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Written by Sean O'Torain
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The fratricidal conflict within Palestine represents a huge setback
for its people. It looks like leading to a de facto division of
Palestinian territory between the Gaza strip controlled by Hamas and
the rump of the West Bank, controlled by the so-called Palestinian
Authority, dominated by Fatah.
The tiny Gaza enclave is unlikely to be retaken by Fatah after its
expulsion and the various appeals for the intervention of
international forces will fall on deaf ears. Israel will continue to
attack Gaza from the air and by limited tank incursions, as it has
done since its withdrawal, but it has no stomach for house-to-house
fighting to clear Hamas out of Gaza, and neither for that matter, has
any other outside army.
Gaza will be supported politically by Syria and Iran but the big
majority of the population of Gaza – some one and a half million –
will have little in the way of economic relief from theses states.
The big majority of the Gaza population already depend on food aid
for their very existence and that will not change. Their economic
prospects are grim, to say the least.
The growth of support for Hamas has been due to the mass revulsion
against the bureaucracy, nepotism and corruption within Fatah and the
Palestinian Authority. As Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent, "The
Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic
republic – which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented –
but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbass's Fatah
and the rotten nature of the Palestinian Authority."
Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, which as achieved a strong basis of
support as a result of its social policies, Hamas has developed a
powerful base in the Gaza strip as a reaction to the dead-end into
which it has been led by Fatah. Nevertheless, what has happened in
Gaza, where the population is 99 per cent Moslem, is not likely to be
so easily repeated in the West Bank, where 10 per cent of the
Palestinians are Christians and are suspicious of the `Islamic'
colouration of the Hamas revolution.
Unfortunately, as Robert Fisk (above) has suggested, it will be the
Islamic character of the Hamas victory that will become the key
issue. Far from bringing a Palestinian state nearer, it pushes the
prospect further away. It will drive Israeli workers further into the
arms of the Israeli ruling class and re-enforce the demands
for `security' from `Palestinian extremism'.
The main responsibility for the tragedy of the Palestinian people
lies with the role of Israeli imperialism in its rapacious
confiscation of land and its strangulation of Palestinian economic,
social and political life. Israel has been backed militarily and
economically by the USA and Europe over many decades as a bulwark for
the protection of western oil and strategic interests in the region.
Since the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 Israel has
continued to settle these areas on land confiscated from
Palestinians. Gaza, with its narrow geographical base (4 miles by 18
miles) and its high population density was less heavily settled and
therefore an Israeli withdrawal was relatively easy. But the more
than 250 settlements on the West Bank are not going to be given up
easily.
Apart from the settlements, there are military outposts, dozens of
checkpoints and special `settler roads', criss-crossing the area but
forbidden for use by the local Palestinian population. The effective
land area controlled by the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank is
less than a quarter of the total land area.
With the gradual suffocation of its agricultural base, the
destruction of citrus and olive groves, the building of the huge
Wall, the mass of the population are gradually being squeezed into
half a dozen densely populated cities like Nablus, Hebron, Ramallah
and Jenin.
Comparisons with South African `bantustans' are entirely legitimate,
given the manner of the strangulation of the Palestinian economy and
the huge-scale theft of land and water resources for a settler
population only a tenth as big as the native Arab population. In
contrast to the increasing squalor of the Palestinian cities, the
Israeli settlements include the most modern air-conditioned housing,
schools and even a new university, all subsidised by the state and
effectively paid for by foreign financial support for Israel.
It is appropriate, as it was in the 1960s and 1970s with South
Africa, to call from a boycott of Israeli trade, institutions and
organisations, the vast majority of which collaborate in the
strangulation of Palestinian life. In the Palestinian areas there is
no academic freedom and no `normal' educational process. Israel has
purposefully engineered a situation in which – on the present basis –
there is no possibility whatsoever of a viable Palestinian state or
economy. Indeed the Palestinian areas have been developed at best
as `bantustans' and at worst as vast urban prisons.
When Hamas was elected as the biggest party within the PA, Israel
used that as a pretext to withhold tax receipts worth hundreds of
millions of dollars. European governments withheld aid and all this
further exacerbated the monstrous economic and social crisis in the
territories. The West Bank cities and Gaza in particular have been
described as urban `prisons' riven by poverty, malnutrition anger and
despair.
More than half the Palestinian population is under 16. The majority
of the working-age population are unemployed and haven't the
slightest prospect of employment. Food-aid is all that keeps the
population alive. Little wonder than the youth in particular are not
prepared to settle for `prison life' and it is inevitable that there
will be explosions of anger directed at those who have held them back
for so long. The first wave of anger in Gaza has blown away the
corrupt Fatah organisation but there will be other explosions on the
West Bank and outside, in places like Jordan and Lebanon, where large
numbers of Palestinians live.
The tragedy of the Palestinian people since 1967 (and before) has
been its `leadership' . The PLO and its main component Fatah have been
organically incapable of posing the question of Palestinian national
rights in the context of the class struggles in the region, yet the
national rights of the Palestinians will not be fulfilled except on
the basis of class struggle. The `leadership' have led the
Palestinian people to one disaster after another, in Jordan and in
Lebanon especially. It is still true, even today, that the big
majority of Palestinian deaths in conflicts have been at the hands of
Arab leaders and not Israel.
