Occupied territories:
The uprising
MIDDLE EAST
They are doing both. At demonstrations, the army will not only arrest people on the street but they will break into nearby houses and take away young people who just happen to be there. This is one way. The second way is planned arrests. They have lists of people, mainly activists. They go around arresting these people according to continues the list, without their being involved directly in the demonstrations or in the uprising.
• Have the recent demonstrations by the Peace Now movement and Yesh
WORLD PUBLIC OPINION continues to be outraged by the brutality of the Israeli repressive forces in the occupied territories, in particular by the shooting of many Palestinian demonstrators. Under this pressure, the Zionist authorities have tried to maneuver, claiming that they were trying to find non-lethal means of maintaining "law and order."
Mahmud Hawari, a representative of the Revolutionary
Communist League, the section of the Fourth International in the Israeli state and occupied territories, explained the facts of the repression and the development of the Palestinian uprising in the following telephone interview on January 27, conducted by Gerry Foley.
W
HAT DOES the Israeli authorities' alleged shift from lethal to non-lethal force to control the Palestinian demonstrations amount to?
This policy is dictated by Yitzhak Rabin, the minister of defence, to counter all the demonstrations, strikes, the popular uprising, by beating up people instead of shooting them. So far, implementing this policy, Rabin is far from curbing the uprising, from curbing the demonstrations in the occupied territories. I think that this is a foolish policy, because if the Palestinian young people who are demonstrating are not deterred by bullets, they are not going to be deterred by beatings.
In the media, Rabin has been talking about a relative calm in the last week. But in the West Bank and Gaza, it is far from being calm so far. Though the Israeli authorities are trying to break demonstrations and put an end to the shopkeepers' strike by force, the strike is still going on. We have less demonstrations, but we are very far
• Has there actually been a noticeable decrease in the use of lethal force?
Does it seem that the Israeli soldiers are less quick to use firearms?
I don't think that there is less use of armed force. I would say the opposite. I don't think that the Israeli soldiers have stopped shooting using live ammunition.
What they do now, in addition to using live ammunition, is they use beatings. They did not get orders to stop shooting.
We hear every now and then that in addition to the beatings in many villages, refugee camps and towns that people are still being hit by live ammunition, rubber bullets, and so on, and hospitalized. So, I think the policy of beating was mainly introduced as a means of revenge, not only against demonstrators, but also against peaceful passers-by who happen to be Palestinian. But it is also meant to get the frustration out of the soldiers, because they have been building up a lot of frustration within themselves during the last few weeks of the uprising. • What do these beatings amount to? Are they deliberate punitive beatings, or do the soldiers just clobber people that they run up against in demon-
Both. Beatings are meted out as a punishment to those who are caught at demonstrations, but there is also random beating. They just stop people in the street and beat them up, regardless of whether they are young men or old men or women or even • Do you have any idea what the total number of prisoners is?
There is a big controversy about the number of prisoners. Israeli sources speak of about 1,500 people picked up. Palestinian and foreign sources talk about several thousand people taken in in the last six to seven weeks of the uprising. • Are there systematic arrests going on, besides the arrests at demonstrations and those of known political activists? Are there systematic roundups in the Palestinian communities?
Gul changed anything? What do they
Since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, there have been a lot of divisions within the Israeli society, a lot of controversy among Israelis about the uprising. That is in public opinion in general, and particularly in the political parties. These divisions and this controversy symbolizes the polarization within the Israeli society which started quite a long time ago, especially after the Lebanese war. The Israeli national consensus has broken down to a large extent. This recent Palestinian uprising has also contributed to this polarization.
The Peace Now movement is known to be a pressure group on the side of the Labor Party. The Peace Now movement has been paralyzed in the last few years, since the formation of the National Unity Government, when the Labor Party joined with the Likud Party to form the government. The Palestinian uprising has forced the leadership of Peace Now movement to react. But they have not taken the sort of position they did after the Lebanese war, when Peace Now raised the slogan for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. The West Bank and Gaza are a different matter from Lebanon, or south Lebanon. They are much more important to the Israeli state.
