Syrian regime ordered its tanks, planes, and troops to invade Lebanon.
The announced purpose of the invasion — in reality it was an open and dramatic escalation of an intervention that had been going on for some time - was to bring peace and order to that civil-war-rocked land. The real purpose was quite different. The invasion was designed to bolster the faltering Christian right and to push bock the anti-reactionary forces.
The Syrian regime, anxious for a settlement with Isroel, moved into Lebanon to clamp down on the Palestinian resistance and to prevent the danger to bourgeois order that would have been posed had the rightists been defeated. That was the real meaning of the peace and order heralded
Thus it is that the Syrian invasion has enjoyed the blessings of all opponents of the Arab revolution, from avowed enemies like the Israeli settler-colonial state and U.S. and French imperialism
For the masses in Lebanon, however, the Syrian invasion has brought only a dramatic rise in death, destruction, and human suffering. Thousands more have been killed and wounded. There are increasingly severe shortages of fuel, food, water, electricity, and medical care, Under the aegis of the Syrian invasion, the rightists have felt free to attempt to consolidate their territory, attacking Palestinian refugee camps and slaughtering those who fall into their hands.
But the rightist forces, even with Syrian support, can be beaten back. The Syrian invasion itself, despite its superiority in arms, has met stiff resistance. The Fourth International hails the struggle of the Lebanese masses and Palestinian resistance fighters against the Syrian-rightist combination. We call for a worldwide campaign of solidarity, centered on the demand for im-
Editeur responsable: René Groslambert, 34 rue Nothomb, 1040 Bruxelles.
by Damascus.
to treacherous "friends" like the Arab bourgeois regimes.
mediate Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.
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