His 5, Ere on, no ana, 70 High St, LONDON: Central Books, WC2; Paperback Books Brion and Order from SC, PO Box 50, London NI 2XP. What's Left RATES for What's Left. 5p per word Saurior to one or Payment in PARE BOOKS! Any books you don' bookshelves Send ExPshop. 328 Upper St, London NI struggle for Box S0, Loneson N1 2 (lasgow), PO good and Tas. 61-36-4903 Socialist Challenge Events Privatisation 12 September flam -for thermain c Fraction C/O Socialist Challenge Socialist Challenge 11 September 1982 page 8 FOR SHALT hroom Books SOUTHAMPTON: October Books YORK: Community Books, WalmRELEASE DAVID KITSON Picket of the South Africa Ma baybe 7180-590 am sion s0p. Speakers from Kison fami Fign imperialism. Deals From Fish 5909 London We XX, BC Bo. SOCIALIST SOCIETY school 10 |1 12 Septer I am replying to comrades D Kelly, J O'Brien, M Meteyard, Challenge 259, articles in Socialist Challenge 257. In these articles we sup ported the position of the Lebanese section of the TrOUILD (RCG) who appealed the PLO to SLaV in Wes Beirut and fight alongside the Lebanese left, muslim and national movements to halt the Israeli invasion.
I wrote as a militant in Palestine solidarity work DOLO Britain Middle East for six years. 1 cal lestily lilal my view 1s not just a personal one nor idiosyncracy RCG but a widely. held view in Lebanon and with Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Why?
Because the battle is not just with the PLO but with the Arab peoples and in particular the people of Lebanon. Williams and Palser display the height ot ignorance They about the RCG statement ... is very brave, the B Williams and R Palser in Socialist criticising Phil Hearse and my although if they to fight, then there will soon be no section... ' But unlike the PLO they have no choice! do you propose the Lebanese resistance should go? They are Lebanese people; the mans. Their not are Palestinians. try is Lebanon. They face future fascist state and Phalange repression with the aid of Israel on a hor rendous scale - possibly the worst Lebanon has seen and occupation by the Zionist army.
Already the Phalange are discussing, preparing, of massive sections of the Lebanese Muslim COlllmunity exactly Israel would like to see.
Should the Lebanese people accept this? They have no intention passively accepting this fate. They are continuing the struggle. But without the PLO thev are in a much weaker position.
The TOO CHI that the comrades, despite aiscialmets endorse political line the "moderate' PLO leadership The heroism of its militants is not in question. But its political line has resulted in enormous difficulties for the future The PLO took a political decision to leave Lebanon, military one as these comrades seem to think.
Their military withdrawal was undoubtably tied in with the new US proposals for a settlement of the Palestinian struggle The main terms of the Reagan settlement are as follows:
Self-government for the Palestinians in the Israeli Occupied Territories (West Bank Mala Strip) in association with Jordan — not an independent state.
US imperialism's war against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua continues to escalate. Towns and villages in northern beset by Somozaist terror attacks for months. ( cities have been attempted as well. * On 19 July Sandinista revolution -flying from Honduras fired two rockets at concentration of storage tanks holding 800,000 gallons of highly combustible fuel in the port of Corinto. The rockets failed to hit their targets; had either done so, the entire population of the city could have perished in the resulting fire which handies Nicaragua's foreign trade, have been Now, air raids against major - the third anniversary of the an unmarked aircraft of would have been avoid the impression land administration in Washington. While the full scope of Washington's collusion in the terror raids from southern Honduras remains shroud ed in secrecy, a few more details have begun to emerge in the US capitalist press.
Shington i on the sumned press s.
columnis.
Rosenfeld wrote 6 August that 'it is hard to that ine Keagai ministration is cranking up something like a slow-motion Bay of Pigs invasion as a part of a multitaceted plan to destabilise Nicaragua The operation entails not a single dramatic assauli across abcaci out seems. a sowou of many hundreds of former Somoza national fed and barker forthen her und border between Honduras dramatically.
COONSC manoeuvers and to the State Department in accounts of the clea examples destablise Nicaragua.
which appears to be aimed unluccessaly wal presence in Honduras has been stepped up the US-Honduran the US-sponsored military buildup along Nicaragua's nothern border, the Sandinista government issued a note of protest early August. It pointed to the manoeuvers and to the published CIA's covert-action plan as serous attempts The protest said the manoeuvers 'confirm the interventionist attitude of the United States toward the Central American region and further represent a clear and open provocation, at causing an between Honduras and Nicaragua, with unforeseeable consequence A Nicaraguan diplomat in Washington tol