Lebanon: Transform the resistance into a broad struggle for national and social liberation

By Claudia Cinatti

As the Israeli air force, armed by US imperialism,
bombs the villages of southern Lebanon, destroys the
infrastructure, and assassinates civilians, mostly
children, the elderly, and disabled people, the
Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora “regrets” that
the “international community” won’t intervene to stop
the offensive, hoping that the principal sponsor of
Israel, the United States, would consider that enough
bombs had been dropped by now for a cease-fire to be
instituted.

The current Israeli attack against Lebanon is no
exception: not only do they make up the majority of
the refugees, but thousands of immigrant workers,
mostly servants, chauffers, and housekeepers from the
Philippines, Vietnam, Sudan, and other middle eastern
countries, were left to fend for themselves by their
Lebanese bosses who fled the bombing, leaving their
workers without money, and in some cases, locked up in
their houses.

However, despite these hard times the Lebanese people
are far from blaming Hezbollah for the destruction and
death caused by the Zionist troops: according to the
polls more than 80% support the resistance against the
Israeli aggression in Lebanon.

But to be able to defeat the attack from Israel and
imperialism, the limits of the Hezbollah militia’s
resistance must be overcome. The broad masses of
workers, peasants, poor and oppressed people must take
the stage, transforming the current resistance into a
broad struggle for national and social liberation.

The government of the Lebanese millionaires is allied
with imperialism.

The current “national unity” government in Lebanon
only protects the material interests of its prosperous
businessmen in construction, tourism, and finance.
Prime Minister Siniora is part of the multimillionaire
political elite that has governed the country since
the end of the civil war. His predecessor, the
multimillionaire businessman Rafik Hariri [1], amassed
a fortune that made him the fourth richest politician
in the world. But while his family inherited around
16.7 billion dollars after his assassination in
February of 2005, the “inheritance” that he left the
Lebanese workers and people is a heavy burden.

The post-war “reconstruction program” led to a foreign
debt of 35 billion dollars, which amounts to 185% of
the gross national product. Under the guidance of the
IMF and the World Bank, Hariri launched a neoliberal
structural adjustment plan which combined the
well-known recipe of cutbacks in public spending,
privatizations, high taxes, and attacks on wages.
Unemployment stagnates at 20% of the population, and
poverty at 30%. This situation provoked a deep social
polarization between the comfortable middle layers of
society, who enjoyed boom in business and the working
class [2], which led important struggles like the
general strikes of 2003 and 2004. Fouad Siniora is
another businessman, a friend and employee of Hariri’s
many businesses, and the minister of finance in his
government, responsible for the increase in foreign
debt [3] and the “structural adjustment” programs.

Hezbollah’s limitations for leading a true national
liberation struggle

Doubtlessly, Hezbollah has been strengthened, at a
national level and whole Arab and Muslim world, as a
legitimate force of resistance against Israeli
oppression. This is because despite being a militia of
limited size - calculated to be around 6,000 fighters
– it is the only one that confronts the powerful
Zionist military, in contrast of the pro-imperialist
politics, not only of the Lebanese government but also
of the major Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi
Arabia. The Lebanese army has stayed on the sidelines
of the conflict while its country has been brutally
attacked by the Zionist army. It has left the
resistance in the hands of the Hezbollah militia, when
the army’s forces are ten times larger, showing in
this manner the bourgeois and pro-imperialist
character of its generals and commanding staff who
report to the government of Siniora.

Far from Bush and Blair’s caricature of Hezbollah as a
band of fanatics and terrorists, the truth is that
this is an organization with broad popular support.
For years, Hezbollah has woven an extensive aid
network that includes health and education services
for the poorest sectors, which although they are
mostly located in the Shi’ite neighborhoods and
villages, help the local population regardless of
religious belief, which along with its resistance
against Israel, has allowed Hezbollah to grow its
influence and political power in Lebanon year after
year, extending its base to sectors of the urban
middle class.

In the last elections in 2005, Hezbollah gained 14
seats in parliament appealing to a combination of
anti-imperialist rhetoric and the rejection of the
neoliberal plans of the preceding governments, a
program combining social reform with religious
ideology.

But despite its denunciations of the Lebanese regime,
Hezbollah participates in the “national unity
government” of Fouad Siniora, which came to power
under the influence of the United States through the
so-called “cedar revolution” and the withdrawal of
Syria from Lebanon. The Hezbollah Minister of Energy
has not resigned from the cabinet, even though the
Lebanese government hasn’t taken the least measure to
confront the Israeli attack.

Despite its anti-imperialist rhetoric and its armed
actions against Israel, due to its social character
and political program, Hezbollah will not transform
the current conflict into a true national and social
liberation struggle. Though it might tactically
declare its opposition to the forceful imposition of
Islam and consider itself allied with the oppressed
people of the world, including non-Muslims, its
strategic objective is the establishment of an Islamic
state in Lebanon, inspired by the 1979 Iranian
revolution and ayatollah Khomeini.

