Marxilaista Työväenliittoa poliittisesti lähellä oleva Palestiinan Sosialistinen Työväenliitto on maaliskuun alkupuolella julkaissut oheisen artikkelin Lähi-Idän tilanteesta.

The World Economic Crisis and Its Effects On the Middle East:

A Revolutionary Perspective

Introduction

This report was released one week after EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, the author of a new version of the Oslo agreements, in the Red Sea port city of Jiddah. The background to this plan is the unprecedented world economic depression and the strengthening of the tendencies to self-dissolution of all capitalist relations. The crisis has extended from the semi-colonies of the Third World to the imperialist centers themselves (Japan, Western Europe and the US) and it is hitting the OPEC countries through the fall in oil prices.

The local expression of the international capitalist crisis is the heroic liberation struggle of the Palestinian people: the Intifada. It not only has survived the brutal repression of the Israeli government of war criminals for a year and a half already: it is becoming stronger with every passing day and scoring impressive military victories. On March 3, one sniper using a 60-years-old rifle, near Rammala, killed 8 solders and 3 settlers. A solder was killed in Kisuphim and the rest of the unit escaped. Six soldiers were killed and a seventh wounded in a Palestinian attack on an Israel Defense Forces’ position in the Ein-Ariq outpost, near Ramallah, on the night of February the 19th. On February the 14th, three Israeli soldiers were killed and one suffered moderate to serious wounds when a bomb went off next to their Merkava 3 tank (one of the most sophisticated tanks in the world), on a road between the Netzarim settlement and the Karni checkpoint in the Gaza Strip. Zionism is more and more revealing is true nature, not only as the oppressor of the Palestinians, but also as a death trap for the Jewish masses.

In their desperate attempts to overcome the world crisis and crush the Palestinian uprising, the Zionist butchers are planning a joint war with the mad imperialist cowboy Bush against Iraq and the Palestinian National Authority-in spite of the fact that Arafat detained leading members of the PFLP, including the three who liquidated the fascist Minister of Tourism Rehavam Ze’evi, in a futile attempt to be allowed to attend the Arab Summit which dealt with the means of ending the Intifada. In that way they hope to kill two birds with the same shot: to secure the wells of Iraq for the oil companies that support Bush, as well as to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestine initiated in 1948 and 1967, or at least terrorize the Palestinian freedom fighters into submission. The orgy of war crimes carried out by the Sharon-Peres-Ben Eliezer government in the refugees camps, bombing civilian population and killing indiscriminately women and children, has as its aim to ignite the region and push the US to start the war immediately.

But the Zionist-imperialist war offensive, in the context of the world economic crisis, threatens to destabilize the puppet Arab regimes, which have done their best to assist Israel in defeating the Intifada by isolating the Palestinian uprising. That is true above all the rotten-to-the core Sheikdoms and Emirates in the Arab Peninsula. That is the reason for the new Saudi "peace plan," which calls on the Arab rulers to fully recognize the Zionist state in exchange for its withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. Such an agreement will leave 82% of the territory of Palestine in the hands of the Zionist state, and will deny the democratic right of return to the four million refugees expelled by Israel in 1948 and 1967. Even the right-wing president of Israel Moshe Katsav praised Abdullah's initiative.

The plan is offered at a time the Sharon-Peres-Ben Eliezer government is loosing support within Israel itself. A poll conducted for the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Israel's largest Hebrew daily, showed that 61% of Israelis were dissatisfied with Sharon's performance, and just 38% would give him a passing grade for his handling of the 17-month Palestinian uprising. His credibility score fell to 54%, a staggering drop from his approval rating of 70% in December and 77% last July.

Seveteen months after the heroic Intifada began, a year after Sharon announced that he will smash the Intifada, the government is facing a deepening capitalist economic crisis, the anger of the capitalist class, that sees him as a failure, and a growing working class struggle, the latest episodes of which include the occupation of Bagir, a textile factory in the Southern town of Kiriat Gat, and the strike of the civil service workers. On the top of it, the government faces the growing dissatisfaction of the middle class, which has manifested itself in two consecutive rallies on February 9 and 16, each one of which drew crowds of tens of thousands. To its further dismay it faces a new movement of young Israeli army reservists, who published a statement in the main bourgeois newspaper Ha’aretz on January 25. It states that they will not serve in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Within four weeks of January 25, the number of signatures on their petition increased from 53 to 270.

The Socialist Workers League of Palestine is calling on Sharon and Arafat to release all political prisoners. We call on the Palestinian and Jewish masses, even at this time, to defend Arafat and the Sulta against the Zionist state. The attacks on the Sulta are aiming at crushing the Intifada. At the same time no political support whatsoever should be given to Arafat and the Sultan. To win the struggle against the imperialists and its servants a working class revolutionary leadership must replace Arafat and the Sultan at the head of the revolutionary struggle. A leadership that will be able to unite the class struggle of the Jewish masses with the heroic national liberation struggle of the Palestinians masses. A leadership that will patiently explain to the masses that Israel is not only oppressing the Palestinians but leading the Jewish masses to a bloody dead end. That it is necessary to struggle and smash the Imperialist control, the Zionists and the Arab servants of imperialism, in order to create a future that belongs to the working class and its allies, whether they are Arabs, Iranians Kurds or Jews.

Oil

The Middle East is important for world capitalist economy because of its oil

Securing the flow of affordable oil is a cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy. The Gulf Cooperation Council states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain), Iran, and Iraq jointly possess 64% of the world’s proven oil reserves. The most important among Gulf States is Saudi Arabia, which alone controls 27% of the world’s oil supplies. The U.S. strategy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq, was designed to ensure that neither Iraq nor Iran is capable of threatening US oil supply from the Gulf countries, which provides about %10 of US total consumption. U.S. competitors in Europe and Japan depend much more on Gulf oil than the U.S. does: 30% of European oil imports and nearly 80% of Japan’s come from the Gulf. The U.S. exerts significant influence on these countries through control of Gulf oil. One aspect of any American war in the Middle East has to do with its economic competition with Europe and Japan.

The two main pillars of imperialist rule in the region are Israel and Egypt, and they are shaky

Israel

Imperialism’s enclave of settler colonialism in the Middle East.

Unlike the other countries of the Middle East, Israel is an enclave of imperialism, as its GDP per capita of $18,900 indicates. It is no more an agrarian country either; only 4% of its GDP derives from agriculture. Its main function in the global economy is to provide security services for the Imperialists’ control of the Middle East. For this reason the US has transferred to Israel at least $92 billions from 1948 to this day.

