U.S. drive to Noriega hits

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The U.S. government is facing unexpected difficulties in its campaign to oust Gen. Manuel Noriega from power in Panama.

The plan hatched in the White House promised a speedy victory: Throttle the Panamanian economy by cutting off its supply of dollars, and starve the Panamanian people a little bit. In a few days, the enraged Panamanians would persuade Noriega to board a plane for comfortable retirement in Spain.

The "few days" have stretched into six weeks. The Panamanian people are suffering, but Noriega remains in power. Things are not going as Washington planned.

The administration's miscalculations started with Noriega himself. When Secretary of State George Schultz bellowed, "That guy has got to go," he viewed Noriega as an employee who had outlived his usefulness. Noriega's indictment on drug charges was intended as a threat to speed him out of office.

But it had the opposite effect. Noriega felt he could be safe from extradition only so long as he remained in Panama. The virtual kidnapping by the United States of his fellow drug dealer in Honduras did not reassure him.

If Noriega cannot be persuaded to leave, Reagan has decided, he has to be forced out. The administration is now applying harsher economic measures. No canal revenue is to go to Noriega's government. No American companies in Panama may pay their taxes, and every source of dollars is cut off where possible.

The problem for Reagan is that mild economic measures will not budge Noriega, but more severe sanctions may permanently (continued from page the arrest of 2000 people, bringing the acknowledged total to 4000. The real figure, however, is far higher. The avoidance of hospitals by the injured-and the ban on news coverage in the West Bank and Gaza-have prevented accurate reporting of the vast scale of the savage beatings and of the deaths of those who endured them.

In spite of the media blackout, news reports giving a glimpse of the scale of the repression have been able to filter through.

New York Times correspondent John Kifner, for example, reported on April 4 that "Hundreds of refugees were treated in United Nations clinics for gas inhalation." On April 15, Kifner wrote, "gas has been thrown inside homes, clinics and schools where the effects are particularly severe."

Kifner's report was the first, after four months of the use of such chemical weapons, to acknowledge this fact:

"Agency doctors have seen symptoms not normally connected with tear gas," Kifner wrote, "and U.N.R.W.A. [United Nations refugee relief] is seeking information on the contents of the gas...to provide antidote...especially for the most vulnerable groups...pregnant women, the very young and elderly."

Gas canisters recovered by Bassam Shaka'a, the deposed mayor of Nablus; Yoosef al-Masri, chief of Ittihad Hospital; and American author Alfred Lilienthal bear the markings "560 cs. Federal Lab. Saltsburgh, Pa. USA MK2 1988." Biochemists are studying their properties as casualties mount.

Kifner later reported, "Warnings on the canisters say the contents can be lethal." NHAT'S WITH THE US. AND NORIEGA?

FIRST THEY PAID HIM... ines cared AND NOW THEYVE MADE HIM A MARTYR IN ALL OF LATIN AMERI Two deposits in Panama's banks have dropped from $35 billion to $19 billion. U.S. companies may move out if they cannot operate normally. It would be a case of "destroying the country in order to save it."

The U.S. adminstration is in the difficult position of pretending that Artur Delvalle, a man despised as a stooge of Noriega for years, is now the government of Panama. The man is in hiding in his own country, and has not addressed his fellow citizens for weeks. However, an American official assures the public that Delvalle is maintaining "videotape contact" with the American embassy.

Throughout the West Bank and Gaza, 'ases of miscarriages, vaginal bleeding, and asphyxiation were occurring after the use of the gas.

Provocation at Beita

In order to attempt to quell the protests of the Palestinian people, the Israeli government enacted a series of new measures in late March which allow detention without any specific charge or trials, even in military courts. Immediately after the order, people were seized overnight in more than a dozen refugee districts, villages, and towns in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin also announced that Israeli citizens had the same authority as soldiers to shoot.

Newsweek (April 4) reported: "The decree meant Israeli soldiers could shoot to kill Palestinian youths.... Yitzhak Rabin [was] effectively deputizing settlers." The decision, according to Newsweek, would "open the floodgates of the 60,000 setters' pent-up frustration [sic]."

It was not long before an attack occurred. On April 6, settlers engaging in a clear provocation shot in cold blood a Palestinian working in his field outside the village of Beita. Attention, however, focused on the death of Tirza Porat, a 15year-old settler girl among the group.

The settlers reported Tirza Porat had been stoned to death by the Palestinian villagers, but an army autopsy report revealed she had been shot in the head by the Kahane follower acting as her nominal guard. [Rabbi Meir Kahane is the founder of the Jewish Defense League.] Despite the autopsy report, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir used the occasion to vow that Palestinians "would be crushed like grasshoppers...heads smashed against the boulders and walls."

In Beita village, the scene of the inciTHEN THEY TRI TO OUST HIM.

