degeneration and perspectives The shift of the leadership of the Palestinian resistance from the struggle for the liberation of Palestine to the race for the Palestinian mini-state; the total and harmonious integration of the resistance leadership into the chorus of the Arab regimes, particularly after the Rabat "Arab summit"; the moderate statements of the resistance leaders and the warm welcome the resistance has been receiving in international circles; in short, all the things symbolized by the "olive branch" that has replaced the "freedom fighter's gun" in the hands of the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, are indications that clearly point to the mature and complete degeneration of the Palestinian resistance movement. There is no doubt that the causes of this degeneraa leadership that views the struggle against the Zionisfstate purely as a struggle for a liberation that is expressed in the form of democracy and secularism and completely leaves out the necessity of the transformation of the social relations in the entire region, could not act otherwise than to insert itself into the process aimed at attaining the "peaceful solufion." That is where the programmatic continuity lies. It does not seem to me sufficient to denounce the turn of the resistance or even to describe the mechanisms by which the turn occurred, as necessary as this certainly is. It is also necessary to demonstrate that the program of the resistance was a false one and that the behavior of the resistance leadership is fully an expression of that false program. That program was not completely subsumed in the slogan or goal of the liberation of Palestine, for the liberation of Palestine presupposes the destruction of the Zionist state and thefefore the replacement of the Zionist state by something else. In the final analysis, this is where revolutionary Marxism differs from the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalism of the resistance leadership. Ultimately, all the other difFerences - on Palestino-centrism, maximalism, the acceptance of subsidies from the Arab states, etc. - flow from that basic difference.• -J. Rothschild tion lie in large measure in the original limitations of the emergence of the resistance, in its organic crisis. But the development of these original causes into an actual degeneration has resulted from a totality of circumstances linked to the relationship of the resistance to its external milieu. These circumstances must be elucidated if the analysis of the degeneration is to be thorough and complete. To be sure, the goal of this analysis is above all to sketch out the main lines of future developments in order to work out a plan of action that enables us to confront these developments. It is regrettable that none of the components of the left wing of the resistance, whether official or not,
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PLO have managed to come to an overal consciousness about the crisis of the resistance. The reason for this is the absence of a consistent revolutionary Marxist tendency within the resistance. All the leftist analyses of the resistance have centered on only one of its features, the petty-bourgeois character of the leadership. The relationship between the leadership's petty-bourgeois character and its behavior has not been made explicit. Likewise, there has been no examination of the relationship between the behavior of the resistance and the social milieu in which it functions: the refugee camps. In fact, the leftist tendencies of the resistance have remained prisoners of the same general line of conduct, have not gone beyond the narrow limits of the resistance, and have themselves shared the organic crisis of the resistance along with all the other tendencies. Our current (from outside the resistance) has been the only one that has described the organic limitations of the resistance in an overall fashion. We did this in an article enfitled "The Crisis of the Palestinian Resistance, " which appeared in the April 1972 issue of el-Munadil - reprinted in our booklet Intisaara li-Lenin (For Lenin's Victory) - and in the resolution on the Arab revolution issued by the Trotskyists of the Arab region. (The resolution has been published in Arabic and will soon be translated into French and English - INPRECOR.) Our analysis can be summed up as follows: For reasons that are in the first place historic the leaderships of the resistance emerged from the various components of the petty-bourgeois nationalist current. Despite the multiplicity of their political tendencies, ranging from the radicalized left to the reactionary right, all these leoderships were petty-bourgeois. The common class nature of the organizations of the resistance found expression in their common inability to work out a program of class struggle linked to the national struggle against Zionism and imperialism (in spite of the fact that some tendencies claimed adherence to Marxism). Likewise, all the currents remained prisoners of a Palestino-centric practice (and, in the case of Fateh, a Palestinocentric theory) that sowed illusions about the possibility of liberating Palestine through the strength of the Palestinian people alone instead of through integrating the Palestinian struggle into a vast effort to build a revolutionary party embracing the whole Arab region that would be capable of breaking all the forms of imperialist dependence, including, of course, the Zionist bulwark that defends this dependence. This Palestino-centric practice also found expression in the fact that all the organizations of the resistance without exception were linked to one or another of the Arab regimes or