The civil war in Lebanon began almost a year ago with a military offensive launched on 13 April 1975 by right-wing militias against the Palestinian resistance.
The right-wing parties, notably the Phalangists, had been arming and training for several years in preparation for a more determined attack on the resistance, since the Lebanese army had proved incapable of this task. But the offensive came at a particularly delicate moment.
Internally, the authority of the bourgeois state was increasingly discredited by the existence of the strong independent Palestiman presence, and by the tremendous mobilisations of the Lebanese masses - seen in the growing strikes by workers, peasants and students.
Externally, the step-by-step diplomacy of Kissinger was running out of steam. Egypt wasn't a major problem, but the united Syrian-Palestinian insistence on a global settlement also supported by the USSR -posed serious obstacles to the enforcement of Pax Americana in the Middle East.
Palestinian The position of the Palestinians in Lebanon was key to the whole operation, since pressure on them here — and thus indirectly on Syna - could force them into concessions that would allow for a more global and durable settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This settlement, by setting up a Palestinian entity on the West Bank under conditions accepted by the US, would lead to the abandonment by the Palestinians of their base in Lebanon, thus allowing the Beirut regime to re-establish its authority over the Lebanese territory and crack down on the mass movements and leftist parties.
The previous major attempt to weaken the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon had been made in 1973, when the Lebanese army launched attacks on the retugee camps. but the operation was a complete failure for the army, while the Palestinians by the Egyptian regime. won important political victories.
In the period leading up to the civil war, attempts were made to weaken the Lebanese mass movement by concentrating on localised areas and avoiding a generalised confrontation. These tactics also met with failure. When the army opened fire on a demonstration protesting against the establishment of a fishing monopoly in the southern city of Saida, killing a Moslem community leader, the result was a mass insurrection; the army was forced to withdraw, leaving the city openly outside the authority of the state.
The failure of these tactics opened the way for the intervention of the right-wing parties. But they preceded their offensive with a political campaign designed to enhance the prestige of the army and thus allow its reintroduction onto the political scene.
Phalangists But it turned out that the Phalangists had miscalculated the role which the army could play. The appointment of a military government in May by the right-wing President Franjieh Once again the Middle East is occupying a central place in international politics. The civil war in Lebanon and the upsurge in the West Bank have dramatically underlined the fact that the struggle of the Arab masses continues despite the relative gains made by imperialism since the October war in 1973.
The October war had complex effects on Arab politics: At a certain level it succeeded in bringing about a temporary stabilisation of the Arab ruling classes, in comparison with the pre-October 'no war, no peace' situation. To this extent it assisted the rightward evolution of these regimes and Sadat's economic opening' to imperialism and the West. The imperialist project of a 'peaceful settlement' of the Arab-Israeli conflict was therefore carried several steps forwar, especially in Egypt after the signing of the capitulationist Sinai accords However, this very important development at the level of the bourgeois state has not yet been translated into a decisive smashing of the mass movement in Egypt. On the contrary, the depth of the economic crisis, the concessions made to Zionism in the Sinai accords, the abrupt rupture of ties with the Soviet Union, and the suddenness of the opening to imperialism have all helped in the development of a powerful and rising mass movement in Egypt - seen in the outburst of strikes and demonstrations at the end of March.
however, moves were once again the anti-Phalangist forces.
to count on direct military interwould side for Arab nationalist reasons with the Palestinian resistance. caused such a massive armed reaction within the Moslem neighbourhoods that it had to resign three days later.
Direct army intervention on the side of the Christian Phalangists was too dangerous, as it could cause a split in the army along confessional lines. As the civil war. intensified, made to prepare an intervention by the army as a neutral force which could underpin a Bonapartist military bourgeois allies.
But the army was increasingly racked by massive desertions. When General Aziz El Ahdab, a Moslem officer described as a friend of the Christian bourgeoisie, finally launched a military coup after eleven months of civil war, he found himself controlling less than a thousand men. The vast majority of the Moslem rank-and-file had gone off to join The Phalangists and other rightwing Christian parties were unable vention by their imperialist allies; and they faced a distinctly unfavourable relationship of forces since the Moslem majority in Lebanon On the Palestinian arena the advance of the imperialist 'peace' project was the so-called 'refusal front' - that rejected the peaceful settlement.
It should be pointed out that following Hussein's massacre of the Palestin ian resistance in Jordan in September 1970, the 'Palestinian arena' became in reality restricted to Lebanon - the only remaining country in which the resis tance movement still had a mass base in the refugee camps independent of the Lebanese regime. The origins of the Lebanese civil war have to be locatec in the tremendous impetus that this Palestinian presence in Lebanon gave to the development of a genuine left-oriented mass movement of opposition to angist offensive in Lebanon.
Finally Zionism's war against the Arabs in October 1973 was only won at the cost of a very great economic, social and especially political loss. The gro ing international isolation of the Zionist state and the political victory that ti ainst the Phalangist attacks No real challenge to this was offered by the left reformist parties.
They centred their mobilisation around demands for greater political power to the Moslems, and subordinated themselves to the Moslem bourgeois leaders - who were forced to participate shyly in a confessional movement aimed at limiting the privileges and power of their Christian The reformist left also uncriticcally tail-ended the Syrian regime Here, however, they were in tor a nasty surprise. Syria had at first sided with the Palestinian resistance against the Phalangist attacks; but the increasing prospect of a strengthening of the resistance did not serve Syrian interests at all. Preservation of the status quo in Lebanon was all that was wanted As the Lebanese left, the Palestinian resistance and the Moslem mass movement began to score growing successes in the later months of the civil war, the Syrians shifted their weight more and more against their previous allies — a turn which was reinforced by pressure from Saudi Arabia, the US, and arrangements made with the Lebanese bourgeoisie This has recently developed into an open political conflict between the Syrian regime and the left-wing parties and Palestinian resistance even involving light military clashes between the two sides.
The latest ceasefire imposed by the Syrians through the left reformist leader Kamal Jumblatt is even more tenuous than previous ones No basic agreement had been reached when it was declared.
Short of dramatic developments in neogiating a settlement of the Palestinian question, the only solution for the Lebanese bourgoisie that would stabilise the political situation and contain the radicalised mass movements is a Bonapartist regime, agreeable to both sides in the conflict, which could win popular support simply by putting an end to the murderous civil war and then use this support to rebuild the foundations of a strong bourgeois state. That, however, is easier said
----- pull-quotes -----
reflected in a rightward evolution of the Arafat leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and its gradual integration into the dead-end road of bourgeois diplomacy and politics. At the same time this evolution was match ed by the formation of a wing inside the Palestinian resistance movement -
the Lebanese Government. It was this independent Palestinian presence and the rise of the Lebanese left that formed the pretext for the reactionary Phal