The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.19           May 13, 1996 
 
 
Israeli Troops Out Of Lebanon!  

The one certain thing that can be said about the cease-fire reached by the governments of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria is that it will not last. The agreement settles nothing because the Zionist regime remains at war with the Lebanese as well as Palestinian peoples. Working people the world over should demand that all Israeli occupation troops get out of Lebanon now, that Tel Aviv stop sealing off the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that Washington end its aid to the state of Israel.

The Israeli regime has been unable to crush the Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Despite the ravaging of the southern part of their country by Israel's rulers, the resistance of Lebanese workers and farmers has emerged stronger and more united in face of a common enemy.

Recent events exposed the weakening of the Zionist regime, particularly the failure of its aerial bombing campaign, the reluctance to launch a ground war for fear of sparking greater opposition at home, and the international outrage at the Israeli massacre in a Lebanese refugee camp. Lebanon is Israel's Vietnam.

Tel Aviv's increased dependence on the U.S. rulers - reflected in Washington's intervention to put together a cease- fire - and concern in capitalist circles about the bitterly contested Israeli elections scheduled for May 29 are also signs of the regime's acute crisis.

Israel's capitalist rulers face another giant problem. It's not enough for them to secure the collaboration of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership to police the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank. It's not enough to get the PLO to exorcise revolutionary political perspectives from its historic charter. That will not solve their crisis. The nightmare for the Israeli bourgeoisie remains the Palestinian workers and farmers - including those within Israeli borders, many of whom took to the streets to protest the bombing of Lebanon. Palestinian working people are unbroken and continue to fight to get the Zionist rulers off their backs.

This is why the fight for Palestinian self-determination - for a Palestinian homeland - is crucial. That fight, which registered partial gains with Tel Aviv's recognition of the PLO and a loosened grip on the West Bank and Gaza, will ultimately be successful only when the Zionist state is overthrown by a mass revolutionary movement, leading to a democratic, secular Palestine. As long as it exists, the state of Israel will be a permanent source of oppression of the Palestinians as well as a death trap for the Jewish workers living there.

Tel Aviv and Washington can hail a gutted PLO document. But they cannot eradicate the decades-long revolutionary legacy of the Palestinian struggle. "The partition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland," the 1964 charter accurately states. "The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine."

That revolutionary legacy exists and will be reconquered by a leadership that will emerge from the ongoing resistance of new generations of liberation fighters in Palestine.  
 
 
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