This document is part of the assessment which the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DPFLP) made of the situation after the September 1970 Civil War in Jordan. It is interesting not simply as a first hand assessment of the situation, but also because of the criticisms it makes of the policy of the Palestinian Resistance before and during the September war. Basically the criticism appear very sound although they are couched in a terminology which can only lead to confusion. For example the Maoist concept of principal and secondary contradiction was the one used by most Maoists to justify their support for El Fatah's suicidal course of collaboration with the Jordan regime. Similarly the Maoist theories of "the people" and the "state of an alliance of classes" are those used to justify the attitude of various of the resistance groups towards, for example, Nasser's Egypt. All that having been said it still remains the case that this is one of the best analyses to emerge out of what is one of the heaviest defeats suffered for the world revolution for a considerable period. — Eds
PRESENT REALITIES IN THE SITUATION OF THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT - Analysis and Critique
Firstly - Internal Structure of the Resistance
The offensive campaign of September has tangibly demonstrated the correctness of the critiques presented by the Democratic Popular Front throughout the past period concerning the internal (ideological, political and military) structure of the Resistance. The Resistance Movement has paid the full price of 'the absence of theory' from its life and daily tactical practices (political and military) whether on the Jordano-Palestinian ground or on the Arab ground or in its international relations with the national liberation movement and the socialist forces and countries - a fact which again confirms that 'there can be no revolution without a revolutionary theory'.
The absence of the revolutionary attitude from, and the prevalence of the spontaneous nationalist trend, in the life and practices (strategic and tactical) of the Resistance have stripped it of the ability to build internal revolutionary realities, cultural, political and military, whether in the ideological structure, which should throw full light on the current national class struggle in the Jordano-Palestinian ground between the Resistance movement and the reactionist and imperialist class forces ruling in Jordan and on the link-up of Jordano-Palestinian and Arab reactionism with the imperialist and zionist designs in the Middle East; or in the internal political structure and the consequent daily national practices as regards understanding the movement of the reactionist forces, as regards understanding and practising the law of the unity of the people in the Jordano-Palestinian ground, and as regards implementing the national class programme favouring the nationalist and revolutionary classes in the country against the programme of the imperialist and reactionist classes which controls the political, economic and cultural life of the country; or in the internal military structure which should be based on revolutionary volunteering without any bureaucratic privileges (material or moral) in the ranks of the Resistance; or in understanding and practicing the laws of peoples' liberation wars against the counter-revolution.
The absence of the revolutionary theory which serves to guide the daily movement of the revolution led to the following results in the structure and practices of the Resistance Movement:
A. The Resistance was overwhelmed by a flood of privileges and by material and moral ease of life, away from the class and mental suffering of the people. For the Resistance lived in great abundance (A Rich Revolution) brought about by Arab reactionism and bourgeois classes in the area, a fact which produced several malignant diseases in the body of the revolution, the most prominent of which were the low level of revolutionary awareness against enemy designs and spread of bureaucratic life (offices, cars, money, semi-classical military relations between commands and bases ... etc.) and the anxiousness to perpetuate these privileges by the insistence on maintaining all the Arab relations which bestowed upon the 'revolution' this easy life.
B. Absence of realist and scientific understanding of the relation with the masses in the Jordano-Palestinian ground: This fact led certain commands of the Resistance in the direction of Palestinianizing the Palestinian cause under the slogan of 'non-interference in the internal Arab affairs'. This trend was translated in the Jordano-Palestinian ground into a series of wrong practices which 'effectively helped to disrupt the unity of the people' through the insistence on maintaining the Palestinian social institutions (the Red Crescent, the Martyrs Establishment, the Children houses ... etc.) and trade unionist and vocational organizations (Students' Union, Labour Union, Women's Union, Artists' Union, Lawyers' Union, Journalists' Union, Writers' Union, etc.). The Palestinianization process existed vertically also because the anti-revolutionary classes were not separated from the nationalist and revolutionary classes in the ranks of the people. This narrow regional policy resulted also in the absence of a nationalist class programme organizing the relation with the Jordanian masses. This led to the reinforcement of the regional leanings (basically nurtured by the reactionary regime) and placed the Jordanian masses in a narrow corner because they found that they had nothing in common with the revolution such as nationalist or class interests, except the common nationalist emotions. Despite our endeavours to provide a revolutionary alternative to that line (by stressing the unity of the ground and of the people, the unity of the Jordano-Palestinian nationalist front, the unity of the social and trade unionist institutions and the need for establishing other institutions on this line) and despite the victory in the Seventh National Council of our call for abolishing the existing regional institutions (Vide the resolutions of the emergency session of the Palestinian National Council held in Amman, August 1970... etc.), these steps came late and only after a bitter conflict and were not fully implemented. Of this situation the reactionary regime made the most advantage, and the Resistance reaped most painful consequences in the offensive campaign of September and in what is currently taking place.
