Arab Revolutionary Thought in the Face of Current Challenges
By Elias Farah 1973
Prepared by Al-Moharer team
Article 6
The IVth anniversary of the birth of the Arab Liberation Front
The shock troops of “Fedayeen” (the Resistance), members of the Arab Liberation Front, are commemorating now at the beginning of 1973, the IVth Anniversary of a militant action of historic importance —the foundation of an Arab Front, genuinely Arab in its ideology, organization and strategy. Its mission is to lead armed combat to liberate Palestine. As the Palestinian cause is the cause of all the Arab peoples and is the cornerstone of the struggle the Nation is waging against all those who oppose its resurgence, the birth of such a Front was a logical event. Its primary objective is to mobilize the potential of the Arab Nation and to incite the masses throughout the length and breadth of the homeland to take up arms in the defense of Arab life and civilization and bring to pass the objectives of the Revolution. These objectives —the unification of the homeland, the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of socialism— will allow our people to develop fully, for they will encourage the creation of favorable conditions for evolution and renewal in every sphere of life. Socialist transformations precipitate the march of history and the evolutionary processes of humanity, particularly processes set in motion by revolutions, such as those led by the enslaved and oppressed peoples who suffer from exploitation, under-development and disunion —the major evils of the three distressed continents, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
On this occasion, we must call to memory the martyrs of the Arab Liberation Front who, by the offering of their lives, delineated the true road to national resurgence, and thereby stand as the surest guides for total liberation — liberation which includes Palestine and all other usurped Arab lands. The blood of these martyrs cleanses our vision of future responsibilities and reminds us of a fundamental truth that both the present and the past, in their temporal dimensions, only precede the hour when ambition, will-power and determination will have their flowering, sustained by the enriching opportunities of combat at the very heart of the Arab Nation. The past, whether recent of far-removed, the present, with its positive and negative aspects, are, in the eyes of Arab revolutionaries, only harbingers of the future, when the liberation of Palestine and the unity of the homeland will become a reality. It must be understood that this realization can only be brought about by the oppressed masses in undertaking the struggle for the edification of socialism.
During the last few years, incidents which have left their mark on the militant Arab struggle prove that contradictions of the past weigh heavily on socio-political life, are reflected in its present and tend to strangle it in a straight-jacket where continuity is abolished, where there is neither rigor nor enthusiasm, and where authenticity, heroism and an opening out of the future have ceased to exist.
The stage previous to the June defeat reveals a saddening fact to all militants of the homeland; the thought-processes, the methods of action, organization and planning responsible for defeat, have in no way changed. They go on as before. The gulf between the present and the future ever deepens. The distance separating apparent realities and real potentialities is increasing. Current plans are revealed to be inadequate to convey the determination and ambition of our militants. The celebration of the anniversary of the birth of the Arab Liberation Front has the same bearing as any other militant action. It aims at safeguarding the future of revolutionary action and preserving it from the leprosy of under-development, at dragging it out from the depths of concerted conspiracy among imperialists, Zionists and reactionaries. Its aim is to revive in the hearts of militants the truths that will inspire them to fight to the end for the prevalence of the Arab cause.
It must not be forgotten that the dramatic perpetuation of past mistakes —those same mistakes which caused defeat and which continue in the stage following June 1967, as witnessed by the state of paralysis in which the future movement has fallen— is unquestionably the indication of the differences prevailing in degrees of national awareness and fidelity to the Arab cause, in the persistence of class privileges, in tribal interests, all factors of <qualitative contradiction which distinguish the present stage in history. If immobility is to be shaken, hesitations overcome and imposture brought to an end, there is only one way out —resolve the contradictions in the interests of the Arab revolutionary masses and cast off all impediments to the revolutionary potential of the Nation.
This anniversary sounds the alarm, warning us of the pitfalls awaiting the future of “fedayeen“ action and that of all revolutionary action in the Arab homeland. It is equally for us a beacon highlighting the dangers, which threaten us. From this point onwards, full vent can be given to militant action, the only action capable of carving out the future path decisively. The difference between the real revolutionary Arab path and all others, which coincide with our enemies’ interests and finally end in their service, flashes before our eyes. Whilst we are celebrating this IVth anniversary of the Arab Liberation Front, we are witness to the rising of a whole process aimed at the strangulation of future potentialities and their imprisonment in chains created by the tragic repetition of the errors preceding June 1967. It is also proved that plans for the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and the immobilization of Arab revolutionary forces are increasing. As a result of our Party’s realizations, such as the nationalization of petrol operations in the North of Iraq and the positive evolution of the idea of unity between the various Palestinian resistance organizations, these forces are, however, today increasing in vigor. Young, vibrant elements are also rising in several provinces of the Arab homeland to carry the torch of the future and cry out the watchwords of resurgence.