to the Arab regimes 20 as a whole (Fateh), sacrificing the interests of the toiling masses living under these regimes on the altar of the "interest of the resistance. " This interest was in turn interpreted as being determined by subsidies - as if these subsidies could in the slightest advance Palestine's liberation, which in reality must assuredly be accomplished through the revolutionary overthrow of the existing Arab regimes. This aspect of Palesfino-centrism was also common to all the resistance organizations, despite the speeches some leaders made about the dialectical relationship between the Palestinian struggle and the Arab socialist revolution. Moreover, because of the absence of real, as opposed to verbal, class-struggle perspectives in the program of the various components of the resistance, the program was reduced to the slogan of "liberation. " This was an illusory program, for it was tied to a Palestino-centric outlook. If the organizations of the resistance were able to recruit rather massively in spite of their maximalism and their inability to define class perspectives, this was due to the nature of the social milieu in which they acted, that milieu being the refugee camps. The Palestinian refugees constitute a social category the majority of which (especially in Jordan and Lebanon) lives outside any productive social structure and is dependent on subsidies distributed as "aid" and on some marginal or seasonal activity. The liberation of the territory from which they were expelled is for and away the dominant desire of the masses of refugees, and that is a goal that is sufficient to mobilize them, or at least to mobilize the youth among them. These masses lack any class consciousness; they perceive only their national enemy; they do not perceive the contradiction between their own interests and those of the Arab ruling classes, except to the extent that one or another of these ruling classes places itself in opposition to their national struggle. The consciousness of the refugees is the consciousness of a "category" that is based on a "Palestinian identity" created by their isolation in the refugee camps and by the desire that their "cause" not be liquidated. (This also accounts for the Palestinocentrism of the organizations of the resistance.) Such are the general features of the organic crisis that has racked the Palestinian resistance since its formation. These features were later to crystallize into characteristics embodied in the behavior of organizations, and then of apparatuses that would become the bearers of the crisis and that would degenerate under the impact of the crisis. Since the refugees were not integrated into any productive structure, the resistance was far from constructing an army of producers, an army of workers and peasants, especially in that the resistance did
not include any politically proletarian tendency. Both the political and military organizations of the resistance were made up of salaried personnel whose incomes varied according to their positions within the hierarchy. The army of the resistance was an army whose structure was similar to that of bourgeois armies, the difference being that the army of the resistance had an anarchic character since the refugee camps are not barracks. After June 1967, and especially during 1968 and 1969, there was a very rapid development of an enormous apparatus swelled with functionaries collecting salaries. The majority of these functionaries were not engaged in any useful activity. The cancer of offices and administrative bureaus spread very rapidly, nearly attaining the level of a state apparatus, as in Jordan; it is known that the budget of Fateh in Jordan was comparable to that of the Jordanian state. In short, an enormous bureaucracy of office holders getting high salaries was formed, a bureaucracy that was like any other bureaucracy in that it had on interest in defending its privileges. But it was unlike other bureaucracies in that it drew its base not from the people over which it was ruling but rather from the contributions of the Arab states that were financing it. In the light of this characteristic, it becomes clear that the phenomenon of "bureaucratism" is not the natural result of the marginality of the refugees, as some may think or deduce from what we have said above. Without the subsidies from the Arab states the organizations of the resistance would have remained poor combat organizations, organizations of poor people strongly motivated by the idea of liberating their usurped homeland. The enormous parasitic apparatus that gradually drew compensation for the loss of Palestine from the privileges that it acquired would not have developed. In fact, we have no doubt that the policy of trying to drown the resistance in a sea of cash subsidies was the result of a plan consciously worked out by some Arab regimes, the Saudi regime in the first place. These regimes certainly knew that this policy was the best way of emptying the resistance of its revolutionary content and of subjecting it to the will of its contributors, since the resistance became dependent on these contributors. The maintenance of the apparatus became dependent on the continuous inflow of "aid. " The reactionary Arab regimes did not try to cut any corners in laying out money for achieving their policy; Saudi subsidies granted to Fateh through 1973 are estimated at nearly $50 million, and this leaves out of account the subsidies advanced by the Arab emirates, Libya, and other states. The Rabat summit decided to grant $100 million to the PLO. The resistance has now accumulated so much money that the PLO itself has offered to pay $1 million in contributions toward funds for African development! It is the height of absurdity that an organization that claims to represent a people plunged into poverty should transform itself into a financial backer of poor countries. (We have described this as the transformation of the Palestinian revolution into the Palestinian fortune.