C. Wrong analyses and practices in the process of understanding the nature and size of the conflict between the ruling and Arab reaction as a whole on the one hand and the national liberation movement in the Palestine-Jordanian ground on the other. Under the slogan of 'giving priority to the main contradiction with the enemy (i.e. the national contradiction) over the secondary contradiction with the reactionism (i.e. the class imperialist contradiction), several Resistance groups were unable to deduce the laws of conflict between 'secondary' contradictions. And despite the insistence of reactionism on settling the secondary contradiction (i.e. liquidating the Resistance) before the main one, the Resistance movement failed to understand and appreciate the 'real size' of this conflict, and to see that the struggle against reactionism (particularly visavis its permanent insistence on winding up the Resistance) required the deliverance of the revolution from the permanent bleeding inflicted upon it by reactionism and imperialism, bleeding that paralysed most of its capabilities in the face of the zionist imperialist enemy. To put it more precisely, those groups ignored or forgot (for the result is one) that the law of giving priority to the main contradiction with imperialist zionism over the secondary contradiction with reactionism applies only to the extent that reactionism responds positively to the nationalist programme of mobilising class forces (irrespective of their ideological and political positions) against the zionist and imperialist enemy (the main contradiction). But reactionism, considering its permanent insistence on liquidating the revolution, forcefully pushes the secondary contradiction to the fore and makes it supersede the main contradiction in its daily programme, because reactionism, by virtue of its class formation and its linkage with imperialism, refuses practically and objectively to take up arms against the national enemy (i.e. Zionism and imperialism). Hence the thesis of 'giving priority to the main contradiction over the secondary ones' crumbles in consequence of the non-fulfilment of its basic requirements; and it becomes incumbent upon the revolution to deal first with the internal contradictions (with reactionism) to be able to resume its struggle with the main contradiction (the zionist imperialist) on ground safe and solid not on ground strewn with mines and bullets.
The absence of a revolutionary theory and a revolutionary culture, and the prevalence of rightist culture in big sectors of the Resistance lost the revolution the ability to react and to confront reactionist designs and attacks and placed it in a defensive position in the grip of the pincers of Israel and reactionism.
D. The relation with Arab regimes. Throughout the last three years, most of the Resistance groups did not base their relations with Arab regimes on the attitude that these regimes took towards the laws of the Palestine liberation process, and the 'struggle against imperialism and colonialism', for there is an active and daily connection between 'the struggle against Israel and the struggle against imperialism and the reactionist Arab classes tied up with imperialism'. Because bourgeois ideology prevailed in most of the Resistance groups (particularly in the political cadres), therefore the relation between those groups and the Arab regimes was governed by the slogan of 'non-interference in the internal Arab affairs' for the sake of obtaining temporary material gains - weapons, money, communications. This resulted in the absence of a revolutionary programme alternative to the programmes of the defeats of 1967 and 1948, a fact which led the aforesaid groups to practise a demagogical (misleading) relation with the Palestinian and Arab masses and to give national deeds of absolution to the reactionist regimes in return for their handful of subsidies as well as to connive at the programmes of the nationalist regimes which have been unable to attain the objectives of national democratic liberation.
