Zionist Policy: Genocide 'mopping Up' Whole Nation

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ANDREW HORNUNG looks at aspects of the massive slaughter in the Middle ars of horror ISRAEL, Castle V.

SAUDI Acre GOLAN THE bloody dismemberment of Lebanon by the Israeli forces completes a seven year tale of terror and civil strife that broke out into open warfare with the Roumaneh massacre in April 1975. On that day, a gang of Phalangists stopped a bus in eastern Beirut and massacred fts 55 passengers, Palestinians and Lebanese workers.

Open warfare continued - punctuated by scores of brief ceasefires -with the rightist, often fascist, Maronite militias directing their attack at the Lebanese left and, then, the Palestinians.

By January 1976 the Right had laid siege to the refugee camp of Tal-alZaatar with the help of Syrian regulars. Later the same month the Palestinian Christian camp of Dbye was crushed by the Right.

Syrian controlled PLO units, the al-Saiga current, East.

ye turned their guns un other PLU units as they linked up with the Rightist militias.

Gradually the tide of battle turned against the right, however. As the Lebanese left and the Palestinians began to get the upper hand by the summer, the Syrians invaded to save the Right.

The Syrian bid to control the Palestinians and use this control as a way of bargaining for the return of the Golan Heights from Israel came to nothing. In time it was necessary for the Syrians to turn their guns on the very militias they had saved from the advancing left.

The causes of the civil war were complex: there were internal and external causes. French imperialism had established the state of Lebanon in such a way as to frustrate the development of Arab nationalism.

The French did all they Captured Palestinian guerillas are herded by the hundreds and thousands, blindfolded and bound at the wrists, into barbed-wire encampments in the battle areas and special custody centres inside Israel.

They are not, according to the Zionists, prisoners of Under the terms of the could to cultivate a pro-Western bourgeoisie within the Maronite community and to establish Lebanese politics on a feudal-confessional basis.

The result was that Lebanon, one of the most advanced and modern states in the Middle East, had one of the most backward political structures.

Pact

The 'National Pact" of 1943 guaranteed that top positions in the state would be divided according to which religious community people belonged to. The dominant community was to be the Maronite one: specifically, the dominant section of the bourgeoisie was to be the Maronite bourgeoisie.

In time the demographic balance that the Pact was based on changed: by the fifties the Muslim 1949 Geneva Convention, members of 'organised resistance movements' are to be treated as POWs too.

That doesn't cover the Palestinians, says Israel.

This is the logic of Israel's steady refusal to recognise the existence of a Palestinian people at all.

What for the vast majority of the world's population is communities were majority.

With the development of the Lebanese National Movement there arose a political movement concerned not to redistribute positions in the state apparatus or commercial fiefdoms but to get rid of the confessional system altogether.

That movement was radicalised by the presence of the Palestinians in Lebanon, but also by the deteriorating economic circumstances.

In the Beirut slum suburbs the squalid shanty towns often merged with the refugee camps, binding the poor and the Palestinians together.

The civil war was the Right's bid to suppress the rising discontent, to hold on to their privileges and to act as a servant of imperialism at the same time. 'the Palestinian problem; for Israel is 'the Arabs self-made refugee problem" and the 'the problem of terrorism"

This view makes it inconceivable that Israel will accede to the setting up of any kind of Palestinian state - even one ruled by a mood of demoralis-ation and national humiliaThe extermination squads are still active. Picking their way through the rubble, Israeli soldiers are "mopping up" Palestinian and Lebanese Leftist resistance. Shelling from the coast or inland batteries, the Zionist troops methodically pround the slums, the refugee camps, the villages - anywhere that opposition might be found.

The estimates of casualties are staggering: perhaps 10,000 killed, over half a million - perhaps even a million! - made homeless. The slaughter by the Israelis continues, ceasefire or no ceasefire, under a bizarre banner: "Opposition to terrorism"

Israel's terms for a ceasefire suggest that the aim of the present slaughter is to establish a 25-mile wide cordon along Lebanon's common border with Israel that would be closed to Palestinians.

But this is deceptive. The Zionists are aware that a buffer zone in South Lebanon could not be closed to the Palestinians unless the Palestinian presence in Lebanon is annihilated.

Further, the zone could not be established as a stable entity unless the Lebanese Left is crushed along with the Palestinians.

Thus, whatever the ceasefire terms, Israel will not be content until the Palestinian presence is exterminated; until the Left TURKEY EGYPT tion. Defence Minister Sharon, however, talks of giving Jordan to the Palestinians. What e loes this mean?

Despotism

Sharon isn't offering the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians. He is simply offhas been smashed and the Lebanese Rightist dynasties put in charge of North Lebanon and Major Haddad put in charge of the South; and until the Syrians have withdrawn.

Whether Lebanon is formally divided between Haddad and the Phalangist leader in the North, Bashir Gemayel, or whether the present Sarkis government continues with the division existing simply as a fait accompli is a matter speculation. Certainly the division of Lebanon an accomplished fact can no longer be avoided.