*) Obviously, the Arab regimes would not have offered this money to the resistance if the resistance had adopted a revolutionary attitude toward the Arab regimes. But the characteristics of the resistance that we have described above (especially the characteristics of fateh), which permitted the resistance to use its right-wing Palestino-centrism to justify relations even with Saudi Arabia, allowed for the inflow of these funds. Nevertheless, for a long time after it attained maturity, the bureaucratization of the resistance did not overturn its single general program: the liberation of Palestine. For a long time, all the organizations of the resistance continued to invoke the necessity of liberating all of Palestine, and they centered their propaganda around this slogan, despite their obvious and complete bureaucrafization. This was not in itself a contradiction; rather, if rested on a contradiction: the contradiction between the Arab regimes and their policy aimed at the "peaceful solution" on the one hand and the desire of the Palestinian mass movement to liberate their homeland and their resolve to struggle for this liberation on the other hand. The task assigned to the leadership of the resistance, and in the first place to the leadership of Fateh, was this: to dominate the Palestinian masses - which required advancing the slogan of liberation - and to prevent their movement from being directed against the Arab regimes. We have described the paradox of the resistance in the resolution on the Arab revolution cited above, which speaks of "the ambiguous position of the Fateh leadership, which has to balance between its relations with the Arab regimes and its relations with the mass movement it is leading; the radicalizing pressure of this movement accords the Fateh leadership a certain margin of autonomy. " The ultimate, political, degeneration of the apparatus of the Palestinian resistance began when the equilibrium on which it had based itself since its development after the Arab defeat of 1967 was broken; that is, when one of the two poles between which it was balancing received a decisive blow through the liquidation of the resistance in Jordan in 1970 and 1971. The equilibrium was broken to the benefit of the Arab regimes, for the main battalion of the Palestinian mass movement, its Jordanian battalion, was broken. The blows that followed, especially during the May 1973 events in Lebanon, further weakened the autonomy of the * An untranslatable pun. In Arabic "thawra" means revolution; "tharwa" means fortune - INPRECOR
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PLO Palestinian mosses and thus strengthened the hegemony of the Arab regimes over the resistance. What we had predicted in the article published in April 1972 progressively occurred: "The relationship of forces is such that the regimes are carrying the day and Fateh is becoming transformed into a new version of the PLO (meaning the old PLO of Shukhairy, before the resistance took over the name). That is, Fateh is consciously agreeing to play the role of an instrument of diplomatic pressure. " The degeneration and its polifical expression The repression that came down on the movement of cause of the degeneration of the resistance. This is true not only because the repression fractured (to the benefit of the Arab regimes) the equilibrium on which the bureaucracy of the resistance had based itself, but also because the repression physically eliminated thousands of the best militants of the resistance, militants who stood in the front lines during the confrontations with the armies of Hussein and the other butchers of the Palestinian people. The rear guard, the people sitting in the offices and the bourgeois neighborhoods of Beirut, survived; the vanguard sacrificed itself. Thus, the relationship of forces within the resistance itself shifted in favor of the elements most inclined to sell out the Palestinian cause in exchange for safeguarding and extending their own privileges. This shift was reflected in the politics of the resistance and in our attitude toward it. In fact, the political degeneration of the bureaucracy of the Palestinian resistance was virtually complete as of 1970-71. Already at that time it was clear that the leadership of the resistance had lost the narrow margin of autonomy it had commanded during the rise of the resistance and was becoming transformed in reality into an instrument of diplomatic pressure to be used by Cairo and Damascus to win concessions from Washington and Israel during the bargaining over the peaceful solution. What we mean to stress here is that while it is true that what appears as a turn in the political trajectory of the leadership of the resistance - that is, its adoption of the project of the Palestinian state - is a clear and declared political turn, it is not linked to an internal transformation but rather was already possible and in fact had occurred in an undeclared fashion after 1970-71. The degeneration of the bureaucracy of the resistance was already complete, but the circumstances of the time - before October 1973 - did not permit the bureaucracy to adopt the 22 liquidationist project of the Palestinian state or to publicly integrate itself into the efforts aimed ot imposing the peaceful solution. Likewise, the same circumstances — the prevailing climate of defeat and the consequent