I recently discovered a blog called The Charnel-House. It is a socialist blog devoted to philosophy and art. I found it to be one of the most insightful blogs on the left, and should be supported. The writer doesn't pull punches. This piece is a good piece for discussion.
To all those who support the actions of jihadist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas on the grounds that they are supposedly putting up brave “resistance” to the imperialist forces of the U.S.-backed Israeli military, I submit the following quotes from Lenin (whose original theory of imperialism is unfortunately claimed as an inspiration by so many the anti-imperialist zombies floating around today). First, from chapter five of his 1916 work, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism:
“Imperialism is as much our ‘mortal’ enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence, it is not every struggle against imperialism that we should support. We will not support a struggle of the reactionary classes against imperialism; we will not support an uprising of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism.
Consequently, once the author admits the need to support an uprising of an oppressed nation (‘actively resisting’ suppression means supporting the uprising), [Kievskii] also admits that a national uprising is progressive, that the establishment of a separate and new state, of new frontiers, etc., resulting from a successful uprising, is progressive.”
Notice, Lenin states that Marxists should only support progressive political tendencies in their struggle to achieve national self-determination. I.e., not the reactionary jihadist forces of Hezbollah and Hamas, whose sexist and homophobic ideology is founded on the ideas of Islamic fundamentalism. Indeed, if Lenin didn’t make himself clear enough on this score here, he spelled it out even more explicitly in 1920:
“With regard to the more backward states and nations, in which feudal or patriarchal and patriarchal-peasant relations predominate, it is particularly important to bear in mind:
first, that all Communist parties must assist the bourgeois-democratic liberation movement in these countries, and that the duty of rendering the most active assistance rests primarily with the workers of the country the backward nation is colonially or financially dependent on;
second, the need for a struggle against the clergy and other influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries;
third, the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc.”
Now I understand that many critics of Israel are influenced by Homi Bhabha’s post-colonial theory, and are familiar with his tedious notion of “hybridity.” Still, in light of Lenin’s unequivocal call here for Communist parties of all nations to combat Pan-Islamism and similar forces, it strikes one as exceptionally odd that some today would attempt to create a hybrid “International Pan-Islamic Communist Party of Proletarian Islam,” which claims to “believe in the Teachings of the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet Muhammad” while “also believ[ing] in and follow[ing] the Revolutionary Communist teachings of V.I. Lenin [!!], Mirza Sultan-Galiev, Tan Malaka [this makes sense, obviously], J.V. Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kwame Nkrumah, Fidel.” This ideological confusion is compounded by the fact that Stalin personally signed the order to have Mirza Sultan-Galiev executed in 1940, on grounds of deviation brought about by his attempt to synthesize Marxism with pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic ideas (despite his perverse authoritarianism and numerous betrayals of revolutionary Marxism, it seems Stalin remained in fundamental agreement with Lenin on this point, at least).
Disregarding such extreme and contradictory manifestations of this bizarre tendency of leftists today to side with reactionary movements in their struggle against imperialism, we may return to the more troubling mainstream phenomenon of which this is a symptom. Imperialism, as Lenin states, is more progressive than the fanatical religious tendencies that fight to resist it, or the so-called “Marxist” groups (the PFLP, the LCP) that collude with them. But to be clear, this does not amount to an endorsement of U.S. or Israeli policies of aggression. All that it means is one should not support tendencies that are even more wretched than foreign, imperialist domination, simply in the name of national self-determination.
RENEGADE EYE
Showing posts with label Hamas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hamas. Show all posts
Monday, October 11, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Stratfor: Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, Again
By George Friedman
August 23, 2010
The Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have agreed to engage in direct peace talks Sept. 2 in Washington. Neither side has expressed any enthusiasm about the talks. In part, this comes from the fact that entering any negotiations with enthusiasm weakens your bargaining position. But the deeper reason is simply that there have been so many peace talks between the two sides and so many failures that it is difficult for a rational person to see much hope in them. Moreover, the failures have not occurred for trivial reasons. They have occurred because of profound divergences in the interests and outlooks of each side.
These particular talks are further flawed because of their origin. Neither side was eager for the talks. They are taking place because the United States wanted them. Indeed, in a certain sense, both sides are talking because they do not want to alienate the United States and because it is easier to talk and fail than it is to refuse to talk.
The United States has wanted Israeli-Palestinian talks since the Palestinians organized themselves into a distinct national movement in the 1970s. Particularly after the successful negotiations between Egypt and Israel and Israel’s implicit long-term understanding with Jordan, an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis appeared to be next on the agenda. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of its support for Fatah and other Palestinian groups, a peace process seemed logical and reasonable.
Over time, peace talks became an end in themselves for the United States. The United States has interests throughout the Islamic world. While U.S.-Israeli relations are not the sole point of friction between the Islamic world and the United States, they are certainly one point of friction, particularly on the level of public diplomacy. Indeed, though most Muslim governments may not regard Israel as critical to their national interests, their publics do regard it that way for ideological and religious reasons.
Many Muslim governments therefore engage in a two-level diplomacy: first, publicly condemning Israel and granting public support for the Palestinians as if it were a major issue and, second, quietly ignoring the issue and focusing on other matters of greater direct interest, which often actually involves collaborating with the Israelis. This accounts for the massive difference between the public stance of many governments and their private actions, which can range from indifference to hostility toward Palestinian interests. Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are all prepared to cooperate deeply with the United States but face hostility from their populations over the matter.
The public pressure on governments is real, and the United States needs to deal with it. The last thing the United States wants to see is relatively cooperative Muslim governments in the region fall due to anti-Israeli or anti-American public sentiment. The issue of Israel and the United States also creates stickiness in the smooth functioning of relations with these countries. The United States wants to minimize this problem.
It should be understood that many Muslim governments would be appalled if the United States broke with Israel and Israel fell. For example, Egypt and Jordan, facing demographic and security issues of their own, are deeply hostile to at least some Palestinian factions. The vast majority of Jordan’s population is actually Palestinian. Egypt struggles with an Islamist movement called the Muslim Brotherhood, which has collaborated with like-minded Islamists among the Palestinians for decades. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula are infinitely more interested in the threat from Iran than in the existence of Israel and, indeed, see Israel as one of the buttresses against Iran. Even Iran is less interested in the destruction of Israel than it is in using the issue as a tool in building its own credibility and influence in the region.
In the Islamic world, public opinion, government rhetoric and government policy have long had a distant kinship. If the United States were actually to do what these countries publicly demand, the private response would be deep concern both about the reliability of the United States and about the consequences of a Palestinian state. A wave of euphoric radicalism could threaten all of these regimes. They quite like the status quo, including the part where they get to condemn the United States for maintaining it.
The United States does not see its relationship with Israel as inhibiting functional state-to-state relationships in the Islamic world, because it hasn’t. Washington paradoxically sees a break with Israel as destabilizing to the region. At the same time, the American government understands the political problems Muslim governments face in working with the United States, in particular the friction created by the American relationship with Israel. While not representing a fundamental challenge to American interests, this friction does represent an issue that must be taken into account and managed.
Peace talks are the American solution. Peace talks give the United States the appearance of seeking to settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem. The comings and goings of American diplomats, treating Palestinians as equals in negotiations and as being equally important to the United States, and the occasional photo op if some agreement is actually reached, all give the United States and pro-American Muslim governments a tool — even if it is not a very effective one — for managing Muslim public opinion. Peace talks also give the United States the ability, on occasion, to criticize Israel publicly, without changing the basic framework of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Most important, they cost the United States nothing. The United States has many diplomats available for multiple-track discussions and working groups for drawing up position papers. Talks do not solve the political problem in the region, but they do reshape perceptions a bit at very little cost. And they give the added benefit that, at some point in the talks, the United States will be able to ask the Europeans to support any solution — or tentative agreement — financially.
Therefore, the Obama administration has been pressuring the Israelis and the PNA, dominated by Fatah, to renew the peace process. Both have been reluctant because, unlike the United States, these talks pose political challenges to the two sides. Peace talks have the nasty habit of triggering internal political crises. Since neither side expects real success, neither government wants to bear the internal political costs that such talks entail. But since the United States is both a major funder of the PNA and Israel’s most significant ally, neither group is in a position to resist the call to talk. And so, after suitable resistance that both sides used for their own ends, the talks begin.
The Israeli problem with the talks is that they force the government to deal with an extraordinarily divided Israeli public. Israel has had weak governments for a generation. These governments are weak because they are formed by coalitions made up of diverse and sometimes opposed parties. In part, this is due to Israel’s electoral system, which increases the likelihood that parties that would never enter the parliament of other countries do sit in the Knesset with a handful of members. There are enough of these that the major parties never come close to a ruling majority and the coalition government that has to be created is crippled from the beginning. An Israeli prime minister spends most of his time avoiding dealing with important issues, since his Cabinet would fall apart if he did.
But the major issue is that the Israeli public is deeply divided ethnically and ideologically, with ideology frequently tracking ethnicity. The original European Jews are often still steeped in the original Zionist vision. But Russian Jews who now comprise roughly one-sixth of the population see the original Zionist plan as alien to them. Then there are the American Jews who moved to Israel for ideological reasons. All these splits and others create an Israel that reminds us of the Fourth French Republic between World War II and the rise of Charles de Gaulle. The term applied to it was “immobilism,” the inability to decide on anything, so it continued to do whatever it was already doing, however ineffective and harmful that course may have been.
Incidentally, Israel wasn’t always this way. After its formation in 1948, Israel’s leaders were all part of the leadership that achieved statehood. That cadre is all gone now, and Israel has yet to transition away from its dependence on its “founding fathers.” Between less trusted leadership and a maddeningly complex political demography, it is no surprise that Israeli politics can be so caustic and churning.
From the point of view of any Israeli foreign minister, the danger of peace talks is that the United States might actually engineer a solution. Any such solution would by definition involve Israeli concessions that would be opposed by a substantial Israeli bloc — and nearly any Israeli faction could derail any agreement. Israeli prime ministers go to the peace talks terrified that the Palestinians might actually get their house in order and be reasonable — leaving it to Israel to stand against an American solution. Had Ariel Sharon not had his stroke, there might have been a strong leader who could wrestle the Israeli political system to the ground and impose a settlement. But at this point, there has not been an Israeli leader since Menachem Begin who could negotiate with confidence in his position. Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself caught between the United States and his severely fractured Cabinet by peace talks.
Fortunately for Netanyahu, the PNA is even more troubled by talks. The Palestinians are deeply divided between two ideological enemies, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah is generally secular and derives from the Soviet-backed Palestinian movement. Having lost its sponsor, it has drifted toward the United States and Europe by default. Its old antagonist, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is still there and still suspicious. Fatah tried to overthrow the kingdom in 1970, and memories are long.
For its part, Hamas is a religious movement, with roots in Egypt and support from Saudi Arabia. Unlike Fatah, Hamas says it is unwilling to recognize the existence of Israel as a legitimate state, and it appears to be quite serious about this. While there seem to be some elements in Hamas that could consider a shift, this is not the consensus view. Iran also provides support, but the Sunni-Shiite split is real and Iran is mostly fishing in troubled waters. Hamas will take help where it can get it, but Hamas is, to a significant degree, funded by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, so getting too close to Iran would create political problems for Hamas’ leadership. In addition, though Cairo has to deal with Hamas because of the Egypt-Gaza border, Cairo is at best deeply suspicions of the group. Egypt sees Hamas as deriving from the same bedrock of forces that gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood and those who killed Anwar Sadat, forces which pose the greatest future challenge to Egyptian stability. As a result, Egypt continues to be Israel’s silent partner in the blockade of Gaza.
Therefore, the PNA dominated by Fatah in no way speaks for all Palestinians. While Fatah dominates the West Bank, Hamas controls Gaza. Were Fatah to make the kinds of concessions that might make a peace agreement possible, Hamas would not only oppose them but would have the means of scuttling anything that involved Gaza. Making matters worse for Fatah, Hamas does enjoy considerable — if precisely unknown — levels of support in the West Bank, and Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the PNA, is not eager to find out how much in the current super-heated atmosphere.
The most striking agreement between Arabs and Israelis was the Camp David Accords negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Those accords were rooted in the 1973 war in which the Israelis were stunned by their own intelligence failures and the extraordinary capabilities shown by the Egyptian army so soon after its crushing defeat in 1967. All of Israel’s comfortable assumptions went out the window. At the same time, Egypt was ultimately defeated, with Israeli troops on the east shore of the Suez Canal.
The Israelis came away with greater respect for Egyptian military power and a decreased confidence in their own. The Egyptians came away with the recognition that however much they had improved, they were defeated in the end. The Israelis weren’t certain they would beat Egypt the next time. The Egyptians were doubtful they could ever beat Israel. For both, a negotiated settlement made sense. The mix of severely shaken confidence and morbid admittance to reality was what permitted Carter to negotiate a settlement that both sides wanted — and could sell to their respective publics.
There has been no similar defining moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations. There is no consensus on either side, nor does either side have a government that can speak authoritatively for the people it represents. On both sides, the rejectionists not only are in a blocking position but are actually in governing roles, and no coalition exists to sweep them aside. The Palestinians are divided by ideology and geography, while the Israelis are “merely” divided by ideology and a political system designed for paralysis.
But the United States wants a peace process, preferably a long one designed to put off the day when it fails. This will allow the United States to appear to be deeply committed to peace and to publicly pressure the Israelis, which will be of some minor use in U.S. efforts to manipulate the rest of the region. But it will not solve anything. Nor is it intended to.
The problem is that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are sufficiently unsettled to make peace. Both Egypt and Israel were shocked and afraid after the 1973 war. Mutual fear is the foundation of peace among enemies. The uncertainty of the future sobers both sides. But the fact right now is that all of the players prefer the status quo to the risks of the future. Hamas doesn’t want to risk its support by negotiating and implicitly recognizing Israel. The PNA doesn’t want to risk a Hamas uprising in the West Bank by making significant concessions. The Israelis don’t want to gamble with unreliable negotiating partners on a settlement that wouldn’t enjoy broad public support in a domestic political environment where even simple programs can get snarled in a morass of ideology. Until reality or some as-yet-uncommitted force shifts the game, it is easier for them — all of them — to do nothing.
But the Americans want talks, and so the talks will begin.
RENEGADE EYE
August 23, 2010
The Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have agreed to engage in direct peace talks Sept. 2 in Washington. Neither side has expressed any enthusiasm about the talks. In part, this comes from the fact that entering any negotiations with enthusiasm weakens your bargaining position. But the deeper reason is simply that there have been so many peace talks between the two sides and so many failures that it is difficult for a rational person to see much hope in them. Moreover, the failures have not occurred for trivial reasons. They have occurred because of profound divergences in the interests and outlooks of each side.
These particular talks are further flawed because of their origin. Neither side was eager for the talks. They are taking place because the United States wanted them. Indeed, in a certain sense, both sides are talking because they do not want to alienate the United States and because it is easier to talk and fail than it is to refuse to talk.
The United States has wanted Israeli-Palestinian talks since the Palestinians organized themselves into a distinct national movement in the 1970s. Particularly after the successful negotiations between Egypt and Israel and Israel’s implicit long-term understanding with Jordan, an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis appeared to be next on the agenda. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of its support for Fatah and other Palestinian groups, a peace process seemed logical and reasonable.
Over time, peace talks became an end in themselves for the United States. The United States has interests throughout the Islamic world. While U.S.-Israeli relations are not the sole point of friction between the Islamic world and the United States, they are certainly one point of friction, particularly on the level of public diplomacy. Indeed, though most Muslim governments may not regard Israel as critical to their national interests, their publics do regard it that way for ideological and religious reasons.
Many Muslim governments therefore engage in a two-level diplomacy: first, publicly condemning Israel and granting public support for the Palestinians as if it were a major issue and, second, quietly ignoring the issue and focusing on other matters of greater direct interest, which often actually involves collaborating with the Israelis. This accounts for the massive difference between the public stance of many governments and their private actions, which can range from indifference to hostility toward Palestinian interests. Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are all prepared to cooperate deeply with the United States but face hostility from their populations over the matter.
The public pressure on governments is real, and the United States needs to deal with it. The last thing the United States wants to see is relatively cooperative Muslim governments in the region fall due to anti-Israeli or anti-American public sentiment. The issue of Israel and the United States also creates stickiness in the smooth functioning of relations with these countries. The United States wants to minimize this problem.
It should be understood that many Muslim governments would be appalled if the United States broke with Israel and Israel fell. For example, Egypt and Jordan, facing demographic and security issues of their own, are deeply hostile to at least some Palestinian factions. The vast majority of Jordan’s population is actually Palestinian. Egypt struggles with an Islamist movement called the Muslim Brotherhood, which has collaborated with like-minded Islamists among the Palestinians for decades. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula are infinitely more interested in the threat from Iran than in the existence of Israel and, indeed, see Israel as one of the buttresses against Iran. Even Iran is less interested in the destruction of Israel than it is in using the issue as a tool in building its own credibility and influence in the region.
In the Islamic world, public opinion, government rhetoric and government policy have long had a distant kinship. If the United States were actually to do what these countries publicly demand, the private response would be deep concern both about the reliability of the United States and about the consequences of a Palestinian state. A wave of euphoric radicalism could threaten all of these regimes. They quite like the status quo, including the part where they get to condemn the United States for maintaining it.
The United States does not see its relationship with Israel as inhibiting functional state-to-state relationships in the Islamic world, because it hasn’t. Washington paradoxically sees a break with Israel as destabilizing to the region. At the same time, the American government understands the political problems Muslim governments face in working with the United States, in particular the friction created by the American relationship with Israel. While not representing a fundamental challenge to American interests, this friction does represent an issue that must be taken into account and managed.
Peace talks are the American solution. Peace talks give the United States the appearance of seeking to settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem. The comings and goings of American diplomats, treating Palestinians as equals in negotiations and as being equally important to the United States, and the occasional photo op if some agreement is actually reached, all give the United States and pro-American Muslim governments a tool — even if it is not a very effective one — for managing Muslim public opinion. Peace talks also give the United States the ability, on occasion, to criticize Israel publicly, without changing the basic framework of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Most important, they cost the United States nothing. The United States has many diplomats available for multiple-track discussions and working groups for drawing up position papers. Talks do not solve the political problem in the region, but they do reshape perceptions a bit at very little cost. And they give the added benefit that, at some point in the talks, the United States will be able to ask the Europeans to support any solution — or tentative agreement — financially.
Therefore, the Obama administration has been pressuring the Israelis and the PNA, dominated by Fatah, to renew the peace process. Both have been reluctant because, unlike the United States, these talks pose political challenges to the two sides. Peace talks have the nasty habit of triggering internal political crises. Since neither side expects real success, neither government wants to bear the internal political costs that such talks entail. But since the United States is both a major funder of the PNA and Israel’s most significant ally, neither group is in a position to resist the call to talk. And so, after suitable resistance that both sides used for their own ends, the talks begin.
The Israeli problem with the talks is that they force the government to deal with an extraordinarily divided Israeli public. Israel has had weak governments for a generation. These governments are weak because they are formed by coalitions made up of diverse and sometimes opposed parties. In part, this is due to Israel’s electoral system, which increases the likelihood that parties that would never enter the parliament of other countries do sit in the Knesset with a handful of members. There are enough of these that the major parties never come close to a ruling majority and the coalition government that has to be created is crippled from the beginning. An Israeli prime minister spends most of his time avoiding dealing with important issues, since his Cabinet would fall apart if he did.
But the major issue is that the Israeli public is deeply divided ethnically and ideologically, with ideology frequently tracking ethnicity. The original European Jews are often still steeped in the original Zionist vision. But Russian Jews who now comprise roughly one-sixth of the population see the original Zionist plan as alien to them. Then there are the American Jews who moved to Israel for ideological reasons. All these splits and others create an Israel that reminds us of the Fourth French Republic between World War II and the rise of Charles de Gaulle. The term applied to it was “immobilism,” the inability to decide on anything, so it continued to do whatever it was already doing, however ineffective and harmful that course may have been.
Incidentally, Israel wasn’t always this way. After its formation in 1948, Israel’s leaders were all part of the leadership that achieved statehood. That cadre is all gone now, and Israel has yet to transition away from its dependence on its “founding fathers.” Between less trusted leadership and a maddeningly complex political demography, it is no surprise that Israeli politics can be so caustic and churning.