After several weeks of the uprising, Peace Now finally decided to move. But the slogans that they have raised in the demonstrations that they have organized -two small ones in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and the big one a week ago in Tel Aviv, which drew several tens of thousands of people — have not been radical ones. They did not call for the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the West Bank and Gaza, or even from the most heavily populated parts of these territories. The main slogans are along the lines of "We need a political solution!", and "We don't like what has been done in the occupied territories." No slogans have been raised for solidarity with the Palestinians, or demanding self-determination for the Palestinians or anything like that.
They say that Peace Now is very worried about the Jewish, Zionist character of the state of Israel, that they think that Israel should find a way by which a peaceful political solution can be introduced and that it will have to be part of a political settlement. In other words, Peace Now is advocating a solution very close to the one 3 proposed by Labor Party, which is to nego-
February 8, 1988 • International Viewpoint
MIDDLE EAST tiate with King Hussein for an alternative involving territorial concessions to Jordan. • In the past, the Yesh Gul ["Enough," or "There is a Frontier"] has gone ahead of Peace Now. What has it done in the present situation?
This movement of reserve soldiers, which arose at the beginning of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in fact was kept alive all these years with very, very little activity. Just before the uprising, a discussion started within this movement about refusing to serve in the occupied territories. The question was not resolved. There were people who were saying that you should refuse to serve on the West Bank because these are occupied territories. Others did not have any opinion, while still others said it would have to be a collective refusal to serve and so on and so on.
Now, with the uprising, and especially when the Israeli army was sent to suppress the uprising, the voices calling for a refusal to serve in the occupied territories have become much stronger. During this time also, the movement attracted a lot of people, more activists, more soldiers, who did not like what was being done in the occupied territories. And so naturally the movement has widened. One of its first activities in protesting against the terror and repression on the West Bank and Gaza was a demonstration organized on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, at an army roadblock, in which they raised slogans against the oppression and called on other soldiers not to obey their orders to beat up people. This demonstration drew several hundred
I think that this movement will gain more influence as the results of the suppression of the uprising in the occupied territories and the brutality and the atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers there are exposed in the Israeli society. • What attitude have the Communist Party and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality taken toward the
The Democratic Front and the Communist Party, which is its largest component, were taken by surprise by the uprising. These parties and organizations, especially the Communist Party, were busy trying drum up support for their call for an "International Peace Conference for the Middle East." They neglected organizing Palestinians and Israelis against the policies of the government. So, the uprising just did not fit into their priorities.
These parties, especially the Communist Party, have of course had to support the uprising. But they are far from taking part in it and far from benefitting from it. The Communist Party in Israel finally agreed to calling a general strike for Palestinian population inside Israel, inside the Green Line [which separates the occu4 staci), in the third week in December in seli pied territories from the pre-1967 Israeli International Viewpoint • February 8, 1988 idarity with the uprising. This was as a result of the pressure upon the party from the masses, from the Palestinian masses inside Israel who felt the need to support their brothers and sisters in the West Bank and Gaza. Now the Communist Party at the state-wide level is completely passive, although local branches are trying to be active in support of the uprising. • What about the Progressive List [a coalition of left Israelis, including left Zionists, such as Yuri Avnery and Matti Peled, and various Palestinian
The Progressive list is in even worse shape. It has been going through a number of splits. Only a month or two ago, a group of activists withdrew from the Progressive List because they claimed that the leadership had not progressed very much and because there was a lack of democracy within the movement, among other things. • Were they Palestinians or Israelis?
Mainly Palestinians. They are also very disillusioned with the Israeli part of the list, because they say that in fact most of the movement is made up of Palestinians, but the leadership itself is shared and that gives too much weight to the Israelis in the party. They also said that the party was not not doing very much, that it was not developing. About 30 activists withdrew collectively from the movement. And now the Progressive List sees that it is in very bad shape. There is a danger that it will not get any seats in the next parliamentary election. • Was this split centered in Nazareth?'
