The intifada revives and spreads
ISRAELI STATE tional reasons, the repression has not been able to reach the proportions of wholesale massacre, breaking the uprising by drowning it in blood. As a result the almost daily killings (700 dead since December 1987) only increase the resentment of those under attack and add further, "personal and individual" reasons, as the general explained, for them to revolt.
In this context, as the "enlightened" Zionists led by Shimon Peres and their
THE MASSACRE by an Israeli gunman of seven Palestinian workers at Rishon-le-Zion on May 20 has led to a qualitative new phase in the uprising of the Palestinian masses (intifada), marked by an increase in radicalization and, above all, by an extension of the uprising to new areas. For the first time since the beginning of the intifada in December 1987 the movement has spread not only to the "Israeli Arabs" - those
Palestinians who remain in the territories conquered by the
Zionists in 1948 and who have Israeli citizenship - but also to the Palestinian refugees in Jordan, some of whom have
Jordanian citizenship. There are at least as many Palestinians in Jordan as in the territories occupied in 1967 by the Israeli state. The mobilization has even reached Lebanon and Syria.
This geographical extent is unprecedented. At the time of writing (May 24) we are still awaiting the speech of PLO leader
Yasser Arafat at the UN Security Council in Geneva in response to these events.
SALAH JABER
HIS NEW flare-up of the Palestin-
T ian struggle, in the 30th month of the intifada, confirms what the
Israeli sociologist Meron Benvenisti predicted at the beginning: in the territories occupied in 1967 there was going to be a long-term struggle with many upsurges, similar to Northern Ireland or
South Africa. However, contrary to all the evidence, a large proportion of the Zionist establishment has, even after May 20, continued to take its desires for reality and periodically announce the approaching end of the intifada. Thus General Mordechai, commander of the occupation troops on the West Bank, by May 23 believed himself to be in a position to partially lift the curfew imposed in the region since the
Rishon-le-Zion massacre, and promise an imminent return to calm.
Israeli politicians reject political explanation
Israeli Prime Minister Shamir and his foreign minister Moshe Arens have protested vigorously against those who have given a political explanation for the flareup after May 20, laying indirect responsibility at the door of the policies of the
Israeli government. According to the government's spokesperson, all this is an accident, the act of someone unbalanced"
which has been exploited by the usual professional agitators from the PLO and the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas. The perennial conspiracy theory of history!
However General Vilnai, commander of the occupation forces in the Gaza sector, cut through the soothing speeches of reassurance coming from the majority of the Israeli administration, recognizing the truth in front of Western reporters on
"The number of people amongst the Palestinians who have scores to settle with us is growing. It is not even a matter of a basic national conflict - Palestinians against Israelis - these scores are almost personal, individual, because some one in the family or social circle has been directly affected.
"There can be no doubt — there are more and more people who want to act, who want to take effective revenge" (Le Monde, May 23).
Inevitable effects of
"restrained" repression
This is the inevitable effect of the kind of "restrained" repression of the type practised by the Zionist army on the West Bank and in Gaza since the start of the intifada. It has been "restrained" in the sense that, for both internal and internamentors in Washington perfectly understand, only political means would be able to bring the rebellion to an end. And in fact in the first few months of 1990, the perspective of an indirect agreement between the Israeli government and the PLO, under American-Egyptian auspices, the famous Baker-Mubarak plan for elections in the territories occupied in 1967, had the effect of dampening down the intifada. It seemed then that the ball was in the Israeli court, where the intifada had shattered the "government of national union" (see /V 183). Arafat calls for Arab deputies to vote for Peres
At the start of April, it seemed that Peres was on the way to forming a new government. Everything seemed to be ready for the start of a process of negotiated "settlement". PLO leader Yasser Arafat himself, thinking that he was on the verge of reaping the rewards of his policy of appeasement of the Americans and Israelis, called on the Arab deputies in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) to vote for Peres. This was the first time ever that a PLO leader had called for a vote for a Zionist leader. However, owing to the caprices of various rabbis, the perspective turned out to be short.
As always the collapse of perspectives, or rather of political illusions, reinforced the exasperation and the need to react of the masses. Such a process was at the origins of the intifada (see "The dynamic of the Intifada" in IV 158) and its revival could only lead to higher levels of radicalization, as Le Monde's Jerusalem correspondent, Alain Frachon noticed:
"If we are to believe remarks made in some military circles, the new form taken by the clashes are particularly worrying the army. The soldiers have confronted crowds of hundreds, even thousands of demonstrators, who, defying the curfew, are pouring out into the streets and around the army posts. This type of action, which recalls the first months of the Iranian revolution, is limited to the Gaza Strip, but they have taken on a breadth not see since the first days of the intifada in December 1987" (Le Monde, May 23).
While the clashes have, as usual, been most violent and massive in the Gaza sector, if only for demographic reasons (600,000 people in 360 Km'), they have also spread in an unprecedented fashion. In the first place to the "Israeli Arabs".