From the point of view of any Israeli foreign minister, the danger of peace talks is that the United States might actually engineer a solution. Any such solution would by definition involve Israeli concessions that would be opposed by a substantial Israeli bloc — and nearly any Israeli faction could derail any agreement. Israeli prime ministers go to the peace talks terrified that the Palestinians might actually get their house in order and be reasonable — leaving it to Israel to stand against an American solution. Had Ariel Sharon not had his stroke, there might have been a strong leader who could wrestle the Israeli political system to the ground and impose a settlement. But at this point, there has not been an Israeli leader since Menachem Begin who could negotiate with confidence in his position. Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself caught between the United States and his severely fractured Cabinet by peace talks.
Fortunately for Netanyahu, the PNA is even more troubled by talks. The Palestinians are deeply divided between two ideological enemies, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah is generally secular and derives from the Soviet-backed Palestinian movement. Having lost its sponsor, it has drifted toward the United States and Europe by default. Its old antagonist, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is still there and still suspicious. Fatah tried to overthrow the kingdom in 1970, and memories are long.
For its part, Hamas is a religious movement, with roots in Egypt and support from Saudi Arabia. Unlike Fatah, Hamas says it is unwilling to recognize the existence of Israel as a legitimate state, and it appears to be quite serious about this. While there seem to be some elements in Hamas that could consider a shift, this is not the consensus view. Iran also provides support, but the Sunni-Shiite split is real and Iran is mostly fishing in troubled waters. Hamas will take help where it can get it, but Hamas is, to a significant degree, funded by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, so getting too close to Iran would create political problems for Hamas’ leadership. In addition, though Cairo has to deal with Hamas because of the Egypt-Gaza border, Cairo is at best deeply suspicions of the group. Egypt sees Hamas as deriving from the same bedrock of forces that gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood and those who killed Anwar Sadat, forces which pose the greatest future challenge to Egyptian stability. As a result, Egypt continues to be Israel’s silent partner in the blockade of Gaza.
Therefore, the PNA dominated by Fatah in no way speaks for all Palestinians. While Fatah dominates the West Bank, Hamas controls Gaza. Were Fatah to make the kinds of concessions that might make a peace agreement possible, Hamas would not only oppose them but would have the means of scuttling anything that involved Gaza. Making matters worse for Fatah, Hamas does enjoy considerable — if precisely unknown — levels of support in the West Bank, and Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the PNA, is not eager to find out how much in the current super-heated atmosphere.
The most striking agreement between Arabs and Israelis was the Camp David Accords negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Those accords were rooted in the 1973 war in which the Israelis were stunned by their own intelligence failures and the extraordinary capabilities shown by the Egyptian army so soon after its crushing defeat in 1967. All of Israel’s comfortable assumptions went out the window. At the same time, Egypt was ultimately defeated, with Israeli troops on the east shore of the Suez Canal.
The Israelis came away with greater respect for Egyptian military power and a decreased confidence in their own. The Egyptians came away with the recognition that however much they had improved, they were defeated in the end. The Israelis weren’t certain they would beat Egypt the next time. The Egyptians were doubtful they could ever beat Israel. For both, a negotiated settlement made sense. The mix of severely shaken confidence and morbid admittance to reality was what permitted Carter to negotiate a settlement that both sides wanted — and could sell to their respective publics.
There has been no similar defining moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations. There is no consensus on either side, nor does either side have a government that can speak authoritatively for the people it represents. On both sides, the rejectionists not only are in a blocking position but are actually in governing roles, and no coalition exists to sweep them aside. The Palestinians are divided by ideology and geography, while the Israelis are “merely” divided by ideology and a political system designed for paralysis.
But the United States wants a peace process, preferably a long one designed to put off the day when it fails. This will allow the United States to appear to be deeply committed to peace and to publicly pressure the Israelis, which will be of some minor use in U.S. efforts to manipulate the rest of the region. But it will not solve anything. Nor is it intended to.
The problem is that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are sufficiently unsettled to make peace. Both Egypt and Israel were shocked and afraid after the 1973 war. Mutual fear is the foundation of peace among enemies. The uncertainty of the future sobers both sides. But the fact right now is that all of the players prefer the status quo to the risks of the future. Hamas doesn’t want to risk its support by negotiating and implicitly recognizing Israel. The PNA doesn’t want to risk a Hamas uprising in the West Bank by making significant concessions. The Israelis don’t want to gamble with unreliable negotiating partners on a settlement that wouldn’t enjoy broad public support in a domestic political environment where even simple programs can get snarled in a morass of ideology. Until reality or some as-yet-uncommitted force shifts the game, it is easier for them — all of them — to do nothing.
But the Americans want talks, and so the talks will begin.
RENEGADE EYE
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Israeli State’s Increasing Violence Betrays a Society in Crisis
Written by Walter Leon
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
The barbaric Israeli Defence Force attack on the aid flotilla trying to break the embargo on Gaza is a clear indication of the growing crisis within Israeli society. The old ideology that held together Israeli society, Labour Zionism, has broken down, as capitalism in this small country can no longer guarantee the Jewish workers the basic social reforms of the past.
RENEGADE EYE
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
The barbaric Israeli Defence Force attack on the aid flotilla trying to break the embargo on Gaza is a clear indication of the growing crisis within Israeli society. The old ideology that held together Israeli society, Labour Zionism, has broken down, as capitalism in this small country can no longer guarantee the Jewish workers the basic social reforms of the past.
Read the rest here
RENEGADE EYE
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Israel’s Massacre in Gaza: A Balance-Sheet of the Struggle
By Walter Leon
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Israel has recently declared a unilateral ceasefire, bringing to an end one of its bloodiest military incursions into the Gaza strip. As the dust settles, the scale of the devastation becomes clear: over 1,300 Palestinians lie dead, with estimates of the number wounded topping 5000. Much of Gaza's infrastructure lies in ruins, with power stations, water networks and sewage systems destroyed; homes, mosques and even schools have been reduced to rubble. According to the UN, the cost of rebuilding Gaza could run into billions of dollars [1].
The most obvious victims of this war (though to call such a one-sided conflict a war seems in bad taste) are the people of Gaza, whose terrible plight is difficult to imagine. Though it would be an insult to the people of Gaza to draw equivalence between their level of suffering and that of the people of Sderot, the situation for the residents of Israel's border towns should not be ignored. For them too, things have become highly unpleasant: three of their number have been killed, and their lives have been blighted by the constant threat of rocket-fire.
But what of Hamas and the Israeli ruling class? And for that matter, where does this leave the interests of US imperialism?
Despite official proclamations of a "popular victory" [2], Hamas has been severely weakened. Although Israel failed to completely destroy them, many of their best cadres have been killed, including members of the so-called ‘Iran-unit', composed of a hundred or so guerrilla fighters trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard [3]. In marked contrast, Israel suffered no real military damage, losing a mere ten soldiers.
Even Israel's failure to recover Gilad Shalit, the captured Israeli soldier, is of secondary importance - it will not be long before his release is negotiated. When Israel's bombardment was at its fiercest, Hamas was conducting secret negotiations with Israel (via Egyptian mediation), and when Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire, Hamas didn't take long to declare one of their own.
Despite Hamas' absurd claim of victory, this defeat leaves them in a position where they will be forced to accept a deal largely on Israel's terms. It is instructive that hardly anyone turned up to the victory parade organised by Hamas in Gaza City [4].
Indeed, the deal being negotiated between Hamas and Egypt is tantamount to a surrender by the organisation. As Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff write in Haaretz [5]:
"The Egyptian proposal is mostly bad for Hamas. It doesn't let the organization bring the Palestinian public any political achievement that would justify the blood that has been spilled, and even forces on it the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, in the form of its renewed presence at the Rafah crossing (as a condition for its reopening).
"Once the cease-fire is reached, the IDF will withdraw from the positions it captured in Gaza, and only then will the two sides begin to discuss the opening of border crossings and removal of the blockade, which was the reason Hamas gave for waging war. The most that Cairo is offering is a timetable for the opening of the crossing points, and even that depends on negotiations due to begin after the cease-fire is reached, and it's tough to know how or when they will end."
So Hamas is prepared to accept its border crossings being under the control of the Palestinian Authority, which has many times shown itself prepared to do Israel's dirty work policing the Palestinian masses, and even foreign powers: according to a report in al-Sharq al-Awsetv [6], Hamas will accept the crossings being monitored by ‘international observers'. Israel will insist on preventing weapons being taken into Gaza, and Hamas will be in no position to oppose this.
So, instead of self-determination, Hamas is preparing to settle for being regulated (and effectively disarmed) by the occupier and its stooges. Why? Because they want to be seen as ‘responsible' by the imperialists. Its attacks on Sderot and other towns, designed to increase its bargaining power, are mere pin-pricks on the Israeli state.
Such a movement as Hamas, tightly controlled from the top, suppressing any dissent (let us not forget that one of Hamas' first actions upon taking control of Gaza was to attack the offices of the Palestinian Trade Union Federation), and alienating potential support amongst Israel's own poor and downtrodden, is completely incapable of building the sort of mass movement needed to threaten imperialism and its local stooges.
Like the PLO before it, Hamas will likely come to some sort of accommodation with the occupier in return for a limited degree of autonomy. This will expose the internal contradictions within the movement. Just as when the PLO was negotiating the Olso Accords with Israel, the more hard-line Tanzim (centred around jailed leader Marwan Barghouti) broke away, factions opposed to the current sell-out will split from Hamas. (This has already begun to happen - a dissident faction of Hamas has just set of a bomb near the Gaza border, killing one Israeli soldier.)
However, these factions will in the end offer no real alternative. (For instance, Barghouti has repeatedly signalled his willingness to negotiate with Israel.) Hamas and the PLO don't collaborate with Israel because of some elaborately worked-out plan or conspiracy - they do it because the logic of their movements prevents them ever mobilising a mass base, and so the failure of their ‘armed struggle' (i.e. attacks on civilians) to dent Israeli power leaves them with no option but to sell out in the hope of receiving a few crumbs in return.
At first, this war seems like an overwhelming victory for Israel. Having pulverised Gaza and slaughtered its inhabitants at will, Israel has severely weakened Hamas as a force, and most probably made it much more pliant at the negotiating table. However, for all their military bluster, they have failed to stop the rocket attacks on southern Israel: the first rocket since the ‘ceasefire' was fired on Wednesday night from the refugee camp of el-Bureij, and landed at Kibbutz Re'im, in the southern Israeli Eshkol region [7]. In reality, Israel is acting from a position of weakness, not strength. For a start, notice how Israel delayed launching a ground offensive until relatively late into Operation Cast Lead, indicating how fearful they were of another defeat, such as the one inflicted upon them by Hezbollah in 2006.
More importantly, though, Israel will no longer be able to count on the unconditional support of the United States for its most barbaric acts and stubborn negotiating positions. Although we have no illusions that Barak Obama represents a break with the interests of American capitalism, he does represent a different wing of the US ruling class to that of George Bush, one more aware of America's diminishing power and need to negotiate with her former foes.
If the US' original aims in invading Iraq were to establish a base from which to police the oil-rich region, the reality is that Iraq is steadily falling under the influence of Syria and Iran. The US will need to negotiate with both to secure its political and economic interests in the Middle East. Any deal with either will have to include the appearance of progress on the Palestinian question. President Ahmadinejad of Iran in particular aims much of his rhetoric towards Palestine (often resorting to the crudest anti-Semitism). Facing massive economic problems and growing working-class militancy at home, he cannot afford to be seen as soft on America and Israel.
Therefore, it is in US interests for Israel to make some compromises. However, the interests of the US and Israeli ruling classes are not always identical. As Marxists, we reject the crude characterisation of Israel as simply under US control. The relationship is dialectical: the US has considerable leverage with Israel because Israel is bankrolled by it (to the tune of over $3bn annually), but Israel can also drive a hard bargain with the US, as it is their only reliably ally in the region. The US cannot afford to antagonise Israel too much. However, the US can still use its enormous financial leverage to wring uncomfortable compromises out of Israel.
Leaving aside the machinations of the imperialists and their lackeys, Israel's assault has generated widespread revulsion around the world. In Gaza itself, the hatred and bitterness it has sown will not go away easily. Nature abhors a vacuum: if Hamas discredits itself in the eyes of the Palestinian masses, something will take its place, and that something might be far more dangerous to Israel.
The First Intifada, or uprising, started in 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. The uprising was spontaneous, initially without the intervention of the PLO, which was still in exile in Tunisia. Quickly, local defence committees were elected to organise the resistance. (Incidentally, Hamas opposed these councils.) The committees organised medical care, food aid, and independent networks of underground schools.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians were largely unarmed, and over a thousand were slaughtered by Israeli reprisals. Still, the Intifada continued to grow, with its tactics of civil disobedience and general strikes causing the Israeli state far more problems than Hamas' rocket attacks ever could. Crucially, because very few Israeli civilians were targeted during the first Intifada, it had a profound effect on the consciousness of the Israeli masses, who for the first time recognised the Palestinians as a people with national aspirations of their own.
Eventually, after six years, Israel was forced to grant some concessions. The Israeli ruling class bought off the PLO, who had by this time returned to Palestine and taken control of the movement. But the lessons of this heroic uprising are there to be learned: only by mass strikes and civil disobedience, mobilising the Palestinian masses, can the Israeli ruling class be threatened. The million Palestinians living in Israel (‘Israeli-Arabs'), often carrying out the most poorly-paid work, could easily be mobilised in this way, and would have a profound effect on the Israeli economy.
One must also not forget the working class of Israel itself. The workers and poor of Israel gain nothing from Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. Instead, their civil liberties are eroded in the name of security, and the massive military budget leads to huge cuts in public spending and widespread poverty. Tel-Aviv's municipality does the bidding of the property developers, demolishing poor neighbourhoods to make way for glittering sky-scrapers. The Israeli working class should be the natural ally of the Palestinian masses. But for years, the ruling class has been able to skilfully manipulate the ‘security threat' (aided, of course, by terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians) to create a permanent state of fear, which leads Israeli workers to back their state against the ‘external threat'.
However, this cannot last forever. The Israeli ruling class' inability to solve the most basic needs of Israeli workers creates enormous contradictions that will eventually come to the fore. Recently, the Israeli Communist Party, despite the associations of Stalinism with anti-Semitism, has enjoyed some growth. As well as its success in the Tel-Aviv municipal elections [8], the ICP has played a leading role in mobilising the (admittedly small) anti-war movement around Tel-Aviv [see video below, note the number of red flags]. Despite its reformism, the ICP is the only authentic force on the left in Israel, with the potential to both oppose the occupation and improve the lives of Israel and Palestine's workers and poor.
On the basis of capitalism, this question is insoluble. Israel can never allow a genuinely independent Palestinian state to emerge, which would deprive it of valuable territory and resources, and could challenge it economically. The best Israel can offer is a series of disconnected ‘Bantustans', which would act as pools of cheap labour for Israeli capitalism, and markets for its produce.
The only solution therefore is the abolition of capitalism. For this, the revolutionary collaboration of the Israeli and Palestinian masses is required. Developments in Egypt, where the working class is becoming more and more militant, are crucial. Only a socialist federation of the Middle East, where all peoples can live with freedom, dignity and self-determination, can solve the problems of the suffering masses of Palestine and Israel.
RENEGADE EYE
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Israel has recently declared a unilateral ceasefire, bringing to an end one of its bloodiest military incursions into the Gaza strip. As the dust settles, the scale of the devastation becomes clear: over 1,300 Palestinians lie dead, with estimates of the number wounded topping 5000. Much of Gaza's infrastructure lies in ruins, with power stations, water networks and sewage systems destroyed; homes, mosques and even schools have been reduced to rubble. According to the UN, the cost of rebuilding Gaza could run into billions of dollars [1].
The most obvious victims of this war (though to call such a one-sided conflict a war seems in bad taste) are the people of Gaza, whose terrible plight is difficult to imagine. Though it would be an insult to the people of Gaza to draw equivalence between their level of suffering and that of the people of Sderot, the situation for the residents of Israel's border towns should not be ignored. For them too, things have become highly unpleasant: three of their number have been killed, and their lives have been blighted by the constant threat of rocket-fire.
But what of Hamas and the Israeli ruling class? And for that matter, where does this leave the interests of US imperialism?
Defeat for Hamas
Despite official proclamations of a "popular victory" [2], Hamas has been severely weakened. Although Israel failed to completely destroy them, many of their best cadres have been killed, including members of the so-called ‘Iran-unit', composed of a hundred or so guerrilla fighters trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard [3]. In marked contrast, Israel suffered no real military damage, losing a mere ten soldiers.
Even Israel's failure to recover Gilad Shalit, the captured Israeli soldier, is of secondary importance - it will not be long before his release is negotiated. When Israel's bombardment was at its fiercest, Hamas was conducting secret negotiations with Israel (via Egyptian mediation), and when Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire, Hamas didn't take long to declare one of their own.
Despite Hamas' absurd claim of victory, this defeat leaves them in a position where they will be forced to accept a deal largely on Israel's terms. It is instructive that hardly anyone turned up to the victory parade organised by Hamas in Gaza City [4].
Indeed, the deal being negotiated between Hamas and Egypt is tantamount to a surrender by the organisation. As Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff write in Haaretz [5]:
"The Egyptian proposal is mostly bad for Hamas. It doesn't let the organization bring the Palestinian public any political achievement that would justify the blood that has been spilled, and even forces on it the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, in the form of its renewed presence at the Rafah crossing (as a condition for its reopening).
"Once the cease-fire is reached, the IDF will withdraw from the positions it captured in Gaza, and only then will the two sides begin to discuss the opening of border crossings and removal of the blockade, which was the reason Hamas gave for waging war. The most that Cairo is offering is a timetable for the opening of the crossing points, and even that depends on negotiations due to begin after the cease-fire is reached, and it's tough to know how or when they will end."
So Hamas is prepared to accept its border crossings being under the control of the Palestinian Authority, which has many times shown itself prepared to do Israel's dirty work policing the Palestinian masses, and even foreign powers: according to a report in al-Sharq al-Awsetv [6], Hamas will accept the crossings being monitored by ‘international observers'. Israel will insist on preventing weapons being taken into Gaza, and Hamas will be in no position to oppose this.
So, instead of self-determination, Hamas is preparing to settle for being regulated (and effectively disarmed) by the occupier and its stooges. Why? Because they want to be seen as ‘responsible' by the imperialists. Its attacks on Sderot and other towns, designed to increase its bargaining power, are mere pin-pricks on the Israeli state.
Such a movement as Hamas, tightly controlled from the top, suppressing any dissent (let us not forget that one of Hamas' first actions upon taking control of Gaza was to attack the offices of the Palestinian Trade Union Federation), and alienating potential support amongst Israel's own poor and downtrodden, is completely incapable of building the sort of mass movement needed to threaten imperialism and its local stooges.
Like the PLO before it, Hamas will likely come to some sort of accommodation with the occupier in return for a limited degree of autonomy. This will expose the internal contradictions within the movement. Just as when the PLO was negotiating the Olso Accords with Israel, the more hard-line Tanzim (centred around jailed leader Marwan Barghouti) broke away, factions opposed to the current sell-out will split from Hamas. (This has already begun to happen - a dissident faction of Hamas has just set of a bomb near the Gaza border, killing one Israeli soldier.)
However, these factions will in the end offer no real alternative. (For instance, Barghouti has repeatedly signalled his willingness to negotiate with Israel.) Hamas and the PLO don't collaborate with Israel because of some elaborately worked-out plan or conspiracy - they do it because the logic of their movements prevents them ever mobilising a mass base, and so the failure of their ‘armed struggle' (i.e. attacks on civilians) to dent Israeli power leaves them with no option but to sell out in the hope of receiving a few crumbs in return.
A Pyrrhic Victory for Israel
At first, this war seems like an overwhelming victory for Israel. Having pulverised Gaza and slaughtered its inhabitants at will, Israel has severely weakened Hamas as a force, and most probably made it much more pliant at the negotiating table. However, for all their military bluster, they have failed to stop the rocket attacks on southern Israel: the first rocket since the ‘ceasefire' was fired on Wednesday night from the refugee camp of el-Bureij, and landed at Kibbutz Re'im, in the southern Israeli Eshkol region [7]. In reality, Israel is acting from a position of weakness, not strength. For a start, notice how Israel delayed launching a ground offensive until relatively late into Operation Cast Lead, indicating how fearful they were of another defeat, such as the one inflicted upon them by Hezbollah in 2006.
More importantly, though, Israel will no longer be able to count on the unconditional support of the United States for its most barbaric acts and stubborn negotiating positions. Although we have no illusions that Barak Obama represents a break with the interests of American capitalism, he does represent a different wing of the US ruling class to that of George Bush, one more aware of America's diminishing power and need to negotiate with her former foes.