Most people and certainly most Palestinians are aware that Zionism is the enemy of the Palestinians masses. It is important for the Palestinians to understand that most Jews have arrived to this country not because they were Zionists, but because the Jews tried to escape the horror of anti-Semitism generated by the putrefaction of European capitalism in its time of decay, which finally led to the Nazi Holocaust. The Zionists have turned the suffering of the Jews into a movement in the service of imperialism and the Jewish capitalist class. Despite the Zionist myth, Israel was not created as solution to the Jewish Question. On the contrary, it became the most dangerous source of anti-Semitism in the region and internationally, due to its defense of the interests of Western imperialism, first of the Anglo-French imperialists and then of American imperialism, in the Middle East. Nevertheless most of the Jews who now live in Palestine have no other place to go. At the same time, to be able to live in Palestine, it is vital for the Jews to understand that they cannot be free by enslaving the Palestinian people. Zionism is not the protector but the enemy of the Jewish people, as it is the expropriator of the Palestinian national right to Land and Freedom

To allow Israel to function as enclave of imperialism, the US has transferred to Israel at least $92 billions from 1948 to this day. Growth was a strong 5.9% in 2000. But the outbreak of Palestinian unrest in late September and the collapse of the Barak government - coupled with a cooling off in the high-technology and tourist sectors - turned the boom into a crisis. If we add the collapse of the American capital markets since last October, the beginning of the global economic slump that has beset Europe and America over the past year, and the severe crisis in global high-tech-the industry that was the main cause of Israel's exceptional economic growth in 2000 - we obtain a picture of the dire circumstances in which the Israeli economy is mired today. Israel’s GNP fell by 0.5% in 2001 - the worst depression since 1953.

Translated into dry figures, the situation of the Israeli economy at the end of 2001 was as follows:

? About 220,000 unemployed, after unemployment had been forecast to fall to 211,000. The Central Bureau of Statistics announced on January 16, that over 250,000 Israelis are out of work, and government officials expect this number to rise steadily during the coming year. Unemployment figures have risen from 8.7% in November 2000 to their current level, with a continuous 0.2% increase each month since July 2001.

? A 11 percent decline in exports, as against a forecast of an 8 percent increase;

? A 0.7 percent decrease in Gross Domestic Product of the business sector, as against a forecast of 5.5 percent growth;

· Growth of 0.5 percent in GDP, as against a forecast of 4.5 percent.

But working class does not accept the attack on its income and social security in the name of the holy war against the Palestinians. Militancy is on the rise.

In the past Zionism provided social security for all the Jewish citizens of Israel. The Zionist welfare state is a question of the remote past that very few people remember. Nowadays you have to be an imbecile to believe that the Jewish capitalists love their Jewish workers. For this reason, at a time the government is waging a war against the Palestinians, the Jewish workers are struggling against the capitalist class and their government. Our experience is that the Jewish workers love our leaflets, calling for a general strike and for solidarity with the Palestinians uprising.

In February 2002 alone, we find the following industrial conflicts:

· Some 30,000 Kupat Holim Clalit Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) employees staged a 24-hour strike.

· The National Insurance workers went on strike for the second time.

· In Tel Aviv University the Teachers Assistants went on strike.

· Pi Glilot’s gas workers went on strike.

· Workers in Otsar Hayal Bank went on strike.

· The disabled’s militant strike continued for more than two months, in demand of pensions equal to the minimum income.

It seems that the real economic program this government has is further attempts to crash the Palestinians uprising and join the US in a regional war.

The Palestinian Uprising

The so-called Al Aqsa Intifada is the continuation of the 1987 uprising that was interrupted by the Oslo agreement. The failing of Barak’s government to force the Palestinian masses to give up on their aspiration for self-determination by "peaceful means" has led to its replacement by the Sharon-Peres-Ben Eliezer government that attempts to force the Palestinians to give up their right to self-determination by terror. The failure of this government to reach its goals is pushing it to a regional war.

The Palestinian Economy:

The end of easy access to employment in Israel for Palestinians, and Israeli employment of foreigners to replace Palestinians, has resulted in individual hardship and considerable collective loss. The situation has been worsened by the sudden decline in income from the Arab oil states; Palestinians there lost their jobs and were often expelled in retaliation for Arafat's support of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. Direct financial aid from the oil states to the Palestinians has also fallen for the same reason.

The Palestinian masses were led to believe that Oslo agreement would lead to a higher level of employment and income. However, even before the el Aqsa Intifada, as result of the combination of movement restrictions and border closures imposed by Israeli authorities, the Gross National Product (GNP) in the PA controlled areas fell 7.6% in 2000, instead of the 6% growth projected by the International Monetary Fund and the Palestinian Ministry of Finance.

During the fourth quarter of 2000, after the beginning of the Intifada, economic activities in the West Bank and Gaza dropped 51% - an income loss of $671 million. Furthermore, declining employment in the fourth quarter, combined with high population growth, caused per capita income for the year to decline by 4.1%. Persistent high unemployment, combined with decreasing participation in the labor force and increasing dependency rates, suggests that living condition continue to decline.

It is through its external and internal closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that the Israeli government is able to control the movement of people and goods both within the occupied territories themselves, and between the occupied and territories and Israel. This closure - which is the mechanism by which the Israeli government maintains its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip - has paralyzed Palestinian life, on a personal and national level, as show by the following statistics (Al Mezan Report, Feb 2001):

· Currently there are 97 Israeli-erected military checkpoints in West Bank and 32 in the Gaza Strip. Together with road blockades they divide the territories into 220 separate, isolated Bantustans.

· Number of Palestinians unemployed due to the closures: 257,000.

· Average unemployment rate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: 57%

· Total income losses for Palestinian workers previously employed inside Israel: $3.6 million per day.

· Decrease in per capita income: 47%

· Percentage of Palestinians living below poverty line: 53%

· Estimated loss if closures continue in 2001: $ 1.7 billion (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics)

The following figures revealing the extent of the devastation perpetrated by the Israeli Army in the Occupied Territories were released on August 1, 2001:

· Residential Palestinian buildings completely destroyed by Israeli attacks: Gaza Strip: 364; West Bank: 333; Total: 679.

· Total number of residential buildings shelled: 3,669

· Palestinian homes demolished by Israeli authorities: 809

· Number of olive trees uprooted from Palestinian land: 112,900

· Area of Palestinian cultivated land destroyed: 42,000

· Number of Palestinian schools shut down due to Israeli siege: 174.

· Number of Palestinian students deprived from attending school: 90,000

· Number of schools shelled: 95

· The price of water tanks has doubled, to NIS 200. The closure prevents movement of water tankers. Israeli authorities have reduced water allocation to the West Bank, and increased it to Israeli settlements and military positions. In Gaza, 14 groundwater agricultural wells, a groundwater drinking well and five cisterns were destroyed, and more than 500 meters of irrigation schemes destroyed.

