The single important post-June 67 situation in the Arab Middle East is undoubtedly the emergence of the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people under the leadership of its armed vanguards the fidayeen. For the first time in twenty years, the Palestinians have violently rid themselves of all ties of dependence on the various Arab regimes and finally taken into their own hands the solution of a problem which is primarily theirs. Amid the crushing humiliation of the third military defeat of the regular armies of the Arab regimes, a people hitherto dispersed, mystified and oppressed - is reborn. It has learnt one essential lesson: self-reliance. It came to realise that the destruction of the Zionist, racist and expansionist structure of the state of Israel and the establishment of a de-Zionised, democratic Palestine where Arabs and Jews enjoy equal rights is the only fulfillment for its right to self-determination and national liberation. This right can be enforced through one decisive means - armed struggle. Now, the Palestine problem is posed along radically different lines from those of the Arab regimes. The June war has at least revealed the incapacity of the Arab regimes, reactionary and pseudo-progressive, in imposing upon Israel the implementation of the UN resolutions concerning the 1947 partition of Palestine, the internationalisation of Jerusalem and the return of the Palestinian refugees.
Through armed struggle and propaganda by deeds, the Palestinian people want to impress upon the Jewish community in occupied Palestine this condition: "if you care to remain in this land, rid yourself of Zionist designs and learn to live with us as equals!'.
European leftists usually raise three issues in regard to the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people:
the fate of the Jewish community in Palestine the help received by the fidayeen organisations from the reactionary Arab regimes thẻ absence from the platform of the fidayeen organisations of any mention of socialism. 1. The Jewish community in occupied Palestine objectively an oppressing community; the Palestinian people, displaced and evicted from its land by the powers of Zionist colonisation, rights of the oppresse an oppressed people. Putting the equal footing is a mockery. The precondition for the recognition oy the Arabs of the rights of the Jewish community in Palestine CITIC the community of the right of the Palestinian Arabs to self-determination and national liberation. This recognition will not come of its own; in the present relations of forces between the Arabs and Israel - in which the latter obviously has the upper-hand the solution of the Palestine problem depends on the imposition of a new balance of power. It is towards this goal that both the Palestinian liberation movement and the anti-imperialist struggle in the Arab Middle East is aiming. 2. Two points should be made clear about the position various Arab regimes Palestine. First, the help given by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya to the fidayeen organisations has a propaganda-polictical function. The regimes of these oil-producing states did not take part in the June war against the Zionist imperialist aggression, and refused afterwards to maintain the embargo on the shipment of oil to Britain and the US as a means of exacting pressure on these two imperialist powers to press tor an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Seen in this context, their help' is but an attempt to buy with oil-money there unabe to prive in deeds Second. Aly the patriotic, anti-imperialist positions Arab regimes came gradually to back the Palestinian fidayeen once the implementation of the November 22, 1967 UN resolution proved unlikely to occur as quickly as was expected. Those regimes saw, and still see, in the fidayeen auxiliary irregular Arab forces carrying on military activities behind enemy lines in order to pressurise Israel into implementing the UN resolution. This is as far as the Arab regimes have gone and will ever go in their support for the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people. For the latter, of course, the question is not merely the Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, but also the overthrow of the racist and expansionist Zionist from the territories it occupied in 1948-49. In as much as the present Arab regimes come nearer to the so-called 'peaceful solution' imposed by the big Four Powers, they will have to liquidate the fidayeen organisations and put an end to their incursions into enemy territory. Hussein of Jordan has already attempted a show-down with them more than once, notably in November 1968 when his attempt was foiled due to the determination of the fidayeen to resist and to the huge mass support they rallied. Presently, concerted effort being undertaken this direction. The commercial-financial pro-imperialist oligarchy Lebanon has continuously arrested any Palestinian commands its forces could find on its territory. Its army has explicit orders to shoot at any "infiltration" that crosses the Lebanese border. The Saudi regime is trying to distract public admiration from the guerilla organisations, especially Al-Fatah, by setting up its own rival group under that notorious traitor Palestinian cause Amir Al-Husseini. In Iraq, the Baathi regime - whose hands are stained with the blood of so many progressive and communist militants, Kurdo and Arabs has recently issued directives to the Palestinian organisations to submit all their activities to the Iraqi military intelligence and Baathi From Liberation of Palestine. Most probably, the next few days or weeks will bring to the open decisive clashes between the Arab regimes and the Palestinian guerillas. The main battle-field will be Jordan where the uneasy "dual power" between the state of the Hashemite monarchy and that of the Palestinian people in arms will have to be resolved one way or the other. It is within this context that revolutionary socialists should view the revolutionary role played by the Palestinian guerillas in the Middle East.
This role can be resumed in two points: i) by taking the Palestine problem into their own hands, the Palestinian people have objectively robbed the Arab regimes of the opportunity to manipulate the Palestine problem in such a way as to blurr the internal class struggle being waged. National Unity' against the foreign enemy (Israel) is a form of blackmail that is increasingly losing its effect: the point of reference on Palestine has become the fidayeen organisation, not the Arab regimes. Now, when the Arab masses are faced with this blackmail, ask themselves if our government is so concerned about Palestine, why does it arrest the Palestinian fidayeen?' Moreover, the answer of the Arab masses has already been formulated: recently, peasants in the south of Lebanon faced the police force with bare chests in order to give the fidayeen enough time to run away to safety. ii) The classic Traeli response to the operations of the fidayeen is attacks against the neighbouring Arab countries. But, by doing this they are in the long run digging their own grave and that of the so-called moderate Arab regimes. Each Israeli raid serves as the living proof of the limits beyond which no present Arab regime can go in its opposition to Zionist colonialism the limits of the common allegience of both the Arab oligarchies and Zionism to one common master US imperialism - and the limits imposed by the incapacity of the petty-bourgeois, state capitalist regime of Syria and Eyapt in achieving integral emancipation political and economic - from the imperialist camp, and waging a consistent anti-imperialist 3. Socialism is not inscribed in the platform of fidayeen organisations, the simple reason that explains its absence in the platform of the Vietnamese NLF: the present phase of the struggle of the Palestinian people is a phase of national liberation. The Palestine problem is a national problem; yet it has no nationalist solution. It can only be waged successfully under the guidance of the revolutionary ideology of the proletariat Marxism Leninism. The social basis of this struggle is already in action; the refugees of peasant stock And those who believe that those displaced peasants are going to liberate the land in orde to hand it back to the very effendi families who sold it to the Zionists have another surprise coming.
Though its confrontation with Arab regimes on the issue of Palestine itself, the Palestinian national liberation movement will come to realise who are its real friends and enemies. It will have to chose between laying down its arms or definitely allying itself to the classes and movements which waging the struggle against reo-imperialism, Arab reaction and the pseudo-progressive regimes. Once those two detachments of the Arab resolution are finally linked together, the victory over Zionism imperialism and reaction will not be very fa away.
Bernard Power Canavan AL-FATAH SPOKESMAN• ABU AMMAR