The foregoing facts have inevitably caused the relation with the Arab masses to be emotional and unorganized and have prevented the development of close and well-arranged organic alliance with the forces of the Arab liberation movement, alliance which would have enabled the Resistance to give the struggle against the unholy trinity (zionism + imperialism + Arab reactionism) its full and objective size. That relation superseded the 'theory of self-reliance and dependence upon the masses' and helped to fetter and chain the revolutionary popular renaissance movement, which was supposed to be a well-organized movement on the local and pan-Arab levels, and left the Resistance movement dependent, for its material and political requirements, upon the Arab regimes, and victimized by the contradictions that govern these regimes and their designs for the Middle East area and the Palestinian problem, while the role of the Arab masses was confined to emotional attachment and limited material (financial and human) support. To sum up, the situation of the Resistance described above was translated in the September campaign into loss of the initiative and cramping of the Resistance forces into defensive positions which were of a nature nearer to regular wars than to the popular warfare which is multiform (streets, houses, ambushes, raids, etc.), long-breathed and capable of carrying the Resistance from defensive positions to equilibrium and to attack. The war of positions alone cannot be in the interest of the Resistance owing to the quantitative and technical superiority on the side of a regular army. Furthermore, the unrevolutionary internal structure, political and military, of certain cadres motivated them to impede the participation of most of the revolutionary capabilities in the class national conflict against reactionism despite the decisions already taken to set up a nationalist government in the North and to advance upon Amman. This episode prompts us to wonder whether it was alone the absence of the revolutionary understanding, political and military, that brought about that situation or there were other factors. In the light of the political consequences of the campaign and in view of this type of relation with the Arab regimes, the Resistance has fallen in the trap of those regimes and their designs for the area, namely the Cairo agreement which has rescued the Hashemite throne and conferred upon it new privileges (the reward of the aggressor for his aggression). Of these was the control of the towns with the repressive machines that slaughtered the people and the Resistance. This was made possible under cover of the 'return of the state machinery, under civil administration', to the control of the country. Thus, the Cairo agreement protected the throne and gave it a new lease of life to continue its offensive against the revolution and the masses, and made an American landing superfluous. It was in the interest of the Arab regimes that met in the Cairo conference to take this attitude, otherwise why did they not take a different one when the massacre was divulged to the Cairo Conference delegation which had arrived in the Jordanian capital?
By Arab concurrence also the Resistance has been shackled and placed under the 'tutelage of Arab regimes' so that the battle of the Resistance may stop after it had retreated two steps in favour of the 'Jordano—Palestinian reactionism', which continues its attacks under the ears of the Cairo agreement and the signatory governments. The agreement is meant to perpetuate the rift between Jordanian and Palestinian in favour of an outcome connected with the final settlement of the Palestinian problem, namely, the 'Palestinian State'.
Resistance in towns and villages (Eastern Bank of the River Jordan)
a. The regionalistic policy followed by certain groups of the Resistance in the past three years (i.e. the Palestinization of the Palestine cause politically, nationally, professionally and on the level of the trade-unions in the Palestine-Jordanian ground and the application of the motto of 'non-interference in the internal affairs of the Arab world') has resulted in widening the gap of dissent between the members of the same people: the Palestine-Jordanian one. The ruling reaction has exploited these errors, which overlook the historical, economic, social and political unity of the battle-ground and the people, for the benefit of its aims which are opposed to all nationalist and revolutionary classes of the country and for the service of the reactionary and imperialist plans aiming at liquidating the Resistance movement and inciting the people to civil war, under the false and reactionary pretext of 'safeguarding the political entity of Jordan' especially within the Army and the Security Forces.
Still more important than the reactionary exploitation of the Palestinian regionalist practices is the fact that some large sectors of the east-Jordanian nationalist class forces remained isolated from the Resistance movement, because their ties with the Resistance were mainly confined to simple patriotic sentimentalism. All this was due to the lack of a class-nationalist programme in the daily practices of the Resistance, in spite of the fact that Jordanian masses eagerly waited for such a programme, which might have facilitated the solution of the problems of the national democratic Palestine-Jordanian liberation in the Eastern Bank.
As for the programme set up by the leftist radicalist wing of the Resistance it was not able to take deep roots among Jordanian masses for several reasons: the short period of practice, the theoretical and practical insistence of the other Resistance groups on continuing their regionalist policy, the alertness of the reactionaries, the rapidity of their military campaigns to prevent the spread of the revolutionary practices in its daily dialectical relations to the problems of the Palestine-Jordanian revolution (especially the struggle and the strikes of the workers' trade-unions in support of their demands, the attempt of arousing the revolutionary nationalist class conscience in the ranks of the people in the rural areas, the unification of the people in its struggle against the Imperialist-Zionist-Reactionary trinity, the agrarian struggle against big land-owners and semi-feudal capitalists, the resolutions of the 7th National Palestinian Assembly, the problems of the national Palestine-Jordanian front, the elected popular communes, the establishment of nationalist rule, the struggle aiming at the overthrow of the stooge Government and the purge of the State machinery from the reactionaries and the agents of Imperialism). This prevailing trend in the policy of the Resistance movement led the Jordanian masses to seeking isolation from the Revolution in practice and contenting themselves with a broad national sentimentalism. This explains the scarcity of the east-Jordanian elements in the ranks of the Resistance on one hand, and the success of the ruling reactionary elements in mobilizing large sectors of soldiers and officers against the Resistance movement, on the other hand.