The commemoration of this glorious event brings to mind more than one idea regarding militancy. We must take into consideration all these ideas; look on them as a new departure and an incitement to reveal the complete picture of the Arab struggle in its present day reality and also to define the levels to be attained by this struggle for it to become a match for dangers and hostile conspiracies.
The foundation of the Arab Liberation Front concretized a new idea advanced by our Party and inscribed by it in the final decisions of the IXth National Congress, where a clear analysis was made of the stage of history following the June defeat. In the introduction to the second part of the documents concerning strategy, as defined by the Congress, we read:
“We in no way exaggerate when we state that we are convinced that the stage through which we are at the moment passing is a decisive one and involves our destiny… It is our duty, as a revolutionary movement, to analyze the conjecture with fresh revolutionary logic and to make use of scientific schemas, capable of saving the Arab Nation, now on the verge of annihilation. Our privileged position at the center of all popular Arab movements invests us with great responsibility, on which depends, not only the destiny of the Baath Party, but also that of the Nation as a whole. We must act radically and deeply in the treatment of all problems connected with our cause.”
After analyzing the causes of defeat of June 1967, the documents concerning strategy of the current phase, recall the fundamental truth proclaimed constantly by the Party since its inception:
“Defeat has deep causes which are inherent in the reality of the Arab Nation itself; defeat illuminates the Arabs concerning the weak points of this reality and calls them, with force and determination to cure their weaknesses; this is an indispensable task for the survival of the Arab Nation.”
The report of the IXth Congress then insists on the disastrous failure of the Arab leaders and on their inability to elaborate a militant strategy with clearly- defined orientations. The report concludes:
“If we approached the conditions of the present crisis rationally, we would discover infallibly one of the most suitable methods to repulse foreign aggression—the establishment of a popular, national front. More than a hundred million Arabs would constitute a gigantic reserve, if well prepared for battle. This is the basis of Arab strategy. It is in this idea —a long-drawn-out armed war of liberation— that we see a solution.”
The Arab Liberation Front was born as a concretization of this idea, and its manifesto states: —
“The previous phase did not permit the realization of the Arab Revolution because its outer image did not then correspond to that which is its very essence —that of armed combat, led by the popular masses.” Even if armed combats in fact took place, they were only partial and sporadic. Armed combat was in no way considered as “an inseparable characteristic of the Revolution, nor as one of its fundamental conditions.”
The Arab Liberation Front has denounced incessant attempts to prevent the Arab Revolution from entering into a new phase by depriving strategy from recourse to armed combat, and by trying to circumscribe and reabsorb such combat by every possible means. The Arab Liberation Front is characterized on the ideological and strategic plane by its ability to highlight all theoretical mistakes concerning the Palestinian cause and to denounce all methods, erroneous and destructive attitudes that have always been irresponsibly at play, and which are still at play with the Arab struggle and armed combat of the future.
The Arab Liberation Front manifesto states: —
“Arab regimes have always been careful to limit the Arab Revolution to Palestine“, leaving to the Revolution no loophole for extension and attack on socio-political realities in the countries where these regimes are in power. These regimes, adds the manifesto, have recourse to the policy of limiting the Palestinian cause to Palestinians only, hiding behind a situation which allows them to protect themselves from any repercussions the Revolution may have on them. This attitude is not only attributable to certain Arab regimes. As the Arab Liberation Front manifesto indeed shows, certain Arab political movements of the Left are no different in this regard to the regimes in question. These movements “erect the whole of their pseudo-leftist policy, and their stubbornness in maintaining it, on a doubtful attitude of conspiracy with regard to those who desire to establish organic links between the Palestinian cause and Arab unity. In accepting disunion and regionalist methods of action, they only express their point of view with increased ambiguity.”
The ideological perspectives of the Arab Liberation Front —based on the fact of a close relationship between the liberation of Palestine and the realization of unity (the Palestinian cause being a key factor in the Arab Revolution)— have gone beyond all other current ideologies, whose incomplete regionalist or static vision is unable to grasp globally the dialectic nature of the Arab Revolution.
