eight monts alter the a new situation
ARAB EAST october war: by JON ROTHSCHILD Egyptian officials estimated the crowd that greeted Richard Nixon when he arrived in Cairo June 12 at 2 million. The Sadat government had overlooked no step to ensure that the U.S. president, while he might have to restrict his American appearances to selected audiences of used car salesmen and other cockroach capitalists, would be properly received in the Egyptian capital. Workers were given time off at full pay to line the streets of Nixon's motorcade, schools were closed, and the mass media urged the whole population of Cairo to come out to greet the "man of peace, who only eight months ago was supplying the Israeli military with the quipment it needed to defend the gains of its June 1967 aggression. Banners in English were even hung up. "Long live Nixon, the man of peace!" "We have confidence in Nixon!" and "God loves Nixon!" were among the most popular, the last one casting allah into an ever more exclusive category. But in spite of the carefully orchestrated character of the welcome, and in spite of the undeniable fact that Nixon tried to use the pomp and public relations of his Arab East tour to bolster his increasingly precarious position in the United States, the size of the crowds, the lengths to which the Egyptian and Syrian regimes went to please their guest, and the agreements and statements signed in Cairo, Jidda, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Amman all point to elements of a new political situation in the Arab East. In foct, it is likely that this new situation will mean changes in the alignment of forces in the Ecst that will be just as great as those engendered by the Israeli victory of 1967. The precise effects of all the factors involved in the new situation may not be fully clear for some time. But a few of the chief elements can already be sketched out: a change in the relationship of forces between the Israeli and Arab regimes; a change in the relationship of forces between the Isroeli regime and U.S. imperialism; an increase, even if temporary, in the prestige of the Egyptian and Syrian governments; a decline in the Kremlin's influence in the region; a new penetration of the region by U.S. capital and a consequent increase in the political influence of Washington at the expense not only of Moscow but of U.S. imperialism's European competitors as well. All these factors will in turn lead to important changes in the internal conditions of most of the states of the region. The aftermath of the Israeli aggression of 1967 saw the rise of the Palestinian resistance movement, which became a determining factor in the political life of the Arab East. And in turn, the way in which the Palestinian movement responds to the aftermath of the October War will have a significant effect on the future political evolution of the Arab East, The Palestinian response, because of its importance and complexity, deserves to be treated separately. But that response cannot be properly emerging understood without on examination of the objective situation within which the Palestinian movement - and the revolutionary movement in the whole Arab East as well -- will have to function.
The October War and the peaceful solution
In early 1970, Gamal Abdel Nasser, then Egyptian head of state, launched a "war of attrition" against the Isroeli forces camped on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. His aim was not to drive the occupiers off the Sinai peninsula, but to put sufficient pressure on the Zionist state to compel it to make concessions that could allow Cairo to open negotiations with the warmth. reflects the present confluence of interest between U.S.
imperialism & the Arab ruling classes
3
ARAB EAST a possibility of achieving a partial Israeli withdrawal. War of attrition is the worst kind of battle for the Israeli state to fight. It offers no opportunities for the decisive lightning breakthroughs in which the Zionist command excels. It costs money, as equipment is used up without producing any compensatory military or political gains. And it costs casualties, which are immediately felt in a country with a population of less than 3 million. The Israeli regime responded to Nasser's war of attrition by carrying out deep-penetration air raids on the Nile Valley, hitting, apart from military targets, factories and workers neighborhoods. These raids on civilian targets, combined with the simultaneous rise of the Palestinian resistance mavement, which had taken its place as the second-most active sector of the colonial revolution (after Vietnam), and the increase in Isracli terrorism against the occupied Arab populations, began to erode the international support that the Zionist state had until then been able to count on. At the same time, the Egyptian government purchased odvanced anti-oircraft missiles from the Soviet Union, and that made the Israeli raids increasingly costly. As the war of attrition dragged on, the American ruling class devised a "peace plan" for the Arab East. Named after William Rogers, then the U.S. secretary of state, it entailed a ceose-fire between the Arab regimes and Israel and the opening of negotiations aimed at arranging an Isroell withdrawal from some of the Arab territories occupied since June 1967 in exchange for Arab recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist state. A subordinate, and not always openly articulated, aspect of the Rogers Plan held out the possibility of the establishment of a rump Palestinian state in the West Bank of the Jordan River ofter the Israeli withdrawal. The Nasser government accepted the Rogers Plan in principle and the war of attrition was ended. Sections of the