[The following are excerpts from the political resolution adopted at the Fourth Congress of the Revolutionary Communist League, the Israeli section of the Fourth International. The congress was held in September 1976, and the excerpts, concerning the RCL's position on the Palestinian liberation movement, were published in the November issue of Matzpen-Marxist, the monthly publication of the RCL.]
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is the umbrella organization of all the different currents in the Palestinian resistance. It embodies the Palestinian national-liberation movement. As such, the PLO deserves the unconditional support of every revolutionary organization in
Such a united campaign would be the best response to the government's attempts to sow division in the workers and mass movement. In face of the small dose of legality and the disorientation this can produce, a united campaign for legalization would in practice help more than anything else in the forging of class unity.
Such a united campaign would also be closely tied to a correct position on the elections themselves. The best way to prevent the elections from becoming a means of "democratically" legitimizing the strong state is to present a common front of the workers and mass movement. Our proposal on this is to establish a united slate of workers candidates on the basis of a program that provides answers to the political problems of the day.
Such a program would champion the following demands: total amnesty and full democratic freedoms; the right of the nationalities to self-determination; opposition to the social pact; free elections to a constituent assembly that would proclaim the republic.
The common front, in which each party would have total liberty to publicize its own political views, would be the best way bourgeoisie's divisive to counteract the maneuvers while meeting the demands so often shown to be those of all the workers of Spain.
the world. However, the PLO is not a communist organization, and none of its member organizations has thoroughly abandoned the petty-bourgeois nationalism that characterized-and characterizes-their programs and their leaderships. In this regard, the necessity to build up the revolutionary-communist leadership of the Arab-Palestinian national-liberation movement still remains an immediate task.
In effect, the PLO is controlled by Fateh in a bureaucratic-centralist fashion. It lacks any democratic pattern, and oppressive measures are taken against opponent members. Our unconditional support does not imply a Catholic marriage. It stems from the PLO being a front of the forces struggling for the liberation of Palestine from Zionism, and we see our place in it. However, if this definition should no longer be applicable, and/or our autonomy is threatened, we shall consider our position anew..:
The revolutionary Marxists' relations with the organizations and institutions of the national-liberation movement were clearly defined by the Second and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International and by Trotsky, in relation to the Chinese revolution:
• Unconditional support for the organizations of the national-liberation movement in their struggle against imperialism and colonialism.
• The position regarding the leaderships is determined by their class character: no 1s determined by their class character: no support for the bourgeois and pettybourgeois leaderships at the head of the national movement nor any support for their nationalistic program or their bourgeois strategy.
• The organization of the proletariat around a revolutionary-communist party and the struggle for the political hegemony of the proletariat and its independent organizations in the national-liberation movement.
• Participation in an anti-imperialist front together with the various currents (tendencies) of the national-liberation movement, maintaining the absolute political and organizational independence of the working class.
• Revolutionary Marxists do not desert either the struggle or the movement for national liberation. Furthermore, they constitute the only force that can actually attain the aims of national liberation in full by achieving hegemony in the movement and leading it to the revolutionarysocialist solution to the national problem.
This principled approach is the one that guides the revolutionary communists in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and determines our relations with the PLO and its institutions.
The PLO is the framework that unifies the organizations struggling against Zionist rule. As such, the revolutionary Marxists support the PLO unconditionally and its struggle against the Zionist regime. Moreover, we, revolutionary Marxists operating under the Zionist regime itself, consider ourselves an integral part of the PLO.
In spite of the fact that the [PLO] National Council's composition is bureaucratically determined and it includes "notables" that are not part of the struggling forces but fulfill the task of presenting the PLO's "sense of responsibility," the council nonetheless comprises all the currents in the resistance movement and we should strive to act within its framework, preserving our political and organizational independence with the aim of strengthening the revolutionary. proletarian faction in the movement. The petty-bourgeois character of the actual PLO leadership-organized in the PLO's
Executive Committee-denies us the possibility of a political agreement with it for the moment.
In the framework of the Palestinian liberation movement and the National Council we will act as a well-defined political current, presenting a political program which is the revolutionaryproletarian alternative for Palestinians and Jews as well, and in the wider context of the whole Arab region an alternative to the actual PLO leadership.
In the discussion presently dividing the PLO over the role of the resistance in the imperialist "settlement," we will stand side by side with those organizations that refuse to surrender to the pressure exerted by imperialism and by the Arab bourgeoisies. At the same time, we will continue to struggle against the nationalistic and bourgeois positions that still rule these organizations. We will strengthen our ties with those currents that may partially abandon their radical nationalistic ideology and practice, aiming at recruiting them to the revolutionary Marxist program for the Arab socialist revolution, and getting them involved in the construction of the revolutionary-communist leadership for the Palestinian liberation movement.
Notes
4. See Intercontinental Press, February 14, p. 124.