The Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in July and August 2006 fits in with the desire of the United States to break Iranian influence in the
As soon as the Bush administration had carried out its invasion of Iraq, it concerned itself as a priority with confronting Iran and it chose as the principal terrain for this confrontation Lebanon, which presented two targets that were allied to Tehran: the Syrian presence and Hezbollah.
On this question, unlike the question Washington could count on the active collaboration of Paris. However, the inability of Washington's Lebanese allies to defeat Hezbollah convinced the United States to turn to Israel for this task. 2. The Israeli offensive suffered a resounding failure: not only did Hezbollah largely demonstrate its capacity for dissuasion in the face of Israel, but it even succeeded in carrying the battle inside the Israeli state itself, for the first time in the history of Israeli-Arab wars.
Washington and Paris were forced to have recourse to a "plan B": the deployment of NATO forces (Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Turkey in particular) in southern Lebanon, under the cover of the United Nations, while waiting for a suitable occasion for these forces to help the Lebanese government, which is dominated by the allies of Washington and Paris, in a new attempt to defeat and disarm Hezbollah. 3. Since then, political tensions have increased considerably in Lebanon between the allies of Washington and Paris and the allies of Damascus and Tehran. The forces making up the opposition bloc, on the side of Hezbollah, are not qualitatively different from those which make up the majority.
They are conducting a battle for a re-distribution of power between the opposition and the majority in such a way as to "associate" the opposition with governmental decisions. The way in which the opposition avoided organizing a real mobilization against the neo-liberal program that was adopted in the perspective of the so-called "Paris 3" the Israeli state itself conference on Lebanon and its debt clearly demonstrates its socio-political nature.
The battle that is underway therefore aims as a priority to negotiate compromise within the ruling class, even though the opposition puts forward at the same time the democratic demand for a new electoral law and for early parliamentary elections.
Nevertheless the Bush The Israeli offensive suffered a resounding failure: not only did Hezbollah largely demonstrate its capacity for dissuasion in the face of Israel, but it even succeeded in carrying the battle inside administration is inciting its Lebanese allies to adopt an intransigent attitude: its closest allies even have a provocative attitude which reveals Washington's desire to push the Lebanese people into a civil war. 4. In spite of the fact that it is
fundamentalist Islamic organization, Hezbollah cannot be put on the same level as the terrorist currents of Islamic fundamentalism: the way in which the Bush administration and Israel are trying to associate it with AlQaeda must be firmly denounced.
Hezbollah is a mass party that has become the principal armed wing of the Shiite community, which makes up the majority in the poor layers of the Lebanese population, in its to Israel's repeated attacks.
In this sense, the armed resistance conducted by the Hezbollah is a legitimate struggle, and this organization cannot be put on the same level as the factions of the "Iraqi resistance". So it is legitimate for the Lebanese left to ally with Hezbollah in resisting Israel and the imperialist forces.
The antiimperialist Left has a duty to give political support to the Lebanese resistance, independently of the social and political nature of its leadership, even though it is led by the Hezbollah - while criticizing this organization for its fundamental and communalist nature and for its attitude on social and political questions.
However, iS the Lebanese left - and in particular to its principal organizaLOn the Lebanese Communist Party, itself engaged in the resistance -that the international antiimperialist forces and the workers' movement must prioritise their support. IV -Palestine 1. The Israeli offensive that has been conducted against Gaza since June 2006 also fits into the same regional strategic framework as the one that determined events in Lebanon: the action of the Bush administration against Iran and its allies.
The victory of Hamas in the legislative election of January 2006 was seen as a serious setback by Washington, which immediately put strong pressure on its European allies to treat with ostracism the new democratically elected Palestinian government. At the same time Washington put strong pressure on its Palestinian partner, Mahmoud Abbas, and the right wing sectors who are dominant in the apparatus of Fatah, to reject any perspective of compromise and of a government of national union with Hamas.
It was to prevent such a development that the Israeli offensive was launched. 2. The alliance with Hamas, a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist organization, is a precious gain for Tehran: it enables Shiite Iran to give a demonstration of its pan-Islamism and to counter the attempts to isolate it, as a Shiite power, from the Sunnis who make the big majority in the Arab Washington and Israel in the same way as Hezbollah is, and also because of the radically anti-Israeli attitude that it shares with its Lebanese ally.
As in Lebanon, Israel has shown itself incapable of defeating Hamas in its principal bastion, Gaza, without reoccupying the sector, which would have a prohibitive military and political cost.
So the principal tactic consists of combining the blows struck from the outside by the
with inciting the Palestinian to civil war, in particular by arming the forces allied to Washington within Fatah and by pushing them towards intransigence and provocation.
The setbacks of the Bush administration have encouraged Washington's Arab allies to be more in favour of a compromise between the Palestinian factions, so that Tehran can no longer draw political profit from its support for Hamas. 3. Like Hezbollah, Hamas is a movement with a mass base, which has become the expression of the desire for resistance of an important part of the Palestinian population. Its reputation for dedication and honesty contrasts with the Mafia-style reputation and reality of the apparatus of the Palestinian authority that is dominated by Fatah.
However, its programmatic nature is expressed in a profound inability to formulate a policy that could help to break the Zionist consensus: even further, Hamas has for a long time contributed to producing and consolidating this consensus by having recourse to suicide attacks that threatened Israeli civilians without any distinction.
In one sense, Hamas is "the preferred enemy" of the Zionist right, which has contributed in no small way to strengthening it by its military provocations and by humiliating its opponents at the head of the Palestinian authority. 4. Anti-imperialists and the workers' movement must support the rights of the Palestinian people to freely choose its government, and fight energetically against the strangling of the Hamas government by Israel, the United States, and their European allies.
They must act in solidarity
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Middle East in Flames -continued from page 13 with the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people to Israeli attacks, independently of the nature of the forces which are conducting this
However, they must establish particular links of solidarity with the organizations of the Palestinian left who are conducting an independent political battle against the Palestinian right which allied to Washington, and an ideological battle against Islamic fundamentalism within the Palestinian population. Iran and does not hesitate to broaden the regional scope of its military action, as was recently demonstrated by its intervention in Somalia.
The Bush administration has its back to the wall, but like a ferocious animal with its back to the wall, it is all the more dangerous. It is urgent to re-double efforts to build a powerful anti-war movement for an immediate and unconditional end to imperialist expeditions, around the following priority axes:
• against any attack on Iran
• for the withdrawal of donors, both Western and oil countries, gathered to supposedly help Lebanon. The conference was organized by Jacques Chirac around a classical
The leadership of the union confederation is actually closely linked to the opposition and to Syria: it is a product of the period of Syrian domination over the country. The demonstration it called on January 9 against the Paris Ill agenda proved completely ridiculous - with just 2,000 people, in a country now used to demonstrations of hundreds of thousands.
That's because the opposition did not mobilize in any serious manner: fighting neoliberalism is definitely not their real concern. They actually explained that they did not want to jeopardize the Paris conference! One way you could cut across the sectarian divide would be