Most Palestinian localities and quarters June 4, 1990 • #186 International Viewpoint
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ISRAELI STATE inside the 1948 frontiers of the State of Israel have witnessed scenes previously seen only in the territories beyond the "Green Line". Above all in Nazareth, where the Zionist forces have used rubber bullets, which can kill, as has been shown often on the West Bank and in Gaza. On May 21 some ten Palestinians were injured there.
The resentment of the Palestinians of Israeli citizenship has been nourished by the spectacle of the growing immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel. These immigrants are pampered and privileged according to racist criteria and the expansionist ambitions of the Zionist authorities, while the status of the "Israeli Arabs" continues to get worse.
But the most significant aspect of the new upsurge is, without doubt, the entrance on the scene of the Palestinians in Jordan. It is true that since the start of the intifada there have been some demcamps, which Hussein, who has more Palestinian blood on his hands than any Zionist leader, having drowned the Palestinian organizations in his kingdom in blood in 1970, has realized the size of the danger.
With the aim of limiting the contagion of the intifada on the Palestinian and Jordanian masses, an effect that is all the more to be feared given the economic crisis in Jordan, he has taken some far-reaching measures. The first was the breaking off in July 1988 of legal and administrative links between Jordan and the West Bank, which until then he had demanded back as an integral part of his kingdom. The idea was to demobilize the Palestinians in Jordan, who could then wait for the birth of a Palestinian state on the West Bank all the more calmly, in that the Jordanian decision would permit a new epoch of fraternal relations between King Hussein and Yasser Arafat.
The King's second measure was to open a safety valve by singing in tune with the political liberalization in vogue on a world scale. A certain space for political liberties, albeit strictly controlled, was opened up, culminating in (very relatively) free elections last November, which were to serve as an outlet for popular passions. Here too an old political law has been confirmed: such openings, however small, under conditions of great pressure, tend to be rapidly transformed into gaping holes.
Already, a few days before May 20, a 4 tant in Jordan for a very long time, met massive demonstration, the most imporInternational Viewpoint #186 • June 4, 1990 with violent repression when the demonstrators tried to move towards the crossing point between Jordan and the West Bank. On May 21 a riot broke out in the of the Jordanian Amman, when 15 thousand demonstraAmerican symbols. Since then demonstrations have been continuing in the Jordanian refugee camps and the cities. The already meant several deaths and dozens
Events in Jordan are of decisive importance for the future of the Palestinian struggle. This is not only because there are so many Palestinians in Jordan but
Dy TOM in Troun also and above all because they are the majority there, including in the army, and in the framework of a balance of forces that makes victory possible — a unique situation for Palestinians. Furthermore Jordan is, with the Zionist state, the other jaw of the vice around the West Bank, and if it is not broken, any perspective of independence for the West Bank is illusory. For all these reasons the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy is a key objective for any viable national revolutionary strategy for the Palestinians.
PLO leaders try to appease
Jordanian masses
This unavoidable objective has always been a touchstone for our judgement of the Arafat leadership of the PLO. This latter, as one could have expected, has been making intensive efforts to appease the anger of the Jordanian masses:
"A Jordanian minister declared yesterday that the PLO 'has begun to intervene vigorously' in the Palestinian camps to reestablish calm and counteract 'the parties acting against Jordan' through protest demonstrations organized against Israel.
The minister also said that President Yasser Arafat had contacted Abdul Razzaq Yahia, the PLO representative in Amman and 'given him instructions on the subject of the camps and notably the Bagaa
"The Jordanian minister Yahia had indeed gone to Baqaa while other PLO officials had gone to the Wahadat camp to try to calm the situation there." (Al-Hayat, an Arab daily published in London, May 23). However, the hold of the PLO leadership on the Palestinian masses in Jordan has been, for a long time, much weaker than in the occupied territories, where it remains quite strong (see IV 157). But in both cases, the force that is challenging the PLO is, unfortunately, not that of the Palestinian left (except marginally), but that of the Islamic fundamentalists. Both in the territories occupied in 1967 and 1948 the role of the latter in the new upsurge has been remarked on; often it has been preponderant. They have grown in direct proportion to the concessions and compromises of the PLO leadership against a background of an impasse in the negotiated "settlement" This has led to a paradoxical situation in which, according to Le Monde correspondent Françoise Chipaux on May 23: "Particularly conscious of the danger, King Hussein is said to have even encouraged the PLO chief to make no more concessions for fear of finding himself bypassed, notably by the Palestinian fundamentalists...All of them, including the Jordanian Muslim Brothers, whose grip is strengthening (their performance in the November elections was impressive - SJ are issuing appeals for *a holy war for the liberation of the whole of Pales-
Whether King Hussein has really given such advice or not, it has not been fol-
On May 23, Arafat reached a new agreement with Washington, sparing the Bush administration the embarrassment of issuing him with a visa for New York. The United Nations Security Council therefore moved to Geneva to listen to the PLO president demand the intervention of UN observers in the West Bank and Gaza. Whatever the outcome of these negotiations, one thing is certain: the American government is more determined than ever to put pressure on Israel to advance towards a pax americana in the Middle East, at a moment when the development of the Palestinian uprising is beginning to seriously threaten the imperialist order throughout the region. *