Workers' Liberty

The left devotes much of its efforts to campaigning against imperialism, which is no surprise given the present foreign policy of the American and British governments.

Seven people were killed on 27 January as the Lebanese army clashed with rioters in southern Beirut in the wake of a Shia demonstration. The incident has drawn the army into Lebanon’s political crisis, which has seen three months of impasse as parties close to PM Fouad Siniora squabble with Syrian-backed parties such as Amal and Hezbollah over the election of a new president.

34,000 blue-collar construction workers employed by “Arabtec” in the “United Arab Emirates” are said to have returned to work after a three-week strike (14 November).

David Broder reviews Fawwaz Traboulsi’s A History of Modern Lebanon (Pluto Press)

Editorial in current "Solidarity"
In 2003 George Bush talked of a worldwide drive by the USA to erect bourgeois democracy and American-style capitalism across the globe, wherever "dictatorial" and heavily state-regulated economies existed. He saw no limits to US power, no insuperable obstacles to an American-engineered transformation of the globe into more or less developed replicas of itself.

By John O’Mahony

A. For socialists in Britain, what are the most important political issues in relation to the situation in the Middle East after the Israeli-Hizbullah war?

Just as veteran US foreign-policy "fixer" James Baker is expected to publish proposals to calm Iraq through cooperation between the USA and Iraq's neighbours Iran and Syria, Lebanon has lurched towards a return to civil war - this time between the Lebanese constituencies aligned with Iran and Syria, and those aligned with the USA.

By John O’Mahony

Tony Blair is again urging the Bush administration to make a new effort to settle the conflict in the Middle East. He has said publicly that resolving the Jewish-Palestinian conflict is an irreplaceable part of such a settlement.

For centuries Lebanon, like all the Arab world, was part of the Ottoman empire, governed from Constantinople. But like another mountainous area of that empire, Kurdistan, it kept itself a bit apart.

The Israeli armed forces have inflicted a vast destruction on the infrastructure of Lebanese economic and social life. They have killed hundreds of civilians.

By Clive Bradley

The Lebanese political system, from 1943 until its collapse in the 1970s, enshrined the religious divisions in the population. There was a Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister (and a much weaker Shi’a Speaker of the House); parliamentary seats were allocated with six Christians to every five Muslims.

By Ruben Lomas

“Only they who can keep their heart strong and their will as sharp as a sword when the general disillusionment is at its worst can be regarded as a fighter for the working class or called a revolutionary.”

Antonio Gramsci

An Israeli soldier — Staff Sergeant Itzik Shabbat — has refused to comply with an emergency order (Tsav 8) to report today for reserve duty in Lebanon.

The third camp statement below (translated from French) has been published by two branches of the French anarchist trade union CNT. They are looking for further signatories - website http://cnt25.over-blog.com

Stop this destructive war! Workers on all sides are paying the price!
A statement by the Workers Advice Center in Israel in relation to Israel's attack on Lebanon.

Since July 12, Israel has been carrying out a disproportionate and murderous war in Lebanon . It has killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including whole families. It has destroyed much of the infrastructure in the south, creating a humanitarian disaster. Those who suffer most are the workers and the poor. At the same time, the IDF continues to pummel Gaza , here too killing innocent civilians. The goal behind all this destruction is to restore the country's power of deterrence. It needs this power so that it can continue to behave unilaterally––without concessions to the Palestinians or the Syrians.

Pasted below is a statement by Lebanese civil society organisations calling on the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to intervene in the crisis to stop Israeli attacks on Lebanon. (The original statement is in Arabic; we are publishing a translation into English.)

The following article, written by Lebanese socialist Ghassan Makarem, was published on Z-net before the latest (14 March) mass demonstrations in Beirut against Syrian troops, and against a government which is seen to be pro-Syrian. Under US/international pressure, which followed the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, Syria has begun troop withdrawal. Makarem argues that the opposition is very heterogeneous, and is dominated by reactionary elements, including the communal leaders of Lebanon’s Druze and Maronite Christian sects. Both resent the fact that they have lost some political power since the end of the civil war. All the religious sects apart from the Shia are over-represented in Lebanon’s cumbersome political system, organised on confessional lines. The pro-Syrian demonstrations, called by the Shia Islamist militia-party Hizbollah, have gained mass Shia support. The Shia population of Lebanon constitutes both the largest single group in the country (41%) and the most oppressed.

The fear now must be that the mobilisations in Lebanon will lead to renewed sectarian conflict.

The following article by Amira Hass, Haaretz's correspondent in Ramallah, details how sucessive Israel government have separated Gaza from the West Bank since 1991.

One can see it as a private problem of four Gazan students - Bashar Abu Shahla, Walid Mah na, Mohammed Matar and Bashar Abu Salim. The four were about to complete their studies at the engineering department of Bir Zeit University this year. They were supposed to begin their last semester Sunday. But the Israel Defense Forces expelled them to G aza in November.

The following extracts from a report by MachsomWatch (a group which monitors checkpoints etc in the Occupied Territories) shows the difficulties that Palestinians face simply moving around. These difficulties were not eased on polling day, 9 January 2005

A diary of labour news from the Middle East. Compiled by David Merhav

Workfare in Israel
The Israeli government is planning a “Wisconsin Plan.” — a programme which will couple tighter welfare benefits with the use of manpower placement companies.

Cathy Nugent reviews Al-Qaeda: the true story of Radical Islam by Jason Burke (Penguin, £7.99)

GEORGE Galloway is entitled to due process. If he is to be condemned for his advocacy of British soldiers refusing orders in the war, or his denunciation of Bush and Blair, then we are proud to be equally condemned. The Telegraph and the Sun are vile Tory rags. Tony Blair is a warmonger and a hard-faced enemy of the working class. But none of that settles the question of the proper socialist attitude to George Galloway. Our enemy's enemy is not our friend.

By Clive Bradley

The United States administration has started to rattle its sabres at Iraq's neighbour Syria. Like Iraq, Syria is ruled by the Ba'th Party, though a different faction; they have been bitter rivals for decades.