· 911 Palestinians have been killed and 17,032 Palestinians have been injured in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between 29 September 2000 and 9 January 2002. Original source: Palestinian Red Crescent Society (updated daily).

· The most recent toll of injuries among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the current Al-Aqsa Intifada is 32 849, or 9.9 per 1000 population.

· Analysis of the pattern of injuries in last year's data shows why the rate of disability is so high. People under 35 were most likely to be injured. Of the 6,071 injured, 226 were aged 0-11 years, 1297 were aged 12-17, and 3,535 were aged 18-34 compared with 414 aged 35-49 and 599 aged 50 or over. In addition, both the type of weapon used and the site of injury show the potential for a high rate of disability. In all, 1,418 people were hit by live, mainly American-made, M-16 bullets, which often break into tiny pieces and cause multiple internal injuries, and 1,936 were hit by rubber coated metal bullets, which can cause extensive damage when fired at short range. Half of the injuries (3,032) were on the upper part of the body, including the head, and nearly a quarter (1,403) to the lower part, including the pelvis.

In spite of the heroism of the Palestinian masses facing the fourth strongest army in the world, the lack of a revolutionary leadership is the most serious obstacle to the victory of the Uprising.

Neither the PLO, nor the left nationalists (the Maoist-inspired PFLP and DFLP) nor the Islamic movement can lead to a victory.

The PLO however came under pressure from the Palestinians masses, which could not stand any more the oppression, humiliation, land robbery, high unemployment and generalized misery brought about by the military occupation and the Oslo agreements. Thus the PLO, with Yassir Arafat at its head, became a typical Bonapartist regime acting under cross fire: the imperialist and the Zionists on the one hand, and the Palestinians workers, peasants and poor on the other hand.

Even the regular Palestinian National Authority military forces, approved by Israel with the idea that they would be used to repress the masses, reflect the contradiction between its corrupt leadership and the rank and file who fight the Israeli army and the settlers. These militants in the armed forces work together with others in the popular committees that act as an embryonic dual power.

The main complain of the Israeli government and the US is that Arafat does not control these forces, which include the Palestinian Security Services (PSS), the Special Security Force (SSF) and al-Amn al-Ri’asah (Presidential Security).

The PSS were established in May 1994 with the signing by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) of the Cairo Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area. The GSS is the umbrella organization nominally responsible for coordinating and maintaining most of the Palestinian security bodies and services-it includes not only police but also intelligence organizations. On the operational level it coordinates ten services. The two additional services are the Special Security Force (SSF) and al-Amn al-Ri’asah (Presidential Security). The SSF is led in the West Bank by Jibril Rajoub and in Gaza by Muhammad Dahlan.

Israel is putting pressure, aiming at creating a civil war. There are rumors that apparently Arafat believes that Rajoub in collaboration with Israel is ready to replace him.

US imperialism under Bush is even more transparent than under Clinton. With the backing of the US, Sharon, looking for other and easier collaborators, put a curfew on Arafat, whose life now depends on an order from Washington, which so far is not convinced that anyone can replace Arafat.

Egypt

The US is building Egypt as a military basis against the workers and Fellahin.

Since the signing of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in March 1979, in preparation of the 1982 war in Lebanon, the United States has supplied Egypt with military equipment and weapons systems to the tune of $36 billion. Like Israel and on the same basis, Egypt receives annual military grants and non-military grants. The annual grants Egypt receives, totaling $2 billion, is the second largest foreign aid allocation provided by the United States. It includes $1.3 billion for military aid and $700 million for non-military aid. Only the grant given to Israel - $2.04 billion for defense and $800 million for nonmilitary aid - is greater. Additionally, Egypt received two other weapons systems from the Pentagon with an estimated value of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The United States recently equipped two battalions of the Egyptian army with MLRS artillery rockets with a range of 40 kilometers. And in the Abrams tank factory (M1-A1) established in Egypt, hundreds of tanks are currently being manufactured, in addition to the 555 tanks of this type which are already in the service of the Egyptian armored corps. By the end of 2007, the Egyptian armored corps will have 750 Abrams tanks. The defense establishment defines this as "critical mass."

The Egyptian Air Force has also been beefed up. Like in Israel, the Lockheed Martin F-16 has become the backbone of the Egyptian Air Force. So far, the United States has supplied Egypt with 224 of its newest model F-16s. The Egyptian Army holds exercises with American and other NATO armies. The exercises allow Egypt to see Western commanders in action

The Egyptian Navy numbers about 60 vessels. The Egyptian army numbers about 450,000 soldiers with a reserves force of about 600,000 additional men.

This impressive army has not sent one solider to support the Palestinian uprising. It is beefed up in a case of working class and poor peasants uprising in Egypt and in the region.

Since the Gulf War in 1991, Israel is no longer the only regional power in the Middle East. Egypt is playing a growing pivotal role in U.S. foreign policy in the region. That means transfer of large amount of money to Egypt.

Prior to 1991, Egypt being a typical semi-colonial state faced problems of low productivity high inflation, and massive urban overcrowding. However, because Israel could not play a role in the 1991 war, the US realized the importance of building Egypt as an alternative base for controlling the region. This however takes a lot of money.

For supporting the US war on Iraq, the United States erased Egyptian debts totaling $7.1 billion. With the help of three IMF programs, Cairo tamed inflation, slashed budget deficits, and built up foreign reserves to an all-time high. That unleashed an investment boom that saw rich Egyptians repatriate an estimated $60 billion in foreign savings.

Although the pace of structural reforms demanded by Imperialism, such as privatization and new business legislation, has been slower than envisioned under the IMF programs, Egypt's steps toward a more market-oriented economy have prompted increased foreign investment.

According to the Information and Decision-making Support Center (IDSC), at the first half of 2001 Egypt achieved a growth rate of 6.5%, with an annual inflation rate of 2.2 per cent.

Since the last quarter of 2001 the rosy picture of Egypt and Israel painted by the capitalist mass media has turn into a picture of countries whose panic stricken rulers are praying that they will not be another Argentina.

Unemployment, unofficially put at 20%, is surging. The main sources of foreign currency earnings in Egypt (tourism, expatriate worker remittances, oil, receipts from the Suez Canal), are extremely vulnerable to the effects of world economic crisis.

