By Lebanon Phalangists

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OU TIM NATIONAL INTEREST! was simply to refer the centred around the refugee camp of Tel Al - Zaatar, near Beirut. The camp has great symbolic as well as practical importance for both sides.

As one of the main pockets of Palestinian resistance it remains a thorn in the flesh of the rightwing Christian Phalangist move ment and their Syrian supporters.

The synans, in particular, nave found the Palestinians and the left wing Moslems to be far more tenacious enemies than they expected.

This has led them to ever more blatant attacks on Moslem-held areas which have recently approached genocidal proportions. To. support the Phalangist advance on Tripoli two weeks ago, Syrian armoured units launched an artillery attack on two Palestinian refugee camps on the outskirts of the city.

In the Tel Al - Zaatar conditions are barbaric. There is no electricity and little water. Every attempt to evacuate the more than 1,000 wounded has been answered by heavy fire from the Phalangists.

At the weekend 500 refugees had been trapped by the collapse of a shelter under Phalangist shelling, and yet, despite repeated claims of victory from the right wing, the Palestinians have held on through assaults which numbered at least into the fifties, before it ceased to be possible to count them.

• Meanwhile, left-wing forces under Kamal Jumblatt have begun to set up local civil administrations in all. areas under their control to combat the breakdown of services.

This has been taken as an answer to similar moves by the Phalangists in the 20% of the country which they dominate.

The fierce struggles of the Lebanese and Palestinian masses have made life difficult for the bourgeois Arab regimes, who see them as an obstacle to accomo-

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For the past month, fight- ing in the Lebanon has