The fall of the Palestinian refugee camp at Tel Al-Zaatar on 12 August marks a turning point in the Lebanese civil war. A total destruction of Palestinian military capabilmy is not at stake unuke Jordan m September 1970 - despite the gravity of raistinian losses at ine camp, esumarca al over one thousand killed. But what the Christian right wing have succeeded shredding to pieces in Tel Al-Zaatar is the Palestinian leadership's political project for a return to a united Lebanese state in which an armed Palestinian presence in the refugee camps is tolerated.
Tel Al-Zaatar was the last big Palestinian and Moslem enclave in the otherwise predominantiv Christian areas to the norti of Beirut. Its fall has enormously boosted the prestige of the right-wing forces. It has given them a geographical brought much closer a realisation of their project for the de facto partition of Tel Al-Zaatar was at the same time a test for ine poncy or intervennon or tne synan regime. win a minary force estimated at 20,000 soldiers and 450 tanks, the Syrian intervention has managed to tilt the relationship of forces away from the Palestinian-left alliance and towards the This overt assistance from Syria came on top or considerable indirect aid to the right-wing forces from the Israeli army in the form of ammunition, sophisticated weaponrv. and control of the coastal areas The combined result gradually led to a generalised retreat by the Palestinian and left forces throughout Lebanon from the end of June onwards.
Courage The battle tor tel Al-Laatar encapsulated all these new ingredients in the situation, giving it a symbolic and therefore political significance far exceeding its military value. unis was no oralary callo.
Fifty-two days of siege and constant artillery bombardment, WIED food, or medicine towards the end. These were the conditions in which the inhabitants fought with a tenacity and courage which will forever remain inscribed in the memories of Arab revolutionaries. This much, at least, even defeat cannot erase.
The Syrian intervention has justified itself with the fall of Tel Al-Zaatar, at least in the short term. The Palestinians and the left have been curbed. A situation of Syrian sponsored law and order' relatively free of "Palestinian anarchy' (le. tree of an in dependent Falestinian movement) is now or the cards.
The groundwork has now been prepared also for a favourable comparison between the role of Sadat during the 1975 Sinai accords negotiations, and of Assad with his policy of intervention against the Palestinians and the left. Yesterday Sadat strengthened his ties with American imperialism by making concessions to clonism today Assad wants to do the same thing by curbing the Palestinians. A strip of useless desert along the colan, to match a strip along Sinai.
Zionism But August 1976 is not September 1975. A vear ago the Zionist State appeared as a partial liability to American imperialism in Is project to mend relations with Arat regimes still flushed with their newly acquired oil power. Today that same regime appears as a rock of stability amidst the troubled waters of the Arab world. Policy Israeli bird in the hand is worth far more than a Syrian one in the bush nothing of an even more elusive Palestinian one on the West Bank!
The Syrians are not completely unaware of this fact. Assad needs to prove that he can control the Palestinian movement and manipulate it to serve the Syrian regime's own interests in the settlement with Zionism and the negotiations over Golan.
Unlike Hussain in 1970, Assad in 1976 does not need to physically annihilate the organised presence of the Palestinians in Lebanon. In fact to do so would weaken his bargaining position with the Zionist regime, as he would • not nave the raresunal movement and the revolutionary potential of the Palestinian masses to bargain with.
After Jordan in 1970, there was water, Lebanon to go to. After Lebanon in 1976 there is nowhere. The Palestinian leadership is therefore faced with a clear-cut choice. Either they agree to accrue petty privileges by acting as pawns of the Syrian regime. Or else they organise to pursue a revolutionary policy whose only logic is an all-out war with the Syrian regime.
M. Jaafar management and Dolice have taken men as they did in the unsuccessful toll -14-week equal pay strike at Salford Electrical Instruments (SEI) in 1974.
SCABS As at SEI, where male union members broke into the occupation, myths abound that women are privileged to work for pin money' and should not complain. These have been used to justify the hostility of male scabs — some of them AUEW shop STeMATOS.
Limited involvement and isolation from trade union activity prior to the strike has meant that many of the women lack the confidence and experience to take running of the strike into their own hand:
- leaving it firmly held by the malecominated AUEW District Committee. Many women express their frustration at their non-involvement in all stages decision-making. This can only heighten their demoralisation, as their only means of DaruCanon picketing is rendered ineffective by the scabs and police.
As with the SEI strike, a few questions need to asked about the role national AUEW HeadersniD. strike began, many militants were optimistie that it would not follow the SEI road isolated and broken by ineffective national blacking and lack of solidarity action from the engineering industry and the wider workers movement. A full-time AUW official proclaimed: This is the most important strike at present going on in the TRICO STRIKERS - their determination should shame the union leaders who have refused to back their struggle to the hilt.
for a district AUEW levy of 5p a member to be paid out. For the first few weeks of the strike new members of the union could not get official strike pay - the district officials arguing that three months' membership before the strike was necessary to receive it.
Rules like this hit women particularly hard because of their isolation from the trade union movement.
*Why, after more than three months, has the union not provided child care provisions? This was called for — and promised — some weeks ago, and would have freed Photo: ANDREW WIARD (Report)
many more women to participate more actively in the strike Red Weekly agrees with the AUEW this is one of the most important strikes in the country at present. So how come its leaders have not pulled out all the stops? We could be forgiven for suggesting tha perhaps the TUC deal with Healey and concern not to rock the boat of big business is more important to them than the living standards of the working class and the fight for women's rights IMPROVEMENTS