The key is the Saudi Arabian economy, which sets the pace for other Gulf economies. Its new budget assumes an oil price of between $16 and 17 a barrel, and cuts in output of about 300,000 barrels a day. Revenue from oil, which last year accounted for 77 per cent of the kingdom's income, is forecasted to fall by 44 per cent. The deficit is forecasted at $12 billion. Total revenue will be down from 215 billion riyals to 157 billion. The result is a 50% cut in the number of the oil barrel (under $20 per barrel of Brent crude). This fall has eradicated any benefits Egypt might have accrued from an increase in oil production for the last quarter of last year (November production, for example, rose by 6,000 barrels a day to around 639,333 barrels a day). The Ministry of Foreign Trade has put losses in oil revenue at 13 per cent. Local sales, of course, do not earn foreign currency.

The performance of the oil industry also affects Egypt indirectly. Many expatriate Egyptians work in Gulf countries (two million, according to government figures). Last year they sent home net receipts of just under $3 billion. Many of these workers are employed directly by the oil industry; almost all depend on it indirectly, as do most people in the Gulf countries. Revenue from the shortfall will be not less than $2.5 billion.

Bailing out the Egyptian ruling class causes further instability.

In January 2002 the US President George W. Bush accelerated the disbursement of $959 million of economic assistance funds to Egypt. The Suez Canal also depends on the oil industry, and the volume of traffic had fallen (tariffs are charged on cargo, rather than ship tonnage). In 2000, Egypt took $4.3 billion from tourists. 1991 figures were down by 40-45 per cent and, in November, the Ministry of Foreign Trade estimated that 10 per cent of employees in the sector had been laid off.

So far, under the tutelage of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government has closed or privatized countless factories. Thousands of jobs have been slashed and the wages of the remaining workforce cut. Now, workers are bracing for new labor laws that, it is widely believed, will spell the end of such labor rights as they currently enjoy, especially in the new industrial parks that have been heavily touted as symbols of the new, foreign-invested and privately driven Egyptian economy. 14 hours a day for $80 a month without social benefits is very common in these parks.

An ad hoc committee set up by opposition parties, labor unions, and rights groups has condemned the draft version of the new labor law as "a massacre of Egyptian laborers". The Committee for the Defense of Labor Unions said in a statement that the law would give "work owners a unilateral right to terminate a job contract, change job descriptions, cut salaries, [and] assign workers to other posts than those stated in the contract".

Organized labor remains confined to state-approved labor unions that are barred from striking or bargaining collectively, even though the misleaders’ stance on any given issue usually is openly government-oriented.

In spite of it the working class militancy is on the rise, as witnessed by the growing number of strikes.

Syria

No imperialist economic reform without a civil war!

In July 2000, Syrian President Bashar Assad inherited one of the poorest countries in the Middle East (per capita GNP being a mere $1,010 in 1999), saddled with one of the highest rates of annual population growth in the region (2.7%), negative economic growth (-1.7% in 1999), skyrocketing unemployment (estimated at 20%), a negative balance of trade, and dwindling oil reserves (2.5 billion barrels). To get into the grace of US Imperialism young Assad promised to privatize and open the doors for finance capital.

Syria is a capitalist state, with nationalization of key sectors after the Ba'ath party's seizure of power in 1963. But its new president cannot transform this economy into a "free market" economy without an uprising, because capitalist economic reforms would bolster the economic power of the traditional Sunni bourgeoisie, whereas the main bases of support of the Assad regime are:

1) The minority Alawite community from which the Assad family came. The Alawites, members of an offshoot sect of Shi'ite Islam, constitute about 12% of the population, concentrated mainly in rural areas of the coast.

2) The workers and professionals who rely upon public sector employment. An estimated 1.2 million Syrians are employed by the military, civilian bureaucracy and state-run economic enterprises.

3) Peasants who benefited from land reform measures undertaken by the Assad regime and remain dependent on the state for access to credit and input subsidies. Over 80% of Syrians employed in the agricultural sector are members of state-run agricultural cooperatives and unions. Assad and many other Alawite members of the regime were of peasant extraction.

Syria is not the Egypt of Sadat, who after Nasser’s death and the demoralization of the defeat in 1967 quickly mobilized sectors of the population that stood to gain from bourgeois economic reforms. Assad lives in a period where the resistance to capitalism in crisis is on the rise.

Lebanon

The danger of a new nationalist civil war

In a recently released ranking of living standards in 218 cities around the world, Beirut finished 158th, lagging well behind the capitals of such impoverished countries as Pakistan, Bolivia, and Ghana. Due in part to sluggish economic growth, the Lebanese government’s budget deficit is now estimated to be at least 45%. Though the IMF put pressure on Lebanon to cut the budget deficit, the estimated 300,000 civil servants represent nearly a quarter of all paid employees in the country. The total national debt now towers at over $20 billion (around 120% of Lebanon's GDP) and the external debt is growing daily.

More than twelve years have passed since the end of the Lebanese civil war, yet agricultural output remains 20% below its 1975 level, despite the fact that rural farmers represent 40% of the Lebanese population. Despite its abundance of arable land, premium soil quality, plentiful water resources and mild climate, Lebanon is among the least agriculturally self-sufficient countries in the world, importing an estimated 75% of its food requirements. Each year, $1.5 billion is spent on agricultural imports, whereas exports of agricultural products bring in less than $200 million annually.

According to the results of a study released last month by the Development Studies and Projects Center, Lebanon's labor force is expected to grow by an average of 2.3% in the next decade, compared to an average of 1.5% worldwide. Lebanon's dismal economy will not absorb this growth

The Free National Current (FNC), a far right organization headed by former Lebanese Prime Minister Michel Aoun, in alliance with former President Amine Gemayel, have launched a hate campaign against the Syrian workers. The FNC pro-imperialist and historically pro-Zionist opposition blames the Syrian government, which continues to control Lebanon, for the severe situation. According to them, the main problem is the 1.4 million cheap foreign Syrian workers, who have flooded into Lebanon shortly after Syria's October 1990 takeover of Beirut. Syrian workers live in squalid conditions, often sharing a single room with several of their compatriots, so as to save the bulk of their income and send it to their families in Syria. Syrian workers remit around $4.3 billion from Lebanon to Syria every year.

Violence against the Syrian workers has not only become more frequent, but has also been organized in pursuit of pro-imperialist political objectives. Specifically against the Syrian government and Hizbulla, that has gained popularity after it chased Israel outside of South Lebanon. A shadowy terrorist group calling itself Citizens for a Free and Independent Lebanon has taken responsibility for a series of attacks against Syrian workers.

At the same time, scores of FNC student activists, who were on summer recess, volunteered to sell produce and bread on the streets of Beirut-jobs usually performed by unlicensed Syrian street vendors. Enthusiastic motorists stopped their cars in droves to "buy Lebanese". FNC activists also performed a variety of other jobs, such as picking apples at local orchards, typically done by Syrian laborers. The FNC is clearly pushing for a military confrontation with the government and with the Syrians. This could have something to do with the assignation of Eli Hobeika on January 27 this year, after he volunteered to testify against Sharon, who is connected with the right wing in Lebanon.

