CARAFAT AT THE UNO
*freedom of political action within the armed forces. Against capitulation and national betrayal:
* let us struggle against the peaceful solution and against UN Resolution 242,
*against the intervention of the great powers in the conflict in the region,
*against the Geneva conference and negotiations with the Zionist regime,
*for the complete and unconditional withdrawal of the Zionist army to the borders of June 4,
1967,
*for the arming of the masses and their instrucfion in the workplaces in the use of arms. Against the imperialist penetration and the enlargement of the private sector:
*let us struggle against the economic opening and the imperialist investments,
*against the export of profits by the foreign companies,
*against the lifting of sequestrations and nationalizations,
*against compensation for nationalized propertv For the nationalization of industry and its placement under workers control:
*nationalization withouf compensation of all factories with more than fifty workers,
*control in all factories of production, account books, and all administrative measures by councils of delegates elected from the ranks,
*implementation of workers self-management in the factories. For a workers regime: a workers and peasants government based on the power of councils of workers, soldiers, and poor peasants elected by the masses in their places of work! For the unification of the Arab nation: for a federated Arab socialist republic! Such is the basic program being advanced by the revolutionary communists of Egypt. They intend to develop and complete it. They invite all Egyptian revolutionaries and all workers tendencies to join in a common struggle for the points of this program on which agreement can be reached. Political and ideological differences are natural and must not prevenf the alliance and unification of struggles. We are confronting a strong and violent common enemy; let us unify our efforts! The following article was published as the lead editorial in the mid-November issue of Mal'amal What Is to be Done), the recently established fortnightly newspaper of the comrades of the Revolufionary Communist Group (Lebanon), members of the Fourth International. The appearance of Mal'amal, four issues of which have come out so far, represents an Important step forward in the struggle to develop a revolutionary Marxist party on an Arab-wide scale.
Workers of Egypt, workers of the Arab countries, workers of the world, unite!! "Mustafa Khamis" Revolutionary Communist Group Cairo, October 5, 1974 1. Mustafa Khamis was a worker in the Misr Company weaving plant in Kafr el-Duwar near Alexandria, a factory with 10,000 workers. On the evening of August 12, 1952, just three weeks after the Free Officers coup led by Nasser had deposed King Farouk, the workers of the plant gathered in front of the managers" office and went on strike. They demanded recognition of their union, dismissal of two of the managerial staff, wage increases, and other economic benefits. The management of the company called the police, who attacked the workers. The workers fought back, and the police opened fire. In response, the workers held a sit-in strike. The following morning, froops were brought from Alexandria to throw the workers out of the factory. After a serious clash, the workers were driven out - af the cost of several killed, more than twenty wounded, and 200 arrested. A summary court-martial was set up to try the arrested workers, who were offered no right of appeal. On August 18 fourteen workers were sentenced to long prison terms for their role in the struggle. Two others, Mustafa Muhammed Khamis and Muhammed Hasan el-Bagri, were sentenced to death. The pronouncement of the death sentence against Khamis was used by the regime to clearly demonstrate its character to the workers. At the time, the correspondent of the London Times reported: "There was an impressive show of force by the military, many hundreds of soldiers being present. About 1,000 workers from the Misr plant and other factories in the neighborhood lined the three sides of the factory football ground, with armed troops facing them and tanks in the background. " Khamis stood in the center of the field and heard the sentence pronounced against him. Later, General Neguib, then the titular head of state, brought Khamis to Cairo and offered to commute his sentence if Khamis would give the regime a list of other strike leaders and denounce them. He refused. On September 8, 1952, Khamis and el-Bagri were hanged, thus becoming two of the first martyrs of the workers movement to fall under the repression of the new regime.
