The crisis of the PLO
Ash Shira, close to Habash's PFLP, was recently banned by the authorities.
The biggest problem the Palestinian press has to cope with is censorship.
It is based on the emergency laws decreed during the British mandate and in prin-
In an article like this, I cannot avoid going into a fairly detailed analysis ciple applies to all publications in Israel.
of the course of the Palestinian resistance movement since its inception in
In reality, however, it is only the Pales-
This is all the more necessary because of the confusion that tinian press that is affected. Every word exists in the world revolutionary movement about the present crisis in the published has to be submitted first to the censorship department in the Ministry
In fact, the latest episodes in this crisis, both military and political, of Defense. The censors then strike out have managed to throw into disarray all those who have lost sight of the what they consider objectionable.
historical context in which this conflict has unfolded.
So, I will begin by recalling the main lines of the context, as well as the
The "liberal" occupation major developments in the most recent period.
In the Palestinian press service bureau,
Ibrahim Karaeen showed us the state in which a manuscript for the weekly magazine El Awdah (published in English)
came back from the censorship office.
On every page there was at least one remark, often whole passages were stricken completely arbitrary. There are no clear criteria to determine what is permitted and what is not. Often they strike out reports that have already been broadcast over Israeli radio. Two weeks ago, they banned an article on the sociological aspects of the work of the Palestinian poet Mahmud Darvish. A few days later the same article was published without cuts in the monthly magazine Al
Almost all the Palestinian publications are banned from time to time in the occupied territories. They publish in Jerusalem, which is under Israeli law.
Apologists for Israel cite this variety of the Palestinian press as a proof of the liberal chacter of the Israeli occupation.
We asked Alexander Flores for his assess-
"It is true that the occupation is not as savage as the Nazi occupation in many find it degrading, humiliating and brutal.
Alongside many so-called liberal aspects, there are also very brutal measures.
"Since 1967, there have been 20,000 cases in which Palestinians have had their homes destroyed or their land taken away. There are also the example of the entire male population of a village being forced to stand three days and nights in the winter rain in the market square because a couple of youths threw some
Above all, the threat of Israeli annexation and expulsion of the Arab population continues to hand over the occupied territories."
(From the January 1984 issue of Die
Linke, magazine of the Austrian section of the Fourth International.
has been slightly abridged.)
International Viewpoint 13 February 1984 the 1960s.
Following the defeat of the Arab regimes in The Six Day War with Israel in June 1967, the Palestinian resistance, as autonomous armed movement of Palestinian masses, experienced a powerful surge of growth. the outset, it divided into two main cur-
The predominant one was the right-wing nationalist current represented by the leadership of El Fateh. There was also a left nationalist current represented by the Popular Front and the various groups that split from it.
Unable to oppose this mass phenomenon head on, the Arab regimes chose to
To this end, they inundated Palestinian resistance movement, which became the PLO in 1969, with a steady flood of millions of dollars. The main beneficiary, of course, was E Fateh, which Saudi Arabia in particular decided to finance to the exclusion of all the other organizations. Thus, by 19691970, bureaucratic squandering of money had already reached a level in El Fateh unheard of in any other national libera-
In return for this massive financing by the Arab oil monarchies, the Arafat leadof El Fateh obliged the entire Palestinian resistance, including by the use of force, to abide by its principle of "noninterference in the internal affairs of the Arab countries."
This policy found its clearest expression in Jordan, where the majority of the population is Palestinian, even without counting those who live on the West Bank, which was occupied by Israel in
In Jordan in 1968 the Palestinian resistance began to take on the aspect of a counter-state, in the context of dual power evolving rapidly in favor of the PLO. However, the Arafat leadership of El Fateh violently opposed the calls of the Palestinian left for overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy, a traditional ally of imperialism. In the conflicts that proliferated between the Jordanian army and the Palestinian resistance it imposed a
Hussein was fighting to eliminate the Fateh was trying to maintain coexistence that the El Fateh leadership agreed to a number of partial retreats in 1970. It went so far as to accept evacuating its forces from the cities and concentrating them in an isolated area, where the Jordanian army was able to smash easily in 1971.
The sacrifice of the Palestinian resistance's most devoted fighters in Jordan and the retreat of its leadership to Beirut, the capital of money making and corruption, considerably accelerated the process described by the Lebanese Fourth Internationalists as "the bureaucratic degeneration and bourgeoisification of the PLOEl Fateh." (1)
This social process obviously had to have a political reflection. The political turn was codified when in 1974, the Palestinian National Council, which is called the Palestinian parliament but in reality is an appointed body rigged to assure a comfortable majority for the Arafat leadership of El Fateh, adopted the goal of a ministate on a part of the the PLO itself had characterized this proposal as liquidationist and contrary to the Palestinian national aim expressed in the calling for "the liberation of Palestine," which all of the organizations in the PLO identified with.