If the US' original aims in invading Iraq were to establish a base from which to police the oil-rich region, the reality is that Iraq is steadily falling under the influence of Syria and Iran. The US will need to negotiate with both to secure its political and economic interests in the Middle East. Any deal with either will have to include the appearance of progress on the Palestinian question. President Ahmadinejad of Iran in particular aims much of his rhetoric towards Palestine (often resorting to the crudest anti-Semitism). Facing massive economic problems and growing working-class militancy at home, he cannot afford to be seen as soft on America and Israel.
Therefore, it is in US interests for Israel to make some compromises. However, the interests of the US and Israeli ruling classes are not always identical. As Marxists, we reject the crude characterisation of Israel as simply under US control. The relationship is dialectical: the US has considerable leverage with Israel because Israel is bankrolled by it (to the tune of over $3bn annually), but Israel can also drive a hard bargain with the US, as it is their only reliably ally in the region. The US cannot afford to antagonise Israel too much. However, the US can still use its enormous financial leverage to wring uncomfortable compromises out of Israel.
Leaving aside the machinations of the imperialists and their lackeys, Israel's assault has generated widespread revulsion around the world. In Gaza itself, the hatred and bitterness it has sown will not go away easily. Nature abhors a vacuum: if Hamas discredits itself in the eyes of the Palestinian masses, something will take its place, and that something might be far more dangerous to Israel.
The Lessons of the First Intifada
The First Intifada, or uprising, started in 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. The uprising was spontaneous, initially without the intervention of the PLO, which was still in exile in Tunisia. Quickly, local defence committees were elected to organise the resistance. (Incidentally, Hamas opposed these councils.) The committees organised medical care, food aid, and independent networks of underground schools.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians were largely unarmed, and over a thousand were slaughtered by Israeli reprisals. Still, the Intifada continued to grow, with its tactics of civil disobedience and general strikes causing the Israeli state far more problems than Hamas' rocket attacks ever could. Crucially, because very few Israeli civilians were targeted during the first Intifada, it had a profound effect on the consciousness of the Israeli masses, who for the first time recognised the Palestinians as a people with national aspirations of their own.
Eventually, after six years, Israel was forced to grant some concessions. The Israeli ruling class bought off the PLO, who had by this time returned to Palestine and taken control of the movement. But the lessons of this heroic uprising are there to be learned: only by mass strikes and civil disobedience, mobilising the Palestinian masses, can the Israeli ruling class be threatened. The million Palestinians living in Israel (‘Israeli-Arabs'), often carrying out the most poorly-paid work, could easily be mobilised in this way, and would have a profound effect on the Israeli economy.
The Israeli Working Class
One must also not forget the working class of Israel itself. The workers and poor of Israel gain nothing from Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. Instead, their civil liberties are eroded in the name of security, and the massive military budget leads to huge cuts in public spending and widespread poverty. Tel-Aviv's municipality does the bidding of the property developers, demolishing poor neighbourhoods to make way for glittering sky-scrapers. The Israeli working class should be the natural ally of the Palestinian masses. But for years, the ruling class has been able to skilfully manipulate the ‘security threat' (aided, of course, by terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians) to create a permanent state of fear, which leads Israeli workers to back their state against the ‘external threat'.
However, this cannot last forever. The Israeli ruling class' inability to solve the most basic needs of Israeli workers creates enormous contradictions that will eventually come to the fore. Recently, the Israeli Communist Party, despite the associations of Stalinism with anti-Semitism, has enjoyed some growth. As well as its success in the Tel-Aviv municipal elections [8], the ICP has played a leading role in mobilising the (admittedly small) anti-war movement around Tel-Aviv [see video below, note the number of red flags]. Despite its reformism, the ICP is the only authentic force on the left in Israel, with the potential to both oppose the occupation and improve the lives of Israel and Palestine's workers and poor.
Can The Question be Resolved?
On the basis of capitalism, this question is insoluble. Israel can never allow a genuinely independent Palestinian state to emerge, which would deprive it of valuable territory and resources, and could challenge it economically. The best Israel can offer is a series of disconnected ‘Bantustans', which would act as pools of cheap labour for Israeli capitalism, and markets for its produce.
The only solution therefore is the abolition of capitalism. For this, the revolutionary collaboration of the Israeli and Palestinian masses is required. Developments in Egypt, where the working class is becoming more and more militant, are crucial. Only a socialist federation of the Middle East, where all peoples can live with freedom, dignity and self-determination, can solve the problems of the suffering masses of Palestine and Israel.
RENEGADE EYE
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Israel Pulls Out of Gaza
By Alan Woods
Monday, 19 January 2009
Israel is withdrawing its forces from Gaza, following a tentative truce with Hamas. The withdrawal, which began on Sunday evening, was proceeding gradually today. Israel and Hamas separately declared cease-fires on Sunday. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday that Israel does not intend to keep a military presence inside the Gaza Strip, nor does it aim to reconquer the territory.
In a recent article (The invasion of Gaza: what does it mean?- Part One and Part Two) I pointed out that the intention of Israeli imperialism was not to occupy Gaza but to inflict the maximum damage on Hamas, terrorise the population and then withdraw. This is what is now happening. Olmert told European leaders visiting Jerusalem on Sunday evening that Israel planned to withdraw all of its troops to when the situation between Israel and Gaza was "stable":
“We didn't set out to conquer Gaza, we didn't set out to control Gaza, we don't want to remain in Gaza and we intend on leaving Gaza as fast as possible", Olmert said at a dinner with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. This decision will cause immense relief in Western capitals who, while publicly sympathetic to Israel's security concerns, were alarmed by the mounting number of civilian victims and the destabilising effects in neighbouring Arab countries.
The main losers, as always, are the ordinary people. In this devastating three-week war, terrible damage has been inflicted. The troops and tanks that poured into Gaza on January 3 have had two weeks in which to pulverise Gaza, which had been already badly damaged by a savage air bombardment. Now the shell-shocked Palestinians will have time to take stock of the situation. The war has taken a terrible toll on an already impoverished territory.
As Palestinians emerge from their hiding-places to survey wreckage of their homes, the last thing they will want is the renewal of the fighting that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,300 Gazans, and will claim more as the wounded die in the hospitals. The infrastructure of this desperately poor land has been devastated. Its government and administration are in ruins. Despite these evident facts, the head of the Hamas administration claimed a "popular victory" against Israel.” The enemy has failed to achieve its goals," Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech. Hamas's decision to call a truce was conditional on Israel withdrawing within a week. This was "wise and responsible," he said.
These brave words do not reflect the real situation. The Israelis are withdrawing because they have achieved their immediate goal, which I outlined in my article: “Their intention now is to make a limited strike that will seriously damage the fighting capacity of Hamas and kill as many of its leaders and militants before withdrawing, having inflicted maximum damage on the economy and infrastructure of Gaza that will take a long time to rebuild.” This is just what has occurred.
In an attempt to show that it was still capable of putting up some kind of resistance, Hamas fired about 20 rockets onto the Negev on Sunday, even when a truce was being announced to the world. But these were mere pinpricks and did not affect the plans of the Israelis in the slightest degree.
Ehud Olmert saw them – and the declarations of Hamas leaders announcing “victory” – for what they were: empty gestures. The Israeli Prime Minister declared the mission accomplished and who can doubt that he had good grounds for saying it, at least as far as the short-term military aims were concerned. The massive offensive that Israel launched with air, ground and sea forces on December 27 pushed all before it. Against the might of the Israeli state, small homemade rockets can have no real effect.
The Israeli decision to withdraw is not at all conditional on what Hamas says or does. Hamas has already said that it will stop firing rockets “when the last Israeli soldier has left Gaza.” But in reality it will be forced to stop. Its fighting capacity will have been severely damaged. Moreover, the sword of Damocles remains suspended over the heads of the people of Gaza. If there is a renewal of Palestinian rocket attacks, the Israelis will not hesitate to intervene again.
Israel still holds Gaza in an iron grip. Israel Radio reported that the Israelis would allow 200 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. But this can be opened and closed, like a water tap, whenever Israel chooses. In the economic as in the military field, Israel holds all the cards.
So what has been achieved from the point of view of the Palestinians? At present Gaza’s situation vis a vis Israel remains precisely where it was before the conflict – a small and unviable state of 1.5 million people remains locked inside the strip by an iron blockade. Its economic life was being slowly strangled before the invasion. Now it must be completely wrecked. The outlook for these poor people is grim indeed.
According to the Palestinian Statistics Bureau, some 4,000 residential buildings were reduced to rubble during the conflict. Western diplomats have said it could cost at least $1.6 billion to repair the infrastructure damage in Gaza. "I don't know what sort of future I have now - only God knows my future after this," Amani Kurdi, a 19-year-old student told Haaretz, as she surveyed the wreckage of Gaza's Islamic University, where she had studied science.
Inside Israel, which lost the grand total of ten troops in combat (and three civilians in rocket attacks), the war was popular and bolstered the prospects of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak before the February 10 election. The war will have stirred up chauvinist feelings and increased the support for the right wing. This is shown by the opinion polls, which are predicting an easy win for right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Let us recall that he opposed Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza after 38 years, arguing that it would embolden Palestinian hard-liners.
The war has also undermined the credibility of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been attempting to negotiate peace with Israel. It has deepened the bitter splits that already existed among Palestinians, who feel depressed and disoriented.
During talks with Egyptian mediators, Hamas officials demanded the opening of all Gaza's border crossings for the entry of materials, food, goods and basic needs. It is probable that some concessions will have to be made on this issue. France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic (which currently holds the presidency of the EU) have called on Israel to open Gaza's borders to aid as soon as possible.
Olmert said Israel wanted out of Gaza as soon as possible and his spokesman, Mark Regev, said "enormous amounts" of aid could be allowed in if the quiet holds. But there will be conditions, as we already see from these words. “If the quiet holds” means: as long as Hamas is neutered and rendered impotent as a military force.
For the past weeks the Western governments have been content to stand by, wringing their hands and weeping crocodile tears while the people of Gaza were being subjected to a vicious bombardment. The simple fact is that these governments – and those of the so-called moderate (that is, pro-American) Arab states – wanted to see Hamas smashed and were in no hurry to stop the Israelis from carrying out this bloody work on their behalf. But now that the Israeli military machine has achieved its ends and decided to withdraw, a flurry of diplomatic initiatives has been commenced. The United States, Egypt and European countries are all striving for peace. That is to say – they are striving to prevent Hamas rearming.
That is the condition that the Israelis will demand, and are determined to get. Public Security Minister Avi Dichter threatened a military response to any renewed flow of arms into the Gaza Strip, saying Israel would view such smuggling as an attack on its territory. Therefore, we can expect to see as yet unspecified measures to stop Hamas smuggling weapons across the Egypt-Gaza frontier, a matter that the Cairo will be delighted to help bring about – if it can. Dichter told Israel Radio: "That means, if smuggling is renewed, Israel will view it as if it were fired upon."
Israel and Obama
The timing of the withdrawal is significant and confirms what I wrote in my article. In that article I explained that the Israeli ruling class attacked Gaza before Obama replaced George Bush on January 20, as a message to Washington not to reach any agreements with the Arabs that might not be to their liking. Having made their point very eloquently, they now withdraw so as not to cause unnecessary embarrassment to the man in the White House.
This was admitted by the Haaretz Service and News Agencies, which wrote yesterday: “Israeli officials have said that troops would withdraw completely before Barack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday as the new U.S. president. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been publicly announced.” (my emphasis, AW).
The U.S. President-elect is to be sworn in on Tuesday. Everyone now looks to Barack Obama to solve this problem. But then, everyone now looks to Barack Obama to solve all the problems in the world. This would be a somewhat difficult task for the Almighty himself. Obama believes in the Almighty, but is already explaining to the people of the USA that he lacks the power to deliver miracles. This is unfortunate because miracles are exactly what are expected.
"The goal remains a durable and fully respected ceasefire that will lead to stabilisation and normalisation in Gaza," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. A spokeswoman for Obama said he welcomed the Gaza truce and would say more about the Gaza situation after he is inaugurated. Obama’s main priority is to bolster his position at home by pulling US troops out of Iraq as soon as possible. He needs to do this (and to make other popular gestures) in the first period of his administration, in order to prepare the ground for the deep cuts in living standards that he will be obliged to carry out later. His presentation of a wreath to honour US war dead a few days before his inauguration was no accident. He is saying to the US public: “Bush got you into this war. But don’t worry: I will get you out of it!”
However, as I explained in my article, in order to get out of Iraq, the Americans will have to talk to Syria and Iran, and in these negotiations (which will be conducted behind locked doors, far from the inquisitive eyes of public opinion), the fate of the Palestinians will be decided. The invasion of Gaza was part of these negotiations, which resemble a game of chess in which whole nations are disposed of like mere pawns, in order that powerful states can obtain their main goals.
The Palestinian people must not expect anything from “friends” like Obama or the governments of the European Union. Still less can they expect from “friendly” Arab governments who either fear the Palestinians because they are arousing the masses in their own countries, or else are using the Palestinian cause as a pawn in a diplomatic game of chess.
The Palestinian problem will not be solved by firing rockets or sending suicide bombers to blow up buses in Israel, as advocated by Hamas. Nor will it be solved by Abbas, who, under the guise of negotiating peace, is preparing to sell out to Israel and the imperialists. The problem can only be solved as part of the revolutionary struggle of the masses to overthrow the rotten pro-western Arab regimes and establish workers’ and peasants’ governments in the Middle East.
Just as the national problem in Russia was solved when the workers and peasants took power, so in the Middle East, the national question of the Palestinians, Kurds and other oppressed peoples can only be solved through workers’ power and a socialist federation. The only way to challenge the might of Israeli imperialism is to split the worker away from Zionism, and that can only be done on the basis of revolutionary class politics. Any other road will only lead to an increase in national hatreds, chauvinism, new massacres, wars and bloodshed. The Palestinians in the past had a socialist tradition. Today that tradition is the only salvation!
London, January 19, 2009
RENEGADE EYE
Monday, 19 January 2009
Israel is withdrawing its forces from Gaza, following a tentative truce with Hamas. The withdrawal, which began on Sunday evening, was proceeding gradually today. Israel and Hamas separately declared cease-fires on Sunday. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday that Israel does not intend to keep a military presence inside the Gaza Strip, nor does it aim to reconquer the territory.
In a recent article (The invasion of Gaza: what does it mean?- Part One and Part Two) I pointed out that the intention of Israeli imperialism was not to occupy Gaza but to inflict the maximum damage on Hamas, terrorise the population and then withdraw. This is what is now happening. Olmert told European leaders visiting Jerusalem on Sunday evening that Israel planned to withdraw all of its troops to when the situation between Israel and Gaza was "stable":
“We didn't set out to conquer Gaza, we didn't set out to control Gaza, we don't want to remain in Gaza and we intend on leaving Gaza as fast as possible", Olmert said at a dinner with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. This decision will cause immense relief in Western capitals who, while publicly sympathetic to Israel's security concerns, were alarmed by the mounting number of civilian victims and the destabilising effects in neighbouring Arab countries.
Hamas’ Empty Boasts
The main losers, as always, are the ordinary people. In this devastating three-week war, terrible damage has been inflicted. The troops and tanks that poured into Gaza on January 3 have had two weeks in which to pulverise Gaza, which had been already badly damaged by a savage air bombardment. Now the shell-shocked Palestinians will have time to take stock of the situation. The war has taken a terrible toll on an already impoverished territory.
As Palestinians emerge from their hiding-places to survey wreckage of their homes, the last thing they will want is the renewal of the fighting that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,300 Gazans, and will claim more as the wounded die in the hospitals. The infrastructure of this desperately poor land has been devastated. Its government and administration are in ruins. Despite these evident facts, the head of the Hamas administration claimed a "popular victory" against Israel.” The enemy has failed to achieve its goals," Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech. Hamas's decision to call a truce was conditional on Israel withdrawing within a week. This was "wise and responsible," he said.
These brave words do not reflect the real situation. The Israelis are withdrawing because they have achieved their immediate goal, which I outlined in my article: “Their intention now is to make a limited strike that will seriously damage the fighting capacity of Hamas and kill as many of its leaders and militants before withdrawing, having inflicted maximum damage on the economy and infrastructure of Gaza that will take a long time to rebuild.” This is just what has occurred.
In an attempt to show that it was still capable of putting up some kind of resistance, Hamas fired about 20 rockets onto the Negev on Sunday, even when a truce was being announced to the world. But these were mere pinpricks and did not affect the plans of the Israelis in the slightest degree.
Ehud Olmert saw them – and the declarations of Hamas leaders announcing “victory” – for what they were: empty gestures. The Israeli Prime Minister declared the mission accomplished and who can doubt that he had good grounds for saying it, at least as far as the short-term military aims were concerned. The massive offensive that Israel launched with air, ground and sea forces on December 27 pushed all before it. Against the might of the Israeli state, small homemade rockets can have no real effect.
The Israeli decision to withdraw is not at all conditional on what Hamas says or does. Hamas has already said that it will stop firing rockets “when the last Israeli soldier has left Gaza.” But in reality it will be forced to stop. Its fighting capacity will have been severely damaged. Moreover, the sword of Damocles remains suspended over the heads of the people of Gaza. If there is a renewal of Palestinian rocket attacks, the Israelis will not hesitate to intervene again.
Israel still holds Gaza in an iron grip. Israel Radio reported that the Israelis would allow 200 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. But this can be opened and closed, like a water tap, whenever Israel chooses. In the economic as in the military field, Israel holds all the cards.
What Has Been Achieved?
So what has been achieved from the point of view of the Palestinians? At present Gaza’s situation vis a vis Israel remains precisely where it was before the conflict – a small and unviable state of 1.5 million people remains locked inside the strip by an iron blockade. Its economic life was being slowly strangled before the invasion. Now it must be completely wrecked. The outlook for these poor people is grim indeed.
According to the Palestinian Statistics Bureau, some 4,000 residential buildings were reduced to rubble during the conflict. Western diplomats have said it could cost at least $1.6 billion to repair the infrastructure damage in Gaza. "I don't know what sort of future I have now - only God knows my future after this," Amani Kurdi, a 19-year-old student told Haaretz, as she surveyed the wreckage of Gaza's Islamic University, where she had studied science.
Inside Israel, which lost the grand total of ten troops in combat (and three civilians in rocket attacks), the war was popular and bolstered the prospects of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak before the February 10 election. The war will have stirred up chauvinist feelings and increased the support for the right wing. This is shown by the opinion polls, which are predicting an easy win for right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Let us recall that he opposed Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza after 38 years, arguing that it would embolden Palestinian hard-liners.
The war has also undermined the credibility of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been attempting to negotiate peace with Israel. It has deepened the bitter splits that already existed among Palestinians, who feel depressed and disoriented.
During talks with Egyptian mediators, Hamas officials demanded the opening of all Gaza's border crossings for the entry of materials, food, goods and basic needs. It is probable that some concessions will have to be made on this issue. France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic (which currently holds the presidency of the EU) have called on Israel to open Gaza's borders to aid as soon as possible.
Olmert said Israel wanted out of Gaza as soon as possible and his spokesman, Mark Regev, said "enormous amounts" of aid could be allowed in if the quiet holds. But there will be conditions, as we already see from these words. “If the quiet holds” means: as long as Hamas is neutered and rendered impotent as a military force.
For the past weeks the Western governments have been content to stand by, wringing their hands and weeping crocodile tears while the people of Gaza were being subjected to a vicious bombardment. The simple fact is that these governments – and those of the so-called moderate (that is, pro-American) Arab states – wanted to see Hamas smashed and were in no hurry to stop the Israelis from carrying out this bloody work on their behalf. But now that the Israeli military machine has achieved its ends and decided to withdraw, a flurry of diplomatic initiatives has been commenced. The United States, Egypt and European countries are all striving for peace. That is to say – they are striving to prevent Hamas rearming.
That is the condition that the Israelis will demand, and are determined to get. Public Security Minister Avi Dichter threatened a military response to any renewed flow of arms into the Gaza Strip, saying Israel would view such smuggling as an attack on its territory. Therefore, we can expect to see as yet unspecified measures to stop Hamas smuggling weapons across the Egypt-Gaza frontier, a matter that the Cairo will be delighted to help bring about – if it can. Dichter told Israel Radio: "That means, if smuggling is renewed, Israel will view it as if it were fired upon."
Israel and Obama
The timing of the withdrawal is significant and confirms what I wrote in my article. In that article I explained that the Israeli ruling class attacked Gaza before Obama replaced George Bush on January 20, as a message to Washington not to reach any agreements with the Arabs that might not be to their liking. Having made their point very eloquently, they now withdraw so as not to cause unnecessary embarrassment to the man in the White House.