fear of a mass reaction in case of open attempis to liquidate the Palestinian cause - prevented Egypt and Syria from negotiating with the Zionist regime and from reconciling themselves with U.S. imperialism. After the October War and the vast propaganda campaign that accompanied it, it became possible for the "battle front" - Egypt, Syria, and the Palestinian resistance - to move collectively to the application of the peaceful solution. Since then, the leadership of the resistance has openly adopted the project of the Palestinian state, with the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the group led by Nayef Hawatmeh - INPRECOR paving the way among the masses by becoming the first group (for a time the only group) to advance an apology for this project. The bureaucracy of the resistance has since integrated itself totally and openly into the efforts aimed at the liquidationist settlement. The project of the Palestinian state is the direct and complete expression of the bureaucratic degeneration of the Palestinian resistance, just as the ideology of "socialism in one country" was the political expression of the bureaucratic Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet revolution. The resistance leaders are abandoning the liberation of Palestine just as the Stalinists abandoned the world revolution. The Palestinian bureaucracy finds its immediate interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank of the Jordan River. The bureaucracy of the resistance has long since become a state apparatus without a state, and this apparatus is now quite naturally seeking a state within which to assert and extend its privileges by institutionalizing them in a state independent of any of the states where refugees are now living. Of course, no one should be fooled; such a state could not be and will not be a "point of departure" for the continuation of the armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine (unless this happens against the will and policy of the leaders of the state). Rather, the precondition for the establishment of this state will be that it accept a peaceful coexistence with Zionism that will be consecrated by international agreements. Moreover, any combative intentiors manifested by such a ministate would result in its immediate occupation, or rather, its reoccupation, by the Zionist army. In any case, it is obvious that the bureaucracy of the resistance has no such combative intention. And how could it be otherwise when the bureaucracy of the resis-
tance intends to live peacefully in the new state, enjoying its privileges and the funds that will continue to flow in from the oil-producing Arab states. Despite the affirmations of principles, which are made for propaganda purposes, it is clear that the bureaucracy of the resistance has abandoned the goal and slogan of the "liberation of Palestine"; it has abandoned this goal and slogan by accepting a state whose precondition is peaceful coexistence with Zionism; it will now progressively abandon it in the sphere of concrete principles and raise it again as an abstract general ideal in the same way that the Kremlin Stalinists treat the ideal of world communism. The degeneration of the resistance leadership will thus have attained its lowest point; the resistance will be transformed into a state instead of into a revolution. The only faction of the resistance that is today rejecting the project of the Palestinian state in reality - that is, not on the basis of seeking a better deal, like the Iraqi regime — is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). From its origin this group was a faction that was excluded from the vital bureaucratic posts because of the hostility and historic rivalry between it and Fateh. The PLFP has not departed from its nationalism and refuses to abandon Palestine; but the nationalist opposition that it represents is a "reformist" opposition; that is, it is not accompanied by an effective struggle for the overthrow of the present leadership of the resistance. It is instead a pressure opposition that will most probably become the official opposition within the future Palestinian state. Any real
"the bureaucracy has become a state apparatus without a state... » opposition prepared to continue the armed struggle after the creation of the state, which means continuing the struggle in opposition to the government of the new state, would have to be a clandestine revolutionary opposition. Such an opposition is beginning to emerge within the organizations of the resistance, among the rank-and-file militants and the patriotic and revolutionary cadres; this is occurring within the PFLP, of course, but also within Fateh itself. Perspectives of struggle The possibility of a fifth war (unleashed by the Zionist military establishment) cannot be ruled out, but given the gravity of the effects a new war would have, it is an unlikely possibility. The most likely possibility is undoubtedly the complete realization of the peaceful solution more or less rapidly, sooner or later, with the participation of the resistance. The settlement will result in the creation of a Palestinion state, whether "independent" or Federated to other states. This is a solution that would satisfy Israel and that cannot be ruled out, in spite of the present appearance of things. (There is no question here of Hussein's project but rather of a formula of federation with Jordan or with some other state within which the Palestinian state would have de facto "autonomy": something along the lines of the Federation of Arab Republics.) What this means is that the Palestinian state is the most likely possibility, whatever form it may take.