At the time of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Hobeika was the principal military liaison to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). When Israeli forces took over west Beirut, Hobeika was given a free hand. In September, Hobeika ordered LF militiamen into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of the city, which had recently been evacuated by the PLO. Over the next three days, LF forces killed about 2,000 residents of the camp. The Israel army prevented the refugees from escaping the camps and provided light to help to carry out the carnage.

Hobeika was involved in a second massacre in March 1985 that would later come back to haunt him. The American CIA reportedly paid Hobeika (through Lebanese army intelligence officers) to assassinate Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of the militant Shi'ite group Hezbollah, considered by US officials to have taken part in planning the October 1983 bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 servicemen. However, the assassination attempt that Hobeika carried out was not the surgical operation that his benefactors had hoped for-the car bombing near Fadlallah's residence killed dozens of bystanders but left the intended target unscathed.

In June 2000 survivors of Sabra and Shatila filed charges against Ariel Sharon for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Belgium, under an unusual 1993 law that allows the prosecution of foreign officials for human right violations. That same month, the BBC aired a documentary of the massacre, entitled The Accused. Although the lawsuit did not mention Hobeika's role and the documentary was focused mainly against Israel, they led to vibrant public discussion of an issue that Hobeika would have preferred to leave buried.

Unless a revolutionary party will be formed, be able to cut through the sectarian division of Lebanon, struggling to unite the working class and the peasants, connecting the struggle for democratic demands with the struggle of working class power, the situation is more than likely to turn into another ugly civil war.

Algeria

The civil war in Algeria is a result of the privatization of the nationalized economy.

After the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) candidates won the first-round electoral victory in the January 1992 elections and threatened the FLN monopoly of power, a political crisis developed, as a result of which a military-dominated State Security Panel assumed power and subsequently appointed a Council of State (military junta) to rule. The state of emergency was extended indefinitely, local governments were disbanded, the FIS was banned, the military was established as the ultimate authority, and opposition insurrection escalated into a brutal and savage civil war.

The military government launched an IMF-sponsored economic plan that included privatizations, the removal of the control over all prices and the elimination of generalized food subsidies, against a backdrop of increasing civil unrest and civil war. Although U.S. oil imports from Algeria are tiny, American investment-mainly in the energy sector-amounts to $3.7 billion and is expected to rise to about $5 billion by 2005. Since 1997, despite the robust performance of the hydrocarbon sector (oil), agricultural output continued to fall in the wake of a severe drought, and industrial production continued to decline due to the ongoing restructuring process in the public sector. These developments put further strain on the labor market. Official unemployment remained high at around 28 percent.

The FIS is a populist movement led by social demagogues.

"Wealth redistribution, taking from the rich to provide for the needs of the people" stands out in the FIS program. But as the Financial Times pointed out, "the FIS has never published a detailed economic program" and that "a total uncertainty reigns regarding its stand on the future of the economic reforms launched by the government."

An analysis of the different layers that lead or support the FIS reveal the reason for this opaqueness. The first layer includes small-business owners as well as wealthy merchants, civil servants as well as dissidents of the FLN. The second stratum comprises university professors, physicians and lawyers, either blocked in their social ascent by a system of nepotism or revolted by the degradation of morals blamed on cultural invasion. The third category of FIS supporters, are the "hittists" (leaners against walls). The hittists constitute the epitome of the despondent urbanized young. Victims of the sky-high rate of unemployment (30 percent), socially marginalized, easily mobilized and prey to "demagogy," the hittists share little in common with the first or second categories named above, except resentment of the regime.

For this reason a revolutionary party would relate to the hittists with a social program addressing their needs, pointing out to the contradiction between the "leaders" of the FIS and the needs of the masses, rather than with polemics against religion.

Algeria faces not only a civil war in which more than 100,000 people have been killed since 1992, the majority of them civilians, but also a national question. The army crackdown against rioting Berbers is threatening the government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika that acts as a civilian mask for the Generals. The Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), a party that draws its support from the large Berber minority, quitted the government after dozens of rioting youths had been killed in clashes with the police in towns in the northeastern region of Kabylia.

The Berbers are a non-Semitic people who have inhabited the North African coast since prehistoric times. Making up a third of Algeria's population, they resent the imposition of the Arabic language and culture. There are no direct links between the Berber protests and the ongoing fundamentalist uprising.

The movement is seeking a revolutionary leadership able to combine the democratic struggle for the national rights of the Berbers with the class struggle for a workers and peasant government, not only in name but in deeds.

Saudi Arabia

The Saudi regime was a major financial backer of the anti-Communist crusade in Latin America, and a leading force in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Washington’s relationship with the Saudi royal family dates back to the era World War II. It has always been primarily about oil, Saudi investments in American Treasury bonds and the purchase of expensive American weapons systems. In 1999 alone, which was a typical year, Saudi exports to the US were estimated at $7.9 billion and imports from the US at $7.6 billion. The total value of US arms agreements with Saudi Arabia from 1950 through March 1997 was some $94 billion, while arms agreements in the period 1991-97 alone amounted to nearly $23 billion.

The Crown Prince Abdullah bin Faisal the 78-year-old prince, widely regarded as the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, suggested that the Arab world would normalize relations with Israel if the Israelis withdrew to their 1967 borders. That was, in essence, a restatement of the Oslo agreement. Many suspect that this agreement has been formed in Washington rather than in the mind of the Saudi vassal.

Nevertheless the perception that the Saudi’s plan was cooked in the US is wrong. This plan came as a surprise for the US that is seeking a regional war. This is not the first time in the last few months that Washington and Riyadh do not see eye to eye. During the American war on Afghanistan the Saudi regime refuse to allow American warplanes to use Saudi Arabia as a military base. At that time the Crown Prince expressed well-founded fears that backing for US war plans in Central Asia, combined with deep resentment among the Arab masses toward America’s support for Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinian Intifada, could unleash a social explosion and topple its rule.

The economic crisis heating OPEC, including Saudi Arabia, is another reason for this fear. Saudi Arabia's wealth has dwindled. According to the IMF, Saudi GDP per capita was $15,319 in 1980 compared with $17, 283 for the U.S. By the end of 2000, Saudi GDP per capita had fallen to $8,452, slightly above Argentina's $7,778. The national debt has reached $170 billion, while economic growth is close to zero.

