[page 28]
West Bank revolt
The masses intervene
The Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip has led to scores of deaths, overwhelmingly of young Palestinians, with hundreds of injuries and thousands detained without trial. It represents the most serious upheaval since the capture of these areas in 1967, and possibly since the Palestinian rebellion against British imperialism in 1936.
Almost every Arab town and village has seen burning tyres, barricades, stone-throwing, pitched battles between youth and the Israeli military, tear gas, rubber bullets and curfews. Television newscasts of the repression by the army have rekindled memories of the brutality shown by the South African state to black township youth, two or three years earlier.
The uprising has involved the overwhelming majority of the population. But at its core have been the Palestinian workers and youth. Two decades of occupation have drawn the majority of Palestinians into the Israeli economy, effectively proletarianising the majority of the population. A series of general strikes, with many workers staying away from work for many weeks, have taken place, and solidarity strikes have extended across the 'Green Line' = to involve Arab workers in Israel.
Repression
The response of the Israeli Government has been to intensify repression to an unprecedented degree, doubling its forces in the West Bank and tripling them in Gaza. There are now more troops holding down the population of Gaza than there were in all the occupied areas after their initial conquest. Many soldiers have adopted an almost indiscriminate policy of 'shoot to kill', firing at Palestinian youth "like rabbits", as one UN official in Gaza noted. Only marginally less appalling is the policy of deliberate beatings and the breaking of limbs of those youth and workers unfortunate enough to be caught by soldiers.
The explosion of discontent and the resilience of the Palestinians has come as an unpleasant surprise to the Israeli ruling class. It will only be by the saturation deployment of troops, the imposition of generalised curfews, and by naked brutality, that Israel can restore the occupied areas, as a British Minister once said of Northern Ireland.
by Peter Jackson
to "an acceptable level of violence But, as the overwhelming majority of Palestinians believe, their uprising will prove in the long run to have been a decisive turning point in their struggle for a homeland.
The scale of the uprising is a marvellous vindication of the Marxist view that the struggle of the Palestinians for a homeland will be successtul only as a mass movement, based on the programme of socialist revolution. It is a refutation of all the theories of guerrillaism -by which it was alleged that serious struggle was not possible under the occupation and that 'military' struggle had to be launched from outside.
The uprising has developed the political consciousness and self-conf idence of the Palestinian people, and at the same time it has had profound effects inside Israel, undermining the political basis of Zionism. In that sense, more has been achieved in a few months of mass struggle than in decades of futile 'military' actions conducted from the outside in the name of the Palestinian struggle.
The underlying causes of the uprising, acknowledged even by Israeli politicians as a spontaneous outburst, are the years of repression and the social and economic hardships faced by the Palestinians. Alongside the modern state of Israel the occupied areas have an economy that more closely resembles the Third World. Gaza and the West Bank are a captive market and a reservoir of cheap labour for Israeli
'more has been achieved in a fe months of mass struggle than in decades of futile 'military'
actions conducted from the outside the name of the Palestinian strugg
le
capitalism, while the population are denied basic democratic and national rights. In the twenty year occupation 30% of the available land of the Gaza strip has been confiscated for the benefit of 2,500 Jewish settlers, while the remaining 600,000 Arabs are compressed into 365 square kilometres, making them one of the most denselypopulated peoples on the planet.
On the West Bank, more than half of the agricultural. land-often the most fertile-has been taken over for military use and for about 65,000 Jewish settlers. Arab-owned orchards are bull-dozed, trees are uprooted and cultivated land is ploughed over, while literally billions of dollars are poured into providing a modern infrastructure of communications, roads, dwellings, irrigation and development for Jewish settlers, outnumbered fifteen to one by Arabs.
Arab farmers and villages have been denied the necessary permission to sink
new new from with lager not { room with your you
wells, provide irrigation or erect buildings. "Settlers come here the Soviet Union and build homes American dollars", one Arab vilcommented, "but a villager canjet permission to build two more is on his ancestral land. If you build ut a licence they will demolish house. If you apply for a licence don't get it."
Hell-hole
The Arab economies of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, always weak, have been consciously stifled by Israel. Thousands of young Palestinians have been forced to seek employment abroad, particularly during the oil boom in the Gulf. Tens of thousands have been forced to find employment as daylabourers in Israel, crossing the 'Green Line' every day to take up the worstpaid, most menial jobs. These Arab commuters are not allowed to stay overnight in Israel and have little protection in relation to health and safety. Nor are they allowed to join the Israeli trade union federation, the Histadruth. To add insult to injury, Palestinians pay income tax and VAT to the Israeli state, which is not returned to the territories, except as clubs and bullets. Since 1967, it has been estimated, Palestinians in the occupied areas have paid $800m, two and a half times more than the total public investment in their area during that period.
