EIGHTEEN MONTHS of the intifada [uprising] of the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank against the Israeli occupation have had an increasingly profound effect on Israeli society. This new "earthquake" is a lot more serious than the last one, the war of 1973, when the Zionist army came within a hair's breadth of disaster. The Jewish population in the Israeli state is polarized as never before, while the Arab minority has also experienced a political upheaval.
The recent municipal elections on February 28 registered the changes that are underway. Below we publish an interview with our comrade Michel Warschawsky in which he deals both with the elections and with the positions and activity of his organization, the Revolutionary Communist League, the Israeli state section of the Fourth International.
Michel is still awaiting trial on charges brought against him by the Israeli authorities In the hope of preventing his continuing solidarity work with the Palestinian people. The International defence campaign for Michel must continue until the charges against him are dropped. The interview was conducted by Salah Jaber on May 3, 1989.
H OW DO you explain the
Labour Party's defeat in the recent municipal elections? The electoral defeat of the Labour Party is another indication of the decline of the organization that has been the unchallenged leader of the Zionist movement and then the Israeli state itself for half a century. But in the elections to the Knesset [the Israeli parliament] in November 1988 the votes were lost by Labour to political alternatives. The municipal elections, on the other hand, revealed the decline of the bureaucratic and clientelist grip of the Labour Party on a growing proportion of the population.
As I explained after the legislative elections (see /V 152), the Labour Party's base has polarized. Between 5 to 7% of the Party's support has passed to the Zionist right, while 12-15% has gone over to the Zionist left. The municipal poll has put an end to the image of Labour as the natural party of government and manager of the everyday running of the country. The gains made by the Likud are not so much a sign of an ideological shift to the right by the population as the recognition of this party as the leading force at the national level, at the expense of Labour. • The most striking aspect of the November elections was the breakthrough of the religious parties. Why were they marginalized in the municipal elections?
The issue in the municipal elections was the running of the local administrations, so that the campaign centred on locally established parties and personalities rather than political ideology. Overall, the religious parties maintained their far from negligible strength in the municipal councils. • The breakthrough of the Islamic fundamentalists in the Arab areas on the other hand has a quite different significance...
Yes, and this was certainly the most dramatic aspect of these elections. While it would be an exaggeration to talk about a tidal wave, nonetheless it would be justified to talk about the appearance of a new force at the institutional level.
The victory of the Islamic Movement in the most important localities of the Arab triangle and its substantial gains in Nazareth, Kafr Kanna and other places in Galilee, represents a change in the public stance of an important minority of the Palestinian population in Israel. It is first of all an expression of their dissatisfaction with the present nationalist leadership, and particularly with the Israeli Communist Party, which has been the dominant force amongst the Palestinian population since 1976.
Firstly, at the municipal level. The municipal councils led by the Democratic Front (controlled by the CP) are still the same as they were at the time of the "red wave" of 1976: the same problems, the same misery and often the same corruption as before. It is true that the problems of the Arab municipalities are due above all to the refusal of the authorities to give them the same subsidies as those dispensed to Jewish municipalities. Even so, the Islamic Movement has demonstrated in a practical fashion, by means of popular mobilization and the organization of the inhabitants, that it is possible to partially alleviate the miserable conditions of the population. They have opened creches, nurseries and clinics, dug drains, laid roads and so on. Meanwhile, the CP municipalities have made do with their empty coffers without any attempt to mobilize the local population.
Dissatisfaction with the nationalist leaders does not only exist at the municipal level. By voting for the Islamic Movement, thousands of Palestinians wanted to assert an identity that the Communist Party has not been able to offer them, with its insistence on the "Israeli" and "(Israeli) patriotic" character of its programme. The Islamic Movement has succeeded in presenting an alternative to the Israeli patriotism promoted by the Israeli Communist Party. • Abna el Balad 1 has also criticized the "Israeli" line of the CP for a long time, from a left-wing and secular standpoint. Why did they also lose out to the Islamic Movement, rather than make gains at the expense of
Except for Um el Fahem, where the Islamic Movement benefited from a real tidal wave at the expense of all the secular and nationalist currents, Abna el Balad kept its positions and even won some seats in two new municipalities.