This was admitted by the Haaretz Service and News Agencies, which wrote yesterday: “Israeli officials have said that troops would withdraw completely before Barack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday as the new U.S. president. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been publicly announced.” (my emphasis, AW).
The U.S. President-elect is to be sworn in on Tuesday. Everyone now looks to Barack Obama to solve this problem. But then, everyone now looks to Barack Obama to solve all the problems in the world. This would be a somewhat difficult task for the Almighty himself. Obama believes in the Almighty, but is already explaining to the people of the USA that he lacks the power to deliver miracles. This is unfortunate because miracles are exactly what are expected.
"The goal remains a durable and fully respected ceasefire that will lead to stabilisation and normalisation in Gaza," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. A spokeswoman for Obama said he welcomed the Gaza truce and would say more about the Gaza situation after he is inaugurated. Obama’s main priority is to bolster his position at home by pulling US troops out of Iraq as soon as possible. He needs to do this (and to make other popular gestures) in the first period of his administration, in order to prepare the ground for the deep cuts in living standards that he will be obliged to carry out later. His presentation of a wreath to honour US war dead a few days before his inauguration was no accident. He is saying to the US public: “Bush got you into this war. But don’t worry: I will get you out of it!”
However, as I explained in my article, in order to get out of Iraq, the Americans will have to talk to Syria and Iran, and in these negotiations (which will be conducted behind locked doors, far from the inquisitive eyes of public opinion), the fate of the Palestinians will be decided. The invasion of Gaza was part of these negotiations, which resemble a game of chess in which whole nations are disposed of like mere pawns, in order that powerful states can obtain their main goals.
The Palestinian people must not expect anything from “friends” like Obama or the governments of the European Union. Still less can they expect from “friendly” Arab governments who either fear the Palestinians because they are arousing the masses in their own countries, or else are using the Palestinian cause as a pawn in a diplomatic game of chess.
The Palestinian problem will not be solved by firing rockets or sending suicide bombers to blow up buses in Israel, as advocated by Hamas. Nor will it be solved by Abbas, who, under the guise of negotiating peace, is preparing to sell out to Israel and the imperialists. The problem can only be solved as part of the revolutionary struggle of the masses to overthrow the rotten pro-western Arab regimes and establish workers’ and peasants’ governments in the Middle East.
Just as the national problem in Russia was solved when the workers and peasants took power, so in the Middle East, the national question of the Palestinians, Kurds and other oppressed peoples can only be solved through workers’ power and a socialist federation. The only way to challenge the might of Israeli imperialism is to split the worker away from Zionism, and that can only be done on the basis of revolutionary class politics. Any other road will only lead to an increase in national hatreds, chauvinism, new massacres, wars and bloodshed. The Palestinians in the past had a socialist tradition. Today that tradition is the only salvation!
London, January 19, 2009
RENEGADE EYE
Friday, January 09, 2009
The Invasion of Gaza: What Does it Mean?
This is the second part of an essay by Alan Woods, about the situation in Gaza. His analysis has more depth than most analysis around. This part one.
By Alan Woods
Friday, 09 January 2009
Hamas is under intense pressure to accept international demands for a ceasefire. After the ferocious pounding they have received, they seem to be indicating that they may be prepared for a ceasefire, including halting rocket attacks on Israel. But Israel is not likely to stop the war just yet. It is demanding not only that that Hamas cease firing missiles, but that it accepts Israel, renounces violence, and adheres to the Palestinians' previous peace deals. In other words, it is demanding unconditional surrender.
Sooner or later, after the fighting stops, there will be new moves for a deal. The likelihood of some kind of deal between Syria, Iran and the USA before the end of the war must have been a cause for concern to the Hamas leadership, which depends heavily for financial and military support on Damascus and Teheran. The latter have made a reputation for themselves as the Palestinians' friends. But all history shows that the Palestinian people should place no faith in the friendship of foreign governments, because, as someone once said, countries have no friends, only interests. If the interests of Syria and Iran conflict with those of the Palestinians, it is not hard to see what they will do.
This fear on the part of the Hamas leadership may well have been the reason for their conduct in recent months. From the public declarations of some of the Hamas leaders it is obvious that they hope that Palestinian suffering would rouse the world's conscience and rally fellow Muslims to their side. In this they have succeeded. But if they imagined that this would be sufficient to force Israel to back down, they were sadly mistaken. Once they started the offensive, there was no going back for Israel, no matter how many demonstrations are held or how many EU missions are dispatched.
All these elements must have determined the tactics of Hamas, which must otherwise appear suicidal. They organized rocket strikes against Israel, and kept up a barrage of accusations against Fatah. Last winter they engineered the dramatic breach of Gaza's border with Egypt to advertise Gaza's misery and arouse the people of Egypt to their support. This was not appreciated by the Egyptian ruling clique, which is facing growing popular discontent as a result of the deepening economic crisis and falling living standards.
The consequences of this war for US foreign policy will be far-reaching. This is not the eleventh of September! In the new world situation, the US can no longer achieve its objectives without the backing of regional partners as well as China, Europe and Russia. That is why there will be significant differences between the foreign policy of Obama and Bush. But in foreign policy one thing leads to another. In order to get Russia to support what the US regards as its vital interests in the Middle East will require that Washington be prepared to take Russian interests elsewhere into account.
This will probably mean that the US will agree to put on hold plans for missile defence in Europe, on condition that Russia takes steps to slow down the Iranian nuclear programme. Similarly, Nato expansion to include Georgia and Ukraine could be slowed. Since none of these things affect the vital interests of the great powers, such "sacrifices" could easily be made, just as one sacrifices a useless pawn in a game of chess.
In the same way "sacrifices" must be made in the Middle East. The fact that David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, recently visited Syria was a sign that the diplomatic machine was already in action. The reason for this is quite clear: Washington wants to get out of Iraq with a minimum of fuss. It must protect its rear and for this it requires the collaboration of Syria and Iran. But since it would be embarrassing for Mr. Bush to admit that he is talking to a "terrorist state", he sends his office boy from London. For their part the Syrians and Iranians are anxious to see the back of the Americans as soon as possible and would like, if possible, to obtain better relations with the transatlantic giant with the possibility of trade and investments this would open up.
Too weak to make war, Syria has proved strong enough to deny its neighbours peace, as we see from its meddling in Lebanon. Even the thickest minds in Washington are beginning to realise that the possibility of talking to Syria could cause less damage than leaving it as an enemy. Even Israel's outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert has understood this. According to Aluf Benn, a columnist in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, Olmert struggled in a recent meeting to persuade Bush that the Golan Heights may be a worthwhile price to pay for a major change in the region's strategic alignment.
Syria has recently grown closer to Turkey, which is keeping a close eye on developments in Iraq, especially the Kurdish area in the north, which sits on its border and serves as a base for the PKK. According to the Economist: "Syria, Mr Olmert explained, sat at the crux of two axes, one linking Iran to Hamas via Hizbullah, the other linking such 'pragmatic' powers as Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. A switch by Syria would dramatically weaken the extremists, the Israeli leader was said to have concluded."
Syria's economy is being damaged by collapsing crude reserves and world prices. It needs foreign investment to deal with unemployment that is unofficially estimated at more than 20 percent. Syria is a secular state and its leaders fear the growth in influence of the Islamist groups they sponsor abroad. A wave of support for Hamas inside Syria would not be good news for them, any more than for the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It does not require much imagination to see that in the future their attitude could change - if the terms were right.
The case of Iran is even clearer. The Iranian regime is facing revolutionary developments which we have analysed in previous articles. Its economy is being hit hard by falling oil prices. There has been a wave of strikes and student protests. The Ahmadinejad regime is clearly on its last legs and the ruling clique is looking for a replacement. A negotiated deal with Washington would be to its advantage.
How does this affect the Palestinians and Israel? History provides us with many examples where the rights of small nations have been used as bargaining chips by the Great Powers who cheerfully gamble them away without even the pretence at consultation. Once the professional diplomats sit down to talk, everything will be placed on the table and everything will be up for negotiation - including the fate of the Palestinians. As always, they are the pawns of great power diplomacy, and can be sacrificed very easily. The Palestinians should bear this firmly in mind, and not place any trust in the good will of even its most fervent "friends" in foreign governments.
On the Palestinian question up to now Syria and Iran have presented themselves as the most intransigent supporters of the hard line and have backed Hamas and Hezbollah with money and arms. The Americans and Israelis object to this. How can we solve this problem? Let us see... Israel possesses the Golan Heights, which Syria wants to be returned at all costs, since 1967. "Why not give us Golan?" the Syrians will say. To which the Americans will shake their head sadly: "For our part we would be delighted to oblige, but our friends the Israelis will object because it is a matter of their security." "Is that all?" the Syrians will answer. But we can also help them with the security issue. Don't forget we pay a big part of the bills for Hamas and Hezbollah."
At this, the Iranian delegate begins to express his displeasure: "The rights of our Palestinian brothers are non-negotiable," he protests, banging the table. But after a few hours (or weeks, or months), the Iranians have recovered their good spirits when the Americans produce a whole packet of economic proposals for trade and investment in Iran." "This comes just in time," says the Iranian, as the falling price of oil is causing us a lot of grief. Maybe we ought to be a bit more flexible on the Palestine issue after all." "Yes, says the American, with a broad smile, and don't forget when we withdraw you guys will control half of Iraq. All in all it is not a bad bargain."
This conversation is, of course, fictitious. But let nobody imagine that such things do not occur in the secret world of diplomacy where principles are nothing and cynical calculation everything. Naturally, not a word of these secret deals will be made public until decades later when some high diplomat writes his memoirs. In the next few months the opposite impression will be created: that the negotiations are very difficult, that Teheran and Syria are being very stubborn (it is always necessary to strike a hard bargain, especially in the Middle East where the tradition of haggling is strong). The talks will probably break down more than once, then they will be resumed. The time it takes to get agreement depends on many factors. But sooner or later a deal will be done, because it is in the interests of all parties that it should be so.
But nothing is simple in the politics of the Middle East. There can be complications for all this. Elections in Israel in February could produce a government opposed to any concessions. Binyamin Netanyahu not long ago was favourite to win the general election, although that will be affected by what happens in Gaza. His right wing Likud party generally opposes the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the West Bank. And the extreme right wing of the party strengthened its position in the primaries on December 9th. Moshe Feiglin, who heads that wing runs a website that denies the right of Palestinians to nationhood and urges Israel to annex the West Bank.
This kind of thing could push Syria and Iran back to the policy of "rejectionism". But in the long run they will have to negotiate. In any case, the new Israeli government, whoever leads it, will have to deal, not with George W Bush but with Barak Obama, whose agenda for the Middle East is rather different to that of his predecessor. Since America subsidises Israel, Obama will have a fair amount of leverage with which to exert pressure.
The only thing that can completely upset this scenario is the revolutionary movement of the masses in the Arab world and in Iran. The invasion of Gaza has set in motion forces that it will not be easy to halt. This is a factor that the politicians and diplomats cannot control with their usual methods of bribery, trickery and intrigue. In the last analysis it is the only hope for the people of Palestine and the whole world.
Although Hamas has taken a battering, the longer the Israeli army stays in Gaza the more it may find ways of striking back. Until yesterday Hezbollah had only offered rhetorical support. However, the latest reports of rockets being fired into northern Israel may indicate that the conflict could spiral out of control.
As the BBC has reported: "Rockets have been fired into northern Israel from Lebanon, raising fears the Israeli offensive in Gaza may spread. Israel's army responded with artillery to a barrage of at least three rockets. No group has claimed responsibility."
The same report goes on to explain that, "The rocket attacks from Lebanon have raised concerns about a wider war, (...) It is is not clear if the rockets were fired by Hezbollah or by one of the armed Palestinian groups that operate in Lebanon. If Hezbollah mounted the attack there is a grave risk of a very strong Israeli reaction, our correspondent says. The Palestinians in Lebanon do not have the capacity to fight a war with Israel, but Hezbollah does."
Israel is clearly anxious that Hezbollah might be tempted to join in. If it does, in the present context, the Israel military will be pushed into hitting back very hard. This is very worrying to the imperialist powers, particularly the European who fear such a scenario. Whether Hezbollah gets sucked into the conflict we will see in the coming days. Meanwhile, inside Israel, too, this war will have serious consequences, as it drags on over time.
The aim of the war is to marginalize Hamas, to weaken and if possible destroy it. This aim is secretly welcomed by the "moderate" Arab regimes. And Abbas would not lose any sleep over it either, except for the fact that the attack on Gaza has caused outrage in the West Bank. The so-called moderate Arab regimes have been strangely restrained so far in their condemnations. In reality the rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan would not be too displeased if Hamas were to be wiped off the face of the earth, although these rulers would never dare to admit such a thing in public.
The petty bourgeois pacifists can only see the horrors of war but they are incapable of seeing the other side of the picture. History has shown many times that wars can lead to revolution. However the invasion of Gaza ends, one thing is sure. Sooner or later, there will be revolutionary developments in the Arab world that will lead to the overthrow of one rotten regime after another. All these reactionary regimes are all hanging by a thread. They live in constant fear that the poverty and discontent of the masses might erupt, leading to a revolutionary overthrow.
The world economic crisis that has led to a collapse of oil prices has underlined this threat. The present situation will lead to a further process of radicalisation throughout the Middle East. The workers and students who come out onto the streets to protest against the invasion of Gaza are not only protesting against the cruel treatment of the Palestinians. They are protesting against the inactivity of their own rulers, against their complicity with Washington and therefore with Israel, against their luxurious lifestyles that contrast so brutally with the misery of the masses.
In an editorial of 17/12/2008, the Financial Times expressed its concern about the stability of the Arab regimes: "Ripples through these regions easily build into waves. The US-allied leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, initially happy to see Israel hit Hizbollah or Hamas, quickly change their tune as soon as their peoples rally to the militants. Their legitimacy and survival is at stake." (my emphasis, AW)
In Egypt, where there was serious unrest even before the war, police have arrested dozens of campaigners for trying to send convoys of food and medicine to Gaza, and Internet organisers were calling for a general strike in support of the strip. There have been mass demonstrations in the Lebanon and the US embassy in Beirut has been attacked. There was a mass demonstration in Istanbul, and other big demonstrations have taken place in Jordan and the West Bank and all over the Middle East, in Indonesia, in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir.
In the northern Israeli town of Sakhnin tens of thousands of Israeli-Palestinians have protested against Israel's offensive. At present the majority of Jewish Israelis have remained passive or support the offensive, deceived by the propaganda about a defensive war. But as the war continues and casualties grow, that can change. There are already signs of differences in the Israeli ruling class. A former head of Mossad has said that Hamas must be included in future negotiations. This already indicates growing doubts even among the ruling layer. If the rockets keep on coming, even in reduced numbers, questions will be raised in Israel and elsewhere about what has really been achieved, especially as the death toll both among the Israeli troops and Palestinian civilians becomes even more severe.
The rulers of the Middle East are right to fear the revolutionary potential of the masses because it was already implicit in the situation before these events. Now it is coming close to boiling point. Arab governments, though furious with Hamas, will come under pressure to reflect the anger on the streets to take some action, and may face overthrow if they do not do so. That is why people like Gordon Brown want peace as soon s possible, because war means instability and instability can have effects that will not be to the liking of either London or Washington.
It is impossible to understand the events in Gaza outside this context. The aim of the Israelis is to pulverise Hamas in order to weaken them as against Fatah, whose services they will need in the next period. On the other hand, Hamas is attempting desperately to gain the sympathy of the Arab masses in order that they will not be completely marginalized. And both sides are issuing a message to those who are preparing to do a deal behind their backs.
Under Abbas the leaders are attempting to arrive at an accommodation with Israel. There is still talk of setting up an independent Palestinian state on land currently occupied by Israel. But how can this be established? The moment we pass from generalizations and pious declarations to the hard facts, the problems come to the fore. I wrote on this question in December 2007, when Bush organized the farce of the Annapolis conference:
"The slogan of the Israeli government is: what we have we hold. The Zionists have no intention of giving any important concessions. Hamas boasted that they had expelled the Israeli army from Gaza. That is a joke. The Israelis withdrew from Gaza as a tactical move to silence international criticism and create the impression that they were giving up something important, when in reality they have no interest in Gaza. This was intended to strengthen their stranglehold on the West Bank, which is the decisive question.
"The Israelis have relentlessly continued building the monstrous wall that slices through Palestinian territory on the West Bank, robbing large chunks of land under the pretext of 'defence'. The settlers have become increasingly bold and insolent. After the incidents in Gaza no Israeli government will want to confront the settlers in the West Bank.
"Then there is the little matter of Jerusalem, which both Jews and Arabs claim as their natural God-given capital. As for the right of return of Palestinians expelled from their homes since 1948, there is no question of Israel accepting them back, since that would completely upset the demographic balance of the ‘Jewish state'."
How are these problems to be resolved? To this question diplomacy has never produced a satisfactory answer. The defiance of the Israelis has just been expressed in the eloquent language of bombs, rockets and artillery fire. And what will the Palestinians say? They will have nothing to say because they will not be invited to these negotiations. The people who have fought and given their blood to fight for their rights, will see that their destiny is being determined by foreign governments who are only concerned with their own narrow national interests.
When all the fundamental issues are nicely decided, there will be a Middle East Conference, with the participation of all the well-known "friends of Palestine" - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others. Abbas will then be invited, not to decide anything, but like a man invited to the last day of a trial to listen to the sentence. As for Hamas, whether they are invited or not depends on their good behaviour. In any case, it will make not the slightest difference to the outcome.
It is the elementary duty of every proletarian internationalist to defend the Palestinians against the violence of Israeli imperialism. But it is also our duty to say what is: the tactics of suicide bombing and firing rockets at Israeli towns are counterproductive and useless. They do not represent armed struggle because they do not even dent the armour of the Israeli state, but strengthen it by pushing the Israeli masses behind it.
A big part of the appeal of Hamas comes from its image of resistance to occupation. Hamas won the election in 2006 because the masses were tired of the corruption of the PLO leaders and their connivance with Israel. But if we pose the question purely in nationalist terms (Jews against Arabs), then no solution of the Palestinian question is possible. It is not possible to solve the problem of the Palestinian people by tactics like suicide bombings and firing rockets at Israeli towns and villages. The methods advocated by Hamas were tried by the PLO for 40 years and have led only to one bloody defeat after another. No amount of sympathy for the sufferings of the Palestinians can alter that fact.
What will be the end result of the war? In military terms Hamas will have lost massively. Many of its cadres will have been killed or taken prisoner. Its military infrastructure will be shattered. In terms of physical assets, Gaza will be left devastated. The economic damage will take many years to rebuild. In this sense the Israelis will have got what they wanted. More serious for Israel will be the long-term political effects. Although it will have suffered a severe blow, Hamas will not be destroyed.
And what will Israel have gained? The Israelis' "victory" in Gaza will turn to ashes in their mouths. Let us remember that the whole point was to achieve security. In the end they will have earned an even greater hatred in the Arab world than before. The threat of terrorist actions will not be any less than before but far greater. For every Hamas militant they kill there will be ten, twenty or a hundred youths who are now children filled with bitterness and hate, who will be ready to volunteer for suicide missions against Israel and its allies in the Arab and western world. If this is the idea of creating security for Israel in the future, it is a very strange one!
What will Hamas have achieved after all the dust settles on the ruins of Gaza? They may win some meagre concessions - perhaps a loosening of Israel's siege, an opening of Egypt's border, a lot of aid from fellow Muslims, and maybe a modicum of international recognition. Their prestige among the Arabs may have been enhanced. But the question remains: what has been solved by all this? We merely return once more to the same never-ending cycle of violence, wars and killings that solve nothing. The rage in Gaza over Israel's violence may momentarily boost Hamas' popularity, but after the excitement dies down the people of Gaza may start to ask what brought them to this mess.
The actions of the Israeli army are stirring up the whole Middle East. They will reap a new harvest of hate, bitterness and a thirst for revenge. But the tactics of groups like Hamas can never succeed. In fact, they are entirely counterproductive. The leaders of Hamas say: "As the weaker party we have the right to use any methods available to us to defeat our oppressors." To this we reply: "Yes, you have that right and we understand that the methods of terrorism and guerrilla warfare are always resorted to by a weaker side against a stronger oppressor.
