PLO and the shift towards seeking a West Bank statelet

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Arafat with Hussein - the butcher of 'Black September' ran draw on a wast reseronir of disnossessed Palestinian neasants ation remains under 'emains under intense attack by the Israeli tack by the Israeli army, the strongest and strongest and best-equipped army in the Middle East.

In order to see how the PLO - with an absolute maximum of 40,000 full and part time fighters, no airforce and negligible armour - could find itself entrenched in a position of conventional military defence against the colossal Israeli military machine, it is necessary to look back at the history of the Palestinian liberation movement. its political and trategic positions.

The PLO was originally formed in 1964 by the President of Egypt at the time. Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The organisation he established was small, uninfluential and limited chiefly to demagogy often of an outright reacuonary nature.

In 1965 another small but unheard of organisation called Fatah — led by Yasser Arafat - began minor guerrilla actions against Israel.

However, it was only after the 1967 war, when Israel annihilated the Jordanian, Egyptian ind Strian armies and occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, Sinai and the Golan Heights, that Fatah really came into its own.

The so-called "progressive" or "Arab socialist" regimes such as Syria and especially Egypt, were discredited, and in the void reated by their demise he small guerrilla organisation of Fatah was looked to by large sections of the Palestinian population as the only force capable of waging a genuine struggle against the Zionist state.

The demoralised Arab regimes were only too happy to divert criticism of themselves by giving great verbal support to the Palestinian 'fedayeen' or guerrilla fighters.

From the very beginning Fatah claimed to be eclectic 'non-ideological', sating that they took ideas som many political trends • thought and 'adapted' hem to the unique context the Palestinians' #ruggle.

Almost immediately after ite 1967 war, Fatah guer-illas infiltrated the nowcupied West Bank, coping to develop a stand.. i zuerrilla war using the West Bank population as the 'sea' in which the guerrilla 'fish' could swim to use the terminology of Mao, who was one of Fatah's many early 'influences'.

The guerrillas, however, had very little success, political or military. They were recruited largely from the teeming refugee camps of Jordan and Syria and their motivation of 'The Return to Palestine' in itself had little appeal to the workers or peasantry of the West Bank.

Their political ideas did not include even a basic nloco analeic nor did thar ass dualysis, mur wu vuey even promise social or land reforms. It was a movement of national liberation.

Military inexperience and unsuitable open countryside also contributed to the withdrawal of the guerrillas not already killed or captured over the Jordan River.

By early 1968 Fatah had pulled back its base area into Jordan, although the urban guerrilla war in the crowded camps of the occupied Gaza Strip continued ferociously until 1971.

Over half of Jordan's small population is actually Palestinian and this vast reservoir of support was utilised by Fatah who threw guerrilla units into Israeloccupied territory almost nightly.

Then, in March 1 68. a mass Israeli reprisa raid consisting of arm oured columns and 20,000 troops was heroically repelled by Fatah forces at the town of Karameh in western Jordan.

The seemingly-invincible Isràeli army received a 'bloody nose' at the hands of Arab fighters and the propaganda value was immense. Thousands flocked to join 'the fedayeen' and at the next PLO conference the Fatah guerrillas swept to power in the organisation and Arafat was voted chairman.

Whatever the political limitations of the movement, it is beyond doubt that Fatah at this time roused and moved the Palactinian maccas in an 1 altoual илл unprecedented manner, here at last were Palestinians taking the struggle for liberation upon themselves.

A sense of hope and pride were rekindled.

The PLO began to estab lish what was practically a 'state-within-a-state' in Jordan - especially in the refugee areas where the PLO ran hospitals, schools, and clinics and policed the camps. King Hussein of jordan felt unable to prevent this as support for the PLO was riding high and he was uncertain of all his army's loyalty.

It was at this time that other organisations were formed within the PLO. Two significant groups to the left of Fatah were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Eront for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

The Popular Front. led by George Habbash, Is a militarist left-nationalist organisation - it refuses to negotiate with Israel. The hijackings and international terrorist operations for which the PLO became famous in the late 1960s were largely the work of the Popular front.

The Democratic Front, a left split from the Popular Front, did not agree with the PFLP in its belief in the revolutionary potential of the petit-bourgeoisie, nor its emphasis on miltary action.