Nevertheless it is true that Abna el Balad has not been able to establish itself as a real mass alternative to the CP and the tradi-
ISRAELI STATE
THE PALESTINLANS
tional leaderships at a national level, despite having a real audience among the population for more than a decade. The main reason for this is that this leftnationalist movement has been unable to mark itself off from the CP around a concrete programme of popular mobilization. Nor has it been able to integrate the Israeli-Palestinian dimension into its perspectives although this is essential for any broad political action in Israel. To win the confidence and sustained support of the broad masses it is not enough simply to assert Palestinian identity and reject all compromises. It is also necessary to say what must be done and what can be done, here and • Let us move on to the overall political situation. What will happen in Israel if an international compromise develops that puts the evacuation by Israel of the occupied territories on the agenda? Might there be a risk of civil war, started by the colonists' movement, Gush Emunim?
First of all, I want to insist on the fact that an Israeli troop withdrawal from the. territories occupied in 1967 is not on the agenda in the immediate future. There is still a long and bitter struggle ahead. The colonists are a more serious danger right now than they would be in the event of an Israeli withdrawal. They are doing everything in their power to provoke an escalation of the confrontation between the army and the Palestinian population, hoping in this way to see the whole of the occupied territories under bloody military rule. On the other hand by brandishing the threat of 1. Abna el Balad (Sons of the Country) is a leftnationalist movement amongst the Arab population in theasa PILe with positions close to those of George 11 Habash's PFLP.
ISRAELI STATE civil war, they provide the Labour Party in particular with an alibi for its inactivity and absolute refusal to contemplate dramatic decisions such as the dismantling of the colonies, or a withdrawal, even partial, of military units.
In my opinion, an armed revolt by the colonists against the state is unlikely. For the majority of settlers and right-wing people, apart from a minority of fanatics, such as those who were organized in the terrorist network which was broken up in 1983, the Jewish state counts for more than "Greater Israel". They would, furthermore, be against a war between Jews. Nor would this be the first time that settlements had been dismantled. It happened in 1948, and again in 1982 with the withdrawal from
It is the Zionist state itself, and not the settlers, that has to be defeated in order to win independence for the occupied territories. If the Israeli state is forced to withdraw from the occupied territories, the worst that could be expected from the settlers is something similar to the OAS?, mounting a rearguard action. • You have said that a protracted struggle is necessary to get a withdrawal from the occupied territories. What objectives do you think the Unified Leadership of the Intifada should adopt in the current situation?
A year ago, the Unified Leadership put forward a programme of immediate demands that seems to me to meet the needs of the present situation and of the possible relationship of forces in the coming period. The central demands are the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian areas, the release of all those imprisoned and detained during the intifada, an end to deportations and the return of those deported, no new settlements and so on.
If these demands were met, then genuine elections free from the interference of the army and the Shin Bet [Israeli secret police] could take place. The real leaders could stand as candidates so that the Palestinian population would be able to freely choose their representatives. While it is necessary to reject the Shamir plan, which offers Palestinians the right to choose from a list approved by the Shin Bet and under the control of the army, the idea of elections has been raised and will spread.
Alongside these demands, the Unified Leadership must constantly strive to reinforce and enlarge the Peoples' Committees, and organize them into organs of local power throughout the occupied territories. • What are the political preconditions for real independence for the Palestinian people, in a part or in the whole of Palestine?
Given the present balance of forces, the Palestinian population of the occupied ter12 ritories and the Palestinian national movement - the PLO - could win an Israeli International Viewpoint #164 • May 29, 1989 withdrawal and wider national autonomy. The condition for this is obviously that the struggle continues, since even these very limited objectives will not be achieved tomorrow. A really independent Palestinian state, sovereign and able to move forward towards the full implementation of the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people, would need a different relationship of forces at both the national and international levels. It would require a different policy by the Soviet leadership, which is currently putting a lot of pressure on the PLO, while paying court to Israel. It would also mean a qualitative development of the popular movement in Jordan and/or Egypt, a radical nationalist regime in Syria, as was the case before 1967, and so on.
