The situation of the Palestinians
Interview with a Lebanese Fourth Internationalist
The following is the second part of an interview given to Gerry Foley in
Paris at the end of March by Salah Jaber, a leader of the Lebanese section of the Fourth International. The first part, which dealt with the Lebanese occupation and the Christian revolt against the resistance to the Israeli
Gemayel regime, was published in issue No 73, April 8, 1985, of International Viewpoint.
this interview was given, a new division has. opened up in the
Since
Palestinian movement, with the split of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine from the Democratic Alliance.
National Alliance (the Al Fatah dissidents, Jibril's PFGC, and Saika) to form the National Salvation Front.
What has happened to the
Question.
left in Lebanon throughout the recent crises?
Apart from the Communist
Answer.
Party, there is hardly anything remaining of the left but the Lebanese section of the Fourth International.
There used to be another far left group.
But it has gradually abandoned Marxism for Khomeinism, arguing that it was necessary to build bridges to the Islamic masses.
It is now in fact dissolving politically.
There is the Communist Action organization, which has existed for many years and occupied a space to the right of the
It is a very bureaucratized group
CP.
linked to Arafat, from whom they get subsidies. The Communist Party does not get on well with Arafat.
As for the Lebanese
Fourth International, we believe that the successes achieved against the Israeli army in the south and the deepening of the economic crisis have opened up the way for the growth of our forces.
advantage of these new perspectives, we decided recently to launch an agitational paper, as a companion publication to our monthly political organ.
We are making efforts to extend our presence to areas both to the north and south of the country where we have not had any base before.
Up till now, we have been based mainly in Beirut, where half the population of the country lives,
So, now
On a modest scale, we think that we have good prospects.
That, of course, cannot compensate for the capturing of the radicalization by the Islamic funda-
We hope that the CP may mentalists.
still be able to take a more radical line and avoid being overtaken by the funda-
Radical politics are quite mentalists.
popular now because of the very deep crisis.
International Viewpoint 6 May 1985
It is joining with the
Q. Is there any sign of any positive political developments inside the CP?
A. Not really.
Q. What about the Palestinians? What has happened to the PLO in Lebanon since the end of the fighting between the Arafat and the Abu Musa factions?
A. They are in the process of reintegrating into Al Fatah what used to be called the Abu Nidal faction. This group suddenly emerged from the underground in the last period in the Bekaa valley area, and proved to be a very large and well structured organization.
Since the Abu Nidal faction originally came out of a rebellion against Arafat on a nationalist basis, they could easily find a common ground with this new Fatah, and so they are joining it. This will not have any effect on the policy of the dissident movement, but it will have contradictory effects on the Abu Nidal forces. It will cool down their external activities [that is, military actions outside the areas where the Palestinians live]. It will involve the type of struggle that the dissidents have been waging, which so far at least has nothing to do with external
The dissidents have concentrating on attacking the Zionist army where it is possible to fight it.
But within the dissident group itself, have there been discussions among
No. Although the dissident Al Fatah is very heterogeneous, forces in it have one common denominator - radical nationalism, strong opposition to Arafat, US policy in the region and so forth, and what they consider a strategic alliance with the Syrian regime. elements remain more ideological than
If the situation changes, they may develop differently, but at this stage the differences are on an ideological plane.
Q. What success have the dissidents had in winning support on the West Bank?
A. The West Bank is clearly the weakest point for the dissidents. In fact, Arafat's major arguident is now the West Bank population. The few people he still has in Tunisia, North Yemen, and Algeria are living in prison-like camps. They are even more useless to him than Shukeiry's old Palestinian Liberation Army that existed until the 1967 war and was supposed to be a unit of the regular Arab armies. Arafat's strongest card is that he has influence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that can be utilized in bringing about a settlement concerning these areas with the Zionists, under US patronage. He is not concerned about Palestinians in other areas.
Arafat also has influence in the Palestinian community integrated in the Gulf area. But these people will not go back to the West Bank, even if a Palestinian state were set up on the West Bank. They are very much integrated into the societies where they live.