b. The September experience has proved that the fundamental field of the Resistance movement lay in the 'cities and refugee camps' which constitute the dense human forests for the Resistance to melt in, as well as the main bases of 'asylum and supplies' in the human, material and political sense, owing to numerous factors such as the density of the population, the spread of nationalist political culture, the historical fact that cities and camps have always been the cradle of nationalist movements, the extension of the nationalist organizations, trade unions, working classes and the middle class of lawyers, engineers, teachers, doctors, artisans and small trades people.
Cities and camps have therefore constituted protecting human forests for the Resistance movement. At the same time, the birth of the Resistance movement along with the awakening of the nationalist and working masses sympathizing with the Resistance and hostile to Imperialism, Zionism and local exploiting Capitalism, combined with the decay of reactionarism, all these factors led the poor working masses and the lower classes as well as certain sectors of the middle class to sympathize with the Resistance movement in front of the reactionary regime opposed to their nationalist and democratic aspirations, as shown by their hostility to Imperialism and Zionism, their refusal of the domination of the semi-feudalists, big land-owners and compradors over the economic and political life of the country, the nationalist opposition to the country's subservience to Imperialism, the trend towards modernizing the State, setting up the basis for a healthy national economy and establishing political democracy, etc...
c. The same experience proved that there is a great difference between the situation of the villages and that of the cities as far as the role they play in the life of the nationalist movement and resistance is concerned, due to historical and economic factors, as well as other factors related to the policy of the Resistance movement.
HISTORICALLY: the nationalist movement remained without effect upon the extension of cultural, political and democratic currents to the villages. It was rather confined to the cities and camps owing to its general nationalist programme directed against imperialism, zionism and reactionarism, with the absence of any democratic programme for the rural areas (dealing with such problems as the agrarian issue, the struggle against feudalism, big land-owners and rural capitalism, struggle against the close relations between feudalism and capitalism in rural productions, demand for the mechanization of agriculture and of scholarization in the rural areas etc...). During the past twenty years, the programme of the nationalist movement remained confined to taking general nationalist positions in support of the struggle of the working masses for certain demands, among a lot of 'socialist' mottos. Thus the rural areas remained excluded from the efficient organic adhesion to the nationalist movement in Jordan.
ECONOMICALLY: within the general sphere of under-development in the rural areas (prevalence of primitive means of production) and the scarcity of agricultural production (primitive means of production, dependence on the raining season, with the consequence that the eastern Bank experiences practically three years of drought for one rainy year), in addition to the class exploitation in the countryside, it is no surprise that the economic life of villages depends largely on the state machinery and the reactionary ruling class. Fifty per cent of the villages income is due to the salaries received by the State employees especially in the army, which is considered the main source of income and the basic employment field for villagers and bedouins. At the same time, bad crops put the villages at the mercy of the regime, which intendedly follows a policy of 'alms' distribution and non-productive expenditures, in ways of services and aids, for drought-stricken villages, without promoting any agricultural development projects or soil improvement etc... It is to be noted that the dependence of the Jordanian villages on 'the Army and the alms of the regime' increases steadily from northern to southern areas where it reaches 60-90%, with the result that less than a third of the village's income is drawn from agriculture.
THE RESISTANCE POLICY: in its dealing with the villages, the Resistance movement confined its activities to extending some medical and social services and to certain simple economic deals such as buying supplies for the neighbouring bases, without undertaking any democratic programme within the frame of the Resistance activities in the rural areas.
As a consequence, Jordanian villages remained isolated from taking class interest in the struggle and in such vital issues as the agrarian problems and the economic difficulties encountered by peasants. At the same time being far from Zionist occupation, Jordanian villages had no immediate incentives to protect the national revolutionary interests or to take an effective part in defending the homeland and the farming land of the peasants.
