For more than six months, Lebanon has been racked by bitter and bloody fighting. The clashes have been fiercest in Beirut but have also occurred in most other major towns and much of the countryside.

As many as 5,000 persons have been killed since April, while estimates of the wounded run as high as 16,000. This in a country whose total population is about 3 million. The equivalent in terms of a country the size of the United States would be more than a quarter of a million dead.

Major fighting occurred in Lebanon the last two weeks in May as Palestinian refugees sought to defend themselves against murderous attacks by the rightwing Phalangist militia. At least 130 persons were killed and 235 were wounded up to May 30. Two Lebanese governments fell during the crisis.

“Violence hit the streets of Cairo today after a demonstration by 1,000 industrial workers against low pay and high living costs developed into a full-scale riot... Washington Post correspondent Michael Tingay reported from Cairo January 1.

“The central security forces arrived in truckloads to quell the rioters, who tore up paving stones and smashed windows, halting traffic and disrupting Cairo’s Liberation Square and the surrounding areas near Egypt’s Parliament building and ministries.”

A delegation of prominent intellectuals and civil libertarians presented a petition with 2,000 signatures to the Iranian Embassy in Washington on November 22 demanding the release of Vida Hadjebi Tabrizi and Dr. Ali Shariatti – two of the many writers, intellectuals, and artists now in the shah’s jails.

The appearance of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat before the United Nations General Assembly on November 13 has been followed by demonstrations of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. Not since the upsurge in 1968 has there been such a widespread wave of protest against the Zionist occupation.

Angry protests erupted throughout Israel in reaction to the huge price rises and other harsh austerity measures decreed by the government in the early hours of Sunday, November 10. Among the measures were a 43 percent devaluation of the Israeli pound and big hikes in the prices of basic foods. The government also intends to impose a wage freeze for one year.