[page 29]
The houses of Palestinians accused of demonstrating against Israell occupation are regularly demolished. The Israeli government's austerity measures, especially in the last few years, with their effects on the occupied territories, and, in addition, the decline in the oil industry, have meant increased economic burdens on the Palestinians. Their discontent over occupation has been fuelled by increasing poverty, overcrowding and unemploy- Every year 3,000 Palestinian students graduate and many of them can only find menial jobs in the territories or in Israel. Gaza, perhaps the worse of the two areas, was described by the Jerusalem Post, as "a hell-hole hopeless mass of nearly 600,000 Palestinians, most of them refugees and their descendants, cooped up in a tiny southwestern corner of the land and cut off from the main body of their compatriots... the population density equals Hong Kong's but its economy is a model of backwardness.
that in the Any political activity remotest way seeks to articulate Palestinian rights is effectively banned, as are newspapers and writers, invariably on the pretext that they 'support terrorism'. On the same spurious grounds the activities of Palestinian trade unions are disrupted or banned outright. Arrested activists are liable to detention without trial, beating or expulsion from their homeland to a foreign country. Collective nunichment_hlnung demolishing the houses of anyone of 'terrorist'
activity, irrespective of who lives in the house or their connection with the suspect-is carried on as a matter of policy. The policies used by the Israeli ruling class to crush the recent uprising have only added to the mountain of anger, hatred and frustration. Beatings and shootings are such a common part of everyday life in the occupied territories, and the culprits are so well protected by Israeli 'law', that Palestinians have little confidence in grievances being redressed through the courts. While Palestinian suspects are treated with the utmost harshness-usually with the Israeli 'Justice' Minister joining in the frenzied, authorities have Jewish murderers and terrorists with an astonishing leniency, letting one, for example, take a 'holiday' in America during his (brief) spell of imprisonment.
Uprising The brutal, arbitrary and repressive military regime in the occupied areas, combined with the economic backwardness, constitute a finished recipe for social explosions. Even before the uprising, researchers noted the increasing frequency and the tendency of oppositinn maramonte to hol tions by the local population, rather than acts of individual terrorism sponsored or planned on the This process reached its logical development in the uprising. The prepared to face heavily armed soldiers with rocks, iron cocktails, even in the knowledge that some of them could be shot and killed. It is no accident that Gaza is known as 'the Soweto of the Middle East'. The mean age of the population is 14 years. Tiny children have been involved in demonstrations, stone-throwing or building barricades. Of the 4,000 or so detained, the overwhelming majority are under 20 and some arrested have been as young as ten.
For Israel, the occupation is becoming a growing nightmare. In demographic terms alone it is a time-bomb: vithin about 25 years, the Arabs of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza wil outnumber the Jews. Even before these upheavals, the Jerusalem Post was moved to comment that the status quo is a "prescription for war and disaster" Increasingly, Israeli youth are becoming disillusioned with the official message of Zionism, which was to offer a safe homeland for Jews from around the world. Instead, Israel seems to offer only unending war and occupation, and steadily worsening economic sacrifice to
[page 30]
MIR Summer 1988: Middle East
shoulders of Isracli workers, subtracting allowances and subsidies, is equivalent to 36 per cent of Gross National Product, more than it was after the 1967 war, the Yom Kippur War or the Lebanon War of 1982.
The Israeli economy. weak on a global scale, will be severely affected by the coming world slump. Workers are already suffering cuts in living standards. The last budget, for example, cut state expenditure on health, education. and a whole range of other services. Increasingly, Israeli workers will be forced to struggle to defend their jobs from economic retrenchments and closures. Yet enormous resources are wasted on war and the repression of the Arab population. 22 per cent of GNP goes on defence. All Israeli youth have three years military service (two for women), followed by six weeks in the reserves every year until they are 55. After five major wars there still seems to be no final peace in sight. Defence Minister Rabin. in a speech last year. raised the possibility of yet another Arab-Israeli war after the Iran-Iraq war comes to an end.
Alienation
Many Israelis, gloomy about their future in the 'promised land. have voted with their feet. In 1987, there were 3,000 more emigrating from Israel than immigrating. A pall of doubt and disillusion hangs over the youth in particular. A former secretary of the Histadruth Yitzhak Ben-Aharon. lamented the younger generation "alienated from the vision, the classic ideals, of the labour movement...
"They face an entirely ditferent reality", he complains, " "... one in which every 18-year-old becomes part of an occupying army, a prison warder, an oppressor of women, children, and students... we have created a murky incomprehensible system in which nothing grows-no new leadership, no charisma in the younger generation, no clarity of vision. There is only a deep cynicism and alienation."
Typical of the alienated youth were the Tel-Aviv school students who, last October, wrote an open letter to Rabin, declaring that they were not prepared to serve in the occupied territories. This is only a small indication of the growing doubt in the minds of many young people. For every one who would sign such a letter at present, there are probably hundreds who serve in the occupation forces grudgingly wishing there was a way out of the cycle of beatings, demonstrations and death.