To professional soldiers such guerrilla methods are always to be condemned. In olden times the shepherd David used his sling to kill the giant Goliath and doubtless the Philistine generals considered that an unfair and barbarous method that did not comply with the rules of warfare. But by the use of this simple but effective method, David won and Goliath lost his head. All that is true but we will say also this: a good general will only make use of such methods that are consistent with his strategic aims and likely to be successful. Only a bad general makes use of methods that do not lead to victory but will guarantee defeat. And the methods used by Hamas can only lead to defeat and help the enemy. That is why we oppose these methods.
If the methods of Hamas have failed to benefit the Palestinians, so have the methods of the Israeli imperialists failed the people of Israel. Every attempt by Israel to guarantee security by force has turned out to be counterproductive. The occupation of Palestinian territory after the 1967 six-day war has intensified the conflict with the Palestinians. Its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 led to the creation of its Nemesis, Hezbollah. Its 2006 war on Hezbollah undermined the pro-western government in Beirut. The current pounding of Gaza has discredited Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president. Security is a mirage that constantly eludes Israel's grasp, and the future of the state of Israel always has a question mark over it.
Equally, every attempt to defeat Israel by military means has ended by reinforcing reactionary Zionism. From the failure of the so-called armed struggle, Abbas and the leaders of Fatah have drawn the conclusion that the only alternative is to negotiate with Israel and seek the good offices of the imperialists. But we have already seen what that means over the last decade or so. It means negotiating surrender and selling out the cause of Palestinian national self-determination. Neither Hamas nor Abbas therefore offer any way out.
What will be the outcome of negotiations on a "Palestinian state" - the "two-state solution"? This solution depends on one thing only: the agreement of Israel (which, after all, will be one of the two states, and not the weakest of them). What will Israel agree to? They might accept some adjustments of the present frontier with the West Bank. They might allow some opening of the border with Gaza (which they can close at any time). They may impose some restrictions on building new Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, and they may even dismantle a few of the existing ones. They cannot hand over Jerusalem, which they regard as their capital, though there may be some sort of sharing agreement. Nor will they allow the right of return to Israel proper, although they might permit some to enter the Palestinian territory.
This is the best the Palestinians can hope for on the present basis: a truncated pseudo-state, which will be economically dependent on Israel, whose presence will stand over it like a dark and menacing shadow. Control of this "state" will be entrusted only to those Palestinian leaders like Abbas, who is prepared to act as a puppet of Israel, and who will mercilessly repress any dissident Palestinian group.
In other words, it will be a "solution" similar to that imposed on the Irish by British imperialism in 1922. That led to a bloody civil war in Ireland in which many more Irish were killed than were ever killed by the British. The same thing can happen with the Palestinians in the future, as we saw with the civil war in Gaza in 2007. Some Palestinians might accept, while others would undoubtedly reject, leading to new conflicts and bloodshed.
Napoleon said that defeated armies learn well. All the defeats and sacrifices and martyrdoms will serve for nothing unless we are willing to learn from them and turn them to our advantage. If we merely look at the present bloody mess in sentimental and moralistic terms, as is too often the case, we will gain nothing from it. Our task, in the words of the philosopher Spinoza, is: neither weep nor laugh but understand.
Ultimately, both Jews and Arabs must have the right to live in peace and control their own destinies in a homeland of their own. It is easy to state this aim, but not so easy to say how it can be achieved. The so-called Peace Process is dead. There is no doubt it will be revived, but not until the Israeli army has done its bloody work in Gaza thoroughly.
We can predict that after the war there will be one deal after another, and they will break down one after another. None of this will do anything to solve the problems of the Palestinians. Nor will it guarantee security for the people of Israel. However, there is a solution to the Palestinian problem that is neither futile acts of terrorism or diplomatic sell-outs.
The events in Gaza were the spark that fell on a parched prairie. It provoked a wave of mass protests that has shaken all the existing regimes in the Middle East. The revolutionary potential implicit in these movements was instantly recognised by the strategists of Capital. Thus, the Economist wrote: "But unless the current furious street protests spark a region-wide revolution that scares the wits out of Israel and its friends, Hamas will still face the same painful old choice of how to come to terms with an immensely more powerful and equally determined enemy."
These words express the essence of the problem excellently. What do they mean? The intelligent bourgeois understand that the Palestinian question can act as a catalyst for all the accumulated frustration, rage and discontent of the masses in the Middle East. That is why they are continually pleading for peace, ceasefires, agreements and moderation. They can see what the Marxists can see: that a region-wide revolution is implicit in the whole situation. That is the starting point for the success of the Palestinian Revolution, and no other.
The question is posed very clearly by the above lines. The Palestinians are faced by an immensely more powerful and equally determined enemy. The events in Gaza have clearly shown the impossibility of defeating this monster by purely military means. Is there a power that is even stronger and more determined than the power of the state of Israel? Yes, there is such a power. It is the power of the masses, once they are organized and mobilized to fight. Two intifadas have shown that the Palestinian masses are prepared to fight heroically. But in war courage is never enough to win. A clear strategy and tactics, and above all good generals are necessary. In revolutionary terms this means that in order to win, the masses require a revolutionary programme, correct methods and tactics and good leadership. This is what is needed and this is what is lacking.
The present leaders of the Palestinians offer no alternative. Some of the leaders of Fatah in reality would not be sorry to see Hamas liquidated. They have in fact blamed Hamas for the Israeli invasion! This has caused a wave of disgust among ordinary supporters of Fatah and the mass of Palestinians on the West Bank, who are asking why their top leader has adopted such a position while their compatriots are being slaughtered. Arafat, with all his faults, would not have behaved like this. Many Palestinians are drawing the conclusion: "Abbas is a puppet of Israel."
Hamas is hoping to inspire Palestinians in the West Bank to overthrow Fatah. They have not yet succeeded in this. However discredited Abbas may be, Palestinians do not see Hamas as an alternative, though some young people in desperation may turn to it. That would be a tragedy. What is required is not a new generation of suicide bombers seeking revenge and martyrdom, but the construction of a viable mass revolutionary alternative.
The first condition for the future success of the Palestinian revolution lies in the revolutionary overthrow of the reactionary bourgeois regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and then for a settling of accounts with the reactionary Zionist state itself. The whole Arab world is now in a state of ferment. The one thing that is lacking in the situation is a genuine revolutionary leadership, standing on the basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism. That is what is required to find a way out of this bloody quagmire.
In the past there were powerful Communist Parties in the Arab world, which claimed to stand for Marxism-Leninism, although the Stalinist two-stage policies of the leadership led to one defeat after another. Since the fall of the USSR, the old Communist Parties have ceased to exist. But there are many revolutionary cadres who are dissatisfied with the existing political leaderships and are looking for an alternative. It is to these layers, especially the youth, that we address ourselves. That is the only hope for the future.
Those who consider that the people of Israel are one solid reactionary mass understand nothing. If this were the case, then the future of the Palestinians would be hopeless indeed. But it is not true. On more than one occasion the masses in Israel have demonstrated against the brutality of their own imperialists and in solidarity with the Palestinians. Even in this conflict we had the first signs of protest in the recent anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv. On more then one occasion the Israeli workers have organized strikes and general strikes. The class struggle exists in Israel as in any other country. What is necessary is to intensify it and cut the ground from under the feet of the reactionary Zionists.
The victory of the socialist revolution in a country like Egypt would have important echoes within Israel, especially if it stood on the programme of Leninist internationalism.
The Palestinian question is part of the overall problems faced by the masses throughout the Middle East. The only real perspective for solving the problem is the creation of a Socialist Federation of the peoples of the region, with complete autonomy for Arabs, Jews, Kurds and all other peoples who inhabit this land. The fight for a free and genuinely democratic Palestine will be won as part of the internationalist socialist revolution, or it will not be won at all.
London, January 8, 2009
RENEGADE EYE
By Alan Woods
Friday, 09 January 2009
Hamas is under intense pressure to accept international demands for a ceasefire. After the ferocious pounding they have received, they seem to be indicating that they may be prepared for a ceasefire, including halting rocket attacks on Israel. But Israel is not likely to stop the war just yet. It is demanding not only that that Hamas cease firing missiles, but that it accepts Israel, renounces violence, and adheres to the Palestinians' previous peace deals. In other words, it is demanding unconditional surrender.
Sooner or later, after the fighting stops, there will be new moves for a deal. The likelihood of some kind of deal between Syria, Iran and the USA before the end of the war must have been a cause for concern to the Hamas leadership, which depends heavily for financial and military support on Damascus and Teheran. The latter have made a reputation for themselves as the Palestinians' friends. But all history shows that the Palestinian people should place no faith in the friendship of foreign governments, because, as someone once said, countries have no friends, only interests. If the interests of Syria and Iran conflict with those of the Palestinians, it is not hard to see what they will do.
This fear on the part of the Hamas leadership may well have been the reason for their conduct in recent months. From the public declarations of some of the Hamas leaders it is obvious that they hope that Palestinian suffering would rouse the world's conscience and rally fellow Muslims to their side. In this they have succeeded. But if they imagined that this would be sufficient to force Israel to back down, they were sadly mistaken. Once they started the offensive, there was no going back for Israel, no matter how many demonstrations are held or how many EU missions are dispatched.
All these elements must have determined the tactics of Hamas, which must otherwise appear suicidal. They organized rocket strikes against Israel, and kept up a barrage of accusations against Fatah. Last winter they engineered the dramatic breach of Gaza's border with Egypt to advertise Gaza's misery and arouse the people of Egypt to their support. This was not appreciated by the Egyptian ruling clique, which is facing growing popular discontent as a result of the deepening economic crisis and falling living standards.
Effects on World Relations
The consequences of this war for US foreign policy will be far-reaching. This is not the eleventh of September! In the new world situation, the US can no longer achieve its objectives without the backing of regional partners as well as China, Europe and Russia. That is why there will be significant differences between the foreign policy of Obama and Bush. But in foreign policy one thing leads to another. In order to get Russia to support what the US regards as its vital interests in the Middle East will require that Washington be prepared to take Russian interests elsewhere into account.
This will probably mean that the US will agree to put on hold plans for missile defence in Europe, on condition that Russia takes steps to slow down the Iranian nuclear programme. Similarly, Nato expansion to include Georgia and Ukraine could be slowed. Since none of these things affect the vital interests of the great powers, such "sacrifices" could easily be made, just as one sacrifices a useless pawn in a game of chess.
In the same way "sacrifices" must be made in the Middle East. The fact that David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, recently visited Syria was a sign that the diplomatic machine was already in action. The reason for this is quite clear: Washington wants to get out of Iraq with a minimum of fuss. It must protect its rear and for this it requires the collaboration of Syria and Iran. But since it would be embarrassing for Mr. Bush to admit that he is talking to a "terrorist state", he sends his office boy from London. For their part the Syrians and Iranians are anxious to see the back of the Americans as soon as possible and would like, if possible, to obtain better relations with the transatlantic giant with the possibility of trade and investments this would open up.
Too weak to make war, Syria has proved strong enough to deny its neighbours peace, as we see from its meddling in Lebanon. Even the thickest minds in Washington are beginning to realise that the possibility of talking to Syria could cause less damage than leaving it as an enemy. Even Israel's outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert has understood this. According to Aluf Benn, a columnist in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, Olmert struggled in a recent meeting to persuade Bush that the Golan Heights may be a worthwhile price to pay for a major change in the region's strategic alignment.
Syria has recently grown closer to Turkey, which is keeping a close eye on developments in Iraq, especially the Kurdish area in the north, which sits on its border and serves as a base for the PKK. According to the Economist: "Syria, Mr Olmert explained, sat at the crux of two axes, one linking Iran to Hamas via Hizbullah, the other linking such 'pragmatic' powers as Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. A switch by Syria would dramatically weaken the extremists, the Israeli leader was said to have concluded."
Syria's economy is being damaged by collapsing crude reserves and world prices. It needs foreign investment to deal with unemployment that is unofficially estimated at more than 20 percent. Syria is a secular state and its leaders fear the growth in influence of the Islamist groups they sponsor abroad. A wave of support for Hamas inside Syria would not be good news for them, any more than for the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It does not require much imagination to see that in the future their attitude could change - if the terms were right.
The case of Iran is even clearer. The Iranian regime is facing revolutionary developments which we have analysed in previous articles. Its economy is being hit hard by falling oil prices. There has been a wave of strikes and student protests. The Ahmadinejad regime is clearly on its last legs and the ruling clique is looking for a replacement. A negotiated deal with Washington would be to its advantage.
How does this affect the Palestinians and Israel? History provides us with many examples where the rights of small nations have been used as bargaining chips by the Great Powers who cheerfully gamble them away without even the pretence at consultation. Once the professional diplomats sit down to talk, everything will be placed on the table and everything will be up for negotiation - including the fate of the Palestinians. As always, they are the pawns of great power diplomacy, and can be sacrificed very easily. The Palestinians should bear this firmly in mind, and not place any trust in the good will of even its most fervent "friends" in foreign governments.
On the Palestinian question up to now Syria and Iran have presented themselves as the most intransigent supporters of the hard line and have backed Hamas and Hezbollah with money and arms. The Americans and Israelis object to this. How can we solve this problem? Let us see... Israel possesses the Golan Heights, which Syria wants to be returned at all costs, since 1967. "Why not give us Golan?" the Syrians will say. To which the Americans will shake their head sadly: "For our part we would be delighted to oblige, but our friends the Israelis will object because it is a matter of their security." "Is that all?" the Syrians will answer. But we can also help them with the security issue. Don't forget we pay a big part of the bills for Hamas and Hezbollah."
At this, the Iranian delegate begins to express his displeasure: "The rights of our Palestinian brothers are non-negotiable," he protests, banging the table. But after a few hours (or weeks, or months), the Iranians have recovered their good spirits when the Americans produce a whole packet of economic proposals for trade and investment in Iran." "This comes just in time," says the Iranian, as the falling price of oil is causing us a lot of grief. Maybe we ought to be a bit more flexible on the Palestine issue after all." "Yes, says the American, with a broad smile, and don't forget when we withdraw you guys will control half of Iraq. All in all it is not a bad bargain."
This conversation is, of course, fictitious. But let nobody imagine that such things do not occur in the secret world of diplomacy where principles are nothing and cynical calculation everything. Naturally, not a word of these secret deals will be made public until decades later when some high diplomat writes his memoirs. In the next few months the opposite impression will be created: that the negotiations are very difficult, that Teheran and Syria are being very stubborn (it is always necessary to strike a hard bargain, especially in the Middle East where the tradition of haggling is strong). The talks will probably break down more than once, then they will be resumed. The time it takes to get agreement depends on many factors. But sooner or later a deal will be done, because it is in the interests of all parties that it should be so.
But nothing is simple in the politics of the Middle East. There can be complications for all this. Elections in Israel in February could produce a government opposed to any concessions. Binyamin Netanyahu not long ago was favourite to win the general election, although that will be affected by what happens in Gaza. His right wing Likud party generally opposes the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the West Bank. And the extreme right wing of the party strengthened its position in the primaries on December 9th. Moshe Feiglin, who heads that wing runs a website that denies the right of Palestinians to nationhood and urges Israel to annex the West Bank.
This kind of thing could push Syria and Iran back to the policy of "rejectionism". But in the long run they will have to negotiate. In any case, the new Israeli government, whoever leads it, will have to deal, not with George W Bush but with Barak Obama, whose agenda for the Middle East is rather different to that of his predecessor. Since America subsidises Israel, Obama will have a fair amount of leverage with which to exert pressure.
The only thing that can completely upset this scenario is the revolutionary movement of the masses in the Arab world and in Iran. The invasion of Gaza has set in motion forces that it will not be easy to halt. This is a factor that the politicians and diplomats cannot control with their usual methods of bribery, trickery and intrigue. In the last analysis it is the only hope for the people of Palestine and the whole world.
War and Revolution
Although Hamas has taken a battering, the longer the Israeli army stays in Gaza the more it may find ways of striking back. Until yesterday Hezbollah had only offered rhetorical support. However, the latest reports of rockets being fired into northern Israel may indicate that the conflict could spiral out of control.
As the BBC has reported: "Rockets have been fired into northern Israel from Lebanon, raising fears the Israeli offensive in Gaza may spread. Israel's army responded with artillery to a barrage of at least three rockets. No group has claimed responsibility."
The same report goes on to explain that, "The rocket attacks from Lebanon have raised concerns about a wider war, (...) It is is not clear if the rockets were fired by Hezbollah or by one of the armed Palestinian groups that operate in Lebanon. If Hezbollah mounted the attack there is a grave risk of a very strong Israeli reaction, our correspondent says. The Palestinians in Lebanon do not have the capacity to fight a war with Israel, but Hezbollah does."
Israel is clearly anxious that Hezbollah might be tempted to join in. If it does, in the present context, the Israel military will be pushed into hitting back very hard. This is very worrying to the imperialist powers, particularly the European who fear such a scenario. Whether Hezbollah gets sucked into the conflict we will see in the coming days. Meanwhile, inside Israel, too, this war will have serious consequences, as it drags on over time.
The aim of the war is to marginalize Hamas, to weaken and if possible destroy it. This aim is secretly welcomed by the "moderate" Arab regimes. And Abbas would not lose any sleep over it either, except for the fact that the attack on Gaza has caused outrage in the West Bank. The so-called moderate Arab regimes have been strangely restrained so far in their condemnations. In reality the rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan would not be too displeased if Hamas were to be wiped off the face of the earth, although these rulers would never dare to admit such a thing in public.
The petty bourgeois pacifists can only see the horrors of war but they are incapable of seeing the other side of the picture. History has shown many times that wars can lead to revolution. However the invasion of Gaza ends, one thing is sure. Sooner or later, there will be revolutionary developments in the Arab world that will lead to the overthrow of one rotten regime after another. All these reactionary regimes are all hanging by a thread. They live in constant fear that the poverty and discontent of the masses might erupt, leading to a revolutionary overthrow.
The world economic crisis that has led to a collapse of oil prices has underlined this threat. The present situation will lead to a further process of radicalisation throughout the Middle East. The workers and students who come out onto the streets to protest against the invasion of Gaza are not only protesting against the cruel treatment of the Palestinians. They are protesting against the inactivity of their own rulers, against their complicity with Washington and therefore with Israel, against their luxurious lifestyles that contrast so brutally with the misery of the masses.
In an editorial of 17/12/2008, the Financial Times expressed its concern about the stability of the Arab regimes: "Ripples through these regions easily build into waves. The US-allied leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, initially happy to see Israel hit Hizbollah or Hamas, quickly change their tune as soon as their peoples rally to the militants. Their legitimacy and survival is at stake." (my emphasis, AW)
In Egypt, where there was serious unrest even before the war, police have arrested dozens of campaigners for trying to send convoys of food and medicine to Gaza, and Internet organisers were calling for a general strike in support of the strip. There have been mass demonstrations in the Lebanon and the US embassy in Beirut has been attacked. There was a mass demonstration in Istanbul, and other big demonstrations have taken place in Jordan and the West Bank and all over the Middle East, in Indonesia, in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir.
In the northern Israeli town of Sakhnin tens of thousands of Israeli-Palestinians have protested against Israel's offensive. At present the majority of Jewish Israelis have remained passive or support the offensive, deceived by the propaganda about a defensive war. But as the war continues and casualties grow, that can change. There are already signs of differences in the Israeli ruling class. A former head of Mossad has said that Hamas must be included in future negotiations. This already indicates growing doubts even among the ruling layer. If the rockets keep on coming, even in reduced numbers, questions will be raised in Israel and elsewhere about what has really been achieved, especially as the death toll both among the Israeli troops and Palestinian civilians becomes even more severe.
The rulers of the Middle East are right to fear the revolutionary potential of the masses because it was already implicit in the situation before these events. Now it is coming close to boiling point. Arab governments, though furious with Hamas, will come under pressure to reflect the anger on the streets to take some action, and may face overthrow if they do not do so. That is why people like Gordon Brown want peace as soon s possible, because war means instability and instability can have effects that will not be to the liking of either London or Washington.
A Betrayal is Being Prepared
It is impossible to understand the events in Gaza outside this context. The aim of the Israelis is to pulverise Hamas in order to weaken them as against Fatah, whose services they will need in the next period. On the other hand, Hamas is attempting desperately to gain the sympathy of the Arab masses in order that they will not be completely marginalized. And both sides are issuing a message to those who are preparing to do a deal behind their backs.
Under Abbas the leaders are attempting to arrive at an accommodation with Israel. There is still talk of setting up an independent Palestinian state on land currently occupied by Israel. But how can this be established? The moment we pass from generalizations and pious declarations to the hard facts, the problems come to the fore. I wrote on this question in December 2007, when Bush organized the farce of the Annapolis conference:
"The slogan of the Israeli government is: what we have we hold. The Zionists have no intention of giving any important concessions. Hamas boasted that they had expelled the Israeli army from Gaza. That is a joke. The Israelis withdrew from Gaza as a tactical move to silence international criticism and create the impression that they were giving up something important, when in reality they have no interest in Gaza. This was intended to strengthen their stranglehold on the West Bank, which is the decisive question.