Israeli ruling class, concerned about the growth of the Palestinian movement, were likewise inclined to accept it, seeing it as a way of exchanging small parcels of territory for long-term insurance against the rising threat to Zionism represented by the Arab revolution and its most active component, the Palestinian movement. But the overwhelming majority of the leodership of the Palestinian resistance rejected the plan as an attempt to liquidale the Palestinion cause. The Palestinian rejection of the Ragers Plan, combined with the revolutionary threat the fedayeen represented in Jordan, resulted in King Hussein's lounching a war of annihilation against the Palesfinian movement in September 1970. Hussein's victory in the civil war should have allowed for implementation of the "peaceful solution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to the calculations of U.S. Imperialism and the Arab regimes. But Ironically, Hussein's very success doomed the Rogers Plan. With the power of the Palestinian movement thoroughly broken, the Israeli rulers saw no reason to concede territory. Tel Aviv's position consequentl, hardened. Further, the Palestinian defeat triggered a general shift to the right in the politics of the Arab region. With Israeli power seemingly absolute, with the war of attrition ended, and with the decline of the Palestinian movement, U.S. imperialism saw no reason for dissatisfaction with the status quo, especially as it was preoccupied with the deteriorating situation in Indochina. So the Rogers Plan was shelved. Washington made no effort to impose -- or even propose -- a "peaceful solution." Throughout 1971, 1972, and most of 1973, then, the Arab regimes were trapped in a situation of "no war, no peace." The military power of Egypt and Syria was bolstered by the latest in Soviet weaponry, but neither Cairo nor Damascus
4 had sufficient strength, or for that matter desire, to attempt to dislodge the Israeli occupation troops by force. Concurrently, the mass movement in Egypt began to rise. In 1972 and 1973 student strikes and demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria led to big clashes with the police. In Helwan, conter of the Egyptian textile industry, there were strikes in both the public and private sectors. Vanguard elements in the Egyptian trade-union movement were beginning to forge links with the radical students, some of whom were developing critiques of the politics and ideology of Nasserism. The Egyptian economy, like the economies of most underdeveloped capitalist countries, was especially suffering the effects of the international crisis of the capitalist economy. The Arab masses were demanding that "their" governments take steps to liquidate the fruits of the 1967 Israeli aggression. Sadat's prestige in the Arab world had sunk so low that his name was Ittle more than a joke from the Nile Valley to the ArabPersion Gulf. A new idiom was coming into vogue in the Arabic language: When someone made a statement others considered absurd exaggeration or stupid bombast he would be answered with the question, Who do you think you are, Anwar el-Sadat? Under such conditions, no Arab regime could simply give up and directly accept a capitulatory settlement with Tel Aviv. The Sodat regime made every effort to hold out concessions to U.S. imperialism in order to induce it to put some pressure on the Israeli state, the most dramatic example being the expulsion in the summer of 1972 of the Soviet military technicions working in Egypt. But nothing worked. By the autumn of 1973, the Sadat government was in danger of imminent collapse, as even sections of the armed forces began to turn against the regime. With the perspective of launching a "war of liberation" ruled out by the very nature of the Egyption and Syrion regimes, and with overt acceptance of Israeli demands for open capitulation excluded by the probability of a revolutionary mass reaction, the "peaceful solution, " like the Sadat regime itself, seemed of an imposse. The October War was launched to resolve that dilemmo. It was a war aimed of "peace, " a military action designed to provoke diplomatic activity that less drastic action had failed to produce. The goal of the Egyptian and Syrian governments was to canalize the rise of popular discontent and at the same time force U.S. imperialism to intervene in the conflict to pressure Tel Aviv to abandon its ultra-arrogant attitude, to settle the contentious "Palestinian problem," and to direct massive economic aid to the faltering economies of the nanoil-producing Arab states. And the war's results Militarily, the October War was a defeat for the Arab regimes. The Israeli army advanced further into Syria. On the Egyption front, while Egyptian troops were able to retake some territory east of the Suez Canal, the Israeli breakthrough in the central sector of the canal and the enclave created on the western bank effectively surrounded the Egyptian Ill Corps on the southem sector of the eastern bank. Had the ceaseFire not gone into effect, it is probable that the Ill Corps would have been annihilated, a preparatory step for the Zionist command turning its attention to the 11 Corps on the northern sector of the canal. But the purely military situation must be viewed in the political context of the needs of the Zionist state. Since it foundation in 1948, that state has been able to determine the military course of events in the region with virtually complete