In this increasingly intolerable situation, understanding that things cannot simnlv on on as before, a section of the
Israeli ruling class has supported the idea of a peace conference, not as a means of granting Palestinians a homeland, but as a device to defuse the explosive situation on which they are sitting. Illusions in the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian question have taken root among sections of the peace movement and the left of the labour movement in israci. It only it were possible. the argument goes. for the Israeli government and the PLO to agree to peace talks. then there could be a settlement and the end of the occupation.
But these ideas overlook the fundamental obstacles to a Palestinian homeland. arising from the class interests of any likely participants in such a conference, principally the USA. Israel and Jordan. Their overriding concern is not and never can be the interests of the Palestinian workers. They are worried only about the interests of their own ruling classes. Their main preoccupation is the political stability of the region and the maintenance of the system that guarantees their rent. interest and profit.
The economic costs of repression and the political effects in Israel and internationally, mean that in the long run Palestinian resistance threatens the stability of Israel itself. King Hussein of Jordan is no less concerned about the possible fall-out from the uprising. About 60 per cent of the Kingdom's population. on the East bank of the River Jordan. are Palestinian. with family, cultural and religious ties with the population on the West Bank. Moreover, Jordan is also facing economic crisis. There are currently 40.000 officially unemployed. according to the Jordanian Labour Minister. "not less than 75% of them graduates of secondary schools, community colleges and universities.
King Hussein's touching 'concern' for the Palestinians has never extended beyond his own security and the continuation of the Hashemite dynasty. In the revolutionary events of 1970-71. he
is
accid Gaza known Soweto Middle
is no
ent
did hesitate to massacre thousands of Palestinian fighters and civilians-assisted by the political weakness and hesitations of the PLO leadership-when he thought his throne was under threat. Since December Jordan has done everything possible to tone down news coverage of the uprising and to clamp down on solidarity movements on the East Bank. The regime has expelled three times more Palestinian 'troublemakers' than Israel. It is out of concern for his own skin that Hussein is now frantic for an agreement with Israel that would rescue him from the threat of social revolution.
The USA. likewise, is concerned only for its own prestige. profits and influence in the Middle East. Because of the strategic significance of this area of the world, especially its oil reserves, it is in the interests of imperialism to maintain political stability at all costs. If the Us administration, through George Shultz, is prepared to consult with leading members of the Palestine National Council (notwithstanding the attempts to close the PLO mission in New York, on the grounds of it being a terrorist organisation), it is in no way a recognition of the 'legitimate rights' of the Palestinians. Imperialism does not recognise the legitimate rights ot peoples anywhere in the world, or. for that matter. the rights of its own workers at home. The 'Shultz Initiative' is a reflection of the need of imperialism to defuse a crisis that threatens Middle East stability.
Palestine state
It is a fundamental mistake to imagine that a peace conference representing capitalist states and sponsored by the most powerful imperialist power of all could ever bring about a solution in the interests of the working masses of Palestine. That would apply whether such a conference was based on bilateral talks or a multi-national conference under UN auspices.
The only agreement that would be satisfactory to the mass of the Palestinians would be one giving a cast-iron guarantee of self- determination. Palestinian workers would be satisfied with nothing less than the complete removal of the apparatus of military repression and the full establishment of democratic rights. to vote, strike. take part in political activities. and so on. Yet a Palestinian state, roughly corresponding to the area of the West Bank and Gaza, would be completely unviable on the basis of capitalism because the economy could not provide the basic necessities of life for the population of approaching two million.
In 1984, those employed in industry
[page 31]
in the Gaza Strip numbered only 6,383
and over 90% of the establishments in
all branches of industry employed seven
or less, mainly in sweat-shops producing
shoes, textiles, furniture or carpets.
Subcontracting between Israeli indust-
rial firms and Gazan businessmen has
been Israel's major form of investment
in Gaza's economy.
The West Bank economy is little
better off. As Meron Benvenisti,
former deputy mayor of Jerusalem
points out in his West Bank Report,
1987, "industry is the most backward
part of the economy... almost one third
of the people employed in West Bank industry are self-employed in 1,200 es-
tablishments. 350 establishments employed 6,600 people... West Bank indust-
ry remains underdeveloped, small scale and traditional. With the exception of a few larger plants, there is no evidence of an emerging modern industrial sector."
In the occupied territories as a whole, productive investment (machinery, transport and other equipment) is only 14% of the total as compared to 58% in Israel. In 1985, the total GDP in the occupied areas was $944m, dwarfed by Israel's GDP of $22,050m.
These facts emphasise the way in which the Israeli ruling class has sought to use the West Bank and Gaza as a source of cheap labour: like undeveloped 'Bantustans' where small scale labour-intensive work can be farmed out and from where thousands of workers can be drawn into Israeli factories and building sites without the inconvenience of having to give them democratic rights.