These facts were reflected in the relation of the village with the reactionary regime, with the result that it continued to see its economic interest linked with the existing regime and did not find any class interest in taking the side of the Resistance because of the absence of a democratic programme to be implemented by the Resistance in the countryside. Also the village did not find a national interest in defending the homeland. So its relation with the Resistance remained emotional. The conspicuously regionalist policy of the Resistance and the exploitation of this tendency on the part of the regime, pushed the village into the lap of its national and class enemy (reactionism and imperialism) and made it fight on his side or remained neutral when the regime launched the barbarous campaign of September to beleaguer and annihilate the Resistance.
Because of these factors combined, we behold at the present a wide reactionary relapse in the country against the revolution, a relapse which grows wider as we move from the north to the south.
The value of the role of the countryside in the popular national war against the Zionist enemy or the attacks of reactionism which aim at imposing capitulatory solutions upon the people and black reactionist dictatorship on the State does not lie in the density of the population in comparison with the towns, but in the nature and size of its role whether in backing or fighting the Resistance and in the role of country soldiers in the army whether in supporting the Resistance or in executing repressive operations against the revolution and the people. Here is the real danger in the matter, especially if we take into consideration the quantitative weight that the country soldiers have in the army.
THE STATE AND THE REVOLUTION:
It is no news that 'the state is an instrument of class repression in the hands of one class or class alliance against one class or class alliance'. This thesis applies to the situation in the under-developed countries as well as to the situation in the developed countries. But it does not mean, for a moment, that the state institution (the army, the security forces, the police, the administration), under a rule opposed to the nationalist democratic revolution or to the socialist revolution, cannot be partly won over to the revolution, especially the low and middle sectors. This is a well-known phenomenon in history. However, this depends, in the first place, upon the size and influence of the nationalist or socialist revolution in the society, and in the second place, upon the nature of the class structure in the institutions of the state.
In Jordan, the Jordanian reactionism (the Palace, feudalism, the compradore class) and imperialism used the state institutions before 1948 for its class reactionary and imperialist repression, which made Jordan a farm 'for a handful of the members of the ruling family which British Imperialism had imposed upon the country, and for a handful of big feudalists, landlords and capitalists', and a centre of conspirations against the Jordanian and Arab national liberation movement, as well as a historical safety valve for the zionist movement and the British Mandate plans of 'Judaizing Palestine'. After 1948, when the two Banks were united, the Jordano-Palestinian reactionism tied up with imperialism continued its policy of employing the State institutions - particularly the army and the security forces - as an instrument of class repression in favour of the counter-revolution (reactionism + imperialism + zionism). But the national and popular movement grew in the country and compelled the imperialist-reactionist-monarchic trinity to give a series of concessions to the national movement in 1956, and led to the growth of the nationalist attitude amid the basic and middle sectors (soldiers, junior officers), a fact which helped the national movement impose the concessions which were in the view of the counter-revolution a mere temporary tactical retreat. The Jordanian army was denounced, after a series of repressive operations against the national movement and the masses and after the failure to affiliate Jordan with the Baghdad Pact (revulsion of 1955 against Templer, emmissary of Baghdad Pact and British imperialism). This retreat, however, effected no changes in the structure of the reactionary regime or the State institutions. Shortly afterwards, therefore, the Palace, in co-operation with the Americans, planned and carried out, in April 1957, the famous reactionary coup (1) the objectives of which were destroying the nationalist movement, purging the army of nationalists and strengthening the position of super-reactionaries and clients at the head of the supreme basic commands, in order that the Palace, reactionism and imperialism might be able to impose black autocratic dictatorship upon the country and to make it once more a fortress and centre serving the purposes of the counter-revolution. Until 1970 the State institutions remained subject to consecutive purges so that they might remain fit to play their full part in the repressive and terrorist operations and launch successive campaigns of 'siege and annihilation' against the Resistance movement and the nationalist forces in the Jordano-Palestinian ground, and to strike at the masses with blind artillery and tank-guns to terrorize the people and make them bow in the face of the counter-revolution attacks.
The September Campaign proved the 'cohesiveness' of the State institutions (the army, the security forces, the administration) as an effective instrument in the hands of imperialism and monarchic reactionism. Despite bombardment of Amman and as-Zarqaa' with every weapon for ten days running, defections to the revolution were limited and [illegible] and went beyond the worst expectations of the Resistance movement!
