The retreat from the self-proclaimed "security zone" in southern Lebanon by the Israeli armed forces is a victory in defense of national sovereignty, as well as another blow to the ability of the Israeli Zionist regime--still Washington's closest ally in the region--to impose its will on the Arab people, especially the Palestinians.

At the same time, working people need to condemn the threats of military assaults by the Israeli government on Lebanon, as well as any moves toward imperialist intervention, such as placement of "peacekeeping" troops under United Nations guise on Lebanese soil.

For more than two decades Israeli authorities have claimed the right to invade, occupy, bomb, and terrorize the people of Lebanon. The Zionist rulers, aided by Washington, turned reality on its head by justifying their assaults and repression on the basis that they were defending Israel, a small country under assault by hostile forces. In truth, it is Israel that was imposed through a bloody reign of terror on the Palestinian and Arab population and maintained as a military garrison state to do the bidding of imperialism in the region.

In 1982 the Palestinian resistance fighters, outnumbered and outgunned by the Israeli army, which was equipped with the most advanced weapons in the world, waged a heroic battle in Beirut against the invasion by the Zionist rulers. Despite suffering tremendous blows, they staged an orderly retreat with their weapons, dignity, and heads held high. Since that time Palestinian and Lebanese people have organized armed resistance, staged strikes, organized marches, and held other actions against the occupation and sometimes daily bombing of Lebanon.

This struggle undercut support in Israel itself for the government's occupation. As the cost of this military operation mounted and more Israeli soldiers came home dead or wounded, the regime was forced to negotiate a withdrawal. But even then it underestimated the Lebanese people. The Israeli rulers hoped that the rightist South Lebanon Army they created would remain in place to defend the military prerogatives of the Zionist regime. However, once the Israeli army started heading south, the whole house of cards collapsed.

Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak suffered "one of the greatest military humiliations in the country's history," the Wall Street Journal editors whined. Humiliating for the imperialists, yes. But it registers something that has already happened: the declining place of the Israeli regime in maintaining the imperialist order in the Middle East, as well as the fact that it has been unable to defeat the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

The hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who wound up in Lebanon after being expelled from their homeland by Israeli troops have not given up their aspirations for a nation-state. Despite the obstacles to the Palestinian struggle for national rights, including a leadership that continues turning its eyes away from the ranks of the Palestinian masses and relying more on accommodation with Washington and the Arab regimes in the region, the resistance remains unbroken.

Let the Palestinian people return to their homeland!

End all military assaults on Lebanon!

Respect Lebanese sovereignty! No UN or foreign "peacekeepers"!

Self-determination for the Palestinian people!  
 
 
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