But the social and economic weakness of the Palestinian economy has enormous political implications because in a genuinely free Palestinian homeland the whole economic basis of the state would be unstable. Capitalism is incapable of satisfying the elementar! needs of the Palestinian population. Neither could there be any possibility of such an economy absorbing large numbers of refugees who may wish to return from Lebanon. Syria or Jordan.
Palestine would be born, not with flags and bunting, but in a condition of economic crisis and political convulsions as workers sought to translate their new-found freedoms into land. jobs, homes, schools, hospitals, welfare facilities and living standards. Because of the economic impasse, there would be enormous pressure from the masses for radical or revolutionary policies in their interests. putting a question mark against the continued existence of landlordism and capitalism.
It is not the fear of a PLO government that haunte Terapli sanitalicte anot
The last thing Jordan's King Hussein wants is an independent revolutionary Palestine on his doorstep.
King Hussein, but the possibility of a Palestinian homeland becoming a focus for a revolutionary movement and political instability that would sweep across the Arab world and undermine Israel to an extent far worse than even the present uprising.
This explains why the capitalist class of Israel would never accept a genuine Palestinian homeland. Furthermore, whatever may be the public position of the various Arab governments, claiming to represent the interests of the Palestinians. they would oppose a Palestinian state with no less determination. The last thing King Hussein wants is a revolutionary state on his doorstep. and while he needs to defuse the movement in the occupied territories, he will do everything in his power to stop a West Bank/Gaza state.
Peace
The proposals currently favoured by George Shultz. and the subject of so many illusions among 'peace-niks' in Israel, are designed to retain Israeli control-for 'security' reasons-of the greater part of the occupied land, while allowing the big population centres in the territories to be administered in some way by Jordan. It is far removed from the concept of an independent state, and. not surprisingly, has found no support among Palestinians.
Unfortunately, even many of the best lefts in the Isracli labour movement, because they do not tear themselves away from the limitations of a capitalist perspective, end up demanding the same "securit guarantees as the
variably alienating themselves from
Palestinian aspirations. On a capitalist basis, a 'peace agreement' could be no тоге • than a joint Jordanian-Israeli policing agreement, with a measure of very limited local autonomy to dress it up. It could never get the support of the Palestinians themselves who are bitterl opposed to any form of Jordanian rule.
Yet even this suggested agreement, leading to a very weak and partial 'autonomy'-and therefore opposed by the Palestinians-would be furiously fought by the extreme right wing in Israel and the militant settlers movements. When the Camp David agreements were signed and Israel agreed to hand back the Sinai Desert to Egypt, there were violent protests against the dismantling of Jewish settlements in Northern Sinai. Thousands of settlers converged on the settlement of Yamit, and its evacuation by the Israeli army was fought over for a month, against a background of fierce debate in Israel itself. Any peace agreement involving the dismantling of West Bank settlements, or even a threat to their security, would unleash a storm of opposition that would put the Yamit protest in the shade. One right wing Knesset member warned the government of 'civil war' if there were any attempts to give up the West Bank.
For all these reasons it is a dangerous illusion to see a solution to the questions of peace and a Palestinian homeland in negotiations among the representatives of capitalism.
Israel-Palestine is a special illustration and a confirmation of the theory of
[page 32]
'The national emancipation of the MIR Summer 1988: Middle East Leon Trotsky over 80 years ago. Trotsky, writing of the perspective for the approaching Russian revolution, explained that in the modern imperialist epoch, the capitalist class was incapable of solving the remaining tasks of the democratic revolution, including the These question of national liberation. could only be resolved, as the October Revolution of 1917 demonstrated, on the basis of the struggle of the working class mobilised behind a socialist prog- The capitalist class in the Arab countrics, including the Palestinian, is organically incapable of a serious struggle for democratic rights and for the his toric union of the Arab nation. Every Arab state is a bonapartist regime of one sort or another, denying democratic rights to its workers. Arab landlordism and capitalism is incapable of a serious struggle for the national emancipation of the Palestinian people precisely because their horizons and class interests are bounded by discased and crisis-ridden system itself. capitalism, imperialism, are no less capable of democratic rights to Palestinians. Zionism The struggle for the rights of the Arabs in Israel and the occupied arcas is inseparable from the struggle of the working class for the revolutionary transformation of socicty. It will not be the Palestinian "notables". sives, friends of Palestine' or any other vague and ill-defined social grouping that will achieve a Palestinian homeland and peace in the Middle East. It will be the working class, both in Israel and Palestine, mobilised around Marxist A fundamental barrier to the Palestinian struggle is the consciousness of Jewish workers in Israel, whose traditions of insecurity and 'siege' mentality is eagerly exploited by capitalism. Time Palestinian people cannot be separated from their social emancipation. That means as much a struggle against Arab landlordism, capitalism and reaction, as against Israeli after time, the right wing exploit the holocaust, to raise the spectre of the Jews being pushed into the sea by Arab armies. Israeli capitalism may be an unless Jewish workers can be offered an alternative that unambiguously accepts their right to a state in the Middle East. they will not come out from behind its walls and they will remain in the grip of Unfortunately, such an alternative has not been offered by the leadership of the PLO. On the contrary. its adop tion of a so-called 'military' which has meant a programme of inconducted against Jews. has completely repelled the vast strategy of the Palestinian leadership. guerrilla groups which make up the PLO, has based on the idea that the national cmancipation of the Palestinian people could be achieved within existing social on the basis of capitalism. The policy is based, explicitly or implicitly, on national rather than strugglc.
