The politics of Israel's

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week?

they see it, to liberate Lebanon from both the Syrians and the Palestinians and to set up a Maronite Christian state.

At regular and increasingly frequent intervals the Israelis have attacked PLO positions in the Lebanon and bombed civilian targets with the aim of isolating the PLO from the Lebanese people, thus making the Zionists' aims easier to implement.

In 1978 Israel invaded Southern Lebanon and more recently for 15 days in July 1981 attacked PLO The speech was made as 200,000 peace demonstrators joined a huge rally on the other side of the Rhine - underlining the pressure of West German Chancellor Schmidt to moderate the pace of the war drive.

But while imperialist leaders have grown accustomed to putting up with Schmidt's timidity - and positions and bombed civil.

ian centres of Beirut, killing hundreds of civilians, mostly Lebanese.

Israel used the Polish crisis last December to divert attention from its annexation of the territory of the Golan Heights occupied in 1967.

Now it appears Israel is taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by the Falklands crisis and the European summit in diverting media coverage and the attention of the US executive while it carries out its aims in the Lebanon. plainly look forward to an impending electoral defeat for his right wing Social Democratic Party - the NATO camp as a whole is far from a harmonious one.

Most rowdy of the inmates . is the newest entrant, Spain. The Spanish generals have set the cat amongst the pigeons by demanding the establishment Lebanon refugees after air attack invasion of a new southern command under Spanish control - to include not only the Canary Islands and Spanish enclaves in North Africa but also Gibraltar!

The Spanish military also want NATO's Iberian subcommand transferred from Portugal to Spain.

Needless to say neither the Portuguese generals, nor 1978 the British government, not many other NATO chiefs (reluctant to spread their net to include Africa) are enthusiastic about this plan.

And on top of this Spain has for its own diplomatic reasons refused to back Thatcher's war in the Falklands, and has withheld cooperation from US moves JOHN HARRIS : to aid Egypt and Israel in the Middle East.

But while the soldiers and strategists squabble over the best way to divide up the task of repressing the world's working class, it might be thought that at least the top industrial ruling classes could agree on how best to confront the economic crisis.

Inconclusive

But no: the contlicting and competing economic interests of the 'top ten' cconomic powers brought an inconclusive mecting in Versailles. No concessions were made by the Reagan government to the demands that the USA assist efforts to stabilise international currencies and reduce world-wide interest rates.

In exchange, Reagan's attempts to tighten restrictions on trade with the USSR and deformed workers states met a cool response from EEC leaders desperately anxious to find markets to sustain their own floundering home industries. And Japanese leaders stonewalled calls on all sides for them to ease off their export drive.

The disarray among the leaders of the capitalist world is, an indication of the scale of the political and economic crisis they face on an international and national level.

But our task in this situation is to prepare the necessary revolutionary leadership and mass mobilisation to overthrow their reactionary governments together with the capitalist system of exploitation on which they all depend. THE Zionist Labour Party of Israel, headed by Shimon Peres, is affiliated to the social democratic 'Second International' and is thus a sister party of the British Labour Party.

Like all reformist parties, the main line of policy of the Israeli Labour Party is a reflection of the policies of the domestic ruling class.

In Israel Labour policy is based on four "no's":

*No to the PLO;

*No to Palestinian self-determination, national rights and Palestinian statehood;

*No withdrawal from Jerusalem;

*No return to the borders of pre-June 1967.

From this standpoint Labour leaders have disagreed with the Autonomy plans in the Camp David accords.

Instead they advocate what is called the "Jordanian option", whereby Jordan would control the West Bank while the Zionists would retain their settlements there.

Though these settlements amount to only 40% of the land, they are in fact 60-70% of the fertile land available.

Settlement

Settlements are key to Labour's position. During the elections last year Peres argued that Begin had no real idea of how to establish settlements: and that by electing Labour government, Zionists would get a real settlement programme!

This is part and parcel of a general line of "practical Zionism" through which the Labour leaders believe Major pro-Zionist - Wilson political sovereignty over the dispossessed Palestinian people must emerge from the faits accomplis of colonial settlement.

That a party with such overtly oppressive, warlike and reactionary politics should be admitted to the ranks of the Second International should come as no surprise: after all the British Labour leaders, their hands bloodied by practical complicity in eighty years of imperialist and colonial wars, are among the leading lights of the "International"

Indeed within the British Labour Party and its NEC there is a vocal pro-Zionist lobby which has so far crippled the necessary struggle for solidarity with dispossessed Palestinian people and-with the Arab and Jewish working class in their struggle against a vicious, marauding racially exclusive regime.

It is vital that this struggle is taken up. Socialists should demand:

1) Opposition to all forms of racism including antisemitism. Unconditional support for all genuine anti-imperialist struggles.

2). Recognition of the right of national self-determination for the Palestinian people.

3) Recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to choose their own representatives, at the present time their representatives being the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).

) Recognition ot Lion sm as a racialist colonialis movement.

5) For a secular democratic state of Palestine. For the right of refugees to return. For the right of all resident in occupied Palestine, including the Jewish settlers, to remain in Palestine, to retain their own language and culture and participating as equals in the politics of the area.

6) For the blacking by the labour movement of all military equipment and supplies to Israel.

7) For the breaking of all links between the trade union and labour movement and Zionism, in particular for the disaffiliation of Poale Zion from the

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 17