Last year, the ruling family cut production by more than 11 percent as part of efforts by the OPEC to buoy prices. During the same period, the price of Brent crude fell nearly by half, to a low of $16.60 a barrel in November, from more than $30 a barrel in early February 2001.

At 3.5 percent population growth a year, the kingdom's population is growing faster than almost any other nation's. It is also one of the youngest countries, with almost 60 percent of its people younger than 19. Those youths have had a harder time finding jobs as economic expansion has slowed. Saudi Arabia needs growth of at least 6 percent a year to stop unemployment from increasing.

Instead of creating new jobs the government has cut back on its welfare programs and reduced investment in the oil and energy sectors as well as in the country’s infrastructure, leading to an unemployment rate that is estimated at 25-30 percent for Saudi males. Many lack a decent education, particularly women. Immigrant workers make up at least 35 percent of the 15 to 64 age group. In addition to filling many low- paid manual jobs, immigrants are estimated to provide 84 percent of doctors, 80 percent of nurses, 55 percent of pharmacists and 25 percent of all teachers. More recently, the government has begun to replace expatriate workers with Saudi nationals, and thousands of foreign workers without proper papers have been arrested tortured and deported, among them many Arab workers.

Tensions exist in the ruling family. King Fahd and the Sultan faction, who belong to the al Sudairi family, have close ties with the US and are seeking greater direct foreign investment in the country and membership of the WTO. In the last year, there have been promises of investment worth $9.2 billion, of which more than 90 percent is from overseas. The regime has reduced corporate tax from 45 percent to 30 percent and allowed full foreign ownership in some sectors of the economy, with promises of more to come.

At the other end stands Crown Prince Abdullah, head of the Saudi National Guard, who has closer alliances with religious leaders. He is more anti-American than his father. Since 1995, relations with the US have cooled slightly. In August, Abdullah sacked Prince Turki al Faisal, Sultan’s brother, who had been director of intelligence for 25 years.

The emergence of bin Laden and Al Qaeda reflects deep divisions within the Saudi society and, specifically, the resentment felt by sections of the Saudi bourgeoisie over their comprador relationship with the US. Al Qaeda expresses a section of the Arab ruling elite itself. It derives a certain amount of support from the middle classes and, as no parties and trade unions are allowed, even from the working class and the most downtrodden layers of the population.

Sharon, who at first had to declare that the Israeli government would study the Prince’s plan, states on March the 2nd, after he sent Israeli troops to massacre civilians in the refugee camps, that this plan is dangerous to the security of Israel. Clearly the only plan that Sharon has in mind is a new regional war. Bush’s support for Israel at this hour shows that two insane minds have met.

Iraq

Iraq has been ruled by the Ba’ath party since 1963 and by Saddam Hussein since 1979. The Ba’ath is a petit bourgeois nationalist party that tried to play an independent role between imperialism and the masses. In power it acted as a one-party Bonapartist regime, which nationalized key sections of the economy. In Iraq it oppress the Kurdish people divided between Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Russia.

Iraq's economy has been dominated by the oil sector, which has traditionally provided about 95% of foreign exchange earnings. In the 1980s an eight-year war with Iran took place. Iraq suffered economic losses of at least $100 billion from the war. Since 1983 the U.S. put its covert help at disposal of Iraq and encouraged its regional allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, to follow suit. As Iraq recovered from the war in 1991, it was entrapped by the US that gave Saddam Hussein green light to attack Kuwait. The US-led war, in which Iraq’s forces were up against a vastly superior military alliance of big powers, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Following the 1991 war the US imposed economic sanctions on the people of Iraq. 1.5 million people in Iraq, over half of them children under five, have died as a direct result of the sanctions. One-third of children are severely malnourished.

Iran

In 1979, the masses in Iran succeeded in bringing down the monarchy of the Shah. Soon afterwards, the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran. The failure of the left to provide a revolutionary leadership gave the clergy the ability to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran. What is the class nature of this Republic?

In a popular referendum held in April 1979, some 98 percent of the participants voted "yes" to the establishment of an Islamic Republic. A constitution was prepared and confirmed by another referendum held in December 1979.

The new constitution encouraged greater involvement of the state in the economy, at the expense of the free market. When the mass confiscation of private property was nearly completed, the management of a significant portion of this newly appropriated wealth was turned over to clerically-hold, state-supported charity organizations. Article 45 of the Constitution specifies that ownership of anfal, or spoils, and public wealth, such as mavat (barren lands without owners; abandoned lands, mines, lakes, seas, underground water, reed beds, natural groves, pastures, unclaimed properties and properties obtained by usurpation), must go to the state. Article 44 called for nationalization of all large-scale industries, mines, banks, insurance companies, power generating stations, dams, postal services, the telephone and telegraph service, shipping, aviation, roads and railroads, without compensation being paid to their owners. In addition foreign trade was nationalized.

Article 49 of the Constitution was the mandate most antagonistic to private capital, treating as spoils of the revolution the thousands of profit-making privately owned enterprises that were confiscated and transferred to the bonyads and the state. With puritanical and moralistic judgment, this article specified that the government shall take over all wealth allegedly derived from usury, usurpation, bribery, embezzlement, theft, gambling, misuse of religious endowments, government contracts, transactions, and sale of original mavat and mubahat, meaning ownerless properties, centers of corruption and illegitimate acts.

When in due course the content of this article was fully implemented, public sector ownership increased enormously, and the private sector reduced to near extinction. A decade later an unofficial estimate put the Iranian state in charge of 80-85 percent of national resources.

In 1979, radical students took 53 US diplomats hostage and held them for 444 days at the US embassy in Tehran. Imam Khomeini, the leader of Islamic Revolution, supported this move. The United States government retaliated with an abortive rescue operation in April 1980, and by imposing economic sanctions on Iran. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that followed, Iran claimed that the US had instigated Iraqi aggression. This allegation was confirmed by the support the United States openly gave Iraq in the form of arms, intelligence, information, and financial help.

The "Imposed War," as the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war is called in Iran, enlarged the public sector even further. As the state mobilized the economy for war, oil earnings were totally allocated for two main purposes: the procurement of spare parts and the procurements of essential goods for public needs. Public sector employment increased while private employment gradually dropped, and the Islamic state soon became the employer of last resort to which everyone turned for jobs and income.