Alliance According to David Hirst, writing the 'Guardian' , the Israeli advance has brought about the extraordinary alliance of the right-wing Shi'a militias like AMAL and the Sunni-dominated left, but this is unlikely to lead to any stable realignment.

Certainly no other opposition can be expected in the short term. Israel has 'pacified' and isolated the Egyptian regime; Iraq is in chaos following its defeat by Iran in the Gulf War; and Jordan has not got the military power to make any difference even if it wanted to.

It is impossible to judge at this stage the degree to which either the Palestinians or the Lebanese left have preserved their strength. What is clear is SYRIA mIs 20 LEBANONI Area under JOR ARABI Haifa ering them integration in an existing Jordan whose despotic monarch • would be further guaranteed by Israeli arms.

In the meantime, he is seeing to it that enough Palestinians are slaughtered to make their integ. ration feasible. In a word, his policy is a policy of genocide. that Israel has launched several ferocious attacks on the Lebanese Left and on the communities that provide it with its main social base, the Druze villages and the villages of the Chouf.

Despite the carnage, all past experience suggests that neither the Palestinian nor the Leftist opposition will be liquidated.

What is more likely is that - like in 1970 and 1971, after the Black September massacre of the Palestinians in Jordan at the hands of King Hussein -the Israeli victory will be followed by a spate of blind-alley terrorist attacks before the Palestinian forces develop a new strategy.

But it is essential that a break is made by the PLO from reliance upon the bourgeois nationalist leaders of the Arab countries to resolve matters in the interests of the Palestinians.

The fact is that these leaders lack sufficient political independence from imperialism, and fear the revolutionary mobilisation of the workers and peasants in their own countries more than they fear even military setbacks at the hands of the Zionists.

It is only through establishing an alliance in struggle with the toiling masses of the Middle East, fighting for the overthrow of the bourgeois Arab regimes, that the Palestinian people can lay the basis for the struggle to destroy the racist state of Israel.

IRAQ kms 20 MARONITES LEBAN Beirute SYRIANS Nabatieh Tyre O Beaufort:

SYRIA ISRAEL

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Executive member of Bradford Labour Movement Campaign for Palestinian Solidarity.

THE recent Israeli invasion of the Lebanon has to be seen not as a reaction to a particular event but as part of an ongoing concerted campaign by the Zionists.

It is a campaign which aims at eliminating or at least neutralising the Palestinian leadership, both the national leadership provided by the PLO and the local leadership in the post'67 occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This would enormously aid the Zionists in realising their aims of bringing about the "autonomy' plans embodied within the Camp David Accords.

These plans themselves would circumvent the legitimate rights of the Palestinians to national and political self-determination and facilitate the further colonisation of the territory under the control of the Israeli Army, leading to its eventual annexation to the State of Israel.

These aims are not new, not only the designs of the right wing Likud government under the leadership of Menachem Begin, but they have been the policy of the Zionists, both Labour and Revisionist, since the colonisation of Palestine began.

The Zionists have openly started major wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967, with two aims:

#territorial expansion - but of territory 'cleansed' of its Palestinian Arab population so as not to incorporate too many Arabs into the Jewish state thereby endangering Jewish homogeneity;

*and secondly, to prevent any articulation of Palestinian national and Raily against Palesti political rights, least of all claims to a state of their own in competition for the same land as that of the Jewish state.

The Israeli invasion of Southern lebanon of 5 June 1982 has its roots in the June 1981 Israeli elections that returned to office for a second term the right wing Likud coalition led by Menachem Begin.

Begin sees himself as fulfilling historical mission, and he reportedly wants to go down in history as the man who restored Judea and Samaria, (the biblical name used by Zionists for the West Bank) to Eretz Israel HARRY SLOAN charts Reagan's progress around Europe in the first week of June.

DESPITE the official fanfares and flag waving, President Ronald Reagan's European foray last week was by nó means an unqualified success.

His embarrassments were not simply the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who turned out to protest against US warmongering.

Indeed, the period of his visits to France, Britain and West Germany revealed a wide range of divisions and confusion between the leaders of the main imperialist nations.

There was, of course, the semi-comic fiasco of the USA's miscast vote at the UN over the latest proposal to resolve the Falklands conflict. (literally the Land of Israel of the biblical promise).

On 18 December 1981 the Jewish Chronicle in London commented:

"Associates of the Israeli prime minister are increasingly convinced that be now regards the restoration of Eretz Israel as his prime purpose on earth and that nothing, not even the wrath of his best friends will deter him from his mission"

To this end in July 1981 Begin appointed Ariel Sharon as defence minister; previous to his new post he was minister for agriculture the occupied territories.

One of Sharon's first announcements as new defence minister - who is the de facto authority in the occupied territories - was the launching of a campaign against 'pro-PLO elements' in an attempt to encourge 'moderates' to take control of local affairs.

He accused the PLO of terrorising local people into unwilling opposition to Israeli rule. 'Expressions of sympathy' for the PLO were made illegal.

On 1 November 1981 (sixty-fourth anniversary of the Balfour Declartion, day marked by strikes in the West Bank) the former American UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpat• rick vociferously denounced her State Department team as "a bunch of amateurs" following belated instructions from Secretary of State Haig for her to abstain rather than join Britain in vetoing the cease-fire plan.

