Shoot-outs hamper fight against Zionism

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The lengthening list of violent shoot-outs at "Iraqi and Palestinian offices throughout the world does nothing to aid the struggle against Zionism and imperialism and shows vividly the failure of petty bourgeois politics divorced from the interests of the masses.

Some of these incidents, like the murder of the former Iraqi Prime Minister on 9 July in London are merely traditional methods of settling political differences on the part of a petty bourgeois regime which also specialised in show trials on TV and public executions.

The South African government has now approved the United Nations resolution which More recently however the murder of Palestinian representatives in Paris, Kuwait and elsewhere, and the retaliations against Iraqi diplomats and their missions in London, Karachi and elsewhere seems to indicate a very dangerous alliance of Palestinian rejectionists and Iraqi Ba'athists.

Compromisers

They are in conflict with those within the Palestinian Revolution who seem prepared to accept a compromise with imperialism and Zionism such as by setting up a Bantustan on the West Bank of the Jordan.

Such bloodletting is more or less traditional within the Iraqi Ba'ath 'socialist' party, whose byzantine manoeuvres are not always even understood by the most active students of Arab For Palestinians to take part in them is simply to reflect their own weakness at this stage following their defeats at the hands of UN troops in the Lebanon, and the consequent restrictions on their ability directly to confront the Zionist enemy.

The fights between PLO leaders and rejectionists' in Lebanon may have been reproduced on embassy steps around the world, but they will not be resolved there.

It will be the mobilisation the workers and peasants of Lebanon, Iraq and the other Arab countries which will in the end provide the greatest challenge to Zionism and imper¡alism as well as to those prepared to sell out to it.

Those who fight for the success of this revolution will not direct shoot-outs at foreign embassies nor act as cheer leaders for every move by the PLO leaders, the Iraqi regime or any other bourgeois force.

They will fight to mobilise the Arab masses on the basis of socialist policies fought for by organisations true to the principles revolutionary of Marxism. PLO leader Arafat Portugal's new political crisis shows that over four years aft er the overthrow of fa scism the Portuguese bourgeoisie has still not found any stable form of rule.

Mario Soares' class collaborationist coalition with the Christian Democrats (CDS) has broken apart after only 8 months on the issue of how fast the gains of the revolution were to be undone.

Both sides seem politically unable immediately to renew the coalition which leaves no majority in parliament.

Sections of the bourgeoisie are openly demanding the reestablishment of

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military rule