freedom. It has been able to decide what territory to take and when; it has been able to strike with impunity at any part of the eastern Arab world. Continual demonstration of that power has been -- and will continue to be -- a comerstone of Zionist policy. So the facts that the Arab armies made some gains at the beginning of the war, that at the war's conclusion some of those gains still remained intact on the Egyptian front, and that the Syrian army (hitherto considered the weakest Arab army by the Zionist command) was able to wage a war of attrition for several months after the October cease-fire modified the relationship of forces between the Israeli state and the Arab regimes. There can be no doubt that Tel Aviv's inability to decisively crush the Syrien and Egyptian armies as it did in 1967 is one of the factors that has allowed implementation of the "peaceful solution" to be placed on the order of the day. At the same time, the war shifted the relationship of forces between Tel Aviv and Washington in favor of the lotter. Here again, the change must be viewed in the context of the needs of Zionist policy. While it is true that the Isroeli regime has always been a subordinate ally of Washington, it is important not to assimilate the position of the Zionist regime to that of a U.S. puppet like the Saigon government. The Israeli ruling class has a genuine social base. It is supported by the vast majority of the Israeli-Jewish population, which is, in large part, proletarian in composition. So the interests of the Israeli ruling class, while they generally dovetail those of U.S. imperialism, are not identical to them. In the past -- especially since 1967 -- the Israeli government has been able to deal with Washington from a position of strength. U.S. imperialism simply had no other option than to maintain the Israeli state as the only feasible counterrevolutionary cop in the region. The entire ruling class in the United States, even that section of it whose major economic interests lie in the Arab world, has been unanimous in its unconditional support to the Israeli military machine. This has meant that Washington has had little leverage against the Israeli govemment whenever conflicts of interest have arisen. U.S. imperialism's only serious source of pressure -- denying aid or arms to Tel Aviv -- would have been as damaging to Washington's interests as to Tel Aviv's. That situation has now been partially modified by the October War, It is absolutely clear, for example, that the Israeli regime did not want to accept the cease-fire that prevented it from pursuing its offensive on the Egyptian front to the bitter end. It broke the cease-fire once to complete its encirclement of the Egyptian Ill Corps. It would have liked to break it a second time to annihilate the Ill Corps. But, as Moshe Dayan rather ruefully observed, it is not easy to go against the wishes of a country that is supplying you in the morning with the ammunition you have to use that afternoon. While, as we shall see, U.S. imperialism has in no way changed its commitment to preserve the Zionist state and to equip it with an armed force that can be used successfully against the Arab revolution, it is nevertheless true that Washington is now in a much stronger position than it was before the October War to impose its demands on the Israeli rulers. These two factors -- Washington's strengthened ascendancy over Tel Aviv and the shift in the relationship of forces between Israel and the Arab states -- have enabled the Egyption and Syrian governments to engage in a formidable campaign of mystification aimed at portraying the sequels to the October War as steps toward the liberation of Palestine and Sadat os a modern-day Saladin embodying the hopes of the whole Arab nation. One aspect of that mystification has been the spreading of the nation that the American government has in some way altered its commitment to the Zionist state, that it
Sadat and Arafat of Fateh. How will Palestinians react? is now interested in freely doling out economic assistance to the Arab peoples. The temporary increase in Sodat's prestige has enabled him to complete his turn to U.S. imperialism under the pretext that he is not selling out the aspirations of the Arab masses but on the contrary is helping to fulfill them. All this represents the background to Nixon's tour of the Arab East. The warmth with which he was received reflects the present confluence of interest between U.S. imperialism and the Arab ruling closses. Washington's new offensive The central objective of the U.S. ruling class in the "peace process" now under way in the Arab East is to recover the ground it lost in the region during the late 1960s and early 1970s and to extend its influence in the area, solidifying that influence by establishing bonds of economic and political dependence between the Arab states and Washington. This involves reducing Soviet power and influence and strengthening its hold on the oil-producing states, notably Saudi Arabia, in order to make economic gains at the expense of European imperialism. The costs of this American operation will be borne not by the U.5. capitalist class but by its Israeli fortress. In exchange for the expansion of American economic and political influence, the Zionist state will have to make certain territorial concessions. In the June 12 issue of the Paris daily Le Monde, Eric Rouleau summarized some of the current objectives of U.S. policy in the Arab East: "To supplant the USSR. in the countries in which it still exercises a certain influence; to win new political and economic positions; possibly to oust European competitors, who are also seeking markets to restabilize their balance of trade and payments; no goal seems too ambitious for American strategists today. True, the conjuncture born of the October War is encouraging them. Commercial exchanges between the United States and the Near East ore on the rise again. Egypt and Syria have loosened up their laws to attract foreign capital; the Cairo government is generously handing out oil exploration contracts to American companies. And, while awaiting receipt of the $250 million Nixon has promised for reconstruction of the cities along the Suez Canal, American technicians are contributing to unblocking the waterway." U.S. investment in Egypt is already showing signs of becoming an important sector of American investment in the underdeveloped world. Five big hotels are scheduled to be built in Egypt (one will be directed by Nixon's brother). The Impart-Export Bank has granted Egypt two loans that amount to $180 million. The Nixon administration has proposed $250 million worth of government aid to Cairo.
