Lebanon: United Ont of Reaction

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£6000 This week's donations - Doug Mackay £35, Stoke SO £10 Godfrey Webster £25, Lynn Gregory £25, Glasgow SO £10, Sue Himmelweit £18, Helen Flack £10 - bring the total uf to £2682.50 towards our £6000 total. Area by area, the amounts collected and the percentage of the target achiever bombers and heavy artillery, massed on the outskirts of the city.

But continued hectic diplomacy on all sides confirms that the storming of the Palestinian and leftist stronghold is far from the simple matter it has been claimed.

Menachem: Begin's bloody regime has demanded the evacuation of the PLO fighters: in this the Zionists have won the full support of Israel's US imperialist backers, together with many of the so-called "pro-Palestinian" Arab regimes.

Effort

Indeed the whole "peace" effort at present taxing the energies of US envoy Philip Habib is one of securing a Palestinian withdrawal without the Israeli military invasion of Beirut.

In this position the USA has been consistent from the outset of the war, when former Secretary of State Alexander Haig welcomed • the Zionist invasion.

His successor, George Schultz, holds a similar view. He told Senators this week that the war in the Lebanon "provides the chance for a peaceful Lebanon"! Begin (le)

Schultz -both out to crush the people of Palestine The risk of possibly sending US troops as part of an international force to supervise the withdrawal of the PLO fighters would be "worthwhile" , he claimed, if the US imperialists "can remove the PLO from West Beirut and avoid an explosion."

Schultz, it should be noted, was coopted by Reagan to the State Department from his post as President of the Bechtel corporation with large Saudi Arabian interests.

It is no coincidence that the Saudi regime too has been exerting its influence to secure the withdrawal of the Palestinians - offering jet planes and cash to ease them out of West Beirut.

Like other Arab bourgeois regimes, the Saudi leaders combine a veneer of verbal support for the Palestinians with a profound opposition to any struggle which might undermine the delicate balance of forces which preserves the political control of their reactionary regimes over the oppressed masses in the Middle East.

Lebanon had furnished an almost unique example of the linking up of the dispossessed • Palestinian forces with the militias of the Lebanese left in the struggle against the fascists of the Phalange.

Indeed despite press reports of "6,000" PLO fighters, the forces of the left who are fighting alongside the Palestinians are also substantial.

The Zionists are even now facing a rising toll of casualties in their seige of Beirut and would find a final onslaught no easy matter.

Meanwhile there are acknowledged reports of Palestinian resistance behind the Zionist lines.

Behind all the rhetoric of "peace" in Lebanon, socialists should be clear that the American, European and Arab bourgeois leaders mean nothing less than the crush. ing of the Palestinians and Lebanese left and the establishment of right wing rule.

In this struggle our stand must be clear - for concrete solidarity with the forces fighting the Zionist invaders and their reactionary supporters. We must reject all illusions that EEC , UN or US "peace plans" offer anything but defeat.

It is the international workers' movement that must take the lead in solidarity action. In Greece and in Australia dockworkers have already given a lead by blacking trade with Israel. This action must also be are:

Glasgow Edinburgh Stirling Carlisle Durham York Bradford Leeds Hull Sheffield Merseyside Manchester Winsford Stoke Birminghan Coventry fought for in Britain, the US and the EEC.

The Scottish TUC has declared itself in opposition to the invasion: now is the time to put this view into practical action by fighting for demonstrations, blacking action and solidarity strikes, demanding Zionist troops out of Lebanon, and victory to the PLO and the Lebanese left in their fight against Zionism and the fascist Phalange.

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