire to expel or again displace tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
The article by David Frankel, widely quoted by comrades Doug Jenness and Cindy Jaquith, reduces the purpose of the Habib negotiations for the PLO to knowing how 'they would not be slaughtered during the withdrawal (from Beirut)?
This is a little overquick to identify the PLO with its leadership and with the 9,000 evacuated fighters. There are 500,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon; the bulk of the resistance forces, and the population which supports them, have therefore remained at the mercy of the Zionist, imperialist and Phalangist troops.
The role of the Multinational Interposition Force is integral to the implementation of the Habib Plan, in which it plays an essential part. Comrades Doug Jenness 10 and Cindy Jaquith base their argument on a radical distinction between the role of the first Interposition Forc according to them, guaranteed the retreat of the Palestinian fighters, and the second which had the character of a 'military force of occupation'. The problem is that we cannot separate the different functions of the MIF since the month of August. At the same time as it guaranteed the withdrawal of the fighters it brought an international guarantee to the Phalangist regime, and opened the gates of West Beirut to the Zionist army by dismantling its defenses. Comrades Cindy Jaquith and Doug Jenness claim that it was the PLO themselves who dismantled their defence lines. This is contrary to the eye-witness reports, and fortunately this is not the case. French parachutists were pictured engaged in this mineclearing exercise.
It is no longer possible to separate the function of the first from that of the second - Interposition Force. Moreover, Yasser Arafat himself established their continuity in only reproaching the first for not 'protect' the camps after having protected the with-
Imagine an armed traveller, attacked in the corner of a wood by bandits with murderous intentions. arrive who interpose themselves, but profit from the situation in robbing and then letting the traveller go, disarmed, in a wood infested with wolves. understand that the traveller would not be in a position personally to publicly draw out the moral of this story. But nothing forbids us from doing so and saying that a thief is a thief, even if claim-
The Interposition Force justified its presence in the eyes of the world by the 'protection' it gave the Palestinian fighters. But it remained above all an imperialist military force which came, heels of the Zionist army, to fashion an *American Peace' in the region.
3. For the whole duration of the war we gave unconditional support to the PLO in its struggle against Zionist aggression. But unconditional support does not mean uncritical, and does not imply that we take responsibility for the tactical choices made by the PLO leadership, that were furthermore disputed in its own
This is what the SWP comrades are now doing in considering that the withdrawal from Beirut, as it took place, was 'necessary', and marking it up on the positive side of the PLO leadership's balancesheet.
In insisting in their articles on the revolutionary qualities of this leadership the comrades suggest an analogy between it and revolutionary leaderships such as the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua or the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador. It seems to us, on the contrary, necessary to insist on the historical, political, and social differences between these organisations. The PLO is a front. Bourgeois components play a hegemonic
After the massacre at Sabra (DR) role in its leadership. Economic and military dependence regimes influence it in a determinant way.
This is why the permanent confusion that comrade Frankel makes between the Palestinian resistance and the leadership of the PLO seems to us dangerous. He thus attributes to 'the PLO fighters' the decision 'to organise the withdrawal' whereas the negotiations and their outcome were the subject of bitter controversy among the fighters themselves during the siege. It is even more wrong to the PLO leadership's proclamations; according to which the withdrawal from Beirut would be transformed from a military defeat into a diplomatic victory. This would be to underestimate the gains made by imperialism and the lasting con-
4. We are therefore in disagreement with the position of the American comrades who are reverting to abstaining from any criticism of the first Interposition Force in the imperialist countries Even if the leadership of the PLO had no other choice that would be no reason for us to stop denouncing in our own coun tries the role of these military expeditions which prepared the ground for an imperialist solution in the Middle East on the backs of the Palestinian resistance and against the interests of the Arab masses. It is even more important as in France the Mitterrand government was able to take advantage of the attitude of the Soviet bureaucracy and the Arab regimes to fraudulently present itself as the best protector of the Palestinians.
Today however we are absolutely in agreement in demanding the withdrawal from Lebanon of the Zionist troops and imperialist troops of the second Interposition Force. However it was Yasser Arafat and Walid Jumblatt who vehemently demanded the return of the MIF after the Sabra and Chatila massacres. Who could pretend that this second mis sion, in which the French parachutists actively participated in the sealing off and search and control operations in West Beirut does not have any relationship Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire French Section of the
Fourth International Lega Comunista Rivoluzionaria Italian Section of the
Fourth International