ARAB EAST The declaration signed by Nixon and Sadat on June 14 codified the plans to increase U.S. penetration of the Egyptian economy. In the declaration Nixon declared his willingness to "help strengthen the financial structure of Egypt, " to help reconstruct the cities along the Suez Canal, to encourage U.S. corporations to invest in Egypt, and to urge Congress to approve large-scale aid to Cairo. An especially significant portion of the declaration stated that Washington and Cairo "will begin negotiation of an agreement for cooperafion in the field of nuclear energy under guaranteed safeguards. Upon conclusion of such on agreement the United States is prepared to sell nuclear reactors and fuel to Egypt." "Actually," Henry Tanner pointed out in the June 15 New
"the sale of nuclear fuel to Egypt will begin immediately. The joint declaration instructs the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to conclude a provisional agreement with Egypt covering such sales pending completion of negotiations on the full agreement. " (It should be noted that Egypt already has two atomic reactors, which were provided by the Soviet Union. The new agreement with Washington will Free Cairo from dependence on Moscow for nuclear fuel for those reactors.) On June 16 the Cairo daily al-Ahram reported that work on the first Egyptian atomic power station to be built with U.S. assistance would begin in 1975. The station is scheduled to be operative by 1981; it will cost $250 million. Wark on a second station will reportedly begin in 1977; it will be finished by 1983. The second reactor will be equipped with units for desalinating sea water. Sections of the U.5, press reacted to the Egyptian-American agreement by voicing concern that Sadat could duplicate Indira Gandhi's tactics and consign the plutonium byproduct of the atomic reactors for production of a fission bomb. That possibility, however, is the least important aspect of the agreement. The really significant thing -- apart from the symbolic the tab for the Aswan dam -- is that the agreement establishes long-term economic bonds between Washington and the Egyption government. Mere construction of the plants will take nearly a decade. Further, the increase in electric power resulting from the reactors' output will provide elements for an economic infrastructure that will make further American investment that much more attractive and profitable. In this respect, Egypt offers a better field for imperialist investment than do many other underdeveloped capitalist coun tries. The Egyptian working class is not insignificant numerically; more than eighty years of imperialist investment (since the British occupation of 1881) have created an infrastructure more flexible and extensive than that which exists in most of Asia and Latin America, not to mention the rest of Africa. And finally, it is usually easier (and more profitable) for capital to Flow into projects aimed at reconstructing industry that has been destroyed by war than to initiate totally new industrial development. The Egyptian plans to reconstruct and enlarge the Suez Canal, to rebuild the conal cities, and to expand the country's tourist industry are projects that are not at all unrealistic from the standpoint of Egyptian and international capitalism. For the American capitalist class, these projects represent not only profit-generating possibilities, but also political insurance that the Egyptian regime will not be in a position to break with Washington as it did after the 1967 For Sadat, the importation of American capital will be doubly beneficial. First, the reconstruction process financed in part by U.S. capital will afford an opportunity to ease Egypt's unemployment and housing problems, as the refugee popula- /
6 fion now concentrated in Cairo and the rest of the Nile delta can be expected to return to its homes alang the canal. Second, the consequent "boom" of the Egyptian economy, especially if it is accompanied by further Israeli withdrawala from the Sinai peninsula, can be expected to divert the dissatisfaction of the Egyptian workers and peasants. Such is Sadat's hope. The convergence of interests between the Egyptian and American regimes, then, is based on Sodat's determination to extract himself from his shaky economic and political situation with the aid of U.S. capital and U.S. imperialism's determination to simultaneously take advantage of the Egyptian market and reestablish its political influence over the most important country in the Arab world. The second axis of Washington's drive toward Pax Americana in the Arab East runs through Saudi Arabia. Both Saudi Arabic and the emirates of the Arab-Persian Gulf have accumulated enormous sums of money from their oil income during recent years. Until recently, these holdings have sat idly in imperialist banks. The international monetary crisis and the devaluation of various Western currencies have heavily reduced the value of these holdings. This has led the states concerned