strategy corresponds to the needs of the Arab regimes who have backed the PLO. The substantial financial and diplomatic support given has always subject to the political situation and whatever is in the interests of cach Arab government at any one time. But when given. it has in every case been dependent on the PLO leadership not 'rocking the boat' in the Arab countries. The PLO leadership has gone along with this, refusing to when revoluchallenge state power tionary events were unfolding in Jordan (1970) and later in Lebanon (1975). on the grounds that they were 'guests' in these countries.
Different components of the PLO "socialist" or describe themselves even 'Marxist', but they have made no impact on guiding the policy of the PLO leadership as a whole towards the programme of socialist revolution. Rather political tremendous usc the than authority of the Palestinian movement, not to mention the military capability, as levers for social change, they have always done their best to avoid the question. Icading. in both Jordan and Lebanon. to betrayal and disaster. The failure of the PLO to provide a revolutonary leadership to mobilise the Arab masses on a class basis against the reactionary Arab regimes, has lett the Palestinian masses politically disarmed, so that one Arab regime atter another has been able to betray them. More Palestinian fighters have been massacred by the PLO's allies, the Syrians and the Jordanians. than by the Isracli army.
Spontaneous Yet. because it is seen as the embodiment of the struggle for national emancipation. the PLO retains the support of the overwhelming majority of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. This is despite the fact that the leadership has 'led' the movement from one disaster to another in thirty years.
Although the PLO may claim the credit for the recent unrest in the occupied arcas. in fact the uprisings have been largely spontaneous. Palestinian leadership has never had a policy of genuine mass mobilisation, the confidence in left wing lacking workers, and the right wing fearing that the class questions would threaten the PLO's financial backers. The growth of Islamic fundamentalism, particularly in Gaza. is to an extent a reaction to the inactivity and the failure of the PLO to mobilise any struggle against Israeli
[page 33]
Instead of mass struggle. raising
social and class questions. the PLO
have historically gone along with a
strategy of the armed minority, either
for individual terrorism or as militias in
Jordan or Lebanon. always directed
against the "main enemy Israel. Yet
Arab reaction, the very regimes that
claim to fight for Palestine and give
money to the PLO. are as much an
obstacle to Palestinian self-
determination, as is the Isracli capitalist
class. The national emancipation of the
Palestinian people cannot be separated
from their social emancipation. That
means as much a struggle against Arab landlordism, capitalism and rcaction, as
agaınst Israel capitalism and imperialism.
Now, in the wake of the mass
movements in the occupied territories, and in tandem with the shift of opinion in Europe, America and to an extent within Israel. the PLO leaders have adopted the policy of negotiations to achieve a homeland of Palestine. The significance of the Algiers Palestine National Council. in unifying the PLO. lay precisely in the fact that it empowered Arafat to move in that direction. The original policy ot the PLO. for the establishment of a secular democratic' state in a unitary Palestine. has been quietly dropped as a result of the failure of the PLO and the Arab regimes to destroy israel militarily. However, even this position, implying recognition of the state of Israel. is ambiguous. leaving ihe right wing Zionists able to argue that any independent Palestinian staid. however small. would be a temporary stage in a longterm strategy to destroy Israci altogether.
Whenever there have been acts of individual terrorism in the past. for example hi-jackings or the murder of Israeli civilians. it has strengthened the Israeli right, and has provided the excuse for the unleashing of state terrorism against Arabs. But, in contrast, the effect of having to suppress a mass movement including men, women and school-children. together with the combined general strike of Arab workers. have brought only demoralisation and division to Israel.
There has been the biggest-ever demonstrations against the occupation. with over 50,000 in Tel-Aviv and, on the same day, 20,000 in Nazareth. The Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit) movement, which originated in the unrest among Isracli solidiers during the Lebanon War, published a list of 1,600 reserve soldiers, including two generals, who have called for an end to the occupation. There is a possibility of a swing to the right within Israeli politics in the short term, as an immediate
Israeli troops move into the Gaza.
reaction to the upheavals in the territories and the 'threat' to Israel perceived by many Jewish workers. But in the longer run, the uprising will have driven home the fact that the 20-year occupation cannot continue in the old way. The success of the uprising, however limited, in undermining support for the Israeli occupation, has been achieved despite and not because of the historic strategy of the PLO leaders. Moreover, this success can be built upon, it a movement is developed among Palestinians which is based upon continued mass resistance, combined with a programme of class demands that would have an effect on Israeli troops and workers.
