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: WORLD
Lebanese Phalangist connection

~ continuing link in Israeli plans

Although it was written some
months ago, in July, the
Sollowing article by People’s
World foreign affairs writer Mark
Allen offers a revealing insight into
the events of the past week — and
the longstanding political-military
link between Israel and the Leban-
&e Phalangists. It has been edited
slightly,
_ “The only thing that is necessary
Ito find a Lebanese officer, even a
Major will do. We will win his heart
‘Or buy him with money to agree to
declare himself the savior of the
MarOnite population. The Israeli
amy will enter Lebanon, occupy
necessary territory and create a
Christian regime that will ally itself
With Israel. The territory of the
Litani southward will be totally an-
Nexed to Israel.’’
Those were the words of former
eli defence minister Moshe
fayan in a letter to then foreign
Minister Moshe Sharett — in 1955.
Just a few months ago, in June,
nother Israeli general and a for-

camps of Sabra and Shatila—Ed.)
Israel has also occupied the terri-
tory up to and beyond the vital Li-
tani river. Now, with the aid of the
Reagan administration, through
special envoy Philip Habib, Israel
is seeking to place in power in Leb-
anon its fascist ally, the Lebanese
Phalangist Party under the guise of
representing the Maronite Chris-
tian minority in Lebanon. (In fact,
the Phalangist leader was installed
— first Bachir Gemayel and later,
his brother Amin Gemayel, follow-
ing Bachir’s assassination—Ed.)
The Phalangist party was found-
ed by Amin’s father, Pierre Ge-
mayel, following his return from
1936 visits to Italy and to Germany
where he met with Adolph Hitler.
The Begin government, with the
collusion of Washington, has em-
barked upon a strategic campaign
that not only threatens the sover-
eignty of Lebanon and all countries
in the area, but far beyond.
“‘Israel’s national security inter-
ests are influenced by develop-

ee
7 BACK GROUNDER

Mer deputy to the Israeli Knesset
Substantiated that long range Is-
Taeli goal as they denounced the in-
vasion of Lebanon.
“This war has nothing to do with
€ protection of the northern set-
tlements in Galilee. Its goal is the
destruction of the PLO, the re-
_ Moval of Syrian troops and the
Placing in power of a Phalangist
8Overnment allied with Israel,”
Said General Matti Peled and for-
Mer Knesset member Uri Averni in
press conference in Paris June 17.
And in this invasion that has re-
Peatedly been termed a war of gen-
Ocide, the outlines of the strategic
80als of the U.S.-backed Israeli ag-
8tession have starkly presented
€mselves.
The Israelis found their major.
€is Major Saad Haddad, the ul-
tta-tightist Lebanese officer, arm-
€d, trained and financed by Israel,
Who was placed by the Israelis in
em Lebanon following their
ae invasion. He has been con-
€mned to death by the Lebanese
80vernment for treason.
(It was the troops of Major Had-
a who carried out the massacre
Weekend in the Palestinian

fees

ments and events far beyond the di-
rect confrontation area where Is-
rael had focused its attention in the
past,” Gen. Ariel Sharon, minister
of defense and commander of the
Israeli invaders said late last year, in
a speech prepared for the Centre
for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv
University.

“Israel’s fear of strategic inse-
curity interests must be broadened
to include in the ’80s countries such
as Turkey, Iran and Pakistan and
regions such as the Persian Gulf
and Africa, particularly the coun-
tries of North and Central Africa,”
Sharon said.

Prime minister Menachem Be-
gin and Sharon’s strategy flows di-
rectly from the “‘strategic under-
standing” between the Reagan ad-
ministration and Israel. “Israel is a
strategic asset for the U.S.,”’ presi-
dent Ronald Reagan told the Am-
erican Jewish Press Association in
1980 during his presidential cam-
paign. ‘‘I believe we must have
policies which give concrete €X-
pression to that position.”

Reagan, in a statement that
caused a furore in his cabinet, said
in February, ‘“‘Israel is a strategic

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‘82’

treasure” and the U.S.’s ‘‘only reli-
able ally in the Middle East.”’

Begin is seeking to ensure that Is-
rael is viewed as the sole U.S. ally in
the area, while expanding its mili-
tary position in the Middle East to
that of a “‘superpower’’ in the re-
gion.