The Iranian theocracy that founded Hezbollah, that
appointed its “spiritual leader”, and that decisively
influences its political orientation, is profoundly
reactionary. Expressing the interests of the bazaar
bourgeoisie [4], it drowned the budding social
revolution in blood in 1979, and established a
completely repressive theocratic regime, which
although it has major differences with the US,
preserved the capitalist character of the country.
Iran, moreover, for its own strategic reasons,
supported the US invasion of Iraq by means of its
affiliated organizations there. Along with Syria,
which also maintains relations with Hezbollah, it
intends to capitalize on the situation in Lebanon in
its own interests and not those of the exploited
masses of the region.

The active intervention of the mass movement

To be able to stop Israel’s current attack, the
enormous energy and fighting spirit of the workers and
oppressed people of Lebanon must be set in motion,
through a program that unites the resistance to
imperialism with the struggle against the local
exploiters and the political elite, brought together
in the so-called “March 14 coalition” [5], in which
the exploited and oppressed Lebanese people have no
interest, and which in the face of the attacks has
been negotiating the disarmament of the Hezbollah
fighters, in accordance with the demands of the
imperialists.

A truly revolutionary program must begin with the
unconditional defense of the Lebanese resistance
against Israeli military aggression, and with the
international struggle for the defeat of Israel, the
United States, and their allies. Nevertheless, the
resistance against an infinitely superior army can not
be limited to the Hezbollah militia, which exercises
an exclusive monopoly over the armed struggle,
reserving for the “civilians” the role of passive
supporters, victims, or refugees. It’s necessary to
proceed with the general arming of the working class
and poor population, which would enable them to defeat
the Zionist state’s ground invasion troops in every
village, giving a massive character to the resistance,
which is the only way to defeat enemies as powerful as
imperialism and the Zionist state. At the same time,
the revolutionary program must orient itself towards
the rank and file of the Lebanese army, to win them
over so that they break with the collaborationist
policy of the government.

This struggle must have a strategic perspective,
beyond gaining a “moral victory” over the Arab agents
of imperialism and Israel. On the basis defeating the
Israeli attack by all necessary means, we must raise
the demand for the expropriation of the imperialist
businesses and the big local business owners, as well
as appropriating the enormous fortunes of the
millionaire politicians.

Despite the frequently heroic character of the
struggles that the masses of the region have
undertaken, such as the two Palestinian intifadas or
the Iranian revolution of 1979, these have been headed
by leaderships without a strategy for victory.

Success calls for joining in the front ranks of the
resistance, to overcome the current leadership
(whether Islamic or Arab nationalist), carrying out a
revolutionary program, policy, and strategy so that
the working class of the Middle East, leading the poor
peasants, the oppressed youth, and all the region’s
exploited people, can decisively defeat the terrorist
state of Israel, the United States, and the corrupt
Arab bourgeoisie, advancing toward a Federation of
Socialist Republics of the Middle East.

[1] 1 A Sunni Lebanese politician, he was prime
minister between 1992 and 1998 and for a second term
from 2000 to October of 2004, when he resigned amidst
a wave of workers’ protests. He began to accumulate
his fortune during the civil war, building deluxe
hotels and other construction projects for the Saudi
monarchy. The Saudi royal family granted him
citizenship, named him as their representative in
Lebanon, and began new investments for him that they
drew him from the construction business to the oil
industry and finance, extending his investments to
Paris and Houston. He died in Beirut from a terrorist
attack in February, 2005. The US blamed Syria for his
assassination, which precipitated the so-called “Cedar
Revolution” led by the Christian and pro-imperialist
sectors in Lebanon.

[2] The Lebanese working class is composed of about
1.6 million wage workers, of whom 62% are employed in
the service sector, 31% in industry, and 7% in
agriculture.

[3] According to an article in the liberal Lebanese
“Daily Standard”, based on the latest report of the
IMF on Lebanon’s debt, “in 1988 the debt was less than
one billion dollars (...) however in the next ten
years it grew to $16 billion in 1998 and doubled to
$35 billion in 2005”.

[4] A traditional sector of the Iranian bourgeoisie,
essentially commercial and tied to the Shi’ite
clerics, which did not benefit from the “modernizing”
plan implemented by the Shah in league with
imperialism before his fall.

[5] It unites Washington’s clients in Lebanon, among
others: the Future Movement (Hariri’s Sunni political
party), their Druze allies led by Walid Jumblatt, the
liberal Christians and the forces of the Lebanese
Maronite Christian right wing. It also includes the
Democratic Left Party (founded by ex-stalinists). It
is named after the mobilizations that were organized
on this date for the withdrawal of Syrian troops.

Source: La Verdad Obrera N° 198