Federation
A bridge can be built between Jewish and Arab workers by a movement which fought under the banner of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East. Such a movement would fight for democratic rights and a national homeland for Palestinians, while directing class appeals to Jewish workers and troops. It would defend the class interests of Israeli workers, and support the right of the Israeli nation to its own self-determination, within a socialist federation.
Capitalism cannot maintain even the present living standards of the population of Israel-Palestine, let alone its democratic or national rights. The greatly intensified social and political divisions within Israel could even raise the possibility in the future of some form of military government, as the capitalist class wrestles to maintain "stability'. An Israeli 'Bonaparte' would
pose a serious threat to the democratic rights cherished by Jewish workers for 40 years and would be the greatest ever challenge to the labour movement.
It can only be in the overthrow of the system, through the joint struggle of Arab and Jewish workers, that there can be a way out of the present terrible impasse. The only alternatives to Marxist ideas will in the long run be bloody wars and possibly more mass expulsions on an even greater scale than in 1948- 50. It is capitalism and the imperialist domination of the Middle East in the past which have created the conditions for the national wars and antagonisms. Capitalısm, especially in the modern epoch, is intrinsicaily incapable of resolving the acute problems it has created. The labour movement can only rely upon its own struggles and its own organisations, guided by the internationalist traditions of socialism.
Israel and the occupied areas will face enormous convulsions in the future, as economic and national crises develop in parallel with each other. No section of the working class will be left untouched by these events. The key factor that is missing from the Middle East equation is the subjective one: a Marxist movement that can provide the necessary leadership and programme to point the way forward.
Marxists take as their starting point the fact that the fortunes of Arab and Jewish workers are inextricably bound together and the key task, therefore, is to provide an alternative programme to all those dragging the region into the swamp. All the political parties, including those linked to the labour movement, will undergo unprecedented splits and upheavals in the future. Despite the
[page 34]
MIR Summer 988: Middle East
right wing character of the leadership of the Labour Party and the Histadruth trade union federation, organically tied to the Zionist state, there will be many movements of Israeli workers in the future that will shake up these organisations from top to bottom.
The Histadruth is a monstrously bureaucratic machine, owning , Israel's biggest bank as well as industries, and governing a large part of Israel's health and welfare system. Almost 30 per cent of its members actually work directly or indirectly for it. Despite regular elections-like mini general elections in themselves-the big majority of trade union members feel remote from the leadership and in periods of real struggle, it is to the factory and workplace shop-stewards committees that the workers turn. Nevertheless, in the period of economic and industrial storms opening up in Israel, unofficial and official workers' struggles will produce big upheavals within the trade union's structures. Among the demands that workers will raise will be for the democratisation of the Histadruth, for the regular election of officials, and for the officials to receive the same wages as the workers they represent.
Integration
A product of the increased discussion and debate within the Histadruth will be the growth of left wing and Marxist ideas among the rank and file. The Marxists will be in the forefront of the struggle for a fighting trade union leadership to protect the jobs and wages of workers, to democratise the unions and to end discrimination against Sephardic Jews and Arabs. Marxists will also fight for the greatest possible solidarity between workers and for the right of Palestinian workers, including day-labourers, to be able to join the trade union federation and fight for better rights and conditions through it.
The break from Labour in 1984 has resulted in a shift to the left within Mapam, a left Zionist party. Many of its rank and file are genuinely searching for policies and a political programme that can point a way out of the present impasse. Mapam members and especially the Mapam Youth have a serious responsibility to examine the ideas of the movement, including their own party's policies. Many will come to the conclusion that it is only the programme and perspectives ot Marxism that can offer a way out.
It will be the Marxists in the labour movement who will be the most consistent in raising the need for joint struggle by Arab and Jewish workers, first and foremost in defence of living
The US government has made no headway persuading the Shamir government in Israel to support thelr 'initiatives'.
standards and the rights that workers already possess. There must be an uncompromising struggle to detend jobs, wages and conditions, as well as the social wage in the form of educational, health, public transport, welfare and other services. But Marxists must also raise the right of the Palestinian people, as with all other nations, to self-determination. That is not to advocate the division of the region into small states, which would be a reactionary step. The weakness of the Palestinian economy and, on a world scale, the Israeli economy, should be used by Marxists to explain the need for a Socialist Federation of States, with the right of self-determination of all nations and guarantees for national minorities, and a harmonious interlinking of the different economies of the Middle East. That would mean the further integration of the Israeli and Palestinian economies-but on the basis of national equality, with a balanced development and investment programme.
Freed of the constraints of the profit system and the shackles of the big imperialist economies. a state-owned economy in Israel- Palestine would be run democratically and openly through elected committees of workers. consumers and technicians. In this way a Socialist Federation could offer the right of return to both the Palestinian and Jewish diaspora, without any threat to the lives and living standards of the peoples of the area. The socialist organisation of society, within a Socialist Federation of Middie East States, would release enormous reservoirs of skill, resources and wealt
that could make it possible for both Israel and Palestine to successfully absorb refugees and immigrants. Where at present billions of dollars are spent every year on weapons of destruction, the same monies invested in industry and agriculture could develop the lives of the entire population to undreamt-of heights.