- INPRECOR El-Munadil. (the Militant), the magazine of the comrades of the RCG, will continue to appear as the theoretical journal of the Arab Trotskyists. The newspapers and other news media are unanimous in considering the speech given at the UN by Yassir Arafat as the baptism of the Palestinian Resistance within the international community" and the conse-
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PLO cration of its legitimacy as the representative of the Palestinian people. It is true that the delivery of the speech by all evidence marks the end of the epoch in which the
Palestinian cause was nothing but a problem of refugees who moved the United Nations to pity. There is no doubt that in itself the affirmation of the exisfence of a Palestinian Arab people, a people who lived on the land of Palestine before being expelled, constitutes an encouragement to the struggle against the Zionist colonial entity. From this point of view, Arafat's speech represented a step forward. In addition, the text of the speech contained a real democratic position in regard to the Jewish inhabitants of the state of Israel, saying: "We include in our considerations all the Jews who live in Palestine today and agree to live with us in peace and without discrimination in the land of Palestine. " It also contained a democratic, non-racist position in regard to the Jews in general; Arafat stated: *We condemn all crimes committed against the Jews and all the kinds of open or camouflaged discrimination that the adherents of Judaism have suffered. " These words also represent a step forward, especially if they are compared to the statements of the unfortunately famous Ahmed Shukhairy about "throwing the Jews into the sea" or the Qaddafist theses on the expulsion from Palestine of all those Jews who came there after 1948. Two steps forward, then. Two steps that we appreciate. Nevertheless, it is necessary to inquire about the conditions under which these two steps were taken. Were they the result of victories for the Resistance? Weren't they rather the result of a series of retreats? That is the nub of the problem! When the Palestinian Resistance, Fateh at its head, stood at the height of its rise, in 1969 and the beginning of 1970, it never entered anyone's mind to invite Arafat to speak from the UN podium. Why, then, invite him today, after the Resistance has been crushed in Jordan and after the number of operations conducted by the Resistance inside Israel has been significantly reduced? Some will say that Arafat's speech, while it was not the fruit of vicfories of the Resistance, is nevertheless the fruit of the general. Arab victory" after October 1973. But this "Arab victory" is itself an illusion. What sort of victory is it that is expressed by direct negotiations in Geneva with the Zionist regime? In fruth, most of the states that have modified their position on the Palestinian problem have not done so for reasons of objectivity or by virtue of such principles as justice, humanity, and so on, buf rather have done so in the hope of attracting Arab loans and investments to their countries; they have 16 done so by virtue of their economic interests and nothing else. Thus, the principal instrument of of Arafat's entry into the UN was not the rifles of the fighters - this truth is obvious, even if bitter - but rather, above all, oil capital. The question then becomes: Why have the Arab regimes - headed by Saudi Arabia, the most reactionary one - expended all these efforts to get the PLO into the UN after having worked openly to get the PLO confirmed as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people? Here also, the answer is obvious: The regimes in question are seeking to liquidate the Palestinian cause as a source of permanent political tension and to guarantee the stability of the Arab region. They are seeking to apply the "peaceful solution" under conditions that, obviously, are not so difficult as to get out of "control. " These regimes see the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with the Zionist state as the only reasonable road to the peaceful solution; they likewise see that this solution will not acquire its full value unless the PLO is in the leadership of this state as the representative of the Palestinian Resistance. The leadership of the PLO has agreed to go along with these efforts; it has accepted the project of the Palestinian state, which Arafat did not neglect to mention, even if only in a single sentence at the end of his speech. This does not change the fact that this sentence was the most important one of the speech, for it constituted the direct request addressed by Arafat to the UN: "I address you so that you may permit our people to establish its independent national regime and to build its national entity on its land. " That was the principal aim of Arafat's trip to New York! Moreover, after the speech, the Arab delegations immediately began preparing a draft resolution on the "peaceful solution" and the "Palestinian entity" for submission to the General Assembly. Arafat ended his speech by declaring: *I have come today ... bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. " Three times he repeated: "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." The "international community" certainly grosped the meaning of this call: Arafat is prepared to let the freedom fighter's gun fall! But the Arab masses, and especially the Palestinian masses, will in no way let it drop so long as the Zionist entity exists on Palestinian land! No to the peaceful solution! Revolution until liberation! •
In INPRECOR No.5-6, August 3,1974, we published a statement of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International issued May 29 (with a postscript issued July 12) dealing with the support of the Partido Socialista de los Trabajodores (Socialist Workers party, a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Argentine)
to the "process of