In 1984 Washington imposed additional sanctions on Iran. The Islamic Republic was refused the desperately needed spare parts for its largely American-equipped armed forces. Sanctions culminated in a total embargo on all bilateral trade and investments. In 1995 further sanctions were imposed, including secondary boycotts intended to penalize non-US companies investing in the oil and gas industries in Iran. The sanctions made survival of the Islamic regime at any cost a national priority

In 1993, the first serious steps were taken to strengthen the cooperative sector. Dormant for nearly 15 years, a Cabinet Minister was appointed and the Ministry received a budget allocation. Several thousand cooperatives have been set up adjacent alongside the public sector. These cooperatives depend heavily on the state's financial support. According to Islamic jurists and Shi'ite clergy, the cooperatives truly reflect the spirit of equality and brotherhood in Islam. A large number of the cooperatives in Iran are consumer cooperatives, followed by producer coops, active mainly in the agricultural sector. The public sector plus the cooperatives produce 2/3 of the GDP.

The oil industry is the prize of all state-owned enterprises, and oil revenues have continued to lubricate the Iranian economy. The oil industry was nationalized in 1952. Between 1954 and 1979 the industry operated in conjunction with a consortium of international oil companies, 60 percent of which was American. In the early 1960's Iran joined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and is still an active member. Since the Islamic revolution, the Ministry of Petroleum has overseen the operations of oil and gas sectors. Revenues from oil and gas exports provide up to 70 percent of the state's general budget and account for some 80 percent of all foreign exchange earnings in the country.

The wide-scoped nationalization does not mean that some Iranians are not becoming wealthy. The bazaaris, merchants and traders, the commercial capitalists, represents many of the international firms from whom state companies and ministries procure required goods and services, and these foreign purchases are paid for mainly by the petrodollars, enriching many Iranians and making many individuals quite wealthy

The election of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as President in 1989 generated a post-war reconstruction euphoria and hopes of prosperity. Rafsanjani was basically pro-private-sector, and he favored the greater involvement of private individuals and companies in trade and production. He had vowed to stop the growth of public sector. His term coincided with the passing of the country's first five-year development plan (1989-93) by the Majles (parliament). When in office, he proposed an IMF "structural adjustment program" reform package. This package included an orderly exchange-rate unification, increased fiscal discipline, trade and business deregulation, reduction of consumer subsidies, attraction of private foreign investment to the country, greater budgetary control over the public foundations, and privatization of loss-making public enterprises. The masses, however, resisted the president's reform packages and blocked the passage of the necessary legislation. Disillusioned, the President quickly abandoned his proposals and reversed course. In tune with the faction dominating Parliament, he asked for larger subsidy payments and embarked upon spending on public sector reconstruction projects. His policy led to high inflation and high unemployment.

With the election of Mr. Khatami, the head of the pro-imperialist reformers as President in May 1997, many new political and economic "reforms" have been initiated. The third five-year economic development plan, which runs to 2005, aims at downsizing the government sector by merging some ministries. It intends to privatize a large number of state enterprises and bonyads. The expected annual increase of 8.5 percent in the private sector investments and the pticatizations envisaged in the third five-year plan, require cataclysmic social changes.

President Khatami also intends to integrate Iran in the global capitalist economy. He has sought to attract more direct foreign investment, and several international companies have been attracted to the oil and gas industries. In spite of the reformers efforts to collaborate with the imperialists, as we saw during the dirty war against Afghanistan, Bush insists that the US has the right to control the Iranian oil. For this reason he announced that Iran is part of the evil axis. This helps the conservative wing of the clergy that opposes privatization and close tie with the American Devil.

We are ready now to reply to the question: What kind of society is the Islamic republic of Iran? Clearly there are some similarities between Iran and the former Soviet Union. Still the Soviet Union after Stalin took power was a deformed workers state, while Iran is a capitalist state. The nationalization of a large economic sector does not make it a workers state. A workers state requires that the working class will smash the organs of the capitalist state and be in power and rule through its organs of power: Soviets; Trade Unions, and above all a revolutionary party. The Clergy smashed the left. The Iranian state apparatus was not smashed in 1979. It is the same kind of a state Algeria was after its independence-a bourgeois state. A bourgeois state with a largely nationalized economy is a state capitalism. Basically it is not different from Iraq or Syria, though the latter are ruled by the Ba’ath bourgeois nationalist government rather than a clergy.

Why such state emerged? Nationalization under a capitalist state in a semi-colonial country is a nationalist measure of protection against imperialist control. Socialism on the other hand is not simply nationalization under the political power of the workers in a given state; it is socialization of the means of production on a world scale. A world revolution is necessary to create socialism.

What should be done in Iran from a revolutionary perspective?

A revolutionary party in Iran will defend the nationalized properties against any attempt to privatize them and against imperialist control. It will demand workers control of the nationalized property. A revolutionary party thus will be with the masses that oppose the privatization. At the same time such a party, will not give any political support to the conservatives. It will explain to the masses that the conservatives cannot defend the nationalized properties; for this a workers government is necessary.

On the other hand a revolutionary party will raise democratic demands against the theocratic regime, and engage in united front actions including demands for women rights and call for a Constituent Assembly to advance these demands. It would not give any political support to the reformers. It will warn the workers and the poor: behind the reformers’ nice talk on democracy the real program is capitalism. The revolutionary party starting point will be the conclusions of the theory of the permanent revolution: to achieve any democratic demands it is necessary for the working class to take power.

The Danger of a War

In his State of the Union address, US President Bush indicated that the intentions of the US under the pretext of "war against terrorism," is to attack Iraq, Iran and North Korea-countries he called "an axis of evil". To carry out his threats Bush proposed the largest military buildup in human history, boosting proposed defense spending by $48 billion, to $379 billion for the fiscal year that begins October 1, while holding the lid on many domestic programs. This will lead to an annual spending of $451 billion by 2007. US military forces and "advisors" have already been sent to Colombia, the Philippines, and Yemen.

However, with the deepening of the economic world crisis, the rifts in the imperialist camp are growing and signs of dissent are seen in the ranks of the imperialist camp and of their local puppet Arab regimes. Virtually the only unconditional supporter of Bush’s savage war drive are Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres, who want to ensure that Iran will included, and that this time Israel will be allowed to participate in the war.

The Israeli government wishes for a war for three reasons:

1) To prove to the US that it can rely only on Israel, as was the case prior to the Golf war in 1991.

2) To use the pretext of the war for ethnic cleansing.

3) To divert the growing class struggle within Israel.

Facing such an opposition from the other imperialist countries and its allies in the Middle East, may Bush reconsider his options? The fact that we hear for over one year American threats against Iraq, but so far without a war, indicates that Bush hesitates, as he may be afraid to risk a social revolution in the Middle East.

Bush however may start such a war for control of the oil in the current world economic crisis. The interest of the masses is to prevent such a war, but if it breaks out, the interest of the masses is the military defeat of imperialism. For this reason, revolutionaries will call for an anti-imperialist united front with Iraq against imperialist attacks. This does not mean political support, as the Ba’ath is unable to defeat the imperialists. For this a revolutionary working class leadership is necessary.