The dominant basic feature in the ranks of the security forces was neutrality between the Resistance and the army, an attitude contrary to that taken by the supreme cadres tied with the regime. However, in the areas that were occupied by the armed forces, the security forces were before an accomplished fact and so carried out the duties with which they were charged by reactionism (searching, detention, torture ... etc.) so that a terrorist atmosphere might be imposed upon those areas.
As for the administrative machine, it was not possible to test the basic attitude of its rank and file because of the war which impeded its daily routine (3) while the leading cadres (ministers, senior officials, ambassadors) which are rightist and reactionary in structure, remained loyal to the reactionary monarchy in keeping with their ideological and class realities (4)
The September campaign inexorably painted a detailed picture of the structure of the army and the reactionist rightist ideology prevalent among its members:
1. The Jordanian army is a 'professional institution', and the internal (ideological and material) relations that govern it are those that govern the employer and the employed. Royal reactionism did its best - in every possible way - to isolate the army from nationalist and progressive ideological and political currents. Nationalist culture is taboo, political affiliations are banned, and the nationalist elements inside the army are continually chased and purged. In contrast, the permissible and prevalent culture is the reactionist one which places the King in the position of the employer, and not an ordinary employer at that, but one around whom there is a halo of deification according to the theory of the 'Divine Right of Kings'. This culture is presented in a religious framework connecting the royal family with the Prophet of Islam, and bedecked with appropriate slogans such as 'God, King, Homeland'. And the homeland which the King blesses is one where reactionism, imperialism and counter-revolution are safe and prosperous. To keep the army isolated from the movement of the masses and under the control of the reactionist ideology in its daily life, the reactionary regime refused to introduce conscription and volunteering in the army despite the existence of the State of Israel on a part of Palestine and the false pretences of the regime of wanting to liberate Palestine. For conscription will expose the army to the nationalist currents, multiply nationalist cadres within its ranks and train the people in the use of arms. In 1969 the regime briefly introduced conscription as a means of intercepting young men who might desire to join the Resistance forces, but it soon repealed the law when it found that it was a two-edged weapon (it absorbed young men in camps very much like the camps of detainment to keep them away from the Resistance but at the same time practised them in the use of arms and allowed them to mix with other members of the army). Despite all these precautions, the 'professional institution' was all the time subjected to unremitting purges seeking to close the army to all elements of any nationalist conviction.
2. The basic corps of the army depended for their soldiers and commanders on the bedouin, particularly, so the armoured divisions and the security brigades - forces of direct repression (5) Nor did the army confine itself to the Jordanian - Palestinian bedouin; it went further to enlist Iraqi, Syrian and Saudi bedouin (6) The idea is that these bedouin feel strong attachment to the ruler who wrests them from poverty misery to place them in the lap of a regime that secures them permanent material and moral gains. In fact the regime takes over their education from childhood. Non-Jordanian bedouin (Iraqis, Syrians, Saudis) form about 30 per cent of the army, the same rate as that of the Jordanian bedouin. In the case of the Jordanians the regime selects the majority from the poor villages, particularly in the south where the inhabitants are very much under-developed and depend on the regime for their economic life; whereas soldiers taken from the big towns, where there is education and nationalist consciousness, form little more than 10 per cent, and many of these are employed in military administrative affairs and technical works. Even this small rate is subjected to unremitting purges that seek to oust nationalist elements. (It should be noted also that there are some nationalist elements among the bedouin officers who, through their training missions and courses in the United States, Britain and Pakistan, have acquired general culture and some knowledge of the outside world).
3. The soldiers from the West Bank form about 30 per cent of the army. The dominant characteristic among the soldiers, non-commissioned officers and a sector of the junior commissioned officers is a broad nationalist attitude without clear-cut commitments; whereas in the ranks of the senior officers there are many stubborn reactionaries and stooges of the throne.
The nationalist commitment which lacks a clear-cut programme among the soldiers and the low ranks has paralysed the capabilities of this sector inside the army. Another paralysing factor is the watch maintained over them by their brothers-in-arms who are imbued with the monarchic reactionist ideology and tied to the regime by economic and other interests.