And Reagan was subjected to the embarrassment of being completely ignorant of the foul-up when questioned by journalists as he sat next to Thatcher.

These crossed wires are however only a symptom of a much bigger divergence on poic over the Falklands While the imperialist nations of Europe, the USA and Japan have rallied behind • Thatcher's war effort, welcoming it as a reassertion of imperialist military authority, they are by no means overjoyed at the prospect of Thatcher installing a permanent largescale garrison to keep the islands firmly under British Arab Affairs advisor to the government Menachem Milson was appointed civilian administrator and the new civilian authority in Judea and Samaria • was brought in by the Israeli bovernment.

The civil administrators, now in civilian clothes, were in most cases the same people who the day before walked into their offices in army uniform, being part of the military administration the occupied territories!

The means used by the new civil authorities in attempting to eliminate and neutralise local leaders is the power of arrest and imprisonment without trial.

Every member of the National Guidance Council, a pro-PLO body set up in 1980 by the municipal councils and national institutions to direct local affairs, has been placed under house arrest or had their movements restricted, so that they cannot leave their home town or village in daylight hours and must be in their homes from dusk to dawn.

To replace this leadership the Israelis set up an alternative structure run by collaborators, the 'village" leagues' , first in the Hebron area in the south of the West Bank, rule.

Such a move would be a thorn in the flesh of the diplomats and dictators attempting to cement longterm relations between the imperialist nations and the various regimes of Latin America, whose reserves of raw materials and cheap labour are an important component in the superprofits of the multinational banks and corporations.

Nobody other than a handful of Tory backbenchers seems too keen on the Thatcher proposal for a so-called "self governing" system - in which the survivors of the 1,800 "independent" inhabitants nestle under the guns of a British military garrison sporting anti-aircraft guns and missiles and a contingent of troops twice as big as the population.

Reagan has been more of openly demanding that and later attempted to introduce them in other areas.

The leagues have become the channel for all Israeli-sponsored development projects, offering financial and technical aid.

Two million dollars have been allocated to the village leagues and all permits for travel and residence are now issued by them.

Money from the joint PLO Jordanian committee which used to come into the West Bank for development has now been stopped by the Israelis; hence the village league is the only place left to turn for money - but still they have been unable to persuade any Palestinian official to work with them.

Informed estimates put the league's active membership at a few hundred. Nevertheless the Israelis try to bolster the credibility of the village leagues by giving great publicity to cases where refugees that have been denied entry since 1967 have been allowed to return and reunite with their families due to the intervention of the village league.

Teachers have been sacked and instructed to go to the heads of their village league who could Thatcher pull back from such a provocative "solution" and concede some form of joint settlement with the Argentines to enable the rebuilding of links and alliances.

But ironically in the Middle East the voice of prudent "moderation" over the Zionist invasion of Lebanon came not from Reagan but from Thatcher.

Just as Reagan's administration has had its finger most closely on the pulse of political developments in Latin America, so . the Thatcher government, with its long-standing close relationship with the reactionary and feudal Arab regimes of the Gulf region has been best placed to warn of the problems of offending them by giving the Zionist warmongers a blank cheque in the Lebanon..

So even while Haig in Washington defended the Zionist invasion - arguing that Begin's government was defending Israeli sovereignty get their job back, on.

The introduction of thi civilian administration its village leagues ank its policy of eliminatin/ the elected local leadershi has led to strikes an demonstrations in the occu pied territories throughou the early part of 1982, witt unarmed demonstrator being killed and injured bi the Army.

These strikes demonstrations hav been the pretext for the sacking of elected mayon of the major towns in the occupied territories, not because, as the Israeli say, they are inciting demonstrations and are i threat to peace and secur ity, but because those mayors support the PLC and have a great following amongst their people.

a fatal blow to the Pales tinians in Lebanon would serve the interests of the Israelis with regard to eliminating the Pales tinian leadership.

It would also serve the interests of Israel's allies in the Lebanon, the Leban ese Front, which groups all the main Christian elements under the leader ship of the Phalangists, who are determined, in the same way as Britain was defending its sovereigntyt in the Falklands - Thatcher: attacked the same invasion: in strident terms. Her argu ment? That the Israeli incursion into Lebanon is the equivalent of the Argentine: invasion of the Falklands!

Thatcher's message

this instance was the same as that of the other EEC coun tries - and it was mor effective than Reagan's lobbying of Thatcher. US pressure was soon stepped up in the effort to force the Lionists to a cease-tire.

But of course on the need to strengthen the armed forces at the disposal of the imperialist rulers sa threaten the internation workers' movement, Reag and Thatcher speak as one.

The NATO summit a Bonn saw Thatcher make call for their anti-comm ist alliance to extend operations on a world so and for heavy new spead on conventional as sel nuclear weapons.

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MIDDLE EAST

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Israeli control YRIA Sidon PALESTINIANS

and the spearhead of Israeli expansionist settlement in

In parallel with Zionist policy in the West Bank