Another area where Arafat has influence is in some of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. He has considerable support in some camps, in certain instances for very material reasons, and in others because of general political beliefs. Besides the Arafat forces, the other main force on the West Bank is the pro-Soviet current, supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as the Palestinian Communist Party. This current backed the Democratic Alliance in the PLO. (There are also forces that support the Jordanian regime, but they are now in alliance with Arafat.) As long as these people maintained a conciliatory attitude in the split, Arafat remained overwhelmingly dominant in the West Bank.
Now that there is a divorce between the pro-Soviet and right-nationalist wings after the last Palestinian National Council meeting, the opposition to Arafat is growing. But he still enjoys majority support there, and probably will maintain it. There are various reasons for this. In the first place, the West Bank is not a proletarian area. Most of its population are petty bourgeois and middle layers.
Q. Or subproletarian.
A. Yes. But you have very wide layers of peasants and petty bourgeois people. And they are politically backward. still follow traditional notables, such as
Up until 1970, most of them were against the Palestinian resistance, and were pro-Nasser. Until 1970, they saw the Palestinian resistance as extremist and remained mostly pro-Nasser, even at the time of the Rogers Plan.
On top of this is a political factor. For these people, the main thing is to get rid of the Israeli occupation. shortest way to accomplish this is through a compromise. They think that the prospects for liberating the West Bank through armed struggle or through
is very reluctant, because despite every- not to believe in that. They have seen thing Arafat is doing, Moscow still has the even their peace with Egypt deteriorate
Yassar Arafat (DR) are very illusory. This idea is utopian for them.
Against this attitude, the left forces have always argued that the idea of achieving a compromise with the Israelis is just as utopian. Since both prospects seem remote, you might as well choose the one that suits your real interests, that is, wage an uncompromising struggle against the Zionists.
So, as Arafat fails in his compromise attempts, he will more and more lose his popularity on the West Bank. He has played his last card now, in breaking with the anti-American Arabs, that is, regimes like the Libyan and Syrian and joining with the likes of Hussein and Mubarak. Arafat burned his bridges. And now he is suffering his first defeat, because despite his deal with Hussein, Mubarak could not even get the Americans to accept talks with a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation including no key figure in the PLO. This 16 is a very big disappointment for Arafat, and it will weaken his position.
So, now the reactionary Arab regimes - the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians - are putting strong pressure on the US administration to make at least some token concession to Arafat to enable him to show his followers that he is making some gains. Because, unless he can offer something, sooner or later he is going to be faced with bankruptcy, and that could mean his political end.
So, how would you sum up the situation in the PLO now? Arafat's people. All the others are out. Now, discussions are going on among the other forces to see whether they will hope that once Arafat sees that he is not getting anywhere with the Americans he will turn again. And it would be ready to take him back because he is the sort of bourgeois figure in the Third World that they need for their program of nonalignment. Losing him would be a big loss for Moscow, and so it does not want to cut the bridges.
Arafat is also being careful to keep a line out to the Soviet Union. Even while allied with Hussein and Mubarak, he is talking about an international conference, which means involving the Soviet Union. So, he is trying to make a compromise with the pro-American people, but at the same time insisting on involving the Soviet Union in this settlement.
If such a conference ever got off the ground, in fact, it would have put the Soviet Union in a tight corner. Because if the Soviets had rejected participation, it would have left the ground to the Americans. And accepting it would have meant problems between them and the Syrians. Because the Arafat-Hussein agreement called for some Jordanian-Palestinian negotiation. Then you had amendments to replace a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation with a common Arab delegation reintroducing the idea of an overall settlement in the region. But I think the chances for this policy are very slim indeed.
The Zionist settlements on the West Bank are irreversible, that is the ones in the key areas are.