To put it another way, only a substantial strengthening of the anti-imperialist movement in the region would make it possible for the question of Palestine to be fully confronted free from the limits imposed by American imperialism, which excludes any solution that might challenge the fundamental interests of the Zionist state. • What do you think of the idea of a Palestinian-Israeli or PalestinianIsraeli-Jordanian "common market" floated by Yasser Arafat or by Faisal
If Arafat and Husseini are putting forward this idea with the aim of convincing Israeli and international public opinion that the Palestinian national movement aspires to coexistence between peoples and a peace based on cooperation and not on separatist isolation, then this is a good reason. If, on the other hand, it is a basic part of the negotiated solution that the PLO leadership is trying to manoeuvre towards, then it is lunacy. It would put Palestinian independence under the supervision of others, an idea which every progressive must reject. • To come back to Israeli society, how does the new generation, that born after 1967, feel about the intifa-
The generation born after 1967 has never known the "green line". It sees little difference between Nazareth and Ramallah or between Kfar Saba and the new town of Ariel in the occupied territories. The end of the status quo calls into question not only the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but the very character of the State of Israel.
For this reason the general polarization of Israeli society is much more intense among young people. On the one hand you have supporters of the "final solution" expulsion and total war against the Palestinians. On the other, you have those who are questioning the basic ideology and institutions of the Zionist state. Thousands of young Israelis are asking if a Jewish state is compatible with a democratic state, and wondering whether permanent war might not be one of the basic features of Zionist policy, and whether it might not be better to struggle for coexistence between the two peoples, rather than defending separation at all costs and so on. • Which opens up new perspectives for the Revolutionary Communist
Some young people are already open to revolutionary answers and a radical questioning of Zionism. This has led us to step up our work among young people. A year ago we set up an organization of revolutionary youth, with some dozens of militants. The RCL itself has recruited some young people this year, which has considerably improved our ability to intervene • Apart from youth work, what is the main political activity of the RCL?
We are very active in the movement for solidarity with the intifada, in particular in the Movement of (Israeli) Women in Solidarity with Women Political Prisoners and in the "End the Occupation" movement. Another priority is work in Yesh Gvul, the movement of army reservists against the occupation. • How do you work in the pacifist movement?
We do whatever we can to enlarge the movement on the basis of broad unity around total and unconditional opposition to the occupation. As the RCL we insist on the need for active solidarity with the intifada and the victims of the occupation, putting emphasis on coordinated action with the Palestinians and support for the immediate demands of the Unified Leadership of the uprising.
In our general propaganda we stress that an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the formation of an independent Palestinian state would only be one step towards an Israeli-Palestinian peace. This could only be assured on the basis of a just solution to the issue of the refugees, of the Palestinian minority in Israel, of the question of sovereignty over Palestine and so on. In other words, the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question cannot be limited to drawing a frontier between the two peoples. It requires the recognition of all the national rights of the Palestinian people, and thus the principle of coexistence of the two peoples, whatever the concrete forms that may take.
FEE. FI. FO. FUMBLOOD OF A SMELL THE PALESTINIAN! 2. Secret Army Organization. Clandestine movement of supporters of "French Algeria", opposed to De Gaulle's granting of independence.
Colonialism breeds
May 11 issue of Rouge, newspaper
Fourth International section of the 13
Fourth International.]
NEW CALEDONIA The Matignon Accords THE MATIGNON ACCORDS were agreed In June 1988 under the auspices of newly-elected Socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard. They called for the division of New Caledonia Into three reglons, direct rule from France for 12 months a programme of economic ald and a decisive
ON MAY 5, thousands of anti-colonialist militants marched through