"The Israelis have relentlessly continued building the monstrous wall that slices through Palestinian territory on the West Bank, robbing large chunks of land under the pretext of 'defence'. The settlers have become increasingly bold and insolent. After the incidents in Gaza no Israeli government will want to confront the settlers in the West Bank.
"Then there is the little matter of Jerusalem, which both Jews and Arabs claim as their natural God-given capital. As for the right of return of Palestinians expelled from their homes since 1948, there is no question of Israel accepting them back, since that would completely upset the demographic balance of the ‘Jewish state'."
How are these problems to be resolved? To this question diplomacy has never produced a satisfactory answer. The defiance of the Israelis has just been expressed in the eloquent language of bombs, rockets and artillery fire. And what will the Palestinians say? They will have nothing to say because they will not be invited to these negotiations. The people who have fought and given their blood to fight for their rights, will see that their destiny is being determined by foreign governments who are only concerned with their own narrow national interests.
When all the fundamental issues are nicely decided, there will be a Middle East Conference, with the participation of all the well-known "friends of Palestine" - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others. Abbas will then be invited, not to decide anything, but like a man invited to the last day of a trial to listen to the sentence. As for Hamas, whether they are invited or not depends on their good behaviour. In any case, it will make not the slightest difference to the outcome.
A Blind Ally
It is the elementary duty of every proletarian internationalist to defend the Palestinians against the violence of Israeli imperialism. But it is also our duty to say what is: the tactics of suicide bombing and firing rockets at Israeli towns are counterproductive and useless. They do not represent armed struggle because they do not even dent the armour of the Israeli state, but strengthen it by pushing the Israeli masses behind it.
A big part of the appeal of Hamas comes from its image of resistance to occupation. Hamas won the election in 2006 because the masses were tired of the corruption of the PLO leaders and their connivance with Israel. But if we pose the question purely in nationalist terms (Jews against Arabs), then no solution of the Palestinian question is possible. It is not possible to solve the problem of the Palestinian people by tactics like suicide bombings and firing rockets at Israeli towns and villages. The methods advocated by Hamas were tried by the PLO for 40 years and have led only to one bloody defeat after another. No amount of sympathy for the sufferings of the Palestinians can alter that fact.
What will be the end result of the war? In military terms Hamas will have lost massively. Many of its cadres will have been killed or taken prisoner. Its military infrastructure will be shattered. In terms of physical assets, Gaza will be left devastated. The economic damage will take many years to rebuild. In this sense the Israelis will have got what they wanted. More serious for Israel will be the long-term political effects. Although it will have suffered a severe blow, Hamas will not be destroyed.
And what will Israel have gained? The Israelis' "victory" in Gaza will turn to ashes in their mouths. Let us remember that the whole point was to achieve security. In the end they will have earned an even greater hatred in the Arab world than before. The threat of terrorist actions will not be any less than before but far greater. For every Hamas militant they kill there will be ten, twenty or a hundred youths who are now children filled with bitterness and hate, who will be ready to volunteer for suicide missions against Israel and its allies in the Arab and western world. If this is the idea of creating security for Israel in the future, it is a very strange one!
What will Hamas have achieved after all the dust settles on the ruins of Gaza? They may win some meagre concessions - perhaps a loosening of Israel's siege, an opening of Egypt's border, a lot of aid from fellow Muslims, and maybe a modicum of international recognition. Their prestige among the Arabs may have been enhanced. But the question remains: what has been solved by all this? We merely return once more to the same never-ending cycle of violence, wars and killings that solve nothing. The rage in Gaza over Israel's violence may momentarily boost Hamas' popularity, but after the excitement dies down the people of Gaza may start to ask what brought them to this mess.
The actions of the Israeli army are stirring up the whole Middle East. They will reap a new harvest of hate, bitterness and a thirst for revenge. But the tactics of groups like Hamas can never succeed. In fact, they are entirely counterproductive. The leaders of Hamas say: "As the weaker party we have the right to use any methods available to us to defeat our oppressors." To this we reply: "Yes, you have that right and we understand that the methods of terrorism and guerrilla warfare are always resorted to by a weaker side against a stronger oppressor.
To professional soldiers such guerrilla methods are always to be condemned. In olden times the shepherd David used his sling to kill the giant Goliath and doubtless the Philistine generals considered that an unfair and barbarous method that did not comply with the rules of warfare. But by the use of this simple but effective method, David won and Goliath lost his head. All that is true but we will say also this: a good general will only make use of such methods that are consistent with his strategic aims and likely to be successful. Only a bad general makes use of methods that do not lead to victory but will guarantee defeat. And the methods used by Hamas can only lead to defeat and help the enemy. That is why we oppose these methods.
If the methods of Hamas have failed to benefit the Palestinians, so have the methods of the Israeli imperialists failed the people of Israel. Every attempt by Israel to guarantee security by force has turned out to be counterproductive. The occupation of Palestinian territory after the 1967 six-day war has intensified the conflict with the Palestinians. Its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 led to the creation of its Nemesis, Hezbollah. Its 2006 war on Hezbollah undermined the pro-western government in Beirut. The current pounding of Gaza has discredited Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president. Security is a mirage that constantly eludes Israel's grasp, and the future of the state of Israel always has a question mark over it.
Equally, every attempt to defeat Israel by military means has ended by reinforcing reactionary Zionism. From the failure of the so-called armed struggle, Abbas and the leaders of Fatah have drawn the conclusion that the only alternative is to negotiate with Israel and seek the good offices of the imperialists. But we have already seen what that means over the last decade or so. It means negotiating surrender and selling out the cause of Palestinian national self-determination. Neither Hamas nor Abbas therefore offer any way out.
What will be the outcome of negotiations on a "Palestinian state" - the "two-state solution"? This solution depends on one thing only: the agreement of Israel (which, after all, will be one of the two states, and not the weakest of them). What will Israel agree to? They might accept some adjustments of the present frontier with the West Bank. They might allow some opening of the border with Gaza (which they can close at any time). They may impose some restrictions on building new Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, and they may even dismantle a few of the existing ones. They cannot hand over Jerusalem, which they regard as their capital, though there may be some sort of sharing agreement. Nor will they allow the right of return to Israel proper, although they might permit some to enter the Palestinian territory.
This is the best the Palestinians can hope for on the present basis: a truncated pseudo-state, which will be economically dependent on Israel, whose presence will stand over it like a dark and menacing shadow. Control of this "state" will be entrusted only to those Palestinian leaders like Abbas, who is prepared to act as a puppet of Israel, and who will mercilessly repress any dissident Palestinian group.
In other words, it will be a "solution" similar to that imposed on the Irish by British imperialism in 1922. That led to a bloody civil war in Ireland in which many more Irish were killed than were ever killed by the British. The same thing can happen with the Palestinians in the future, as we saw with the civil war in Gaza in 2007. Some Palestinians might accept, while others would undoubtedly reject, leading to new conflicts and bloodshed.
Take the revolutionary road!
Napoleon said that defeated armies learn well. All the defeats and sacrifices and martyrdoms will serve for nothing unless we are willing to learn from them and turn them to our advantage. If we merely look at the present bloody mess in sentimental and moralistic terms, as is too often the case, we will gain nothing from it. Our task, in the words of the philosopher Spinoza, is: neither weep nor laugh but understand.
Ultimately, both Jews and Arabs must have the right to live in peace and control their own destinies in a homeland of their own. It is easy to state this aim, but not so easy to say how it can be achieved. The so-called Peace Process is dead. There is no doubt it will be revived, but not until the Israeli army has done its bloody work in Gaza thoroughly.
We can predict that after the war there will be one deal after another, and they will break down one after another. None of this will do anything to solve the problems of the Palestinians. Nor will it guarantee security for the people of Israel. However, there is a solution to the Palestinian problem that is neither futile acts of terrorism or diplomatic sell-outs.
The events in Gaza were the spark that fell on a parched prairie. It provoked a wave of mass protests that has shaken all the existing regimes in the Middle East. The revolutionary potential implicit in these movements was instantly recognised by the strategists of Capital. Thus, the Economist wrote: "But unless the current furious street protests spark a region-wide revolution that scares the wits out of Israel and its friends, Hamas will still face the same painful old choice of how to come to terms with an immensely more powerful and equally determined enemy."
These words express the essence of the problem excellently. What do they mean? The intelligent bourgeois understand that the Palestinian question can act as a catalyst for all the accumulated frustration, rage and discontent of the masses in the Middle East. That is why they are continually pleading for peace, ceasefires, agreements and moderation. They can see what the Marxists can see: that a region-wide revolution is implicit in the whole situation. That is the starting point for the success of the Palestinian Revolution, and no other.
The question is posed very clearly by the above lines. The Palestinians are faced by an immensely more powerful and equally determined enemy. The events in Gaza have clearly shown the impossibility of defeating this monster by purely military means. Is there a power that is even stronger and more determined than the power of the state of Israel? Yes, there is such a power. It is the power of the masses, once they are organized and mobilized to fight. Two intifadas have shown that the Palestinian masses are prepared to fight heroically. But in war courage is never enough to win. A clear strategy and tactics, and above all good generals are necessary. In revolutionary terms this means that in order to win, the masses require a revolutionary programme, correct methods and tactics and good leadership. This is what is needed and this is what is lacking.
The present leaders of the Palestinians offer no alternative. Some of the leaders of Fatah in reality would not be sorry to see Hamas liquidated. They have in fact blamed Hamas for the Israeli invasion! This has caused a wave of disgust among ordinary supporters of Fatah and the mass of Palestinians on the West Bank, who are asking why their top leader has adopted such a position while their compatriots are being slaughtered. Arafat, with all his faults, would not have behaved like this. Many Palestinians are drawing the conclusion: "Abbas is a puppet of Israel."
Hamas is hoping to inspire Palestinians in the West Bank to overthrow Fatah. They have not yet succeeded in this. However discredited Abbas may be, Palestinians do not see Hamas as an alternative, though some young people in desperation may turn to it. That would be a tragedy. What is required is not a new generation of suicide bombers seeking revenge and martyrdom, but the construction of a viable mass revolutionary alternative.
The first condition for the future success of the Palestinian revolution lies in the revolutionary overthrow of the reactionary bourgeois regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and then for a settling of accounts with the reactionary Zionist state itself. The whole Arab world is now in a state of ferment. The one thing that is lacking in the situation is a genuine revolutionary leadership, standing on the basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism. That is what is required to find a way out of this bloody quagmire.
In the past there were powerful Communist Parties in the Arab world, which claimed to stand for Marxism-Leninism, although the Stalinist two-stage policies of the leadership led to one defeat after another. Since the fall of the USSR, the old Communist Parties have ceased to exist. But there are many revolutionary cadres who are dissatisfied with the existing political leaderships and are looking for an alternative. It is to these layers, especially the youth, that we address ourselves. That is the only hope for the future.
Those who consider that the people of Israel are one solid reactionary mass understand nothing. If this were the case, then the future of the Palestinians would be hopeless indeed. But it is not true. On more than one occasion the masses in Israel have demonstrated against the brutality of their own imperialists and in solidarity with the Palestinians. Even in this conflict we had the first signs of protest in the recent anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv. On more then one occasion the Israeli workers have organized strikes and general strikes. The class struggle exists in Israel as in any other country. What is necessary is to intensify it and cut the ground from under the feet of the reactionary Zionists.
The victory of the socialist revolution in a country like Egypt would have important echoes within Israel, especially if it stood on the programme of Leninist internationalism.
The Palestinian question is part of the overall problems faced by the masses throughout the Middle East. The only real perspective for solving the problem is the creation of a Socialist Federation of the peoples of the region, with complete autonomy for Arabs, Jews, Kurds and all other peoples who inhabit this land. The fight for a free and genuinely democratic Palestine will be won as part of the internationalist socialist revolution, or it will not be won at all.
London, January 8, 2009
RENEGADE EYE
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Stop Israel's Massacre in Gaza!
By Walter Leon
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Two years after the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces indiscriminately slaughtered over a thousand Lebanese civilians in the quaintly-titled Operation Just Reward, Israel has turned its attention to Gaza, in the form of Operation Cast Lead. Stripped of its innocuous-sounding name, this operation becomes a lot less palatable: according to Palestinian medical sources, nearly 300 Palestinians have been killed, including numerous women and children. Israel’s targets have included police stations (which are unsurprisingly situated in densely-populated areas), the headquarters of a Hamas-owned satellite television channel, and the Islamic University, Gaza’s only higher education institution.
According to witnesses, hospitals are overwhelmed with the injured and the bodies of the dead are piling up in the morgues. BBC correspondent and Gaza resident Hamada Abu Qammar describes a typical grisly scene:
“I followed one woman who was screaming ‘my son, my son’ as she searched the building.
Eventually they located him, a young man was in his twenties. The staff would not let her see the body, but I saw it. It didn't have a head and there was no stomach. She fainted on top of the remains of her son, which were covered with a white sheet.”
The attacks have come as a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas elapsed. However, even when this ceasefire was in place, this did not mean the people of Gaza were free of problems. Israel has instigated a crippling blockade of Gaza that has starved its people of food, fuel and even medical supplies. As John Ging, head of operations of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said in an interview with The Electronic Intifada in November, “there was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food.”
Nor should Israel alone be held responsible. Whilst Israel was instigating these brutal attacks, Egypt was playing host to Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. According to the BBC, “[a]s jets pounded the southern Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians stormed over a fence on the Gaza-Egypt border, but Egyptian security forces fired shots to prevent them entering.”. In fact, Egypt has consistently participated in the blockade of Gaza, time and again doing Israel’s dirty work, caging Palestinians like animals and denying them essential supplies. Arab states called for an ‘emergency’ session of the Arab League, but Egypt opposed this and Saudi Arabia expressed ‘reservations’.
Why has Egypt done this? Well, firstly, as the world’s second largest recipient of US military aid (no prizes for guessing the first largest), Egypt is a ‘key regional ally’ (i.e. pawn) of the United States, and as such, will carry out US policy. Writing in Haaretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper, Zvi Barel argues that “Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which view Hamas as an Iranian ally whose goal is to increase Tehran's regional influence at their expense, prefer to wait a bit in the hopes that Israel's military operation will strip Hamas of its ability to dictate terms.” In other words, the Egyptian and Saudi regimes (and their US puppet-masters) are hoping Israel succeeds in destroying the Hamas government and replacing it with something more pliant. They are prepared to see Gaza’s streets drenched with Palestinian blood to make this happen.
Of course, the pusillanimous collaboration by the Arab states has not been matched by its people. In Egypt and Lebanon, rallies of tens of thousands have taken place in support of the Palestinians. Large rallies have also taken place in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Jordan. Revulsion at the complicity of the Arab states was evident: left-wing Lebanese television station Aljadeed (New TV) showed demonstrators outside the Egyptian embassy, some waving red flags and one sporting a Ché Guevara t-shirt.
Even in Israel itself, where the population is subjected to a relentless propaganda machine in support of the state, a rally of over a thousand people assembled spontaneously in Tel-Aviv, attended by organisations from “Gush Shalom and the Women’s Coalition for Peace to the Anarchists Against the Wall and Hadash [with whom the Israeli Communist Party are involved]”.
A demonstration also took place in London outside the Israeli embassy. According to police reports, 700 people attended the stormy demonstration, blockading the road outside the embassy and bringing traffic to a standstill. Clashes between protesters and the police broke out when a group of protesters tried to storm the barrier that was penning them in.
So what is Hamas, the supposed leader of Palestinian resistance to Israel, doing to defend the Palestinians? Unfortunately, their ‘resistance’ strategy is based on futile terrorist attacks on Israeli civilian targets. Since taking control of Gaza, the Islamic movement has fired hundreds of homemade rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot. Whilst these attacks have rarely been deadly (less than 20 Israelis have been killed in such attacks since Israel removed its settlers from Gaza), they have made life miserable for the inhabitants of this poor, working-class town.
These attacks do nothing to militarily damage the regional superpower; they do however serve to harden Israeli public opinion, particularly amongst the poor workers of Sderot, who should be the Palestinians’ natural allies. Such attacks help to create a fortress mentality within Israel, encouraging its workers and poor (themselves heavily exploited by Israeli capitalism) to support ‘their’ state in its attacks against ‘the enemy’. The Israeli military can then take advantage of favourable Israeli public opinion to launch an attack. Its aim is to destroy or severely weaken Hamas, and see it replaced by something more pliant.
For its part, Hamas is primarily interested in gaining power over its own stretch of territory. The terrorist attacks on Israel are aimed at strengthening its position at the negotiating table; Hamas has already shown its willingness to accede to Israel’s demands (even going so far as to aid the Egyptian security forces in preventing Palestinians from entering Egypt via Gaza), but its support base forces it to drive a harder bargain than Fatah. This is a problem for Israel, whose dominant economic and political position will be threatened if it concedes too much.
If Hamas were serious about organising a resistance against Israel’s occupation, it would base its strategy not on futile acts of terrorism by small bands of ‘heroes’, but on arming the Palestinian masses. It would organise regional defence committees in every city, town and village, democratically controlled by the workers, peasants and refugees, and composed of every able-bodied man and woman. Such a force would have a genuine mass base, and, conducting a campaign of guerrilla street-fighting, would be a formidable foe for the Israeli occupation forces. But such a force would threaten the power of Hamas (and of the powerful, semi-feudal clans that dominate Palestinian politics). One of Hamas’ first actions upon taking control of Gaza was to raid the offices of the Palestinian Trade Union Federation, in an attempt to stifle any independent organisation of Palestinian workers.
For its part, the Israeli labour movement has a moral duty to oppose Israel’s barbarous actions. The Histadrut (Israeli Trade Union Federation) should refuse to cooperate with the ‘war effort’, calling strikes amongst workers involved in the handling of military supplies, and, if necessary, an anti-war general strike. The workers and poor of Israel are the natural allies of the Palestinian masses of Gaza and elsewhere. This war will not benefit them – it will mean more curtailing of civil liberties by the state (Israeli police already have unprecedented powers to search people’s homes without even informing them), more cuts in public spending, and more threats of terrorism as Hamas or Hezbollah retaliate.
Of course, we are under no illusions that the Israeli labour movement is about to take such actions – even more than in Britain, Israeli trade union leaders are very much integrated into the state machine. But some rank-and-file members, Israeli workers, will start to ask awkward questions at union meetings, demanding that their leaders take action.
An immediate cessation of hostilities by the Israeli military against the population of Gaza
An immediate lifting of the crippling economic blockade, to allow free movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza
An end to the futile terrorist attacks on the civilian population of Sderot; the leadership of the resistance must arm the Palestinian masses and organise regional defence committees in every city, town and village
Support for the suffering masses of Gaza by the Israeli labour movement – no cooperation with the Israeli war machine
For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East
RENEGADE EYE
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Two years after the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces indiscriminately slaughtered over a thousand Lebanese civilians in the quaintly-titled Operation Just Reward, Israel has turned its attention to Gaza, in the form of Operation Cast Lead. Stripped of its innocuous-sounding name, this operation becomes a lot less palatable: according to Palestinian medical sources, nearly 300 Palestinians have been killed, including numerous women and children. Israel’s targets have included police stations (which are unsurprisingly situated in densely-populated areas), the headquarters of a Hamas-owned satellite television channel, and the Islamic University, Gaza’s only higher education institution.
According to witnesses, hospitals are overwhelmed with the injured and the bodies of the dead are piling up in the morgues. BBC correspondent and Gaza resident Hamada Abu Qammar describes a typical grisly scene:
“I followed one woman who was screaming ‘my son, my son’ as she searched the building.
Eventually they located him, a young man was in his twenties. The staff would not let her see the body, but I saw it. It didn't have a head and there was no stomach. She fainted on top of the remains of her son, which were covered with a white sheet.”
Israel’s ‘Ceasefire’ and the Complicity of the Arab World
The attacks have come as a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas elapsed. However, even when this ceasefire was in place, this did not mean the people of Gaza were free of problems. Israel has instigated a crippling blockade of Gaza that has starved its people of food, fuel and even medical supplies. As John Ging, head of operations of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said in an interview with The Electronic Intifada in November, “there was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food.”
