"The authorities have
no remedy for our
ills, the petition
stated. 'There is a
real cure, which is
national reform." gentsia - writers, teachers, lawyers, engels, makers - published a letter in the London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat declaring a kind of war on the Government. Called Charter 99, it demanded an end to the 1963 state of emergency, the release of political prisoners, the return of political exiles, freedom of the press and the right to hold public meetings.
Two months later, Assad freed about six hundred political prisoners and closed Damascus's notorious Mezzeh prison, where political dissidents have been tortured ever since it was built by the French. (The much harsher Tadmor prison in the eastern desert is still in use.)
month later, the Government issued a licence for al-Domari (the Lamplighter'), the country's only privately owned newspaper. Meanwhile, more opposition networks were forming, and more declarations were being issued. Some of their pamphlets circulated as samizdat in universities and schools.
In 2003, 287 Syrian citizens published an appeal to Bashar in the Lebanese daily as-Safir. The petition warned that Syria faced two enemies, Israel and the United States, and was too weak to defend itself against either. While making the usual demand for an end to martial law and the release of political prisoners, it also argued for something more fundamental.
"The authorities have no remedy for our ills,' the petition stated. "There is a real cure, which national reform."
This demand for national reform faces the typical dilemma that all the movements against authoritarian regimes have faced in the last 20 years.
Either the US and other western countries will support and arm authoritarian regimes - Colombia, Egypt, El Salvador, Uzbekistan - or it will support the demand for democracy and try to overwhelm and subvert the democratic movement.
The dilemma facing progressive forces in countries like Lebanon and Syria is exactly the same as that faced in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe during the fall of Stalinism how, inl an unfavourable relationship of world forces, to carve out an independent and autonomous political space which will remain hostile to imperialism while fighting for democracy.
Only through rebuilding the workers movement and the left internationally can this dilemma be overcome. Elections under occupation leading to peace and progress? A new dawn in Palestine has been promised. Far from it, reports PIERS MOSTYN At Sharm el-Sheikh on February 8, the Israeli state Prime Minister and the new Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shook hands and agreed a ceasefire. Ariel Sharon even declared that the Israeli army "will cease all its military activity against all Palestinians anywhere».
Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery commented, "Only the violent Palestinian resistance, which the Israeli army has not been able to put down, has brought Sharon to the round table".
But he also noted that, "Sharon did not utter a single word that does not conform with his plan of annexing 58 per cent of the West Bank and enclosing the Palestinians in small enclaves in the rest of the territories".
No one, not even Abbas, mentioned the occupation, the refugees, the settlements, or the wall being constructed apartheid-style to carve up the land. And the Americans didn't turn up, ensuring the Israeli state wouldn't have to deliver anything. After all, Washington is the paymaster.
So in the Summit's aftermath, it was no surprise that:
• During the conference, there was an Israeli military landgrab of the Palestinian village of Twane in South Hebron.
• Within a week the Israeli soldiers shot and killed 5 Palestinians, one of them an 11 year old boy.
• Within two weeks the Israeli Lands Administration announced plans for 6391 new settler homes and the "legitimisation" of 120 unauthorised outposts in the West Bank.
• A new section of the apartheid wall was started West of Ramallah, deep inside West Bank territory.
• More than 10 Palestinians were injured when soldiers fired at peaceful protestors against the wall.
• 45 Palestinian civilians were arrested during 25 incursions into the West Bank.
But no Israelis were killed or injured. Abbas certainly delivered. For Sharon, it was business as usual.
True, an end to house demolition as a form of collective punishment was announced. This way the Zionist state aims to cut its (minimal) losses in Gaza and prepare the
way for the creation of a Bantustan-style "Palestinian" statelet
based on scattered territories, rendered
totally dependent,
isolated and quiescent by
settlements, road blocks, prison camps,
economic
strangulation and a
massive wall. Is it any surprise that the Palestinians don't go along with all this? Too late for the 4,000 made homeless and 12 killed in 675 punitive demolitions over the past four years.
