Crisis of leadership in PLO

Scan page 4

[Ralph Schoenman, a long-time Trotskyist, is the former Executive Director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. He is presently Director of the Committee in Defense of the Palestine and Lebanese Peoples. He had been designated by the United Nations International Conference on the Question of Palestinian Political Prisoners to write report on that subject. That document will be published in book form under the title Prisoners of Israel.

The political conclusions contained in the article printed below do not necessarily reflect the views of Socialist Action.] The virtual civil war between Palestinian fighters loyal to Yasir Arafat and those supporting former Fateh deputy commander Abu Musa expresses nothing SO much as the ongoing crisis the nationalist leadership of the PIO. It has been a long time coming.

The precipitating event was the appointment of Haj Ismail as commander of PLO forces in the Beqaa Valley last May. Although a reliable supporter of Arafat, Haj Ismail was widely felt to have deserted his fighters when he left Sidon ahead of the approaching Israeli forces during the invasion of June 1982. His imperious style replete with Phalange soldier threatens Palestinian woman in Lebanon.

Mercedes and high living, was a symbol to many officers and fighters of a profound malaise within the Palestinian revolutionary movement.

Abu Musa on the other hand was a heroic figure. He is a former Jordanian officer who joined the Palestinian resistance to King Hussein during the terrible weeks of Black September and who commanded Palestinian forces from Southern Lebanon to Beirut during suecessive Israeli invasions. He is known as an incorruptible and brave fighter, unlike such figures as Ahmad Jibril or loyal to the Palestinian cause the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Cormand, in no way a Syrian creation.

The demands declared by Abu Musa and the rebels were widely shared by the fighters and by the populatin in the camps. They included (1) democratization of decision making, with far more collective arrival at policy and its implementation; (2) a committee answerable to the rank and file to handle Fateh finances, which had heretofore been in the hands of Yassir Arafat; (3) a rigorous elimination of privilege among Fateh political and administrative. leaders; (4) repudiation of all the varied diplomatic manuevers emanating from Washington and such surrogate regimes as the Saudi and Moroccan governments; (5) return to the principles of the Fateh movement, notable among them a commitment to armed struggle and to resistance to Israeli occupation as the focus of the liberation movement.

December 1983 The rebels stated that they did not wish to remove Yassir Arafat but to reform al Fateh, the largest group within the PIO, and to revitalize the movement. Above all, they called for a frank balance sheet after the catastroof the summer of 1982, culminating as it did in the massacres of Sabra and Shatila.

In doing so they rejected the claim Yassir Arafat that the net outcome of the Israeli invasion was a Palestinvictory because of the heroic Palestinian defense of West Beirut against 125,000 Israeli troops, 500 tanks, a siege, and saturation bambing.

was paintully evident, the rebels said, that the withdrawal from Beirut under deceitful American guarantees of protection resulted in the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, the dispersal of fighters throughout the Arab world where they were disarmed and placed in camps away from population centers.

It was shortly after these declarations by Abu Musa and the rebels that Yassir Arafat went to Beddawi camp near Tripoli. Trade union leaders of Beddawi informed him that the people in the camps would not welcome him because of what had happened Sabra and Shatila and that the mood was one of great restiveness with the appearance of drift disarray the leadership.

Abu Musa also met with the Palestinian trade union leaders who went to the Regaa to Damascus to discuss the dissident demands. One trade unionist in particular had led major strikes in Beirut Port by Palestinian workers over the years. The PID leadership, out of deference to the Sunni bourgeoisie of Beirut, had urged the workers to call off the strikes and were categorically turned down by the workers.)

This man now urged Abu Musa to take struggle to the people, to wage a political campaign in the camps, and to go into the councils of Fateh to call for a new program, a new strategy, and an honest accounting of where the movement had gone wrong and the necessity of new directions if new disasters were to be avoided.

"If you wage this political battle, you will sweep the camps, for our people are with day in Fateh, "you. You will carry the "But above all, " warned my trade union friend, "do not attach yourself to that dog, Hafez al Assad. Do not let him harness your struggle to his ends. Do not resort to arms. If you are perceived as a Syrian instrument, you will not only lose all support in the camps, but you will, instead of advancing our cause, deal it a grave blow."