The Front states:—
“Palestine is the path to unity and unity is the path for Palestine... the Arab people will, henceforward, accept no form of unity if its primary objective is not the liberation of Palestine. Unity can only be achieved by the popular masses, their faces turned towards Palestine.”
Since the beginning of 1969, the Arab Liberation Front has thus hurled itself into the battle, fortified by a new ideology, opening up a new path for the Revolution, endowed with a national organization gathering together combatants from all over the Arab territories, and imbued with the ambition defined by Comrade ‘Aflaq (in his introduction to the text entitled “The Strategy of the Confrontation of Zionism and Colonialism“, adopted by the Xth National Congress), as follows: —
“In taking the initiative to found the Arab Liberation Front, the Party is not seeking to fill a gap, but to get rid of its ailments. It is seeking complete renewal; it is seeking a healthy resurgence, a serious ideological and militant re-birth. If we approach the Front with our old mentality, with our old ailments, the hoped-for renewal will never see the light of day... Indeed, militants of the Baath can have other activities within other organizations, but for the Front we want the most dependable militants, because we wish to make of this Front the true Organization through which the Arab Revolution and the Party can renew itself and regain its strength.”
This IVth anniversary of the foundation of the Arab Liberation Front reminds us of other truths. The most important of these are that:
1. The foundation of the Arab Liberation Front in no way corresponded to a futile need to augment the number of already-existing organizations whose aim is the liberation of Palestine. On the contrary, it is a question of creating a new atmosphere in which the unification of already-existing organizations can be promoted and in which the perspectives of armed combat can be enlarged and given depth.
2. The creation of the Arab Liberation Front was a response to an objective necessity, to a long-felt need on an ideological, organizational and practical plane. This initiative corresponded to the beginning of a process in which could be foreseen both the exigencies of the particular phase of history and those of the struggle opposing the resurgent Arab Nation to forces of oppression which were hostile to its liberty, to its unity and to its development, as to the international revolutionary movement as a whole. These forces of oppression are Imperialism and Zionism; the last-named is a racist movement, the _expression of certain complexes, of tyrannical interests, of the desire for revenge and of genocidal tendencies. Zionism is profoundly opposed to the march of history and to the natural evolution of humanity.
3. The Unitary vision and the deep awareness of the danger of imperial-Zionist conspiracies, together with the true dimension of the Palestinian cause, makes it possible for the Arab Liberation Front to take its place above all organizations of limited horizon whose importance is to be measured by the number of its members and those who militate in their name. The Front draws its significance and its strength from the future, the preparation of which it is undertaking.
The Front is a force, which reveals the latent potential of the Arab masses. It is the _expression of the Nation’s will to live. It claims to rouse an immense revolutionary heaving, exempt from every form of regionalism, bureaucracy, autocracy and, at the same time, avoids the unhealthy and debilitating competitiveness in which Arab revolutionary forces sometimes indulge.
4. Just as all other organizations, of which the Party has confirmed the importance and the absolute necessity (and the Party states that it is indispensable to make of these organizations the source of a new spirit for the Arab Revolution), the Arab Liberation Front is still at the beginning of its way. It has not yet taken the form corresponding completely to the Baath’s ambition. Like all other forces turned towards the future, which constitute the under-pinning of this new phase and contribute to the armed struggle —such as the power represented by the working-class on the one hand and that of ideological and militant action on the other— the Arab Liberation Front is still suffering from birth-pangs. Dangers are many, obstacles are countless and conspiracies incessant, and this is normal, for its strength is the vital source from which will spring liberation, unity and socialism in the Arab homeland.
If the IVth anniversary of the birth of the Arab Liberation Front is of the greatest significance, this lies well and truly in the establishment of this verity and the awareness of its importance. In its light, all obstacles threatening the future of Arab revolutionary action and the growth-potential of the Revolution itself can be faced.
The martyrs of the Arab Liberation Front and all the fighters who, throughout the width and breadth of the Arab homeland, accept the supreme sacrifice in defense of the national cause, together with the heroes who are the troops of the Front today and who represent in the eyes of the Arab people a concretization of the future, of hope, of determination and of heroism —discern in this anniversary of the birth of the Front, and its proclamation “The Revolution unto Victory“, an opportunity to renew their solemn promise ever to continue on the path of sacrifice.
Those who follow this path are transformed into eternal symbols of our Nation’s essential qualities —determination, will-power, confidence in themselves and in the future- They also symbolize the positive values created by civilization and are benefits for the whole human race.