The DFLP began a discourse with Israeli socialists connected to the Israeli Socialist Organisation (Matzpen) on the role of the revolutionary party in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Soon afterwards, however, the DFLP moved sharply to the right and towards the USSR. They are now in broad agreement with the Israeli CP on most issues - such as their recognition of Israel.

Although not officially recognised as the Palestine CP, their Stalinist manoeuvrings, their popular frontism and their espousal of the 'two-stage' theory of an independent state then class struggle, places them wholly in the ranks of the Stalinists.

All of the fedayeen organisations, even the DFLP in its most left wing phase, have failed seriously contempiate carrying out the ant! Zionist armed struggle on a class basis, trying to link with the Israeli working class against Zionism.

The starting point for Israeli socialists should be solidarity with the Palestinians, recognition of their right to struggle against Zionism and recognition of the PLO as their representatives; • however this was made much more difficult by the indiscriminate bombings of markets, bus-stations, etc., of which the Israeli working class were the prime victims.

So the class to which the PLO should have looked to in order to build support was alienated even further.

Unable to view the 'white settler' attitude of many Israeli workers towards the Palestinians in a dialectical way, and politically incapable of exploiting the innate class antagonism of the Oriental Jewish working class against the European/American bourgeoisie and Zionist establishment, even the best elements reemates behind her nationalist barrier, where they have •remained, largely speaking, to this In Jordan, the lack of a class analysis and the subsequent failure to organise with the Jordanian masses for the overthrow of Hussein led to the partial isolation and crushing of the PLO in Jordan during Black September 1970, when Bedouin units loyal 10 Hussein were used against the Palestinian camps and PIO bases in Amman, the capital, and elsewhere.

Forced to evacuate the whole of their forces from Jordan after more fierce fighting in 1971, the PLO moved its headquarters to Beirut, Lebanon, where there was also a large Palestinian refugee population, and a weak central government.

The delicate confessional balance of power in Lebanon (where the Christian pro-Western Lebanese held political control) had been put under strain by the influx of Palestinian refugees in 1948 and the establishment and consolidation of PLO power in the camps further threatened the status quo.

Christian Phalangist militias armed and organised against the PLO and their leftist allies. Again the PLO avoided involving itself in the Lehanese class conflict until it was given no choice but to do so.

Villagers and workers who had to tolerate continual Israeli bombing raids in reprisal for PLO actions were not supported in their struggles against the Lebanese bourgeoisie and crucial opportunities to develop an armed struggle hand in hand with and embedded in the Lebanese working class were lost.

Still commanding almost total support from the Palestinian masses (and bourgeoisiel, the Palestinian revolution did not, in practice, generalise the anti-Zionist struggle into an anti-imperilist, an anti-in anticapitalist struggle. capitalist st It was natural that the It was r DI A atill h PLO still held the support of large sections of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, as Arafat continued to solicit and receive vast financial support from the most reactionary Arab governments, such as Saudi Arabia, as well as from the state capitalist regimes such as Syria.

By 1974, the Israeli army's defences were so sophisticated, and its armoury so powerful, that guerrilla activity from across the borders had become limited to occasional 'suicide missions' Military impotence, coupled with the reactionary nature of much of the PLO's support and the class composition of the leadership, was making the drift towards 'negotiated solution' almost inevitable.

First the Stalinist Democratic Front, then Fatah, began to speak of recognising the right of the Israeli state to exist in return for the granting of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The major stumbling block was that the Israeli government, then as now, sure of their army's invincibility and refusing to recognise the Palestinian national rights thạt they felt would undermine the legitimacy of the Israeli state itself, simply reftised to negotiate with the PIO. The only way to force them to negotiate, the PLO-felt, was to mobilise international, especially US, pressure upon Israel to negotiate a 'solution' Socialists should argue for the recognition of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, while at the same time calling for a class struggle crossing the Palestinian-Israeli national Zionismarab Zionism, imperialism and divide - opposed to the Arab bourgeoisie, including the PLU leadership.

The contacts between left Palestinian organisations (SO no. 84) and Israeli Trotskyists must be broadened and built upon within the Israeli and Palestinian working class. The Zionist war machine will not be defeated militarily, it can only be destroyed by the Israeli and Palestinian working class, struggling for a socialist Palestine for Arabs and Jews.

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ORGA While the press reports from Lebanon refer to Socialist Organiser по.90