In fact, it was natural for the bourgeois state bureaucratic apparatus that the PLO had become to abandon the revoluționary objective of destroying the Zionist state for the more "realistic" solution of negotiating with the Zionists to get a supposedly independent Palestinian ministate in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank that would live alongside Israel and in peaceful coexistence with it. And this ministate was to be set up on
Inprecor (English edition) No 19, Febru-
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parts of the Palestinian territory that were not even occupied by the Zionists seven years before.
It should be noted that at the time some organizations in the Palestinian resistance grouped around Habash's PFLP, boycotted the PLO leadership and formed the Rejection Front. Further stage of capitulation
A lot could be said about the role played by the Arafat leadership of El Fateh during the 1975-76 civil war and subsequently. But there is not room for that in this article.
Particularly important in the civil war period were the Palestinian resistance movement's relations with the Syrian regime of Hafez El Assad. Up to 1976, the Assad regime supported the Arafat leadership against the Rejection Front (which was backed by Iraq and Libya).
Assad thought that, from a position of strength, he could get an overall ArabIsraeli settlement in the framework of the Geneva Conference. allied himself with the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon to block Kissinger's policy aimed at getting a separate peace between Egypt and Israel.
This scheme was indeed disrupted in Lebanon. The Ford administration had to deal with the Syrians. The US promised an overall peace settlement in return for the Syrians reestablishing bourgeois order in Lebanon.
The US-Syrian honeymoon did not last very long. Begin's victory in the Israeli elections and then Sadat's visit to the Zionist state in 1977 set in motion a process that was to lead to the Camp David accords. This pushed the Syrians into opposition to American policy in the Middle East. The Syrian-Palestinian alliance was reestablished. The Palestinian resistance regained its unity, in particular since the organizations in the Rejection Front broke with Iraq (which after 1979 began flirting with Saudi Arabia and even Arafat in Tripoli, North Lebanon(DR)
with Sadat) and made a rapprochement
"peaceful solution" definitely seemed far away. This, moreover, was the argument always used by the nationalist left in Fateh after 1972 for staying framework of this organization Arafat leadership was chasing a right-wing utopia, that there was no chance that it could be included in an "American so-
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was to upset these calculations. In this case also to describe the role played by the Arafat leadership would in itself require more than one article. just point out that from the first days of the siege of Beirut, instead of rejecting in principle the evacuation of the Palestinian fighters demanded by Begin, Sharon, Reagan and Gemayel & Co., this leadership started negotiating with US representative Philip Habib on the conditions of such an evacuation. And it did not even pose concrete conditions, such as guarantees of the inviolability of Beirut and the camps. We saw how little the infamous Habib Plan had to offer in that Aim of Arafat's negotiations
In fact, what was the subject of the negotiations were the political conditions. Arafat wanted to trade evacuating Beirut for a US-recognized role in the "settlement" of the Palestinian question. was on this basis that he could say: "We are only leaving Lebanon for Palestine." Reagan announced his plan on the very day that the last contingent of PLO fighters left Beirut, on September 1, 1982. A few days later, Hussein called for Jordanian-Palestinian negotiations on the stitutional link between his kingdom and a future Palestinian entity on the West Bank and in Gaza, as was proposed by the American plan.
Arafat did not hesitate. He entered into negotiations with Hussein — the principal Arab hangman of the Palestinian people - over a scheme for a Jordanian-Palestinian "confederation" and for a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to participate in negotiations United States and Israel, that is, in a Camp David II. He got the Palestinian National Council that met in Algiers in February 1983 to endorse the main lines of this policy, using only slightly ambiguous formulations.
In April, Arafat was about to announce an agreement with Hussein. The El Fateh cadres had been informed of the main lines of the deal. Confronted with warnings from the opposition, however, he had to pull back. But he intended this to be only a temporary retreat.
The nationalist left in Fateh, which resigned itself to evacuating with the greatest reluctance and then was able to see in the light of the Sabra and Chatila massacres how much Arafat's promises were worth, could not go on forever accepting the unacceptable.
The pretext that Arafat's line of national betrayal was simply utopian and therefore did not have real effects could not be maintained any longer. first time, a framework appeared in which there seemed to be a genuine possibility for applying Arafat's line, that is, the Reagan Plan.
This was all the more unacceptable for the national left because its central nucleus was made up of Palestinian officers and soldiers who deserted from the Jordanian army in 1970 to fight alongside the Palestinian resistance. It is easy to image the anger of these fighters against a leadership that thirteen years after Black September had nothing better to offer them than going back under the tutelage of the Hashemite regime! So, the nationalist left led by Abu Musa, Abu Khaled and Abu Saleh warned Arafat against concluding any deal with Hussein.
