Part 6 - DW062 001 026 006

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6 PALESTINE - THE KEY ISSUE In april 1948, shortly be- fore the British left Pales- tine, members of a Zionist terrorist group (Zionists are those who believe in the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine) occupied the peaceful Palestinian vil- lage of Deir Yassin and slau- ghtered 254 of its inhabit- ants. The handful of sur- vivors, spattered with the blood of their families and friends, were loaded into a lorry and driven into Jeru- salem, where a crowd jeered and spat at them. News of the massacre of Deir Yassin spread like wild- fire among the Palestinians and many who were under threat of occupation by the Zionists fled their houses in terror. The pre-Deir Yassin trickle of refugees turned into a flood. This is just what the Zionists wanted. Their aim was to create a Jewish state in Pa- lestine, and they could not do that when they only owned only 6% of the land, and the Palestinian Arabs heavily outnumbered them. They tried to seize as much of Palestine as they could before the British left, and encouraged the Pa- lestinians to leave so that the way would be clear for Jewish settlers to come and build a Jewish state. Alto- gether, 1 million Palesti- nians left their homes, and the Deir Yassin massacre played a big part in persuad- ing them to do so. The mas- sacre was carried out by the Irgun Zvai Leumi, whose lea- der was Menahem Begin, the present Prime Minister of Israel. For nearly 20 years, the Palestinian refugees - the majority of the Palestinian people - waited for others to win the right to return to their homeland. Every year, the United Nations passed a resolution in sup- port of their right to go back, but nothing was done to back this up with action. Arab states did nothing to help the Palestinians re- cover their homes. Eventual- ly, young Palestinians reali- sed that no one else would win their right of return for them; the only way to assert their national rights was to take up the gun a- gainst the Zionist state of Israel and to fight for the liberation of Palestine. After careful prepara- tion, the first shots of t Palestinian revolution we- re fired on January 1st 1965 by al-Fatah commandos. Since launching the armed struggle the Palestinians have made many gains. They have taken control of the Palestine Liberation Organ- isation out of the hands of the Arab states, and made it their own organisation. Through the PLO, they have developed their poli- tical, social and cultural life and strengthened their will to liberate their home- land. They have put for- ward as their aim the only realistic solution to the Palestine conflict, one which takes account of the needs of the present Jew- ish population of Israel, as well as of the rights and needs of the Palestini- Arabs themselves - a demo- cratic, secular state of Pa- lestine, in which all citi- zens have equal rights and responsibilities. In the armed struggle, the Zionist enemy has been hit time and time again by the Palestinian guerillas. On the diplomatic front the PLO has won widespread re- cognition as the only legiti- mate representative of the Palestinian people. The struggle has been hard one. Over the years, the Zionists have tried to crush all Palestinian resis- tance - even Palestinian poets inside Israel who ha- ve expressed the national feelings of the Palestinian people have been harassed a detained. Arab reactionaries have tried to destroy the bases of the Palestinians outside Israel - more Pales- tinians were killed by the Jordanian government in its attacks on the resistance than have been killed by the Zionists since the armed struggle began in 1965. TWO SUPERPOWERS The two super-powers have had a hand in all the moves to destroy the Palestinian resistance in the past 13 years. In 1967, both the USA and the Soviet Union sup- ported the British-sponsored UN resolution 242, which they said provided the guidelines for a peace settlement. The resolution treated the Pales- tinians merely as "refugees" ignoring their national rights, and brushing aside the fact that the main cau- se of the conflict in the Middle East was the Zionists' seizure of the homeland of the Palestinian people and their expulsion of 2/3 of that people from their land. In March 1968, the Pales- tinian resistance won a grea victory over the Zionists at al-Karameh, in Jordan, and from then on it was able to operate openly against Is- rael, with the support of all progressive world opi- nion, notably of China, whic has never once wavered in its support for the Palesti- nians. The Soviet Union did not welcome the emergence of the Palestinian Revolution as a major force in the Middle East, because it did not con- trol it. It said that the armed struggle was "andvent- urist" and criticised the Pa- lestinian guerillas as an obstacle to peace. When Egypt and Syria followed a policy of confron- tation with Israel, the So- viet Union made a deal with the US to impose a peace in the Middle East, and brought pressure to bear on the Arab states that were standing up to Israel to give up the con- frontation policy and seek peace with Israel through the "Rogers Plan" (Rogers was the JS secretary of State in1970). This left the Palesti- nians standing alone against Israel, and prepared the way for "Black September", when King Hussein of Jordan's ar- my savagely attacked the Pa- lestinian bases in Jordan. The open presence of the resistance was eventual- ly wiped out, and the main responsibility for this lay with the super-powers. The United States supplied the Jordanian army with over 300 million worth of arms in 1970 for use against the Pa- lestinians (Jordan's Gross National Product for that year was about a 1/15 of this amount), while the So- viet Union had helped the US to isolate the Palestinians in the first place by spon- soring its "peace plan". According to Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, it was just before "Black September" 1970 that the Sov- iet Union offered the Pales- tinians new rockets - on con- dition that they agreed to go along with the plan for a peace with Israel! Throughout Israel's his- tory, the US supplied it gen- erously with arms and other "aid". Total US aid to Israel up to 1975 was greater thanits aid to the puppet governments of south Vietnam! In the 1970s, the Soviet Union also gave generous help to Israel, allowing (after a little fuss) thousands of Jews to emigrate there to swell its army, colonize Palestinian land and add many highly qual- ified scientists and technici- ans to the Zionist state's hu- man resources. In October 1973, Egypt and Syria hit Israel hard, but the US kept up a steady stream of supplies to it to make good its losses - for example the Americans more than replaced the third of Israel's airforce which was destroyed by the two Arab countries. The USSR, which by that time was loudly claiming to champion the Arab cause, sec- retly opposed Egypt and Syria, denying essential spare parts to keep the Egyptian army functioning and thus helping the Israelis to gain the initi- ative. Of course, the Arab states which border Israel are main- ly interested in recovering the land they lost to the Zionists in 1967. The ruling classes in Syria and Egypt would like to defeat the Zionists and take back what they lost, but they are afraid of relying on their own peoples in a protracted war against the enemy, so they wa- ver between compromise with Israel and struggle against it. The two superpowers have tried to promote the tendency to compromise, because they are against a genuine people's war that would sweep away not only Zionism, but also their own imperialist interests in the area. This explains the special attention they have given to supporting attempts to repress and control the Palestinian resistance, the foremost revo- lutionary force in the Middle East. In the current "peace" moves, Sadat, who only last year condemned Lebanese right-wingers who had deal- ings with Israel as "traitors", has himself now opened direct talks with Israel against the wishes of the Palestinians and most of the Arab people. This move has been pro- moted by the United States. The other superpower, the Soviet Union, has condemned it, but purely and simply be- cause it is not in on the act. That this is true is shown by Soviet calls for the re- convening of the Geneva con- ference. This conference, composed of the two super- powers, the frontline Arab states and Israel is the rival "solution" which Russia puts forward in competition to America's "step-by-step" diplomacy. In calling for this Con- ference the Soviet Union is fully prepared to sell out (Cont. Page 2)

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