The Western media portrays the struggle in Palestine as one between “extremists” and “moderates”, with the Palestinian factions’ willingness to live peacefully alongside Israel as the decisive factor.
In reality, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is at the root of the conflict. The Israeli state was born in flames in 1948, with 750,000 Palestinians driven from land their families had lived on for centuries. About five million Palestinians now live in refugee camps, while those that remain in Israel are second-class citizens, discriminated against in employment, housing, education and political life.
To keep the Palestinians subordinated, Israel constantly needs new immigrants: hence its appeal to Jews across the world to come and settle there. But to provide land for them, Israel needs to expand and so displace more Palestinians. The occupation of the West Bank, the blockade and bombings of Gaza, and the building of settlements all prevent a viable Palestinian state coming into existence.
This is why the advocates of a “two state” solution are misguided. Only a single state for Arabs and Jews can restore Palestinian rights – ending the occupation and allowing the return of the refugees – and guarantee physical security for the Israeli people.
It is this conflict between Israel, receiving billions each year in US military aid, and the poorly armed Palestinians that defines the politics of the various factions. The so-called extremists, including Hamas, are prepared to defend their people from this pro-imperialist, aggressive settler state. Those portrayed as “moderates”, now including Fatah, are willing to act as agents of the USA and the Zionist state.
Fatah, historically the secular nationalist party of the Palestinians, lost the elections in January 2006 to Hamas because it capitulated to Israel, lining its supporters’ pockets in the process. Its acceptance of the 1993 Oslo accords, accepting Israel’s “right to exist”, has reached its logical and intended conclusion: an openly collaborationist administration at war with half the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile in Gaza, a Hamas administration under siege consoles itself for failing to oust the collaborationists in Ramallah, by imposing religious social and cultural norms, with all their negative consequences for women, secularists, minorities and the workers’ organisations.
Recent protests in Gaza by Fatah supporters, targeting the homes and families of Hamas leaders, mark Fatah’s determination to act as a “fifth column”, opening up a new front of struggle, not against the Israeli occupation, but other Palestinians.
Abbas’ and his entourage are certainly being rewarded for their cooperation. Tax revenues and foreign aid withheld when the PA was led by a “power sharing” administration including Hamas have been released – to the Fatah controlled West Bank only – allowing the payment of civil servants and security forces and easing the humanitarian crisis. The “peace process” – that endless game of conferences, meetings and declarations – is back in play, now that Israel has a “partner in peace” to negotiate with.
When it comes to substantive matters, however, the rewards seem scant. A US hosted peace conference scheduled for November will not address the issues of Jerusalem, refugees or final borders. Meanwhile, the IDF creates “facts on the ground”, stepping up settlement activity and completing the apartheid Wall snaking through the West Bank, annexing yet more Palestinian land.
In Gaza, resistance is rewarded by starvation and lethal violence. Each day brings news of missile strikes, shootings at fences and border crossings, or IDF incursions. People already dependent on aid, without freedom of movement, a livelihood, or other basics of social and economic life, are now subject to life-threatening cut-offs of food, fuel, medicines and even writing paper. A block on funding for power generation by European Union donors has led to electricity black-outs and the collapse of basic services, with reports that Gaza City “is sinking in piles of garbage that are scavenged by people looking for something to take, while others volunteer to burn the piles to get rid of them”.
Hamas’ demands on Fatah following their “coup” in June were surprisingly moderate: the restoration of a “power-sharing” PA government. This was not down to any modesty on Hamas’ part, but a tacit admission that its own programme and methods of struggle only lead back to the same negotiating table at which Fatah has sat for the last fifteen years. The “armed struggle” – guerrilla war by an elite of fighters – can only end in this way, however sincere or self-sacrificing its participants, or how widespread their base of support.
If in the West Bank the danger is of “moderates” negotiating defeat, in Gaza it is that Hamas might accept the confinement of resistance to this enclave and build it as an Islamic state, negotiating separately with Israel for scraps of concessions. For all Israel’s rhetoric about not negotiating with “terrorists”, it suits its interests perfectly to play off one part of the Palestinian people against another. A hierarchy of Palestinian dispossession gives “moderates” an incentive to behave and provides a visible warning of the price of “extremism”.
If in the West Bank the job is therefore to complete the unfinished business of June, of removing a pro-imperialist government, then in Gaza it is to deepen and broaden the resistance -ultimately wresting its leadership from the hands from the Islamist reactionaries.
Mass struggle, involving all of the oppressed, women and minorities included, would dispel Hamas’ pretension to being the only force for Palestinian resistance. The arms of the resistance must be placed at the disposal of the mass organisations, and not just the leaderships of the armed organisations. Mass and democratic organs of struggle must be built, to prevent the replacement of one corrupt dictatorship with another.
Crucially, the workers’ movement, drawing on the solidarity of anticapitalists and workers organisations in the neighbouring Arab countries and across the world, must protest and attempt to break the blockade of Gaza.