And 500 Palestinian prisoners were released. But nearly all were shortly due out anyway. 7,600 remain incarcerated (compared with 649 before the Intifada), with Sharon making clear they are hostages to be bargained with.
Put all this together and you don't find any kind of "peace process".
With the Israeli pull out from Gaza to be completed by September, the massive new settlement expansion programme is timed to ship the 8,000 Gaza settlers across to the West Bank, to join the 225,000 already illegally settied there. A minor shifting of pieces on the board.
That the "Road Map", the US/EU "peace plan", requires a halt to illegal settlement building is of minor consequence. A US official has been quoted as saying "we are concerned". But Bush has made it clear that there will be no political pressure on Israel prior to the Gaza pull out.
Western states are therefore playing a lying game, by:
Bullying the Palestinians into stopping the Intifada;
Creating the political space for Israel to impose it's plan;
Feigning concern about continuing brutal occupation policies;
Without doubt, they will then state that it is too late to change the "facts on the ground".
This way the Zionist state aims to cut its (minimal) losses in Gaza and prepare the way for the creation of a Bantustanstyle "Palestinian" statelet based on scattered territories, rendered totally dependent, isolated and quiescent by settlements, road blocks, prison camps, economic strangulation and a massive wall.
Is it any surprise that the Palestinians don't go along with all this?
A bomb was then set off by Islamic Jihad in Tel Aviv, at the end of February, killing four people and injuring many more. Sharon repeated the Sharm elSheikh message: "there will be no progress politically, and I repeat, no political progress, until the Palestinians carry out a determined campaign to destroy the terrorist groups and their infrastructure".
But he has two problems. For all it's weaknesses, the Intifada was undefeated. And the US placeman Abbas is not in a position of political strength.
Abbas appeared to be delivering a one-sided agreement to halt the Intifada. But he was elected on a weak mandate -with a low turn out, Hamas not standing and the main opposition candidate, Marwan Barghouti, under lock and key.
His lack of a base was underlined in February when his prime minister, Ahmed Queria, had a real fight to form his first cabinet. Two were thrown out in less than a week by MPs from his own party, Fatah.
And there is an election coming up for the Palestinian Authority legislature, with Hamas recently getting 60 per cent of the seats on an 85 per cent turnout in local elections in Gaza.
This, along with strategic interests including Iraq, helps explain recent US/British pressure on Iran and Syria. We may never know who assassinated Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon.
But, as The Guardian's Jonathan Steele put it, it was no surprise that "Washington quickly activated a plan for international pressure which had already been prepared". Destabilise Lebanon, weaken Syria and isolate Palestinian militant groups well placed to move into the post-Arafat political vacuum.
Blair also organised the London "meeting" with this in mind. Down-graded from "conference" and boycotted by the Israeli state, the politics of occupation were strictly off the agenda. Its sole purpose was to prop up Abbas, who virtually had to be dragged there himself. Perhaps he's worried that his tenure may turn out to be an interlude.
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Hassan Juma'a Awad, President of the General Union of Oil Employees in Basra (of which the Southern Oil Company union is part) visited Britain last month, as a result of work done by Iraq Occupation Focus. He spoke to successful meetings in London and Glasgow and also addressed the Stop the War Conference. Q: When and how was the Southern Oil Company union founded?
A:It started in the 1950s as a result of the industrial revolution in Iraq and led a big strike in 1952. Then in 1978 the Baath regime banned all Refining their arguments: Iraqi oil workers difficult. Q: The media in Britain focuses a lot on the tension between Sunni and Shia. Have you encountered this?
A: This problem doesn't exist in Basra. Those who are spreading this propaganda are claiming that there is a Sunni triangle. But in any case, Basra is very far from this area, and in Basra Sunni and Shia live in harmony, saying simply that they all believe in Islam.
The tensions are stirred by the occupiers in order to divide the followers of Islam, and to ignite communal war between Sunni and Shia. We are happy that the Americans and their friends could not achieve their objectives.
Q: How can trade unionists and anti-war activists best provide solidarity?
Trade Unionists here should not be asked simply for financial support, but to provide training for Iraqi trade unionists, so that we