Syrian Duplicity During

the Civil War The trade unionist knew whereof he spoke. At the culminating moment of the civil war in Lebanon in the autumn of 1975, Henry Kissinger brokered a strategic alliance between the Phalange, other right-wing Christian militia, and the Syrian regime of Hafez al Assad. An outright military deal was also made between Hafez al Assad and the Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. This reversed Syria's previous support of the left in Lebanon during the civil war of 19751976.

On January 22, 1976 Syrian controlled regular troops of the Palestine Liberation Army entered Beirut while Israel supplied the facist militia with arms and advisers. As the Washington Post reported at the time, the SyrianIsraeli alliance meant that "Israel and Syria were now free to gang up on the Palestinian commandos."

1. Throughout 1976 Israeli and Syrian naval vessels patrolled the Lebanese coast to interdict Palestinian supplies.

2. Syria and Israel jointly supplied the heavy arms, tanks, small arms and ammunition during the Phalange siege of the Palest inian camp of Tal al Zataar, culminating in a massacre of the populace.

3.This Syrian help occurred when the right-wing militia were on the verge of defeat with but 72 hours of ammunition left. It was coordinated in a meeting that took place on U.s. orders with Israeli Minister of Defense Defense Shimon Peres on an Israeli destroyer at Junieh harbor near Fast Beirut.

4. Ihe Syrian team that negotiated the consolidation of right-wing Christian control under Syrian tutelage was composed of Foreign Minister Abdel Hakim Khaddam, Army Chief of Staff Hikmet Shahabi and and Air Force Conmander Naji Jamil.

5.When the Syrians and Israelis moved to crush the Palestinians and their allies in the Lebanese National Movement, Zuhair Mohsen, of the Syriancontrolled units of the Palestine Liberation Army, told the Washington Post, "Lebanon can only be saved by the U.s. Sixth Fleet or the Syrian Army. There can be no other solution."

6. PLO Saiqa commandos under Syrian control, broke the Palestinian siege of Zahle in the Begaa valley, whereupon the Syrians invaded with two divisions to ink up with the Phalange.

Limitations of the Lebanese National Movement must also be noted that the "Left in this civil war--although indisputably less reactionary than the fascist Christian militia--left much to be desired. Kamal Jumblatt, winner of the Lenin Peace Prize, was • also a fea lord, a huge capitalist and the titular head of the coalition of Moslems, Nasserists, and Pro-Soviet Lebanese Conmunist Party, which comprised the Lebanese National Movement.

Jumblatt had, moreover, the closest links with L. Dean Brown, former U.S. ambassador to Arman, " a U.S. intellilie rast institute, gence conduit, and the very man assigned by Kissinger to "control" Jumblatt by restricting the program of the Lebanese National Movement to one of "minimal political reforms."

Shortly after Israeli-Syrian intervention, Kamal Jumblatt was murdered a short distance from a Syrian checkpoint. The United States and Syria then joined to force the "left" Christian, Sleiman Franjieh, out of office to consumate the defeat of the Lebanese National Movement.

Syria's Role During

the Israeli Invasion of 1982 To the Palestinian masses in Lebanon, the Syrian regime is the kiss of death-a kiss widened to an embrace in the Arrin® sharon's visit to Alexander ding In May was that of Rifaat al Assad, brother to the president and head of his security. Rifaat al Assad arrived in Washington in conjunction with Ariel Sharon. These consultations in Washington underline the fate of the PLO during the Israeli invasion--an invasion sanctioned by the U.S. rulers.

Within days of the Israeli blitzreig, Hafez al Assad, who now points the finger of betrayal at Yassir Arafat, agreed to a cease-fire freeing Israel to destroy Palestinian camps and Lebanese towns and villages at will.

Hafez al Assad has always viewed the struggles of the Palestinians and Lebanese peoples with the same jaundiced eye with which he has viewed those of his own oppressed population. They are either to be controlled or crushed. And control, where both the Palestinian and Lebanese are concerned, has meant their deployment as bargaining counters from which to exact concessions fram U.S. imperialism and the Israeli juggernaut.

He demonstrated his skills as a policeman during the Lebanese civil war, just • as he is engaged in the destruction of the PIO today--the better to show the Americans and Israelis that he is both necessary and worthy of reward.