Yes, centered in Nazareth and in the northern part of the country, where most of • Within the occupied territories, is there any sort of united organization
The uprising itself was spontaneous. It stemmed from the anger and frustration that has built up during 20 years of occupation. There were no specific reasons for the beginning of the uprising. I think it was just that there was a growing feeling that the occupation could not go on like this and that if Israel is not stopped now, the situation will become worse. People realized that only resistance and struggle will stop
So, in the first few weeks of the uprising, we could see wave after wave of demonstrations and strikes and acts of resistance, which welled up in a sporadic way, and later on activists tried to direct and organize it. So, in the last four or five weeks, we have seen that the uprising has become very well organized, especially in the Gaza Strip. Popular committees have been formed in order to organize the uprising. They are mainly based on coordination among the activists in the several Palestinian factions. In particular, in the Palestinian camps, the popular committees were composed of representatives of all the Palestinian factions in that camp. We can't say that these committees are very well representative of the population, but activists from all factions of the Palestinian movement are involved in them. • What are these factions?
The main factions of the PLO. That includes Fateh, the PFLP, the DFLP, the Communists, the Abu Musa faction, and in some places, as in Gaza, also the Islamic • Was it only in Gaza that the fundamentalists have taken part in the committees?
It has been mainly in the Gaza Strip. In other refugee camps on the West Bank there was a kind of "cease-fire" between the nationalists and fundamentalists. And all efforts were focused against the occupation forces. But we can't say that on the West Bank there was a united front with the fundamentalists. I think this was because in the Gaza Strip, the fundamentalists are much stronger, so that the nationalists were forced to accept this sort of pact with them. • On the West Bank, it was the nationalists who opposed bringing the fundamentalists in?
I don't think we can say they opposed it. It just happened that because the nationalists are the strongest, they simply ignored the fundamentalists. And the fundamentalists just went along and participated in the uprising as organizations or as individuals. • Coula you say that the fundamentalists were the leading force in the Gaza
No. But the international media and particularly the Israeli media have tried portray the fundamentalists as leading the uprising. This is not true at all. What is more, I would say that the uprising in the Gaza Strip was headed not only by activists and leaders of the mainstream of the PLO such as the Fatah people, but also by the left in Gaza. That is, by the PFLP and the DFLP and even the Communists. Some of the leaders, such as Haydar Abdul Shasi, are identified witl the left. He is an important figure in the Gaza Strip and in the uprising. • What about still more conservative forces, such as supporters of the Jordanian regime? Are they involved in this at all?
The popular uprising in the West Bank and Gaza has actually shown that the Jordanian current and the other reactionary currents in the West Bank and Gaza have no 1. The strongest Palestinian support for the Progressive List comes from the Democratic Movement of Nazareth, a heterogeneous opposition to the Communist Party. The latter controls the city administration. Within the Israeli state, the strongest Palestinian communities are in the norther region, especially the mountainous parts.
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popular support whatsoever. They did not even show up and take part in the uprising. And that is in contrast to their attempt before the uprising to gain some power and support. Through buying people off, offering money and jobs and so, there was a kind of revival of these currents, especially the pro-Jordanians and the pro-Abu Zaim, Abdullah Abdullah people. You know, the one who defected from the PLO and supports Jordan. He split from the PLO and fled to Jordan. He also was trying to get some kind of support in the occupied territories. The village leagues that were supported by Israel are non-existent now. So, all the proJordanian currents were given a blow during this uprising. They have been the main • Are age and class differences showing up in the uprising?
One of the characteristics of this uprising is that it has united all sections of the Palestinian community, young and old, residents of refugee camps and residents of cities and villages, workers, university students, highschool students, merchants and so on. This uprising is distinct from past ones in that it includes all sections of the Palestinian popall these forces into the struggle.
Until now, the Palestinian people here have been led to believe that their liberation would come from outside the country. In its action and strategy, the PLO have always emphasized that liberation would come from outside the country. In the beginning, it was from the Arab regimes. Later on, it was from guerrilla warfare mounted from across the borders. And then, and up to this moment it has been, from diplomatic initiatives. Recently, the slogan has been for an international peace
This uprising has shown that the Palestinian masses are miles ahead of the leadership. It has shown that the leadership is backward in that it has been preoccupied with these diplomatic maneuvers. The Palestinian movement has to base its strategy on the masses of Palestine in order to change the balance of forces within the country itself. This strategy should take into consideration that the Green Line has now in fact disappeared. The oppressive policies implemented by the Israeli authorities are not limited to the occupied territories but they are moving into Israeli society
MIDDLE EAST itself.