to seek more profitable areas of investment. The direction Saudi investment has taken has clearly been of benefit. to American copitalism. The Saudi regime has proposed investing in the American petroleum industry, a plan that fully corresponds to that industry's need for capital for expansion. Another section of Saudi holdings is going to finance projects being carried out elsewhere in the Arab world in cooperation with American imperialism. (The oil pipeline running from Suez to the Mediterranean is an example.) The June 22 issue of The Economist took note of this aspect of the Saudi-American alliance: "It appears that the co-operation between Saudi Arabia and America that was announced two weeks ago is likely to become every bit as important as first suspected. Saudi Arabia's surplus oil revenues, which will be far bigger than any other country's, will largely be recycled through America both in investments and os imports of American goods and services. In the past few months Saudi officials have radically revised their traditional ultra-conservative attitudes towards investments. They realise that they cannot for long continue to invest their surplus funds in short-term accounts and they claim that they are only doing so now on the advice of western bankers. The Saudis want soon to start making large investments in selected American company stock, in property and in refinery and in petrochemical projects. The present state of the American stock market frightens many would-be investors, but the Saudis, who would invest for the long term, smell bargains. They emphasise, though, that they will be unwilling to take a wholly passive role and for that reason will expand some existing Arab banks, perhaps create some new ones, and perhaps form other organisations staffed with expert advisers, many of them non-Arab, to help to overcome their own self-acknowledged shortage of business expertise." In the same orticle, the leading organ of British finance capital took a smug attitude toward some secondary effects of the
U.S,-Saudi alliance. Discussing the recent meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), held in Quito, Ecuador, The Economist observed: "The decision of the .. OPEC. - to raise some crude all prices by 1012 cents a barrel was hardly the most significant result of the meeting at Quito. Much more important was the refusal of
Saudi Arabia, Opec's largest producer, to agree to even so nominal an increase and to express its disagreement publicly.
This should kill any remaining doubts about the Saudi's pre-
viously announced intention to lower prices. What is more, the public disagreement, which was backed up by hard words from the Saudis in private, probably means thai they will confinue to push on other fronts for price reductions. Given their strength in oil, the Saudis can hardly fail to succeed unless something totally unforeseen happens." The interpenetration of Saudi and U.S, capital ensures on the one hand that the Saudi rulers will not take measures that would damage U.5. economic interests, as their own would be simultaneously damaged as well. In oddition, if means that mounting Saudi investments in the rest of the Arab world (especially Egypt) can serve as a supplementary force playing the same role as the American investments both politically and economically. The Saudi-American alliance is further cemented by the agreements that have been signed between the two countries providing for large-scale sales of U.5. arms to Riyadh. On the one hand, bolstering the strength of the Saudi armed forces provides Washington with yet another reliable cop in the Arab-Persian Gulf; and on the other hand, the fact that Saudi Arabia will pay for its arms in cash will have the effect of relieving balance of payments pressure on the United States, os some of the oil revenue flowing to Saudi Arabia will be redirected back to the United States. This is an odvantage that no European imperialist power can avail itself of. The strengthening of Washington's already important bond with Saudi Arabia and the solidifying of the new EgyptianAmerican relationship were rounded out with the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Damascus. The Syrian-American rapprochement will undoubtedly proceed at o slower pace than the one between Egypt and the United States, both because of Syria's greater dependence on the Soviet bureaucracy and because of the relatively less profitable market that Syria represents for U.S. imperialism. Nevertheless, the Nixon administration has asked the U.S. Congress for $100 million in contingency aid for Syria, and it is scarcely likely that the Bathist regime will evince either the inclination or the ability to maintain its corlier anti-Washington policy in face of pressure from Egypt and Saudi Arabia and aid offers from the U.S. government. The Israeli connection The new drive of U.5. Imperialism to expand its influence and power in the Arab world does not at all mean that Washington has decided to nullify its alliance with the Israeli state. The Isroeli rulers are well aware that the agreements signed between the United States and the Arab countries will not strengthen the ability of the Arab states to fight Israel. On June 12, speaking of the Weizmann science institute in Rehovoth, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin observed that "when the Arab states are preparing for war, it's not rapprochement with the United States that they want. They aim of that only when they need material aid to develop their economies. That is why this development of Arab-Americon relations should not touch off too much uneasiness in Israel, especially since we know that the United States wants a strong Isroel."