Sweep
of events
In few of the conflicts around the world do the issues seem as complex and as intractable as those in the Middle East. But the ideas and methods of Marxism, approaching the question from the point of view of a class analysis, can cut through the tangle of complexities and difficulties.
Marxists can be encouraged by the fact that Israeli and Palestinian workers will be shaken out of their own ways, as much as anything by the sweep of events that will affect the world around them. Titanic upheavals impend around the whole of the world: in the advanced capitalist countries, in the underdeveloped world and in the Stalinist states. There is not one part of the world that is not in the throes of economic and political crisis in one form or another at the present time. In a decade or two, the entire political landscape of the planet will have changed, not once, but many times over. Like the colossal geological catastrophes that in prehistoric times shaped oceans, mountains s and continents, so the political cataclysms in the future will shape a new world, not least in the Middle East.
[page 35]
Equal opportunity?
LETTERS
Polluted beaches
Send letters to MIR, 3 - 13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the ideas of the Editorial Board. We reserve the right to shorten excessively long letters.
Dear Comrades,
The review article in the las MIR on acid rain only touched on the pollution of the waterways and beaches. In fact a whole article could have been written just on the situation here in Southend
During the summer months Southend seafront is still packed with day-trippers, in spite of the competition from cheap package holidays to the Costa Brava. However a report published last year would probably deter anyone from coming to Southend ever again. The report was compiled by microbiologists at Surrey University and sponsored by the environmental pressure group, Greenpeace. It documented 74 British beaches that failed to reach EEC standards-Southend was one of them.
The immediate reason for this is the millions of tonnes of raw untreated sewage that is pumped out into the Thames Estuary. Some of this has found its way back onto our golden sands. Who wants to see their children building sandcastles amidst used tampons, surgical swabs and slurry? Yet that is what often stained our shore last summer. In fact the situation got so bad that local doctors were warning their patients to avoid the beach which they viewed as a serious health hazard. This is a far cry from the pre-war years when Southend's seawater was noted for its health giving properties.
Protests
to the local Ang-
lian Water Authority were futile. The Authority claimed to be acting on the recommendations of the government which has continually put pressure on it to reduce costs, even at the expense of ordinary people. Consequently it has been unable to 'waste' money
treating sewage and has simply pumped it out to sea and hoped for the best. The only concession they have offered is a new extended outflow pipe to take the sewage further out to sea- there is no mention of making it safe first as there is obviously no
made from money to that.
But the foul state of the beaches is only the most obvious sign of the polluted sea. Less visible but even more frightening is the radioactive liquid waste spewed into the Thames from the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Horwell and the Ministry of Defence at Aldermaston. This and the harmful chemicals that flood into the sewers from factories and homes all make for a deadly cocktail that is killing the sea.
Large amounts of this untreated effluent causes deoxygenation of the water which kills off fish and other marine life by the thousands. This in turn affects the local fishing industry and also the feeding habits of the 150,000 wading birds who winter on the nearby marshes.
Last Autumn Tory councillors organised an oyster festival at the picturesque village of Paglesham to celebrate
be
Dear Comrades,
The collapse of the London Labour councils, putting through cuts to balance the books, is part of a process over the last five years of ducking and diving from the legal measures imposed by the Tory government. And yet the London working class placed their trust in these councils to shield them from the worst excesses of Tory economic policy.
The left reformists, particularly in London, have an analysis of society which has no role for the working class as a whole but only for some sections. As Ken Livingstone put it in Marxism Today, 'We believe in winning a majority for socialism through work on the minorities-all the minorities added up, make a majority". Marxists fight harder than anyone for every reform possible to lessen the burden of capitalist society for every section of society. Yet without clearly identifying the class enemy, the plethora of committees set up under these councils lurched into a position of dismissing all white workers as being racist, sexist, and anti-gay.
In Haringey, the Lesbian and Gay Working Party put forward a whole number of demands which went into the council manifesto. They started not from explaining in a calm and sober manner why lesbians and gay men face real problems, the origins of anti-gay prejudice etc. They embarked without proper consultation among the local community or within the council workforce on a policy for 'positive images of lesbians and gays.
There is a desperate need to
this venerable local industry. Then the ugly truth leaked out-that Paglesham no longer has a single oysterman! The local beds had been destroyed years earlier by the polluted water and also by the barnacle-killing paint used on the yachts of the super-rich moored at
stem anti-gay prejudice whipped up by the Tory controlled media. There has been an escalation of physical attacks by far right groups and the beginnings of dismissals from workplaces on the pretence of AIDS. A recent survey of
Lohion sho ged hat h6 %
had considered suicide because of the pressures exerted on them in school.