Nor should Israel alone be held responsible. Whilst Israel was instigating these brutal attacks, Egypt was playing host to Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. According to the BBC, “[a]s jets pounded the southern Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians stormed over a fence on the Gaza-Egypt border, but Egyptian security forces fired shots to prevent them entering.”. In fact, Egypt has consistently participated in the blockade of Gaza, time and again doing Israel’s dirty work, caging Palestinians like animals and denying them essential supplies. Arab states called for an ‘emergency’ session of the Arab League, but Egypt opposed this and Saudi Arabia expressed ‘reservations’.
Why has Egypt done this? Well, firstly, as the world’s second largest recipient of US military aid (no prizes for guessing the first largest), Egypt is a ‘key regional ally’ (i.e. pawn) of the United States, and as such, will carry out US policy. Writing in Haaretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper, Zvi Barel argues that “Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which view Hamas as an Iranian ally whose goal is to increase Tehran's regional influence at their expense, prefer to wait a bit in the hopes that Israel's military operation will strip Hamas of its ability to dictate terms.” In other words, the Egyptian and Saudi regimes (and their US puppet-masters) are hoping Israel succeeds in destroying the Hamas government and replacing it with something more pliant. They are prepared to see Gaza’s streets drenched with Palestinian blood to make this happen.
The Masses Rally
Of course, the pusillanimous collaboration by the Arab states has not been matched by its people. In Egypt and Lebanon, rallies of tens of thousands have taken place in support of the Palestinians. Large rallies have also taken place in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Jordan. Revulsion at the complicity of the Arab states was evident: left-wing Lebanese television station Aljadeed (New TV) showed demonstrators outside the Egyptian embassy, some waving red flags and one sporting a Ché Guevara t-shirt.
Even in Israel itself, where the population is subjected to a relentless propaganda machine in support of the state, a rally of over a thousand people assembled spontaneously in Tel-Aviv, attended by organisations from “Gush Shalom and the Women’s Coalition for Peace to the Anarchists Against the Wall and Hadash [with whom the Israeli Communist Party are involved]”.
A demonstration also took place in London outside the Israeli embassy. According to police reports, 700 people attended the stormy demonstration, blockading the road outside the embassy and bringing traffic to a standstill. Clashes between protesters and the police broke out when a group of protesters tried to storm the barrier that was penning them in.
The Futility of Terrorism and the Bankruptcy of the Fundamentalists
So what is Hamas, the supposed leader of Palestinian resistance to Israel, doing to defend the Palestinians? Unfortunately, their ‘resistance’ strategy is based on futile terrorist attacks on Israeli civilian targets. Since taking control of Gaza, the Islamic movement has fired hundreds of homemade rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot. Whilst these attacks have rarely been deadly (less than 20 Israelis have been killed in such attacks since Israel removed its settlers from Gaza), they have made life miserable for the inhabitants of this poor, working-class town.
These attacks do nothing to militarily damage the regional superpower; they do however serve to harden Israeli public opinion, particularly amongst the poor workers of Sderot, who should be the Palestinians’ natural allies. Such attacks help to create a fortress mentality within Israel, encouraging its workers and poor (themselves heavily exploited by Israeli capitalism) to support ‘their’ state in its attacks against ‘the enemy’. The Israeli military can then take advantage of favourable Israeli public opinion to launch an attack. Its aim is to destroy or severely weaken Hamas, and see it replaced by something more pliant.
For its part, Hamas is primarily interested in gaining power over its own stretch of territory. The terrorist attacks on Israel are aimed at strengthening its position at the negotiating table; Hamas has already shown its willingness to accede to Israel’s demands (even going so far as to aid the Egyptian security forces in preventing Palestinians from entering Egypt via Gaza), but its support base forces it to drive a harder bargain than Fatah. This is a problem for Israel, whose dominant economic and political position will be threatened if it concedes too much.
Is There an Alternative?
If Hamas were serious about organising a resistance against Israel’s occupation, it would base its strategy not on futile acts of terrorism by small bands of ‘heroes’, but on arming the Palestinian masses. It would organise regional defence committees in every city, town and village, democratically controlled by the workers, peasants and refugees, and composed of every able-bodied man and woman. Such a force would have a genuine mass base, and, conducting a campaign of guerrilla street-fighting, would be a formidable foe for the Israeli occupation forces. But such a force would threaten the power of Hamas (and of the powerful, semi-feudal clans that dominate Palestinian politics). One of Hamas’ first actions upon taking control of Gaza was to raid the offices of the Palestinian Trade Union Federation, in an attempt to stifle any independent organisation of Palestinian workers.
For its part, the Israeli labour movement has a moral duty to oppose Israel’s barbarous actions. The Histadrut (Israeli Trade Union Federation) should refuse to cooperate with the ‘war effort’, calling strikes amongst workers involved in the handling of military supplies, and, if necessary, an anti-war general strike. The workers and poor of Israel are the natural allies of the Palestinian masses of Gaza and elsewhere. This war will not benefit them – it will mean more curtailing of civil liberties by the state (Israeli police already have unprecedented powers to search people’s homes without even informing them), more cuts in public spending, and more threats of terrorism as Hamas or Hezbollah retaliate.
Of course, we are under no illusions that the Israeli labour movement is about to take such actions – even more than in Britain, Israeli trade union leaders are very much integrated into the state machine. But some rank-and-file members, Israeli workers, will start to ask awkward questions at union meetings, demanding that their leaders take action.
We demand
:An immediate cessation of hostilities by the Israeli military against the population of Gaza
An immediate lifting of the crippling economic blockade, to allow free movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza
An end to the futile terrorist attacks on the civilian population of Sderot; the leadership of the resistance must arm the Palestinian masses and organise regional defence committees in every city, town and village
Support for the suffering masses of Gaza by the Israeli labour movement – no cooperation with the Israeli war machine
For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East
RENEGADE EYE
Monday, August 04, 2008
Hamas And Fatah Are A Bigger Threat To The Palestinians Than Israel
(Taken from The Daily Star
It is a damning indication of just how bad things have become in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip when Fatah militants there must look to Israel for protection from their Palestinian rivals. The Jewish state announced on Monday that it would help a group of 150 Fatah fighters who had fled weekend clashes in Gaza relocate to the West Bank, after determining that they would face "imminent danger" if they were to return home. The scenes of Israel coming to the rescue of Palestinians after a bout of Arab fratricide were reminiscent of the events of Black September, during which scores of Palestinians sought asylum in Israel to escape King Hussein's crackdown on the Palestine Liberation Organization. The only difference this time around is that instead of seeking refuge from a heavy-handed Arab crackdown, Palestinians are fleeing from the murderous hands of their own Palestinian brothers.
Achievement of the Palestinian cause requires that all factions maintain a semblance of orderliness and keep their eyes on the price of independent statehood. In this both Fatah and Hamas have been miserable failures. Both have put partisan interests ahead of national ones and therefore have failed to maintain anything like a united Palestinian front. Even the mediation attempts of Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have not been enough to curb the political infighting and internecine bloodshed that have served to further threaten the Palestinians' very right to existence.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza has been deteriorating since the international community callously decided to punish an entire people for having exercised their democratic rights in the legislative elections of January 2006. But the Hamas movement is now exacerbating the situation by undermining the rule of law in the territory. After accusing its Fatah rivals of carrying out a deadly bombing late last week that killed five Hamas leaders and a little girl, the Islamist party launched what can be only be described as a witch-hunt, rounding up some 200 Fatah activists. Fatah provided an equally bad example of governance in the West Bank when it retaliated against the move by rounding up scores of people it branded "Hamas activists," including many judges, students and activists who have no known affiliation with the Islamist party. On both sides of divided Palestine, civilians must now add Fatah and Hamas to the long list of threats to their security and wellbeing.
The events of the last week are just the most recent example of how the situation in the Occupied Territories has gone from bad to worse under the watchful eyes of elected Palestinian "representatives." Hundreds of people were killed last year when the two groups allowed their rivalry to degenerate into street violence. Hundreds more were prevented from going about their normal activities such as attending school, going to work or expressing political views.
Over the past few days the two Palestinian factions seem to be close to repeated the same disastrous mistakes. We have seen Palestinians denigrating the legitimacy of other Palestinians, Palestinians making war on other Palestinians, and Palestinians arresting other Palestinians, while the Jewish state has come to the rescue of those Palestinians who fear for their lives. Israel has never looked so good.
The Daily Star
Marxist From Lebanon
It is a damning indication of just how bad things have become in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip when Fatah militants there must look to Israel for protection from their Palestinian rivals. The Jewish state announced on Monday that it would help a group of 150 Fatah fighters who had fled weekend clashes in Gaza relocate to the West Bank, after determining that they would face "imminent danger" if they were to return home. The scenes of Israel coming to the rescue of Palestinians after a bout of Arab fratricide were reminiscent of the events of Black September, during which scores of Palestinians sought asylum in Israel to escape King Hussein's crackdown on the Palestine Liberation Organization. The only difference this time around is that instead of seeking refuge from a heavy-handed Arab crackdown, Palestinians are fleeing from the murderous hands of their own Palestinian brothers.
Achievement of the Palestinian cause requires that all factions maintain a semblance of orderliness and keep their eyes on the price of independent statehood. In this both Fatah and Hamas have been miserable failures. Both have put partisan interests ahead of national ones and therefore have failed to maintain anything like a united Palestinian front. Even the mediation attempts of Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have not been enough to curb the political infighting and internecine bloodshed that have served to further threaten the Palestinians' very right to existence.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza has been deteriorating since the international community callously decided to punish an entire people for having exercised their democratic rights in the legislative elections of January 2006. But the Hamas movement is now exacerbating the situation by undermining the rule of law in the territory. After accusing its Fatah rivals of carrying out a deadly bombing late last week that killed five Hamas leaders and a little girl, the Islamist party launched what can be only be described as a witch-hunt, rounding up some 200 Fatah activists. Fatah provided an equally bad example of governance in the West Bank when it retaliated against the move by rounding up scores of people it branded "Hamas activists," including many judges, students and activists who have no known affiliation with the Islamist party. On both sides of divided Palestine, civilians must now add Fatah and Hamas to the long list of threats to their security and wellbeing.
The events of the last week are just the most recent example of how the situation in the Occupied Territories has gone from bad to worse under the watchful eyes of elected Palestinian "representatives." Hundreds of people were killed last year when the two groups allowed their rivalry to degenerate into street violence. Hundreds more were prevented from going about their normal activities such as attending school, going to work or expressing political views.
Over the past few days the two Palestinian factions seem to be close to repeated the same disastrous mistakes. We have seen Palestinians denigrating the legitimacy of other Palestinians, Palestinians making war on other Palestinians, and Palestinians arresting other Palestinians, while the Jewish state has come to the rescue of those Palestinians who fear for their lives. Israel has never looked so good.
The Daily Star
Marxist From Lebanon
Monday, January 28, 2008
Why Does the Egyptian Ruling Class Fear the Crisis in Gaza?
By David Markovitch
Monday, 28 January 2008
The Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip has been dealt a major blow: Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, had to allow the starving Palestinian masses to cross the border into his country to get food, medications, clothes and other basic necessities.
Some 350,000 Palestinians poured out of Gaza and into Egypt early on Wednesday and more than half the total population of the strip managed to cross the border during the first days after the breach, the United Nations said. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the Gazans rushed to purchase food, fuel, and other supplies made scarce by Israel's blockade of the Strip, after militants detonated 17 bombs in the early morning hours, destroying some two-thirds of the metal wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
Hamas did not claim responsibility for knocking the border wall down, but Hamas militants quickly took control of the frontier, as Egyptian border guards took no action. Israel said in response to the chaos that it expects Egypt to solve the crisis, but it's evident that Egypt is in a difficult position where whatever choices are made will cause more instability.
Haaretz reports that "the destruction of the border continued late on Wednesday morning. Palestinians driving a Caterpillar bulldozer arrived at a point where the frontier is marked by a low concrete wall topped with barbed wire, tearing down the wall and opening a gap to allow easier access for cars. Hamas police channelled the crowds through two sections of the border, and inspected some bags, confiscating seven pistols carried by one man returning to Gaza.
"Others walked unhindered over the toppled metal plates that once made up the border wall, carrying goats, chickens and crates of Coke. Some brought back televisions and car tires, and one man bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds".
On Monday, some 60 people were injured at a demonstration at the Rafah crossing as the crowd tried to break through the border gate, and Egyptian border guards used water cannons against them. This fact and the subsequent attempts to seal the border by Egypt, indicate that Mubarak was forced to allow people to break in because the Egyptian army was overwhelmed by the pressure of the crowd. Any attempt to resort to bloody repression would have opened an even more dangerous scenario for the stability of the regime.
Israel imposed a full closure on the Gaza Strip on January 17th in response to massive barrages of Qassam rocket fire on southern Israel. Defense Minister Ehud Barak allowed limited transfers of fuel Tuesday for the power plant in the Strip and medical supplies for hospitals.
Security sources told Haaretz on Tuesday that Israel intends to keep the crossings into the Gaza Strip permanently closed except when it is necessary to provide for emergency humanitarian needs. This new policy would have allowed, according to the Israeli government, the transfer of sufficient aid and materials to the Palestinians to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and minimize international criticism. What really happened was that the burden over the lives of the mass of the population was so heavy that the whole situation exploded.
Hamas politburo chairman, Khaled Meshal, declared that the attacks would continue until Israel "ended the occupation and the aggression, the resistance, including rocket attacks, would not cease." At least 20 rockets were fired against Israel on Tuesday, in addition to a handful of mortars. The Israeli ruling class on the other side welcomes these sort of indiscriminate attacks because they do not harm the power of Israeli state at all. On the contrary, they secretly welcome each and every rocket fired from Gaza because they leave ordinary Israeli people with little choice than to support the Zionist state.
What motivates Mubarak?
Mubarak has no special sympathy toward the Palestinians. When Yasser Arafat was hesitating signing on the second Oslo Accords with the late Prime Minister Rabin, Mubarak muttered angrily and whispered, "Sign, you son of a dog!" In fact, Mubarak has been striving for decades to do whatever he could in order to maintain his regime with minimum tension, attempting to present the Palestinian question as a problem that has no unique or close relation to Egypt. His country did absolutely nothing in order to help the Palestinian refugees, wallowing in terrible misery and tragic poverty in the camps.
Like the Jordanian Hashemite Kingdom and its leader Hussein, Mubarak was always seeking to play a role of disinterested conciliator between Israel and the Palestinians, enjoying the enormous financial support delivered to them by Uncle Sam.
The interesting question is, however, why did Mubarak decide to open the border and let the Palestinians cross? Did he find hidden humanity in his heart? Did he lurch to help the famished Palestinian people?
The main reason why Mubarak did not order the Egyptian army to carry out a bloody repression against the Palestinians is that he feared the army would not hold the line.
Furthermore, he feared that repression would have detonated an even more furious response from the Palestinian masses and eventually fail, opening up an even more terrifying scenario for the regime.
The third reason is related to the rising social unrest that is heating up in Egypt (see previous articles here and here). The conditions of Egyptian masses have been worsening in recent years, in spite of high rates of growth. The inflation rate is well above 10 per cent and price hikes between 30 and 50 per cent in all basic commodities like meat, fresh vegetables, wheat flour, bread, fuel, energy, etc., hit the poorer sections of the population harder than the rich. In the last two years a wave of strikes and workers' militancy has been rising. The regime had no alternative than concede to workers' demands, in the attempt to prevent struggles to generalize.
The Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported on January 14 that about 300 workers of Menotex factory demonstrated in the city of Menoufia over the failure to pay their salaries for two months, while about 200 others at the Aalaf Kafr Saad factory in Damietta threatened to go on strike in protest against the sale of the plant. On January 9, a member of the Coordinating Committee of Workers' Unions Rights and Freedoms, Khaled Ali, told al-Masry al-Youm that "it is unacceptable for the minimum monthly wage in Egypt to be 35 pounds when the price of a kilogram of meat is 40 pounds, and when the minimum for social security is 104 pounds".
Every strike collides with the official union's bureaucracy, which is a part of the state and through their own experience sections of the most militant workers are reaching the conclusions that independent unions have to be formed.
The blog 3Arabawy, written by an Egyptian journalist reported that The Center for Socialist Studies issued a statement on the victory of the two months long Real Estate Tax Collectors' Strike, asserting this will open new doors for the struggle of professional people and civil servants in other government sectors. He translated part of it: "Another fight is also looming... Once again it's over the unions... The strike all throughout was run by the Higher Committee for the Real Estate Tax Collectors' Strike, headed by the dynamic Kamal Abu Eita and in theory included one representative from each of the country's 26 provinces.
"Where were the state-sponsored Union Committee members? They were not involved. And as a humiliating proof of their illegitimacy and lack of credibility they were not even invited to the final negotiations between the Finance Minister and members of the Higher Committee for the Real Estate Tax Collectors' Strike, the true representatives of the civil servants..."
The same blog announced that the Egyptian Workers and Trade Unions Watch has issued a new report, citing 35 industrial actions during the first two weeks of November: 8,000 workers took part in strikes, sit-ins, or hunger-strikes, while 33,000 others threatened to go on strike or stage sit-ins.
The situation in Egypt is clear: the workers' movement is becoming a major force in the society, while the labor movement - apart from the trade union bureaucracy - is led by militant unionists. It is playing a crucial role in carrying forward the class struggle and laying the foundations for a mass political organization of the Egyptian working class.
The Egyptian toilers feel understandable sympathy toward their poor and oppressed brothers and sisters in Gaza. They watch the pictures at the Television, read the reports in the newspapers, get updates through the internet, and they become angry and furious. They are not directing their angry toward the Israeli ruling elite, which has always been regarded in great suspicion and hostility by the Egyptian masses. They expect nothing from the decaying Israeli liberal bourgeoisie and the Brown Shirts of the rising racist Israeli Right. They demand that the government takes action, while understanding its treacherous role, abhorring its policies as representing the interests of the US imperialism, and loathing it as the enemy of the workers and youth.
Mubarak fears the labor movement and it is no coincidence that after so many strikes and pressure from below to end his austerity policies, the Egyptian Bonapartist fears the reaction of the masses and allows the Palestinian impoverished masses to enter his country. Mubarak knows quite well that his rule is unstable, that after his retirement (he is almost 80 years old) the country might fall into chaos as the leadership the National Democratic Party has been losing the support of the masses. His son, Gamal, is not regarded as an authoritative figure within Egyptian politics.
At a certain stage this wave of anger towards the ruling NDP can be transformed into pre-revolutionary situation. Egypt has been leaning for years on the West. Since 1979, the country has been receiving $2.2 billion per year from the imperialist US ruling class. In return, Egyptian rulers have been enslaving the masses to the world bourgeoisie. Thus, in its annual report, the IMF has rated Egypt as one of the top countries in the world in undertaking economic reforms. A serious intensification of the class struggle can threaten the rule of the NDP and create an open conflict with masses. US and the EU imperialism would expect Mubarak to respond by oppressing the labor movement. Mubarak, who knows how fragile his rule is, doesn't wish to enter a situation in which his eroded regime could be undermined by his own people.
Egypt's road to Revolution
The Egyptian republic has travelled a long way during the last 50 years. The July 23 Revolution in 1952, by a group of young army officers who called themselves The Free Officers Movement, was a decisive step forward in which a monarchy became a republic through a bourgeois-national revolution. The reasons for the revolution resembles today's situation: The Egyptian ruling elite was corrupt and pro-British, with an ostentatious lifestyle, provocative and boastful; the masses lived in terrible misery. The masses considered the establishment as corrupt and had no trust in its institutions or in the political parties. The defeat suffered by Egypt in the 1948 war caused a national crisis in which the king was considered as a defeatist who lacked any program that could advance Egyptian society. As a result, Gamal Abdel Nasser was nominated as president.
A change in the course of Egyptian politics was occurring after the regime had been asking for loans from the World Bank in order to finance the construction of the Aswan High Dam. After the US and Britain withdrew from their agreement to finance the project, the Egyptian president pressed forward in the revolutionary process and announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. Nasser promised that revenues of the SCC would finance the construction of the High Dam. Nasserism was a radical bourgeois nationalist who spoke about "socialism" (in some respects resembling Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan). This created sharp tensions between Egypt and Britain and France. The British and French imperialisms decided to freeze Egyptian assets and put their armies on alert.
The Stalinist bureaucracy considered Egypt as an important country in consolidating the pro-Soviet camp in the Middle East, while Israel allied with US imperialism. The Soviet Union offered to fund the High Dam project. The Israeli ruling elite saw its opportunity in the rift between Egypt and the European imperialists and initiated a Tripartite Anglo-French-Israeli aggression against Egypt in 1956. Egypt responded to the war by nationalizing all British and French banks and companies. Later, other foreign and Egyptian firms were nationalized by Nasser.