Associated Press reports indicated that Israeli rulers were saying much the same thing in private. One unidentified leader remarked, "If you draw up a balance of the risks and advantages that this rapprochement represents for Israel, you see that the result is clearly positive, in large part because this process cannot go on except at the expense of the Soviet
Union. And Isroel prefers to see an increase in the influence in the Arab countries of a friendly country like the United
States rather than of a superpower that is hostile to Isroel, like the Soviet Union." When Nixon got to Jerusalem on his tour, he left no doubt that American imperialism did indeed "want a strong Israel. " The joint Israeli-American communiqué released of the end of the visit promised for the first time "long-term" military aid to the Zionist state. Previously, U.S. aid to Israel hor been negotiated on a year-by-year basis. The military aid Washington will extend to Israel during the next several years was reported to have been fixed at an average of 51,500 million a year, In addition, Nixon signed an agreement promising Israel the same sort of nuclear aid as had been granted Egypt. In fact, the new opening of Egypt to American Investment will increose, not decrease, Israel's importance to Washington. The Egyption regime is sfill for from having developed enough stability to serve as a reliable imperialist watchdog in the Arab East. The expansion of U.S. investment in Egypt will simply mean that Woshington will have mare to protect, and this assures the Zionist stafe of continued U.5. support. Nevertheless, the new course of U.5. policy in the Arab East does not iully correspond to the immediate interests of the Isroeli ruling class. The Isroeli rulers will have no choice but to relinquish some of the Arab territory they have held since 1967. And while relinquishing some territory surely represents no long-term threat to the existence of the Zionist state, it is still the case that the majority of the Ismelt ruling class would prefer not to yield territorial concessions. relative conflict between Washington and Tel Aviv will have a twofold effect on Israeli policy. First, Tel Aviv will demand the highest possible price from Washington in exchange for its territorial losses, whatever they may be. This undoubtedly partially accounts for the current large increase in American aid to Iscoel. Second, the Israeli rulers will attempt to find ways of reasserting their militory hegemony over the Arab East, ways that do not fundamentally conflict with Washington's carefully arranged "peace scenario. "The necessity of the Israeli ruling class finding ways to do this is all the more pressing in view of the ideological "earthquake" touched off in Israel by its relative setback during the October War, that is, its inability to annihilate the Egyption and Syrian armies.
Lebanese rescue workers remove body of child killed in Israeli bombing raid. 7
ANTIFASCIST MILIANT
For the Zionist ruling class, there is one time-tested means of asserting power in the Arab Ecst, and that is killing Arabs.