The tragedy is that mishandling equal opportunities by these councils will make it more difficult to defend lesbian and gay workers in the workplace, and from attacks by roaming gangs or the police. Any illusions that lesbians and gays had that these councils have a strategy that can defend them are being destroyed
The labour and trade union movement should counterpose to these paper tigers calling themselves 'equal opportunity' units, the real equality achievable by councils which fight to eradicate the appalling conditions the majority of workers have to endure. We must demand the resources to serve the needs of all the community, which will include proper campaigns to take up discrimination in the workplace; for democratic control of the police to curtail the escalation of attacks on clubs and bars, and for education which provides the best possible teaching, where parents, students and the best advisors are fully involved in the drawing up of the school curricula. We also need democratic control of the media which sows the seeds of prejudice.
Jon Johnson, Newham
nearby marinas.
If immediate action is not taken, the beaches and seas could be beyond saving. If we can no longer safely bathe in the sea how long will it be before we are unable to drink the water in our taps?
Paul Barratt. Southend.
[page 36]
S CI
AIDS: Scramble for profits
hampers research
The World Health Or-
estimated ganisation that by the end of 1987 between 5 and 10 million people had been infected with the AIDS virus. The WHO expects a ten fold increase in the number of cases in the next five years. Modern means of mass transportation have turned AIDS into the worst ever world epidemic, or pandemic.
While the virus was confined to Africa and to homosexuals in the
countries, capitalist governments were complacent. But by 1987 AIDS was the biggest killer of women between 25 and 34 in New York City.
Mortality rate
Reagan acted when figures showed that the virus presented a threat to the profits of big business. The US General Accounting Office estimated that AIDS will cost the American economy $55 billion a year by 1991 due to the premature death of tens of thousands of young people. However, these figures are based on an assumed mortality rate of 30%. Many experts think the true figure could be 70% or 80%.
The delay in taking effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease, or more correctly syndrome, has cost thousands of lives.
A recently published book by two New Scientist reporters, The Search for the Virus, provides a good example of the way scientific research works
in capitalist society.
There was cut-throat competition in what became a race to isolate the AIDS viruses between the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the US National Cancer Institute. What was at stake was not only the prestige of being the first past the post, and a possible Nobel Prize, but also the financial benefits.
Scientific and medical laboratories have links with the drug corporations. Marketing a kit to test for the virus could be a billion dollar business.
The Pasteur scientists were in the lead and they patented a test for the virus in July 1983. Meanwhile the rival National Cancer Institute claimed to have isolated a different virus.
When the Pasteur virus was discovered they passed it over to the rival laboratory for evaluation as is common practice.
The NCI subsequently claimed that the virus was damaged in transit and was not examined.
Then in April 1984 Margaret Heckler, US Health Secretary, triumphantly announced that the NCI had discovered the AIDS virus. Shortly after, the test for the NCI virus, called HTLV-3, was granted a US patent. The application by the Pasteur Institute for a US patent was refused.
It subsequently emerged that the Pasteur virus, called LAV, was indistinguishable from HTLV-3.
Coincidences like this are not unknown in research but evidence
which emerged the following year cast doubt on the role of the head of the NCI laboratory, Robert Gallo.
The AIDS virus is of fiendish complexity. Its ability to mutate into a slightly different form is five times greater than the 'flu virus. It changes its form within an individual over time. Different nelghbourhoods in New York are associated with different types of AIDS virus. This makes the search for a cure very difficult since there is a constantly moving target.
It also means that the chances of finding two
viruses identical separated by thousands of miles and a year in time are very small. The Pasteur Institute hired an American lawyer to prepare a case to sue the US government.
Dirty dealings
evidence As the mounted it was clear that a long drawn out legal battle was in prospect, involving the two leading Institutes in the battle against AIDS. The wrangle was having a serious effect on the progress of research. Eventually a deal was cobbled together which swept all the dirty dealings under the carpet. It was announced by Reagan at a meeting with Chirac in March 1987.
When the test for AIDS was developed in
the British America government refused to Implement it here. There was a six months delay at
INNOR
Kine a
THE
SEARCH
FOR THE
VIRUS
THE SCIENTIFIC
DISCOVERY OF AIDS
ANG DES
FOR A CURE
The Search for the Virus,
by Steve Connor and Sharon Kingman. Penguin,
1988, £3.95 a crucial time in monitoring the syndrome. The DHSS denied that this was due to the time it took the British drug company Wellcome to develop their own test.
But the Financial Times commented: "The delay in introducing screening in Britain has given Wellcome the chance to leap into the business of producing diagnostic kits for AIDS, a market that could be worth 100-200 million pounds worldwide by the late 1980s and which is now dominated by US companies..."
political
Cynical manoeuvring and financial trickery have marked the history of the campaign against AIDS. Drug corporations with the help of their national governments are all trying to cash in. Readers of this book will be more than ever open to the need for a socialist programme to eliminate private profit from all aspects of health care and research.
[page 37]