The "glorious" Israeli army has been forced to abandon Southern Lebanon because, despite its modern arms, brutal reprisals, and the support of the USA, the UN and the countries of Europe, it could not blunt the resistance of the exploited Lebanese. And also because Israeli society is beginning to crack internally as a result of its growing contradictions and divisions, and the increasing burden of its permanent state of war. This is of course still something less than outright victory against the Sionist enemy and its imperialist gangster allies, but the occupying troops could do nothing against the determination of the masses, their protagonism and refusal to compromise, their unity that goes beyond their religious differences, and their sacrosanct hatred of their oppressor.
The result shows that Israel is not invincible provided that it is confronted in a determined manner. It is no accident that only the coming onto the stage of the oppressed masses made it possible to achieve what Arab governments have been incapable of achieving. The complicity and readiness to compromise of Arab leaders, their economic ties with Israel and the West, their willingness to restrict the mobilisation of the working masses, their definitive renunciation of pan-Arab unity, and their defence of the interests of the exploiting classes, all exclude the possibility of their engaging in a real struggle against the state of Israel. The enthusiasm with which the victory in the Lebanon was greeted by the exploited Palestinians obliged Arafat to draw back (at least for now) from a final sell-out in the face of the diktat of Clinton and Barak, but it has not stopped him and the other Arab leaders from pursuing the (Sionist-imperialist) "peace" that has done nothing but weaken the Palestinian and Arab struggle, and strengthen the enemy. The victory in the Lebanon shows that there is a different path to national and social liberation – and that the first steps along this path are being made.
It will not be long before the exploited Jews begin to understand that their fate must be separated from that of the Sionist state, and that they cannot free themselves by oppressing the Arab people. This awareness could lead to the merging of their struggle with that of the Arab masses in such a way as to allow a powerful and definitive attack to be made against imperialist domination in the Middle East – a domination of which the state of Israel is the local pillar at the direct service of the West.
The struggle of the oppressed Islamic Arabs cannot and must not stop. It cannot stop because this will not be permitted by the state of Israel or the exploiting and murderous West, which for ten years has starved Iraq by means of the infamous embargo of the UN (as a warning to all of the exploited in the Middle East), and is already preparing to reinforce its armed presence in just-liberated Southern Lebanon! And it will not be allowed by the disinherited masses, who have demonstrated that they are no longer willing to bow their heads, and acquired more dignity, confidence and resoluteness from this victory.
It is also an extremely important result for all of the proletarians who have been forced to immigrate here by Western pillaging, as well as for their struggle to achieve, together with white workers, equal rights and a life that is finally free of exploitation.
We internationalist communists unconditionally support this struggle among Western workers who (like those in Israel) are today deaf to your calls because they are still intent on enjoying the last and increasingly poisonous crumbs of imperialism – but who will soon be obliged to open their eyes and react against a dominion that, albeit in other forms, also enslaves them.