This is a picture of the ideological and social structure of the army from which we deduce the following results:
A. The core of the contention is not between Jordanian and Palestinian, it is rather due to the economic, social and ideological structure of the army. (Note that countrymen and townsmen in the West Bank do not depend on the army in their economic life because of the nature of the economic structure of the Palestinian village: non-existence of feudalists (only big landlords), fertility of the land, seasons of rain, developed means of production, binary and tripartite agricultural cycle, briskness of the town market, purchasing power of the countryside, spread of vocational and scientific education, there being doctors, engineers, tourism, emigration to the Arab area and America ... etc.).
B. The dominance of the bedouin element makes the army a blind repressive instrument in the service of the royal reactionism.
C. The September campaign proved the impossibility of rebellion in the army, though it is refused politically and ideologically. This does not mean that there are no nationalist and progressive trends in the army; on the contrary, such trends are existent, and this very fact makes it incumbent upon the nationalist movement and the Resistance to devote special efforts to the deliverance of the army from the imperialist and reactionary grip and to the development of the army into a nationalist institution (by purging it, introducing conscription, dismissing mercenaries and agents, injecting its ranks on an extensive scale, with educated and knowledgeable elements and cadres ... etc.). This also specifies the role of the nationalist sectors in the army, that they should form an organic part of the nationalist movement and the Resistance throughout the process of popular struggle.
D. To achieve a nationalist attitude against imperialism and zionism and a class nationalist attitude against monarchical reactionism among the Jordanian soldiers who come from the Transjordanian country, it is incumbent that the Resistance and nationalist forces treat this rural problem in such a manner as to make the population of the Jordanian countryside feel that they have a class and a nationalist interest in the revolution and in rallying round it.
As for the bedouin there can be no speedy solution. The policy here should be a long-breathed one aiming at promulgating nationalist culture in the army and liberating it from the control of the monarchical reactionist culture. The promulgation of a nationalist programme and fighting for its realization all over the Jordano-Palestinian ground will make the Transjordanian feel the existence of national and class interest for himself in the revolution and will prompt him to participate in the solution of the problem in the interest of the nationalist democratic revolution in the country.
The trial of September came to emphasise with tangible evidence and under the bombshells tank guns and machine guns, the reality and the nature of the structure of the state institutions and their role as instruments of repression in the hands of the counter-revolutionary trinity (the monarchy + imperialism). Will the Resistance movement learn this lesson? Will certain Resistance groups have the ability to realise what is going on around them? And where will the reactionist ideology, with which they are flirting, lead them?
(1) It is no coincidence that Rabis a-Majali held the position of General Military [illegible] 1957 to [illegible] the nationalist movement and purge the army of nationalist officers [illegible] stepped forward in July 1970 to hold the same position ignoring the different subjective and objective circumstances in the country and the area. But a reactionist always remains loyal to his reactionary and imperialist masters.
(2) Fateh did not expect that the army would storm Amman with tanks and with that violence. It rather expected that considerable splits would occur and that the Palestinian soldiers would in the majority quit the army. The Democratic Popular Front ruled out from the begining possibilities of a military coup; moreover it refused in principle such a coup except as a part of the national popular operation. But it also did not expect the events that did take place. Splits in the army were highly expected if the Resistance held out in its battle with the Regime for several days (a week for instance). As-Sa'iqa's estimates of nationalist capabilities in the army and in the ranks of the people of both Banks were great. The Popular Front (Arab Nationalists) was certain that early splits would take place in the army. During the September campaign its estimates were that the army would split if the struggle with the regime continued between 48 and 72 hours. The Arab Liberation Front was sure that schisms would happen in the ranks of the army and that it had the capability to paralyse many sectors of the army in favour of the revolution.
(3) During the revulsion of 1955 against the Baghdad Pact, the administrative machine responded to the call of the nationalist movement by declaring civil sedition and going out to the streets in demonstrations with the masses to frustrate the reactionist efforts to join Jordan to the Pact.
(4) One single incident took place when Antoun Attallah, foreign minister in the government of al Rifa'i, declared his refusal to deal with the sanguinary military government, Attallah was in New York at the time and was dismissed from his post.
(5) The security brigades, such as the desert Brigade and the Internal Security Brigade, are different from the Security Forces in that the [illegible] brigades are like the other corps of the army in respect of their training and arms, tanks, armoured cars, artillery.
(6) From the very beginning the British policy decided to build the army from the bedouin for well-known ideological and political considerations - non-existence of nationalist culture among the bedouin, their strong attachment materially and morally to the ruler (the employer) who provides their material needs and [illegible] plots religion to make of himself a holy symbol around which they would rally.