Moreover, the Syrian regime, offered nothing by the Reagan Plan, makes no mention of the Golan Heights, the only Arab territory occupied in 1967, except for East Jerusalem, that has been formally annexed by Israel, also warned Arafat against making any deal with Hussein. For obvious reasons, the Syrian regime is strongly opposed to a Camp David II, which would have the effect of leaving it totally isolated in the face of Israel.
This is why the Syrian opposition to the Arafat line of rapprochement with Hussein was expressed with growing force, both directly and through the Saika, once the negotiations between the two parties began. I should also note the opposition by Libya to Arafat, which was consistent with Libyan policy with respect to the United States and the Arab national question.
While it is true that Saika is the instrument of the Syrian regime and Jibril's PFLP-General Command is in the pay of Libya and closely linked to Damascus,
International Viewpoint 13 February 1984
it has to be made clear that making an amalgam between the nationalist left in Fateh and the Syrian regime is a false and tendentious procedure. In fact, Abu Musa and his comrades were the most resolute fighters against the Syrian regime in 1976 when it tried, in concert with Washington, to strangle the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon. Up until 1983 this group had no relations with the Syrian regime, leaving this to the Fateh leadership.
However, after the summer of 1982, the Palestinian resistance no longer controlled any territory in Lebanon. All its forces were operating from areas under Syrian control. dents in Fateh constituted themselves as an autonomous force they cannot be reproached for having alliance-type relations with Syria. It is possible, and necessary, however, to criticize the forms given to these relations. I will come back to this. the split in El Fateh as the result of Syrian manipulation is simply a propaganda ploy by Arafat. Provocation
In fact, this split was not produced by manipulation from Damascus but provoked by Arafat himself, who wanted to cut his connections to the Palestinian left and the Syrian-Libyan axis in order to clear the way for going over to the camp of the Arab reactionary regimes allied with American imperialism.
All the evidence supports this conclusion. A few days after the interruption in his negotiations with Hussein, Arafat proceeded to name people personally loyal to him and known for having deserted the fight in June 1982, to command of Fateh's forces in Lebanon. What is more, he ordered the most prominent leaders of the nationalist left to go into were unacceptable. Abu Musa and his comrades were left with no alternative but rebellion. So, they rejected Arafat's measures and proposed a program of demands, the central planks of which were the following: A democratic congress of El Fateh to define the line of the organization. The demand for an accounting of the finances of El Fateh available to all members of the leadership. Breaking off negotiations with Hussein and rejection of the "Jordanian-Palestinian Confederation." Stepping up the anti-Zionist armed struggle.
It is out of the question that Arafat would risk confronting the left opposition in the sort of democratic congress it called for. He would be at a strong disadvantage on such ground. This is why he chose to push things toward an armed clash by envoking military discipline against the dissidents. In this way, he could cover up the political and organizational issues in the conflict. What is more, Arafat publicly accused the Syrians of having organized the rebellion against him at a time when they were not only not doing that but were showing a conInternational Viewpoint 13 February 1984 ciliatory attitude toward him, following the interruption in his negotiations with Hussein, and had offered to mediate to solve the crisis in El Fateh.
By provoking a fight with the dissidents, Arafat killed two birds with one stone. He cut his ties to a regime opposed to his Jordanian option and at the same time disguised the nature of his conflict with the dissidents in the way best masses, especially on the West Bank.
and his powerful propaganda apparatus presented the conflict with the dissidents, supported by the Syrians, as a struggle against an attempt by the Syrians to impose their dominance, a struggle to defend "the autonomy of Palestinian decision making." Walid Joumblatt at the Geneva conference (DR)
All offers of mediation and proposals for stopping the fighting between the two factions in El Fateh and settling their conflict in a democratic way were rejected by Arafat. For example, the mediating commission formed by the Executive Committee of the PLO meeting in Tunis last summer had to suspend its work and issue a communique in October saying that its proposals had been accepted by the dissidents but rejected by Arafat. From his point of view, Arafat had a good enough reason for turning them down, they provided for organizing a
Arafat was determined to go all the way, all the way in breaking with the dissidents and the Syrian-Libyan axis and all the way in lining up with the Arab regimes dependent on American imperialism - Saudi Arabia, Jordan and even
September, Arafat went on an Egyptian freighter via Cyprus to Tripoli in northern Lebanon, where the troops still loyal to him had regrouped. In the meantime the great majority of the fighters in the Bekaa valley facing the Zionist army had rallied to the dissidents. Arafat organized a campaign to wipe out all opposition to this policy in the camps in the
Tripoli region and then in the city itself.
The Islamic Unity Movement launched an operation with the support of Arafat's forces to establish total domination over the city. This is a fundamentalist Sunni movement linked to the Muslim Brotherto its Syrian hood and particularly branch, which is armed, trained and fi-
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