Exactly which Arabs are killed must of course vary with the political and military situation in the region. With "disengagement" effected on the Egyptian Front and beginning to take effect on the Syrian front, and with the Jordanian border quier, one tempting target presents itself: Lebanon, a country that cannot defend itself and has a large Palestinian population to boat,
The Israeli rulers last no time. Nixon left Israel For Jordan, the last stop in his "peace pilgrimage, " on June 17. On June
18 Israeli planes struck at Palestinian refugee comps in Lebanon. On June 19 they struck again, and yet again on June 20. The Isroeli regime's excuse for the attacks was the usual one: its need to "defend" itself by hitting back at Palestinian liberation fighters. "These consecutive raids are meant as a signal that we have reached a breaking point, " an Israeli official said on June 20. "This new government is composed of military men who are not prepared to tolerate attacks on the civilian population. " On June 24 Rabin announced that Israel had entered a stage of "perpetual war" against the Palestinian fedaveen. Apart from the observation that there are few other countries in the world in which an official could explain that the government cannot tolerate attacks on civilians because it is composed of military men (who just happen to make their living by killing civilians) and apart from noting the irony - or should we say pathological arrogance - of explaining that the government will express its nontoleration of "attacks on the civilien population" by attacking a civilian population, we should point out that the raids on Lebanon have little if anything to do with opposing Palestinian "terrorism. " The fact of the matter is rather more simple. The raids, which after three days had killed at least 150 civilians, are an application under the current delicate circumstances of the long-standing Zionist policy of terrorizing the Arab world and Flaunting the power of the Zionist state. They are the Israeli BRITAIN "It has been a long time since the violence of the capitalist class stalked the streets of this country quite as openly as on Saturday afternoon, 15 June, " said the June 20 issue of Red Weekly, paper of the International Marxist Group, British section of the Fourth International. "While the National Front proudly paraded their vile doctrines of race hatred through the streets of London, the police meted out brutal punishment to those who dared to challenge the fascist threat. "Between them they can claim the responsibility for the death of Kevin Gately -- the first of our comrades to fall in the fight against racism and fascism." Gately, a 21-year-old student from Warwick University and a sympathizer of the IMG attending his first political demonstration, was murdered June 15 by London cops who attacked a demonstration of some 1,000 militants protesting a meeting against immigrants being hold by the fascist organization Na8 regime's way of showing the Arab world that things have not changed that much after all. And they are a means of showing the Israeli population that the "earthquake" has not destroyed the Israeli state's ability to inflict murderous punishment on a section of the Arab world, "peace pilgrimage" or not.
The plans of U.S. imperialism in the Arab East today are transparent. Washington intends to bolster the role of Saudi
Arabia within the Arab world and cement its alliance with the Saudi family on both the economic and political levels. It intends to pry the Sadat government away from the Soviet bureaucracy definitively, pouring capital into Egypt with the aim of deflecting the working-class and student movements there. The Syrian regime is to be neutralized, if it cannot be directly drown into the American orbit as well. Opposition among the Arab masses to the new U.S. penetration of the eastern Arab world is to be countered through a combination of economic development financed by American capital and territorial concessions wrung out of the Zionist state. At the same time, the Israeli army will remain os the central guaranfor of stability in the region. The result is to be a new American hegemony over all the states in the castern Arab world.
Already the American plan has taken big steps forward. But it is far From having succeeded. The major obstacle to its success is the opposition -- actual or potential -- of the Arab workers and peasants. U.S. Imperialism's re-entry into Egypt has already required and will continue to require changes in the Egyptian socioeconomic structure that will undoubtedly provoke opposition from the Egyptian population. And of the same time, there remains the "problem" that created the Arab-Israeli conflict in the first place: the denial of the national rights of the Palestinian Arabs. The next stages in the development of the Arab East will therefore revolve around two decisive questions: the response of the Egyptian masses to Sadat's "de-Nasserization" progrom and the response of the Palestinian resistance movement to the attempts to impose the "peaceful solution. " Future articles in INPRECOR will return to those two problems. COPS MURDER tional Front. The stated purpose of the National Front rally and march was to protest the Labour goverment's decision to grant amnesty to people who had been declared illegal immigrants under the 1971 Immigration Act. But beyond the immediate purpose, the National Front -- which has engaged in a not insignificant number of attacks on individuals and bookshops of the workers movement -- wanted to stage a show of force on the streets that could bolster their recent successes in several local by-elections. (In Newham they took 12 percent of the vote, pushing the Tories into fourth place and in the Leicester council by-election they took 25 percent, coming in second after the Tories.) The counterdemonstration was supported by Liberation (a colonial freedom group), the IMG, and others. It exceeded the National Front rally in size. Jackie Stevens, a mamber of the IMG who had accompanied Gately to the demonstration, explained how the police attack on the