The Revolutionary Party in Palestine

The SWL is the nucleus of the revolutionary party of Palestine. It is no accident that it emerged in the particular historical moment after the new Intifada began, and the international struggle to refound the Fourth International has gained a new momentum .Shortly after it was established its sister party the PO is engaged in the revolutionary struggle in Argentina as the leading revolutionary organized force. The SWL is based on a program, which confronts the rest of the left parties and groups in this country.

In opposition to the reformist Stalinist party, the Israeli Communist Party, we not only oppose the imperialist plan of a Palestinian mini-state alongside Israel, which the CP supports with two hands, but we deny the possibility of an end to the violence in the Middle East as long as the Zionists and the Arab collaborators with the imperialists are not defeated. We deny as well the legend that the Jewish settlers colonialists are a nation. But the CP, in spite of its terrible deformations, is the only party of Arab and Jews with large base in the Palestinians workers inside Israel.

The "Sons of the Village" (Abnaa El Ballad) is a petty bourgeois radical left wing movement operating mostly among the Palestinians petty bourgeois and lumpens. It has a Maoist program of two-stage revolution, while in reality calling for a bourgeois democratic state in the entire Palestine. This group tries to work with the Jewish petit bourgeois mobilized on the program of two states.

In opposition to the "Sons of the Village," the SWL is struggling to combine the democratic struggle of the Palestinians masses with the working class Palestinians and Jews for a socialist state. For this reason our transitional program, which include the call for Constituent Assembly, calls for a Workers, Peasants and Refugees’ Government, not simply for a democratic state.

The "Sons of the Village" refuse to work in the Histadruth that organizes hundreds of thousands of Jewish and Arab workers, on the ground that its leadership is reactionary. With this theory, they could not work in the Egyptian trade unions controlled by the state. This is a reflection of their social nature, which prevents them from organizing the working class.

The Histadruth leadership is indeed reactionary and racist. Furthermore the Histadruth organizes only the large workers committees and the public sector. It is necessary to set up industrial trade unions in this country for the mass of unorganized workers. However, those who refuse to struggle for a revolutionary leadership within the Histadruth will not organize anything.

"Socialist Struggle" (Ma’avak Socialisti), the local section of the CWI, calls for two socialist states. This program is based on the left Zionist assumption that two nations, an Israeli and a Palestinian one, exist in the same country, both having the right of self-determination. The SWL, on the contrary, insists on one Secular Democratic Socialist State in the entire historical land of Palestine. "Socialist Struggle" does work with the Histadruth, but with semi-reformist conceptions. They practiced entrism into "One People" (Am Ehad), the party of the Histadruth bureaucracy, which does not have any social base among the workers. At the same, they reject a united front tactic with Hadash, which has some real social base among the Palestinians inside Israel, with the argument that Jewish workers would not like the CP. This is a chauvinist criticism of the CP, which in the mind of most Israelis is an Arab party.

Michael Varshavasky, the local representative of the United Secretariat, practiced deep entrism into Uri Avneri’s left wing bourgeois party "Peace Bloc" (Gush Shalom). For him and his few unorganized friends and employees (he now heads an NGO financed by European imperialism), the working class does not exist, either within the Histadruth or outside it.

The SWL, a propaganda group struggling to organize the proletarian vanguard, has been able, in spite of its very small size, to intervene in all the major struggles of the working class and the left petit bourgeoisie with its program. We publish a newspaper that comes out every three months. We distribute every months thousands of leaflets. We publish almost daily on the Indymedia (an internet newspaper read by the left petit bourgeois). We are well known in the left as activists who are for the tactics of the united front. At the same time without growing, and in particular among the Palestinian militants, we will not be able to affect the struggles.

Pabloism and the Arab Revolution

To be able to found other revolutionary parties in the Middle East, especially where a national question exists, like the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, or the Berbers in Algeria, it is important to reject the petit-bourgeois nationalist theory of the "Arab revolution". The revolution will be carried out by Arabs, Kurds, Iranians, Berbers, and Jews. It will establish a Soviet Federation of the working class of the entire region. The ethno-centric theory of the Arab revolution is an obstacle on this road. The Middle East is not the Russian Empire where all nations in the Monarchy lived under the same rule. Calling the Russian revolution by that name was aimed at pointing out that it was a revolution against the ruling class in Russia.

The theory of the Arab revolution was first given currency among within the Trotskyist movement by Michel Pablo in November 1958, in his pamphlet The Arab Revolution. At that time Pablo was tailing the Stalinists, Social Democrats and the petit bourgeois nationalists. The theory was later propagated by leading member of the self-proclaimed "United Secretariat" of the Fourth International, such as Nathan Weinstock in his book Le mouvement révolutionnaire arabe.

Our position is not against the unity of the Arab nation, to the extent that it indeed exists as a single nation, but that the Socialist Federation of the Middle East includes other nations as well, and that the democratic tasks are subordinated to the working class task of the world revolution. Like the Stalinist epigones of Leninism’s repetition of the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" formula, the Pabloite theory of the Arab revolution contributes politically to the dissolution of the proletariat in the petty-bourgeois masses and thus creates the most favorable conditions for the hegemony of the national bourgeoisie and consequently for the collapse of the democratic revolution.

Not surprisingly, the Pabloite political currents supporting this theory are also ready to provide support for partition in Palestine with the argument that that is "the wish of the Palestinian masses"-i.e., that that is the wish of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, represented by Arafat, which betrayed the basic demand of the democratic revolution in Palestine: a democratic and secular republic in the entire land.

Against Partition in Palestine

The theory of two socialist states in Palestine is a reflection of the Imperialist-Zionist pressure. To call for such a partition of Palestine even after the socialist revolution is not the wish of the Palestinians masses, for it implies a renunciation of the right of return of the four million Palestinian refugees. Their will is expressed in the Palestinian Charter: One Palestine.

To mention the possibility of two states after the revolution (the position of the CWI) is to recognize that the settler colonialists are a nation. This is the position of the left Zionists, not of Revolutionaries. The future Socialist Federation of the Middle East will have as one of its cornerstones a United Socialist Palestine.

Against all of the political currents who are looking for a solution of two states, which is really the US plan, we would like to point out to the sixth point in the 11 thesis of comrade Lenin in his famous article printed for the second congress of the Comintern: Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions:

"Sixth, the need constantly to explain and expose among the broadest working masses of all countries, and particularly of the backward countries, the deception systematically practiced by the imperialist powers, which, under the guise of politically independent states, set up states that are wholly dependent upon them economically, financially and militarily. Under present-day international conditions there is no salvation for dependent and weak nations except in a union of Soviet republics"