International News International News Internationai News "REALISM' AND THE

Scan page 4

Reagan wants to fix up a deal which puts the Palestinians firmly in the grip of Arab ruling Class I Why have Reagan Begin fallen out?

Harry Sloan reports REALTY IS a messy business. In a world dominated by reactionary forces, the events which shape our lives are often unpleasant producing 'facts of life' which we find unacceptable.

The struggle for revolutionary solutions to the problems we face begins with a refusal to accept the world as it is, and a determination to mobilise the forces needed to change it.

The opposite to a revolutionary policy is for this reason continually referred to by the capitalist class and by the various liberal and reformist politicians as a 'realistic' policy.

Since the mass slaughter in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in May, politicians on all sides have looked for and sought a new realism' among the leaders of the Lebanése left, the Palestinians and the • Arab states - by which they politely convey the fact that they wish to see further major retreats, concessions and betrayals by these leaders in the face of the armed might of Zionism, the pampered protege of US imperialism.

Unfortunately, they have not been disappointed. President Reagan's 90called 'peace plan' put forward last week is the most cynical move yet attempted to cash in on the military defeat inflicted on the PIO, the weakness exposed in the Syrian army, and the obvious refusal of the Arab bourgeois states to rally to the defence of the Palestinians.

The US plan appears daring in that it demands concessions from the Zion-' ists. Reagan calls for:

• Elections among the announcement that seven new settlements would go ahead, bringing a further 2,000 Israeli Jews to the West Bank.

In case anyone believes these settlements - which, like other similar encampments, will be built upon land forcibly stolen from Palestinian Arabs — will be simply harmless groups of Jewish farmers, a spokesman for the World Zionist Organisation pointed out that three of them will be undisguised military outposts manned by "soldierfarmers'. So far such military/agricultural formations have moved 25,000 Zionists into 100 villages on the West Bank and Gaza Strip - three quarters of them since Begin took office in 1977.

Begin's hard line response to Reagan flows from his different vantage 'realities' 3 establisher by assessina the Lebanon invasion. Reagan seeks to exploit the mood of retreat to force the pace for a negotiated settlement which will neutralise the most radical forces in the Arab camp and provide a basis for long-term compromise in the interests of imperialism as a whole.

Begin sees the victory in Lebanon as further proof that by sheer brute force and arrogant use of overwheiming military superiority the Zionist regime can force the Arab and Palestinian leaders to accept defeat and eventually recognise Israel, while making no concessions at all.

He also presides over a coalition of extreme right wing and fundamentalist parties. and groupings which are pressing the govemment to concede none of the territory of Biblical Israel.

far from looking now to withdraw from land already conquered, the eyes of Begin and Sharon are already focused still further afield _ on the enforced removal of Palestinian forces from