all the territories occupied in the 1967 war. teeing Israel's security in case of an attack by a "third' party.
real step towards a final and peaceful settlement?
In the first place, such an outlook on the situation grossly underestimates the continuing obstacles to a settlement:
1. The Zionist State has publicly and repeatedly declared that it cannot afford to give up the Golan Heights or anything of strategic importance on the West Bank:
2. The agreement does not change the situation of the Palestinians and the plight of the refugees one iota; It has taken Henry Kissinger two years of frenzied diplomatic activity to negotiate a 13-26 mile pull-back of Israeli troops from the Sinai peninsula and a 1-5 mile eastward advance of the Egyptian army. At this rate an optimist could expect the Arab regimes to spend another 50 years recovering But that is not all. It is estimated that around half of the 40-odd clauses in the interim agreement are to be kept secret. These secret items concern for the most part Egyptian promises made to the US on 'non-use of force', regular renewals of the UN mandate, the Arab trade boycott on US firms aspiring to operate in the Middle East, and the propaganda war on Israel. On the other hand there are also rumours of secret agreements between the US and Israel involving substantial American commitments on arms purchases, financial assistance, and possibly even a pact of some sort guaranSuch is the outward shape of the complex web of public secret agreements that are being woven all over the Middle Eastern scene today. question is: does this territorial exchange actüally signify a tentative but zone between the populated centres of Israel and Egypt. The successful conclusion of an interim agreement. provides Sadat with a breathing space — time to tighten up the 'internal front', patch up a virtually bankrupt economy, and begin the process of suppressing the wave of militancy steadily growing in the Egyptian working class.
extremist regime nanona oi rrance front.
• • sunmarised as follows:
war. no peace impasse with Zionism. and Rabin can achieve from their current negotiations is temporarily to forestall the spilling over of the class struggle in the shape of a war against Zionism, and forcibly contain it within the more manageable boundaries of the existing Middle Eastern states. In July twenty Egyptian revolutionaries were arrested on charges of belonging to the Mustapha Khamis Revolutionary Communist Group and wanting to overthrow the economic and political system in Egypt and install a communist "trotskyist"
The Egyptian daily Al Akhbar commented: *This communist organisation was in contact with the Revolutionary Communist Group of Lebanon and the Fourth InterThe prosecutor, Abdel Magid Mahmood, indicated the nature of the case the regime is trying to whip up against these revolutionaries when he said: 'At a time when it is necessary to reinforce the internal front, this League has come along to destroy any progress in the reinforcement of this The context of this latest wave of arrests can be briefly The October 1973 war did not resolve the post-1967 'no Rather it created limited conditions for movement towards an interim and nonfinal settlement. However, this was not the way in which the Egyptan regime - lor internal reasons - could present its meaning to the Egyptian masses. Either the Egyptian army had inflicted a great defeat on Zionism, which was now rolling down a historical cul-de-sac - as official propaganda claim- or else the masses would begin to doubt the ability of the Arab regimes to fight Zionism successfully. As this contradiction ripens, fewer and fewer people still believe Sadat's Since the October war, the Egyptian masses have experienced a rapid decline in their living standards as ihflation outsation in face of right-wing attempts to keep them out of the country seus at so plasties police.
& THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PEACE' and worker militant trials coming up in Cairo between 15-20 September strips the meagre rises in their incomes. For example, rents in working class parts of Cairo have gone up from Ef8 to E£15 (E£1 = approx. 80 English pence = 100 piastres). The officially subsidised prices of both a kilo of sugar and a kilo of cooking oil have gone up from? to 11 piastres. However, it is so hard to obtain these items 'officially' that a black market is flourishing in which cooking oil sells at 32 piastres a kilo, while sugar The masses' response to ihis attack on their living standards is best reflected in the phenomenal increase in strikes, factory occupations and demonstrations. The most dramatic episode was undoubtedly the 1 January mobilisation in Cairo, involving thousanas or workers and pruneu Darnies with the * The regime's response was predictably to unleash a wave of repression. According to unofficial estimates, more than 250 people have so far been arrested, including students and professionals of all types but also prominent trade unionists In'light of all those factors, one can only conclude that the arrest of the twenty Egyptian revolutionaries, together with the nature of the charges, is designed to isolate a group of internationalist marxist revolutionaries by "proving that they are 'motivated from the outside' and attempting to sabThis is first and foremost an attack on the whole of the Egyptian left, and a frontal assault on the organisational gains it has previously won. A lot more than just the fate of twenty revolutionaries is at stake in the
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