Israel has long sought the estab-
lishment of a ‘‘Christian”’ state in
Lebanon or parts of Lebanon. As
early as 1954, then-prime minister
David Ben Gurion said that such a
state could not be established
“without our initiative and effect-
ive assistance.’’ According to Ben
Gurion, this was a “‘principal task,
or at least one of the principal tasks
of our foreign policy.”

Standing in the way of the Israeli
plans for Lebanon, however, is the
progressive Lebanese National
Movement, a coalition of left and
democratic organizations, and the
Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), based among the 400,000
Palestine refugees in Lebanon.

Israel also wants a Lebanon di-
vided or dismembered along reli-
gious lines, according to Raymond
Edde, Christian leader of the Leb-
anese National Bloc, because
Israel wants, ‘“‘the creation there of
several states of a confessional
character in order to justify the ex-
clusive nature of the Zionist state.”

The Phalangists have consoli-
dated their position in eastern Bei-
rut not only through brutal massa-
cres of Palestinians and the Leban-
ese progressive movement, Mos-
lem and Christian alike, but
through massacrés of their former
Maronite allies. The Phalangists
wiped out the militia of former
Maronite president Camille Cha-
moun. In one attack on July 7,
1980, 300 Chamounists were killed.
Two years earlier, the fascists laun-
ched a similar attack on the Maron-
ite forces of former president Sulei-
man Franjieh, driving Franjieh out
of east Beirut.

The siege of Beirut is directed not
only at driving out and destroying
the Palestine resistance led by the
PLO, but the destruction of the
leadership of the Lebanese Nation-
al Movement; the imposition by
Israel of the Lebanese Phalangists
in power as the central govern-
ment; the weakening of Syria; and
turning Jordan, along with Leb-
anon into client states.

Through the force of arms, Is-
rael is determined to create an em-
pire three times the size of its 1948
borders. ‘‘Begin has told old Likud
Party friends of his in the Israeli
embassy here that he expects to see
‘Greater Israel’ formed before he
dies — and that includes Jordan
beyond Amman,”’ syndicated col-
umnist Georgie Anne Geyer wrote
May 15.

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Also, through the invasion of
Lebanon, Begin has given de facto
proof of Israel’s willingness to use
aggression against the Arab revolu-
tion, which is characterized by op-
position to foreign domination, Is-
raeli expansionism and annexa-
tion, and the feudal dictatorships in
the region.

Many in the Reagan administra-
tion have sought to build upon the
Camp David separate peace deal
between Israel and Egypt by using
the feudal Arab regimes’ fear of the
Arab revolution to forge a strategic
alliance in the Middle East and Per-
sian Gulf under the aegis of the
C5;

Such a strategic alliance also im-
plies at least lip service to the Arab
and particularly Palestinian cause.

But in the view of Begin and Sha-
ron, such a strategic alliance would
mean downplaying Israel’s central
role as Washington’s chief ally in
the Middle East and gendarme pro-
tecting U.S. oil interests in the Mid-
dle East and Persian Gulf.

Step by step, including the highly
publicized Israeli opposition to the
sale of AWAC spy planes to Saudi
Arabia and the planned arms sales
to Jordan, to the annexation of the
Syria’s Golan Heights, Israel acted
to block the process of developing
this ‘‘strategic consensus’’ that
would reduce Israel to one among
many in the Reagan administration
orchestrated reactionary cabal.

“The whole process,’’ former
secretary of state Alexander Haig
said earlier this year, ‘“‘was jolted
severely first by the Israeli bombing
of the Iraqi reactor, and secondly,
the subsequent increased violence
along the (Lebanese) border with
Israel.’’

But the biggest jolt was the Israel
aggression against Lebanon. Israel
struck to make the debate over the
strategic consensus — a debate that
ultimately resulted in Haig’s resig-
nation — mute. Israel proved that
it, as Reagan said, is the ‘‘only reli-
able ally in the Middle East.”’

As the liberal French daily Le
Monde commented, ‘‘Washing-
ton’s complicity with Israel is, un-
doubtedly, explained by considera-
tion of political strategy.’’ It add-
ed, ‘‘The Israeli aggression does
not threaten Washington’s inter-
ests in the Middle East, quite the
contrary, it might only be favorable
to them. In view of Washington’s
calculations it becomes clear why
Lebanon’s territorial integrity and
sovereignty and, hence, the lives of
its citizens are of secondary import-
ance to the U.S.”

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 1, 1982—Page 11