Workers Power
This article is also available in Arabic here
Despite the ceasefire in Lebanon, Israeli Defence Forces have continued the cynically named Operation Summer Rain in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This consists of a massive bombardment of homes, workplaces and infrastructure and constant low flights to terrorise the civilian population. The actions of the Israelis constitute a cruel collective punishment, in breach of the Geneva Conventions, and international law. The silence from governments around the world is deafening.
Israel and the Palestinians
The election of the Hamas government in Palestine was seen by both the USA and the European Union as a revolt against their “Road Map” settlement. No matter that Israel had already torn up the map and was making its own unilateral settlement by building a wall to seize yet more land still in the possession of its original inhabitants. So swift and brutal economic and military punishment followed.
For all their talk of creating democracy in the Middle East, as soon as the Palestinians elected a government that refused to recognise Israel, the US and the EU pulled the plug on millions of dollars and euros in funding, deepening the poverty of one of the poorest areas of the world. Under cover of the invasion of Lebanon, the Israelis arrested several Hamas MPs and ministers: a demonstration that the Palestinian statelet is completely powerless against them.
Many saw the withdrawal from the Gaza strip as an enforced retreat. In fact the Israeli ruling class calculated that, by returning a small and overcrowded strip of land to the Palestinians, they could obtain international support for their land grab in the West Bank. They are constructing of a 703 kilometre long wall to extend and defend illegal settlements that exist on Palestinian land. 47% of the West Bank will be annexed to Israel upon its completion. 27,000 Palestinians then on the Israeli side will require permits to travel from their homes to their places of work.
Under the guise of the “war on terror” and “security”, the Israelis are seeking to eliminate the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. The fact that the United Nations is doing nothing to prevent this should come as no surprise; the UN created Israel and defends it in the final analysis against the struggle of the Palestinians to return home.
What can we do?
All democrats, socialists and trade unionists should take action to force Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank and withdraw its troops, to lift its air, land and sea blockade, to release its thousands of Palestinian prisoners and to recognise the democratically elected Palestinian government. We need to expose the racist settler state and its plans to ethnically cleanse most of Palestine, turning what is left into open air prison camps.
Just as, in the 1980s, the campaign against the South African regime helped turn it into pariah state, we need to do the same now. To encourage and support the Palestinian resistance we must organise an international boycott of Israel. We should include all goods and services provided or produced by the Zionist state, plus sporting and academic exchanges. The international workers’ movement should take action not only against Israeli trade, but those western corporations which support Israel.
One state solution
Israel, the fifth largest military power in the world, armed with nuclear weapons, is the principle regional instrument of USA for dividing and exploiting the Arab world. Despite muted rivalry between the US and the EU for domination of the region, all the imperialists gain from this division and subordination. Any imperialist peace is aimed not a justice for the Palestinians but at. reducing and eliminating resistance. Events in Iraq and Lebanon show, however, that, despite the overwhelming military power and economic stranglehold of the imperialists and the Zionists, this is a futile task.
But resistance is not enough. Alone, it will condemn generation after generation to suffering. This suffering can and must be ended. Israel – a racist settler state that is expelling the Palestinians from their land – must be destroyed.
How can this be done? Just as the apparently hopeless resistance to Israel has survived by mobilising the masses, Israel can be destroyed in a revolution, by mobilising the Arab masses of the region and drawing to its side those progressive forces that exist within Israel itself.
Some on the left argue for a two state solution, under capitalism. This is reactionary and utopian.
First, it denies over five million Palestinian refugees, in camps across the Middle East their right to return to the land, from which they were ethnically cleansed. A return only to the West Bank and Gaza however would double the population of Palestine at a stroke and lead to its rapid economic collapse.
Second, the Israeli state is dependent for its supposed Jewish national identity on its role as regional gendarme for US imperialism, which subsidises it to the tune of billions of dollars a year. If this stopped, so would the subsidy.
Third, Israel can only preserve its Jewish majority by drawing in settlers and expanding into Palestinian territory.
The only progressive way forward for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples is a bi-national state. Even then, such a solution under capitalism is utopian. The working classes of the region have to come to the head of the struggle against Zionism and its American and European backers. If they do so, why should the Palestinian workers and peasants settle for a market economy, one bound to be subservient to imperialism?
The answer is to create a workers state, where collective control of the economy allows Hebrew and Arabic speaking workers and farmers to run the factories and cultivate the soil for the common well being of all. This must form an integral part of a United Socialist States of the Middle East. This can only come about through a revolution, but it must happen if the people of the Middle East are to escape poverty and achieve liberation.