So, at the moment there is a great need for uniting the struggle of the Palestinians as well as progressive Israelis against the common enemy. • What concrete demands are you raising in this respect?
On the front page of our paper in Hebrew, we set out such demands. They include calling for the release of all the detainees, stopping all the deportations, stopping all the oppressive measures in the occupied territories, political rights for Palestinians, the rights to organize, the right to protest, the right elect their own municipal governments, equality in taxation.
We think that this uprising has shown that such immediate demands can be raised and
We think that after 20 years of occupation, it is much more realistic, more reasonable, to start raising demands against the anti-democratic and religious sectarian system imposed through the territory, demands that people in the whole territory can mobilize behind, than to call for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. * ulation. It has not even been divided by Notebooks for Study and Research class. Even petty-bourgeois and bourgeois people have been propelled into the
Previous uprisings were mostly by young people, who are called shebab by the Israeli leaders. Now this uprising is far from being led and organized by the shebab, because if you look at TV films from the Gaza Strip refugee camps, you can see among the people who are fighting against the Israeli army young people alongside older people, women, children - all are forming one
•POPULISM IN LATIN AMERICA • What do you think are the perspec-
A collection of essays by Adolfo Gilly, Helena
This uprising represents a qualitative Hirata, Carlos M. Vilas and the Argentine PRT, shift in the balance of forces between Zionism on the one hand and the Palestinian na- selected and presented by Michael Löwy tional struggle on the other. It also represents the beginning of a new era in the In Brazil, Brizola's populist PDT is vying with the PT for the workers alleanti-Zionist struggle. This uprising has also giance, in Mexico the PRI still coopts most forms of discontent, in Arshown that after the blows that the PLO, the gentina Peronism is staging a comeback. Many Latin American parties Palestinian national movement, are allying with the Socialits International. This notebook examines the during and after the Lebanese war the cen- origins, mechanisms and limitations of populism in Mexico, Argentina ter of gravity of the Palestinian struggle has shifted from Lebanon, from the outside of Also available: the country, into Palestine itself, into the N°T - The Place of Marxism in History, Ernest Mandel. 20FF, £2, $3.50 occupied territories themselves. N°2 - The Chinese Revolution - Part I: The Second Chinese Revolution
The uprising has also shown that the Pa- and the Shaping of the Maoist Outlook, Pierre Rousset. 20FF, $2, $3.50. lestinian masses in these territories are N°3 - The Chinese Revolution - Part II: The Maoist Project Tested in playing a decisive role in the Palestinian the Struggle for Power. Pierre Rousset. 25FF, $2.50, S4.00. struggle. The Palestinian national move- N°4 - Revolutionary Strategy Today, Daniel Bensaid. 20FF, £2, $3.50 ment should reorganize itself in accordance N°5 - Class Struggle and Technological Change in Japan Since 1945, with this reality. It should base itself on the Palestinians who are living in Palestine. Subscribe to NSR (9 Issues): 180FF, £18, $31; airmail add 20%. Indicate first issue of subscripTherefore, the Palestinian national move- tion. Payments to Pierre Rousset. Preferred: French francs payable in a bank located in ment should try to formulate a new strategy France; bank transfers to Crédit Lyonnais 30002/816/47 170C/44, or postal giros to CCP Paris in order to organize and to mobilize the Pa- 11 541 97 T. Next best: sterling payable in Britain or dollars paysable in USA.(Please indicate lestinian masses in Palestine. To this end, it must try to find out what forces there are in the Palestinian population and try to draw and Brazil. 40 pages. §2, $3.50, 20FF.