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PLO What, then, are the perspectives of struggle in the light of this state? That is an essential question for Palestinian revolutionaries and for all revolutionaries in the Arab region. There are those who think that the creation of this state would be a crushing victory for reaction, and in this pessimism they find the justification for their abandoning the struggle or abandoning their "rejection" of the peaceful solution, since reaction will inevitably triumph anyway. (Some of the so-called Marxists in Fateh justify abandoning their rejection of the peaceful solution by sowing illusions as to the impossibility of a settlement!) The pessimism in these cases flows from the optimism that preceded it. Those who believed that the Palestinian resistance by itself, with the given composition of its factions, could someday advance down the road of the liberation of Palestine are today the same people who are thunderstruck by the impending victory of the project of the Palestinian state. We are not among them! Because of the organic crisis of the resistance, it was clear and inevitable from the beginning that the only possible road for the leadership would be to join up with the advocates of the settlement. If this settlement has taken the form of the creation of a Palestinian state, it is an indication of the fact that the Arab regimes cannot ignore the Palestinian cause. If the settlement had taken place in the form of a pure and simple liquidation of the resistance everywhere it existed and of a simple return to the pre-June 1967 situation but with a new American hegemony, that would have really been a heavy defeat for the mass movement. But that sort of solution has proved to be impossible, and the failure of the attempt of the Lebanese government to liquidate the resistance in May 1973 confirms this. American imperialism has been unable to impose the solution that would have been the best: for it, the solution expressed in the project of the United Arab Kingdom proposed by Hussein. The solution toward which we are moving today is not that of a pure and simple liquidation of all traces of the Palestinian mass movement that arose after June 1967. To be sure, the solution is a consecration of imperialist domination - and how could it be otherwise, given the nature of the forces in conflict -but it is a consecration in the form of a compromise. And this compromise creates a reality whose effects on the mass movement must be studied; there is no point in sounding the bell of defeat. On the Palestinian level itself, the Palestinian state will mean the definitive discrediting of the bureaucracy of the Palestinian resistance and the end of its ability to politically contain the mass movement in the name of the national liberation struggle (but obviously not the end of its repressive power). It will assemble all the Palestinian refugees on the 24 same territory, creating a vast refugee camp, and therefore a highly explosive "powderkeg. " It will also crystallize the class differentiations within the Palestinian people, creating a concentrated Palestinian proletariat facing a government whose repressive bourgeois character will be clearly revealed, a government that has already created a finished state apparatus that includes a parliament in which the owning classes play a preponderant role. This means that the creation of a Palestinian state will in the final analysis create more favorable conditions for the development of a revolutionary Palestinian vanguard. On a more general Arab level, the Palestinian state will in no case result in the crushing of the Palestinian cause in the consciousness of the masses, for this cause is above all based on the existence of the Zionist colonial state, the military bastion of imperialism in the Arab East. On the contrary, the settlement will permit the deepening of the division between the movement of the Arab toiling masses and the pseudo current of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist movement. The revolutionary movement in the Arab region must prepare itself today for waging the most important battles after the conclusion of the wrangling over the peaceful solution. The revolutionary movement must build itself, lay the groundwork for a prole tarian revolutionary party on the scale of the whole Arab region, and sharpen all its material and programmatic weapons in order to respond to the requirements of the new rising wave of the Arab revolution, a wave that will have a class basis. The revolutionary movement must respond to the vanguard that the Egyptian workers have established and are continuing to build, which we foresaw in our analysis in the document on the Arab revolution in spite of the pessimism of all superficial impressionism. This time the Palestinian workers will participate in an overall Arab revolution whose advance guard will be much stronger than it was after June 1967 when it was constituted by the Palestinians themselves because the movement of the Arab toiling masses was so weak. They will participate in a revolution whose driving wedge will be represented by the workers of Egypt, the main battalion of the Arab proletariat. January, 1975
an appeal for