Q. That is, the ones that are extensions of Israeli cities?
A. Yes. And any idea that you can get a compromise with the Zionists by which they could withdraw from the West Bank and from these settlements is totally illusory. The most that you could get would be a partial withdrawal, opening a space for some sort of Palestinian state federated with Jordan, which would be a state under joint Israeli and Jordanian control. It would be a hostage state, what we have called a large Palestinian camp. And even that does not seem at all likely to happen.
Why should the Israelis go to the trouble? The problems they would get inside Israel from any withdrawal from the West Bank would be greater than any gains they could make. Peace? They have their peace with Egypt, and that is what matters to them. Peace with Jordan? They are not interested in peace with Jordan. What is Jordan? It doesn't threaten them. And peace with Jordan would not mean peace with the Syrians. So, the Israelis have nothing to win by making concessions in this area.
Arafat is relying entirely on the Saudis pressure on the Americans and US pressure on Israel. The Israelis have nothing to gain.
Q. Not a hope of a stable peace in the area?
A. No, the Israelis are smart enough
International Viewpoint 6 May 1985
into a sort of standoff, no real peace, no real diplomatic relations a very lukewarm relationship.
Q. Sort of an arm's length romance?
A. Yes, exactly. What can the Israelis expect? In particular, since the kingpin is Saudi Arabia, which up until now has folan anti-Jewish propaganda line. And the Syrian regime now has no illusions about the possibility of getting the Golan heights back through negotiations. They understand that the Israelis won't leave the Golan, won't give it back to Syria. Besides east Jerusalem, this is the only Arab territory occupied in the 1967 war that has been officially annexed. Moreover, from the Israeli point of view any idea of seeking peace with Damascus is crazy, because they know that a month later they could see a coup d'etat, a nationalist coup d'etat that would put them back to square one.
So, the Syrian regime today has no choice but to do what it is doing. And to top it off, this military regime in Syria is profiting from the war situation, from the war mobilization. This situation provides a justification for this military dictatorship and it also allows Damascus to extort big financial support from the oil states.
Q. So, that leaves the Lebanese Christians as about the only ones the International Viewpoint 6 May 1985
Israelis can collaborate with. What about indications that even this relationship is souring?
Well, there is a feeling among the Christians that the Israelis stabbed them in the back. The defeat of the Lebanese Forces in the Druze mountains is blamed surfacing of old anti-Jewish
Q. The treacherous Jews who betrayed
Yes. Moreover, after the Israeli defeat in the south, the Christians in the south began to get worried about their own skins. So, they shifted support for the Israeli occupation, to neutrality, and now to taking some anti-Israeli stances. But it's more for opportunist reasons than from real convictions. convictions are neither pro-Israeli nor anti-Israeli. But they have lost confidence in Israel; that's very clear.
participation of Christians in the Lebanese resistance, there are also leftists among the Christians, at least individuals remaining from the old left that used to be quite strong in the main Christian areas before the 1975 war.
The Geagea rebellion has an ambiguous attitude to the Israelis. On the one hand, these forces have no confidence in them. On the other, they know that in the coneinibnea flict in the area the Israelis are their only possible ally.
Q. Is there any possibility of a DruzeIsraeli alliance?
No, because there is nothing in it for the Druzes. We had the development of a pro-Israel current among the Druzes, even a pro-Israeli wing of the Joumblatt party itself in 1982 and 1983. But after the Israeli withdrawal from the Druze mountains, the Zionists will no longer be able to offer them anything. Israeli wing is fading, and it is the proSyrian wing in the Joumblatt party that
However, the Druze situation is very volatile; it can change very quickly and for very parochial reasons. play a big role. If Hafiz Assad were to die, well ... As I said, Bashir Gemayel's death made a big difference.
What about conflicts between the Shite fundamentalists and the Druzes, for whom the latter are heretics at best?
A. They don't like each other. That is clear, but there is no disputed ground between them. In the unlikely event that the fundamentalists made a decisive breakthrough and became the dominant force in Lebanon, then they would clash with the Druzes. But even to speculate about that is political fiction. •
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