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February 8, 1988 • International Viewpoint
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5
Steelworkers' militant fightback against job losses class
A POWERFUL struggle was launched by workers at the struggle
Krupp Rheinhausen steelworks on November 27 in opposition to management plans to close the factory. Plant shutdowns are a regional problem in West Germany's
SPEARHEADING attacks on jobs in traditional center of heavy industry, the Ruhr. In most cities, the steel industry has been the Krupp the unemployment rate is over 15 per cent. The fight of the company. In 1982, it announced that it
Rheinhausen workers has offered a striking example of would shut down steel section production in Duisburg-Rheinhausen, elimimilitancy in combating the capitalist offensive.
nating 4,000 jobs. For the first time in a long while, strong resistance developed. Since then, the Krupp workers have taken the lead increasingly in mobilizations in the steel industry. Between 1983 and 1987, plans for cutbacks were linked to a number of proposed mergers that failed to go
On May 21, 1987, Krupp announced that it would lay off 6,000 workers throughout the company before 1988, including 2,000 at Rheinhausen. On
July 16, Krupp boss Cromme declared that the elimination of 30,000 steel jobs in the Rhine and Ruhr regions was "unavoidable." The workers and a part of the factory council held out against it.
But under the threat of "either rationalization or total shutdown of the rolling plant," and because of the unreadiness of IG Metall [the metalworkers' union] to fight, the factory council was finally forced to sign an agreement with the management on September 10, 1987, that opened the way for job cuts.
The elimination of jobs was possible only if the workers were ready to accept the social welfare measures offered and voluntarily leave. The main points of the agreement signed on
September 10 were the following:
maintenance of all the Krupp steelworks (Rheinhausen, Bochum, Siegen-
Geisweid); investment to bolster these works; a social plan providing for 90% of the last net wage until early retirement at 60; no further reduction of personnel until 1991; Introduction of a two to three year "leave period" for younger workers. The latter could also leave their jobs with a guarantee of 90% of their last net wage for retraining, and have a guarantee of re-employment.
There was also an extensive guarantee of the existing training facilities, and on assuring and creating jobs (devel-
6 oping new products, and so on.
International Viewpoint • February 8, 1988
However, the ink on this agreement was barely dry before a "slip" made the factory council aware that the Krupp management had worked out a wide-ranging cooperation agreement with Thyssen and Mannesmann (whose main production centers are also in Duisburg), which called for a total shutdown of Rheinhausen. The Mannesmann foundry in Duisburg-Huckingen was to take over all basic steel produc tion, and Thyssen all the rolling mill work, before the middle of 1988.
Social democrats offer
"pie in the sky"
This was the last straw. Those who wanted to defend jobs had organized early in Rheinhausen - as far back as 1983, a Citizens' Committee had been formed. In the 1987 factory council elections, a left majority was elected. The present council chair still belongs to the old social-democratic majority.
The Social Democratic Party's line was not to maintain jobs but to provide "substitute jobs," preferably in high-tech industry, but also in environmental protection. That fits in with the SPD's structurai policy in NordheinWestialen, which accepts that the "old industries" have to be trimmed and re lies on a rise of the so-called industries of the future. The state government has adopted a "Coal, Iron and Steel Initiative for the Future" backed by 2,000 million DM, two thirds of which is to be provided by the federal government. But no obligations have been placed on private or public companies to create jobs.
The Rheinhausen workers' struggle has broad community support and has been marked by many dramatic episodes. Inprekorr, the magazine of the German Fourth Internationalists, commented on the significance of these ac tions in its January issue.
THAS BEEN a long time since we have seen such things in West Germany - enraged steelworkers keeping Krupp's
Rheinhausen plant under a de facto occupation; storming the Hügel Villa, the Krupp family palace for a century and the temple of capital and its politicians; occupying streets and bridges in Duisburg. In the last weeks of 1987, a powerful blast of class struggle swept away another bit of the myth of the "twilight of the working class."
For a brief moment, power was in the streets. At least the masters on top were given a clear demonstration of what West Germany could look like if workers no longer limited themselves to polite protests directed from above, but were also determined to win their demands themselves.
Since November 26, no piece of work has gone out of the factory grounds without the approval of the factory council. [These bodies, set up in the framework of "co-management" laws, are elected by the entire workforce.] The when, what and how much is produced are being decided by the personnel and not by the management. The tactic of the fight is to "stop and go"- that is, the workers stay in the factories but there are enormous shortfalls in production (amounting to as much as half of the normal monthly total), and the management is quite unable to make any plans.
In Lorraine, on the French side of the Rhine in 1984, while the bargaining for the 35-hour week was going on here, the steelworkers besieged union and party headquarters. It was the same syndrome. A region had been made into a poorhouse. The union leadership co-administered this
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