THE VANQUIS SEEM TO LACK A TRADITION OF IOLITICAL STABILITY The American ruling class prefers to rely on local military forces as a base for puppet regimes. In Panama, it would like to see the Panama Defense Force (PDF)-purged of Gen. Noriega and corruption—support a compliant civilian government.

But Panamanians point out that to take the PDF out of the drug business, at least a dozen other high ranking officers would have to go.

Noriega is widely despised in Panama as a drug dealer and a despot, but the opposition has so far lacked the power to dislodge him. Panama's political life has been stultified for decades by the overwhelming presence of U.S. troops and personnel.

No powerful bourgeois dent, 30 houses were blown up. The number of houses destroyed was confirmed by Hamdi Faraj, a noted Palestinian journalist.

New strategy needed The tragic death of Abu Jihad is particularly instructive in its timing. The Mossad has had the ability to murder major figures, such as Abu Jihad, in the past. His killing is the equivalent of a declaration of war. It underlines, once again, the necessity for a new strategy on the part of a revolutionary Palestinian leadership, one based on a political program directed to the Palestinian and Jewish masses for the replacement of the Zionist state.

The Palestinian masses are in motion. The extraordinary will to struggle on the part of the entire population has shown that there is no going back. The Intifadeh needs to focus on specific features of oppression and to challenge them by reclaiming the land, planting forbidden crops, sinking wells and withholding labor in the course of demanding unconditional Israeli withdrawal.

A revolutionary Palestinian leadership will need to devise a program for inside the Green Line (pre-1967 borders) which addresses the Jews within Israel as well as the Moslems and Christians. In short, what is necessary is a blueprint for a postZionist society which inspires people and associates the inequities of their lives with the Zionist state.

As the Zionist state is at once a species of capitalist class rule and an extension of U.S. imperial power in the region, the struggle against Zionism becomes, programmatically, a struggle for a socialist Palestine and, as the dawn follows the long night, a struggle for a socialist Arab East-from the Mediterranean to the Gulf.

A P.L.O. faithful to its promise of a democratic-secular Palestine would include SOCIALIST

ECONOMY

Fernest Mandes patentis.: pun!

USSR

(iorhachrs a speart: y tuu mistituatin.!

MUCIAL FRATURE

LIBERATION THEOLOGY Amerns • laari." sition, centered in the National Civic Crusade, is dominated by the elite merchant class—with the CIA pulling the strings in the background.

It is an all-white organization in a country where Blacks and Mulattoes form the majority of the working class. The lukewarm response of the workers to the two-week general strike called by the Civic Crusade reflected the workers' distrust of their ruling class.

Noriega, on the other hand, has courted Black and Mulatto Panamanians. He has reportedly recruited 600 workers, including 50 women, into a military formation called the Dignity Battalion. They are prepared to resist a U.S. invasion.

The National Civic Crusade serves as a very weak base for Washington's plans for Panama. The Panamanian merchants are afraid of a mass movement strong enough to oust Noriega. It prefers that the United States do it for them. They are mad at Washington-not for landing more troops-—but for hesitating to use them.

A U.S. "surgical strike?"

The U.S. State Department has put forward the idea of an armed "surgical strike," possibly a kidnapping, that would quickly remove Noriega. Although Noriega seems to have been careful not to create incidents that could lead to excuses for U.S. military action, American troops seem to be falling over themselves to create an incident.

A platoon of marines who had just arrived in Panama engaged in a two-hour fire fight with imaginery "intruders" at a fueltank farm. In another encounter with a non-existent enemy, a U.S. soldier was accidentally shot by his own buddies.

These episodes have given the Panamanians a good laugh, as the stumblebums thrash about in the jungle. But soon, the situation will become deadly serious. Panama and the Canal are too important to the American imperialists to let temporary setbacks divert them from their long-range goal.

Whether they will make another deal with Noriega or embark on a bloody confrontation remains to seen. It is the task of people in the United States to call for an end to this country's intervention in Panama. U.S. troops out now!

in its leadership those anti-Zionist Jews who have fought the colonial-settler state. In this way, the Jewish masses themselves would be able to see who really speaks for them, and who offers them a way out of perpetual war, insecurity, and deprivation.

A clear call for a democratic and secular Palestine is essential to uniting mass social forces capable of dismantling the Zionist state and replacing it with a humane society dedicated to the ending of class and national oppression.

The Palestinian revolutionary movement can only advance by hammering out a new strategy based on combining the Palestinian national struggle with the struggle of the workers and peasants of the whole Middle Eąst for liberation from both capitalist and imperialist domination-for a socialist Middle East.

nternational пана 130 November 23. 1987 C0 85. 82. C$2 50,1295 I fIFA NIRA TEM S Subscribe toaay to International Viewpoint!

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ACTION MAY 1988 11

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wreck Panama's economy. Already, foreign ... Palestine

oust shag