The revolutionary process went deeper in 1962, as the Nasserite regime supported the deformed workers' state of Abdullah Al-Sallal in Yemen. The Yemenite Revolution overthrew Imam Badr and carried forward a revolutionary process that was aiming at building a "socialist republic" - that is to say, a deformed workers' state in the image of Moscow. As a result, Egypt entered a political conflict with Saudi Arabia, the committed supporter of the Yemeni royalists.
Egyptian industry progressed very much during Nasser's rule as capital Investment in industry and mining increased considerably. Nasser carried forward a major Agrarian Reform. By 1962, these policies had led to a minimum 51% government ownership of the economy. Egypt was moving in the direction of a deformed workers' state, that is, a state in which the means of production would be nationalized, but without proletarian democracy.
However, after the defeat in the 1967 war with Israel against Egypt in June 1967, Nasser decided to resign. Millions of workers and youth poured onto the streets in mass demonstrations in Egypt and across the Middle East. This was the moment in which Nasser could have finished the job of expropriating the capitalists, but the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy, which had no interest in advancing the revolution in the Middle East, restrained him.
When Nasser died of heart attack on September 1970, more than five millions were present in his funeral. With all his faults, the masses admired Nasser for his anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist policies, and for reforms such as making education freely available to the poor, building Egyptian industry, removing the monarchist boot from the masses' neck. He also supported the arts, such as the theatre, the film and music industries, as well as Egyptian literature.
However, after the death of Nasser. Egypt swung in the opposite direction. It suffered another blow when it was defeated in the 1973 war, initiated by Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat. Its economy went through a period of serious stagnation. Sadat's turn to the right culminated in the Camp David accords with Israel, under the patronage of former US President Carter, which caused frustration among the masses. He even refused to insist that Israel should withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories and stop the settlements movement. The peace pact with Israel was regarded as terrible betrayal by the masses and led to his assassination.
For Egyptian workers' revolution
Nasserism had its own problems. First and foremost, its concept of socialism was nationalistic; there was no workers' democracy and Nasser took the degenerated Soviet state as his model of "socialism". This doomed the Egyptian Revolution, which did not even establish a deformed workers' state like the one in Yemen. Nasser had no idea of the permanent revolution, though he did have a very strong anti-imperialist stance. His policies fluctuated between revolution and nationalism, more accurately, Pan-Arabism - a tendency aiming at unifying the Arab masses of the region along anti-imperialist lines. In this "socialism-from-above" the masses didn't play any real role in politics, while a layer of bureaucracy, careerists, right centrists and opportunists was formed in the image of Moscow.
The defeat in the June 1967 War did not destroy the masses' trust in Nasser but it did encourage the bureaucracy to step backward and reverse the tendency towards greater statization of the economy. The formation of National Democratic Party in 1978 further deepened the retreat. Nasser was a petty bourgeois Bonapartist, who balanced between the working class and the bourgeoisie, and also between imperialism and the USSR.
Mubarak is a bourgeois Bonapartist who has abandoned all Nasser's "socialist" demagogy and openly allied himself to imperialism and the bourgeoisie. The Nasserite experiment thus came to a bitter end with years of stagnation, brutal dictatorship, open alliance with the US imperialism and, in recent years, privatization, anti-working class measures, the oppression of civil rights and the strengthening of an authoritarian regime.
The awakening Egyptian workers' movement has no trust in the bourgeois NDP. It has even less trust in the bureaucracy of the unions. It wishes to use the trade unions and the workers' power in order to change the course of the country. The compromising attitude of the ruling NDP reflects a recognition in its weakness. This weakness is now expressed in the decision of Mubarak to let the Palestinians enter Egypt and thus break the Israeli siege. The Egyptian ruler fears the masses.
But the most dangerous lesson (from the point of view of the regime) that emerges from the crisis in Gaza is that when the mass of the people are mobilized, they become such a powerful force that normal means to enforce authority become useless. Every attempt to seal the border after the break up has failed so far and it is clear that nobody can ensure that things go back to "normal" unless the mass mobilization steps back. We are sure that this lesson will not be ignored by the masses in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.
However, the labor movement in Egypt should not use the crisis in the country just to overthrow Mubarak. The reactionary Muslim Brotherhood movement, smashed by Nasser, has been long waiting to seize power. The Islamists are dying to take revenge, to crush bourgeois national secularism and build Islamic republic. This will be a disaster to the working class. The workers in Egypt should build their class organizations and strive for political independence. The most advanced workers and youth will defend the socialist programme and fight for a real workers' republic in Egypt and throughout the region. They will fight for a class programme, based on secular and democratic policies and develop solidarity with all the toilers of the region, building fraternal links not only with the Palestinian but also with the Israeli working class, advancing an internationalist agenda.
Through action, the Egyptian workers will sooner or later come to understand the need to establish their own Labor party. In a situation like that of Egypt, militant trade union activity will necessarily end with the workers drawing political conclusions. In the end there is no other way forward for the workers of Egypt except taking power into their own hands.
The most advanced sections of the Egyptians and youth will be interested in the ideas of Marxism. They will study the problems and achievements of the past, and they will draw the conclusions from the failure of Nasserism and turn to authentic socialism - to Marxism as it was elaborated by Lenin and Trotsky. Only in this way can a genuine revolutionary leadership be forged, as a truly socialist wing within the Egyptian workers' movement. Socialism is the only way forward to the Egyptian exploited and poor masses.RENEGADE EYE
Monday, 28 January 2008
The Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip has been dealt a major blow: Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, had to allow the starving Palestinian masses to cross the border into his country to get food, medications, clothes and other basic necessities.
Some 350,000 Palestinians poured out of Gaza and into Egypt early on Wednesday and more than half the total population of the strip managed to cross the border during the first days after the breach, the United Nations said. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the Gazans rushed to purchase food, fuel, and other supplies made scarce by Israel's blockade of the Strip, after militants detonated 17 bombs in the early morning hours, destroying some two-thirds of the metal wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
Hamas did not claim responsibility for knocking the border wall down, but Hamas militants quickly took control of the frontier, as Egyptian border guards took no action. Israel said in response to the chaos that it expects Egypt to solve the crisis, but it's evident that Egypt is in a difficult position where whatever choices are made will cause more instability.
Haaretz reports that "the destruction of the border continued late on Wednesday morning. Palestinians driving a Caterpillar bulldozer arrived at a point where the frontier is marked by a low concrete wall topped with barbed wire, tearing down the wall and opening a gap to allow easier access for cars. Hamas police channelled the crowds through two sections of the border, and inspected some bags, confiscating seven pistols carried by one man returning to Gaza.
"Others walked unhindered over the toppled metal plates that once made up the border wall, carrying goats, chickens and crates of Coke. Some brought back televisions and car tires, and one man bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds".
On Monday, some 60 people were injured at a demonstration at the Rafah crossing as the crowd tried to break through the border gate, and Egyptian border guards used water cannons against them. This fact and the subsequent attempts to seal the border by Egypt, indicate that Mubarak was forced to allow people to break in because the Egyptian army was overwhelmed by the pressure of the crowd. Any attempt to resort to bloody repression would have opened an even more dangerous scenario for the stability of the regime.
Israel imposed a full closure on the Gaza Strip on January 17th in response to massive barrages of Qassam rocket fire on southern Israel. Defense Minister Ehud Barak allowed limited transfers of fuel Tuesday for the power plant in the Strip and medical supplies for hospitals.
Security sources told Haaretz on Tuesday that Israel intends to keep the crossings into the Gaza Strip permanently closed except when it is necessary to provide for emergency humanitarian needs. This new policy would have allowed, according to the Israeli government, the transfer of sufficient aid and materials to the Palestinians to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and minimize international criticism. What really happened was that the burden over the lives of the mass of the population was so heavy that the whole situation exploded.
Hamas politburo chairman, Khaled Meshal, declared that the attacks would continue until Israel "ended the occupation and the aggression, the resistance, including rocket attacks, would not cease." At least 20 rockets were fired against Israel on Tuesday, in addition to a handful of mortars. The Israeli ruling class on the other side welcomes these sort of indiscriminate attacks because they do not harm the power of Israeli state at all. On the contrary, they secretly welcome each and every rocket fired from Gaza because they leave ordinary Israeli people with little choice than to support the Zionist state.
What motivates Mubarak?
Mubarak has no special sympathy toward the Palestinians. When Yasser Arafat was hesitating signing on the second Oslo Accords with the late Prime Minister Rabin, Mubarak muttered angrily and whispered, "Sign, you son of a dog!" In fact, Mubarak has been striving for decades to do whatever he could in order to maintain his regime with minimum tension, attempting to present the Palestinian question as a problem that has no unique or close relation to Egypt. His country did absolutely nothing in order to help the Palestinian refugees, wallowing in terrible misery and tragic poverty in the camps.
Like the Jordanian Hashemite Kingdom and its leader Hussein, Mubarak was always seeking to play a role of disinterested conciliator between Israel and the Palestinians, enjoying the enormous financial support delivered to them by Uncle Sam.
The interesting question is, however, why did Mubarak decide to open the border and let the Palestinians cross? Did he find hidden humanity in his heart? Did he lurch to help the famished Palestinian people?
The main reason why Mubarak did not order the Egyptian army to carry out a bloody repression against the Palestinians is that he feared the army would not hold the line.
Furthermore, he feared that repression would have detonated an even more furious response from the Palestinian masses and eventually fail, opening up an even more terrifying scenario for the regime.
The third reason is related to the rising social unrest that is heating up in Egypt (see previous articles here and here). The conditions of Egyptian masses have been worsening in recent years, in spite of high rates of growth. The inflation rate is well above 10 per cent and price hikes between 30 and 50 per cent in all basic commodities like meat, fresh vegetables, wheat flour, bread, fuel, energy, etc., hit the poorer sections of the population harder than the rich. In the last two years a wave of strikes and workers' militancy has been rising. The regime had no alternative than concede to workers' demands, in the attempt to prevent struggles to generalize.
The Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported on January 14 that about 300 workers of Menotex factory demonstrated in the city of Menoufia over the failure to pay their salaries for two months, while about 200 others at the Aalaf Kafr Saad factory in Damietta threatened to go on strike in protest against the sale of the plant. On January 9, a member of the Coordinating Committee of Workers' Unions Rights and Freedoms, Khaled Ali, told al-Masry al-Youm that "it is unacceptable for the minimum monthly wage in Egypt to be 35 pounds when the price of a kilogram of meat is 40 pounds, and when the minimum for social security is 104 pounds".
Every strike collides with the official union's bureaucracy, which is a part of the state and through their own experience sections of the most militant workers are reaching the conclusions that independent unions have to be formed.
The blog 3Arabawy, written by an Egyptian journalist reported that The Center for Socialist Studies issued a statement on the victory of the two months long Real Estate Tax Collectors' Strike, asserting this will open new doors for the struggle of professional people and civil servants in other government sectors. He translated part of it: "Another fight is also looming... Once again it's over the unions... The strike all throughout was run by the Higher Committee for the Real Estate Tax Collectors' Strike, headed by the dynamic Kamal Abu Eita and in theory included one representative from each of the country's 26 provinces.
"Where were the state-sponsored Union Committee members? They were not involved. And as a humiliating proof of their illegitimacy and lack of credibility they were not even invited to the final negotiations between the Finance Minister and members of the Higher Committee for the Real Estate Tax Collectors' Strike, the true representatives of the civil servants..."
The same blog announced that the Egyptian Workers and Trade Unions Watch has issued a new report, citing 35 industrial actions during the first two weeks of November: 8,000 workers took part in strikes, sit-ins, or hunger-strikes, while 33,000 others threatened to go on strike or stage sit-ins.
The situation in Egypt is clear: the workers' movement is becoming a major force in the society, while the labor movement - apart from the trade union bureaucracy - is led by militant unionists. It is playing a crucial role in carrying forward the class struggle and laying the foundations for a mass political organization of the Egyptian working class.
The Egyptian toilers feel understandable sympathy toward their poor and oppressed brothers and sisters in Gaza. They watch the pictures at the Television, read the reports in the newspapers, get updates through the internet, and they become angry and furious. They are not directing their angry toward the Israeli ruling elite, which has always been regarded in great suspicion and hostility by the Egyptian masses. They expect nothing from the decaying Israeli liberal bourgeoisie and the Brown Shirts of the rising racist Israeli Right. They demand that the government takes action, while understanding its treacherous role, abhorring its policies as representing the interests of the US imperialism, and loathing it as the enemy of the workers and youth.
Mubarak fears the labor movement and it is no coincidence that after so many strikes and pressure from below to end his austerity policies, the Egyptian Bonapartist fears the reaction of the masses and allows the Palestinian impoverished masses to enter his country. Mubarak knows quite well that his rule is unstable, that after his retirement (he is almost 80 years old) the country might fall into chaos as the leadership the National Democratic Party has been losing the support of the masses. His son, Gamal, is not regarded as an authoritative figure within Egyptian politics.
At a certain stage this wave of anger towards the ruling NDP can be transformed into pre-revolutionary situation. Egypt has been leaning for years on the West. Since 1979, the country has been receiving $2.2 billion per year from the imperialist US ruling class. In return, Egyptian rulers have been enslaving the masses to the world bourgeoisie. Thus, in its annual report, the IMF has rated Egypt as one of the top countries in the world in undertaking economic reforms. A serious intensification of the class struggle can threaten the rule of the NDP and create an open conflict with masses. US and the EU imperialism would expect Mubarak to respond by oppressing the labor movement. Mubarak, who knows how fragile his rule is, doesn't wish to enter a situation in which his eroded regime could be undermined by his own people.
Egypt's road to Revolution
The Egyptian republic has travelled a long way during the last 50 years. The July 23 Revolution in 1952, by a group of young army officers who called themselves The Free Officers Movement, was a decisive step forward in which a monarchy became a republic through a bourgeois-national revolution. The reasons for the revolution resembles today's situation: The Egyptian ruling elite was corrupt and pro-British, with an ostentatious lifestyle, provocative and boastful; the masses lived in terrible misery. The masses considered the establishment as corrupt and had no trust in its institutions or in the political parties. The defeat suffered by Egypt in the 1948 war caused a national crisis in which the king was considered as a defeatist who lacked any program that could advance Egyptian society. As a result, Gamal Abdel Nasser was nominated as president.
A change in the course of Egyptian politics was occurring after the regime had been asking for loans from the World Bank in order to finance the construction of the Aswan High Dam. After the US and Britain withdrew from their agreement to finance the project, the Egyptian president pressed forward in the revolutionary process and announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. Nasser promised that revenues of the SCC would finance the construction of the High Dam. Nasserism was a radical bourgeois nationalist who spoke about "socialism" (in some respects resembling Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan). This created sharp tensions between Egypt and Britain and France. The British and French imperialisms decided to freeze Egyptian assets and put their armies on alert.
The Stalinist bureaucracy considered Egypt as an important country in consolidating the pro-Soviet camp in the Middle East, while Israel allied with US imperialism. The Soviet Union offered to fund the High Dam project. The Israeli ruling elite saw its opportunity in the rift between Egypt and the European imperialists and initiated a Tripartite Anglo-French-Israeli aggression against Egypt in 1956. Egypt responded to the war by nationalizing all British and French banks and companies. Later, other foreign and Egyptian firms were nationalized by Nasser.
The revolutionary process went deeper in 1962, as the Nasserite regime supported the deformed workers' state of Abdullah Al-Sallal in Yemen. The Yemenite Revolution overthrew Imam Badr and carried forward a revolutionary process that was aiming at building a "socialist republic" - that is to say, a deformed workers' state in the image of Moscow. As a result, Egypt entered a political conflict with Saudi Arabia, the committed supporter of the Yemeni royalists.
Egyptian industry progressed very much during Nasser's rule as capital Investment in industry and mining increased considerably. Nasser carried forward a major Agrarian Reform. By 1962, these policies had led to a minimum 51% government ownership of the economy. Egypt was moving in the direction of a deformed workers' state, that is, a state in which the means of production would be nationalized, but without proletarian democracy.
However, after the defeat in the 1967 war with Israel against Egypt in June 1967, Nasser decided to resign. Millions of workers and youth poured onto the streets in mass demonstrations in Egypt and across the Middle East. This was the moment in which Nasser could have finished the job of expropriating the capitalists, but the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy, which had no interest in advancing the revolution in the Middle East, restrained him.
When Nasser died of heart attack on September 1970, more than five millions were present in his funeral. With all his faults, the masses admired Nasser for his anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist policies, and for reforms such as making education freely available to the poor, building Egyptian industry, removing the monarchist boot from the masses' neck. He also supported the arts, such as the theatre, the film and music industries, as well as Egyptian literature.
However, after the death of Nasser. Egypt swung in the opposite direction. It suffered another blow when it was defeated in the 1973 war, initiated by Nasser's successor, Anwar Sadat. Its economy went through a period of serious stagnation. Sadat's turn to the right culminated in the Camp David accords with Israel, under the patronage of former US President Carter, which caused frustration among the masses. He even refused to insist that Israel should withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories and stop the settlements movement. The peace pact with Israel was regarded as terrible betrayal by the masses and led to his assassination.
For Egyptian workers' revolution
Nasserism had its own problems. First and foremost, its concept of socialism was nationalistic; there was no workers' democracy and Nasser took the degenerated Soviet state as his model of "socialism". This doomed the Egyptian Revolution, which did not even establish a deformed workers' state like the one in Yemen. Nasser had no idea of the permanent revolution, though he did have a very strong anti-imperialist stance. His policies fluctuated between revolution and nationalism, more accurately, Pan-Arabism - a tendency aiming at unifying the Arab masses of the region along anti-imperialist lines. In this "socialism-from-above" the masses didn't play any real role in politics, while a layer of bureaucracy, careerists, right centrists and opportunists was formed in the image of Moscow.
The defeat in the June 1967 War did not destroy the masses' trust in Nasser but it did encourage the bureaucracy to step backward and reverse the tendency towards greater statization of the economy. The formation of National Democratic Party in 1978 further deepened the retreat. Nasser was a petty bourgeois Bonapartist, who balanced between the working class and the bourgeoisie, and also between imperialism and the USSR.
Mubarak is a bourgeois Bonapartist who has abandoned all Nasser's "socialist" demagogy and openly allied himself to imperialism and the bourgeoisie. The Nasserite experiment thus came to a bitter end with years of stagnation, brutal dictatorship, open alliance with the US imperialism and, in recent years, privatization, anti-working class measures, the oppression of civil rights and the strengthening of an authoritarian regime.
The awakening Egyptian workers' movement has no trust in the bourgeois NDP. It has even less trust in the bureaucracy of the unions. It wishes to use the trade unions and the workers' power in order to change the course of the country. The compromising attitude of the ruling NDP reflects a recognition in its weakness. This weakness is now expressed in the decision of Mubarak to let the Palestinians enter Egypt and thus break the Israeli siege. The Egyptian ruler fears the masses.
But the most dangerous lesson (from the point of view of the regime) that emerges from the crisis in Gaza is that when the mass of the people are mobilized, they become such a powerful force that normal means to enforce authority become useless. Every attempt to seal the border after the break up has failed so far and it is clear that nobody can ensure that things go back to "normal" unless the mass mobilization steps back. We are sure that this lesson will not be ignored by the masses in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.
However, the labor movement in Egypt should not use the crisis in the country just to overthrow Mubarak. The reactionary Muslim Brotherhood movement, smashed by Nasser, has been long waiting to seize power. The Islamists are dying to take revenge, to crush bourgeois national secularism and build Islamic republic. This will be a disaster to the working class. The workers in Egypt should build their class organizations and strive for political independence. The most advanced workers and youth will defend the socialist programme and fight for a real workers' republic in Egypt and throughout the region. They will fight for a class programme, based on secular and democratic policies and develop solidarity with all the toilers of the region, building fraternal links not only with the Palestinian but also with the Israeli working class, advancing an internationalist agenda.
Through action, the Egyptian workers will sooner or later come to understand the need to establish their own Labor party. In a situation like that of Egypt, militant trade union activity will necessarily end with the workers drawing political conclusions. In the end there is no other way forward for the workers of Egypt except taking power into their own hands.
The most advanced sections of the Egyptians and youth will be interested in the ideas of Marxism. They will study the problems and achievements of the past, and they will draw the conclusions from the failure of Nasserism and turn to authentic socialism - to Marxism as it was elaborated by Lenin and Trotsky. Only in this way can a genuine revolutionary leadership be forged, as a truly socialist wing within the Egyptian workers' movement. Socialism is the only way forward to the Egyptian exploited and poor masses.RENEGADE EYE
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