The PLO and Fatah leaderships have protected the class basis of all
the Arab states which have `sponsored' them. Every reactionary and
barbaric Arab leader in the region has been feted at one time or
another by the Palestinian leadership. The PLO and Fatah have
contributed significantly to the protection of Western oil interests
by their political support for the Arab oil sheikhs. In return, the
Arab leaders have turned a blind eye when out of the billions of oil-
dollars they have given to the PLO over the decades a billion or two
of it finds its way into secret accounts in Switzerland and
elsewhere. These are the `leaders' who purport to represent the
interests of the Palestinian masses.
The PA president who succeeded Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, is the
Palestinian leader, as Robert Fisk pointed out, "who wrote a 600-page
book about Oslo without once mentioning the word `occupation' ". He is
the `moderate' leader trusted by the US and the EU leaders because
he "wears and tie and goes to the White House". The US strategy of
arming and promoting Fatah as the `moderate' wing the Palestinian
spectrum is now in serious question because at least in Gaza
everything that Abbass represented has been swept away.
Abbas has appointed a new Prime Minister to replace the Hamas Prime
Minister he has dismissed. The means that the Palestinian controlled
areas have effectively two prime ministers, Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza
and Salam Fayed in the West Bank.
Before the Second Intafada in 2000, the integration of the
Palestinian and Israeli economy had reached new heights, even though
it was on the basis of a `one-sided' development, the Palestinian
sector being deliberately stifled. 150,000 Palestinian workers
commuted daily to work in Israel and the Palestinian economy
developed, even under the thumb of the military occupation. The
unemployment rate among Palestinians fell to something like 10 per
cent, not much different to Israel itself.
The Paris agreements ensured that sales taxes and duties on goods
imported into Palestine – most of which went through Israel – was
remitted to the Palestinian Authority. Up to the summer of 2000 this
meant that the PA received $4.7 billion, about a fifth of which was
diverted into `special' accounts run by Fatah and Arafat's entourage.
44 per cent of Palestinian GDP came from the $2 billion per annum
remittances of workers in Israel.
The Intifada created a recession in the Israeli economy, so much was
it reliant on Palestinian labour and the Palestinian market, but it
devastated the Palestinian economy. The vast majority of Palestinian
worker-commuters have stayed away from Israel and cross-border trade
has collapsed. The freeze on duties and taxes after the election of
Hamas was the last nail in the coffin for the Palestinian economy.
The tragedy has been the failure of the struggle of the Palestinians
to be presented in a class context, in a way that could appeal to
Israeli workers. In Israel, there has been no real recovery up to
today from the recession brought about by the Intifada. The Bank of
Israel estimated that just one year of Intifada – 2002 – cost the
equivalent of 3.8 per cent of Israeli GDP.
Living standards have fallen and workers are being asked to accept
cuts in their living standards to pay for the constant military
adventures and the huge costs of occupation and settlement building.
Today one in five Israeli families are officially `poor'. Almost one
in three children lives in a poor family. Unemployment has increased
to over 10 per cent.
Government cutbacks have meant that the much-vaunted `welfare state'
is crumbling. The leaders of right-wing parties, like Netanyahu of
the Likud, are calling for even greater cuts in state spending. Like
a latter-day Thatcher, he is advocating rolling back the borders of
the Israeli welfare state, elimination of `Bolshevik' traditions, for
curbs in the power of the Histradut trade union federation.
Added to attacks on workers' living standards is the widespread
feeling of personal insecurity brought about by the constant fear of
suicide bombings and rocket attacks in the border areas. There is no
prospect, anywhere on the horizon, of a `safe haven for Jews' as
promised by the original Zionist founders of Israel.
The situation of Israeli workers does not compare to the abject
situation of Palestinian workers, but it does mean that with a class
programme the Palestinian movement could begin to appeal to Israeli
workers. A class programme would be based on the common class
interests of Palestinian and Israeli workers, on the right for both
Israel and Palestine to co-exist within agreed borders within a
socialist federation.
The vast majority of Israeli workers have no vested interest in the
prolonged occupation of the Palestinian areas and suppression of
Palestinian national rights. However, as long as the Intifada appeals
only on national lines, it will not break the solidarity of Israeli
workers with the Israeli capitalist class. The natural tendency for
Israeli workers to fight for their class interests in Israel will be
subsumed in the defence of the Israeli state, if it is perceived that
its very existence is under threat.
Notwithstanding the popular character of the Hamas movement in Gaza
the distinctly Islamic basis of the movement has no appeal whatsoever
to non-Moslems, and least of all Israelis. The Hamas movement is
associated in Israel with suicide bombings, random rocket attacks and
the capture of Israeli soldiers from the border post. All of these
tactics are portrayed in Israel as `terrorist' attacks that threaten
the existence of the state. The pronouncements of Hamas leaders in
favour of `driving the Jews into the sea' and the support for Hamas
from Holocaust deniers like the madman Ahmedinejad in Iran are all
grist to the mill as far as the Israeli ruling class are concerned.
They couldn't invent better propagandists themselves. Hamas may
control Gaza for the foreseeable future and they have rid the area of
the corruption of Fatah, but they will not move the goal of
Palestinian statehood one inch further forward with their Islamic
programme.
Despite the complexities and the enormous difficulties, the role of
Marxists in Israel/Palestine is to raise the class questions and to
point away from the direction of national and fratricidal war and in
the direction of the common class interests of all workers.
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