SRI LANKA / PALESTINE government's privatization plans, and as a ON September 27, Palestinian political prisoners began a big step forward towards bringing wor- open-ended hunger strike against living conditions in the kers together in a single, united trade prisons and detention centres. For two weeks, thousands union body. They pledged their support of detainees participated in the action and were supported for any future stepping up of industrial by a level of mass mobilization not seen since 1987, during action.
Faced with the determination of the port workers, the SLPA returned with another offer on September 15 granting payment MICHEL WARSHAWSKY - October 20, 1992 of a special port allowance linked to the cost of living index along with a payment of arrears owed since the 1988 freeze, to be spread out over the next year.
By the end of the work-to-rule campaign, the CMU had nearly doubled its membership to 6,000. It gained the new adherents through its role in the recent action, seen as a fruit of its class struggle policy, its political independence and democratic functioning.
General strikes of CMU membership
Earlier in the year, the CMU attracted workers across the country into its fold through the two separate one-day general strikes of its members for the repeal of all "Emergency" regulations suppressing or restricting trade union, democratic and human rights.
The work-to-rule campaign was the first major workers action at the port since December 1969. The sixty-day strike in 1969-1970 — joined by workers at the Trincomalee port in the northeast of the country — came to a victorious conclusion ten days after the CMU called out its entire national membership in a sympathy general strike.
With this recent victory, the port workers may well have gotten the wind back in their sails. *
HA
the early days of the intifada.
M ORE than 5,000 people and
prominent leaders of all the factions of the PLO followed the two coffins in Jerusalem. The slogans and flags of the Democratic Front (DFLP) were side by side with those of the Islamic Hamas movement; those of Arafat's Fatah alongside those of George Habash's
On October 17, Hussein 'Abeidat and his cousin Mustafa 'Abeidat were buried in the Jerusalem suburb of Jabel Mukaber. The former died of exhaustion in the prison of Ashkelon on the last day of the hunger strike by Palestinian political prisoners; the second was killed by police during a demonstration in support of the prisoners in central Jerusalem.
The burial was a symbol embodying all that had taken place in two weeks of struggle and sacrifice involving several thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons and detention camps: the determination of the prisoners prepared to face death and the united solidarity of the population of the occupied territories.
At a press conference Tikva Parnass, a worker at the Alternative Information Centre, gave shocking details of the conditions in the Hebron prison on the occupied Left Bank: "The appointment a year and a half ago of Gabi Amir as Governor General of prisons was a declaration of war on Palestinian political prisoners. Shamir's government had given him a clear mandate: one by one to take back the gains won by the Palestinian prisoners over two decades of struggles and at the cost of many victims"
### Nothing to lose
After summarizing the appalling sanitary conditions, the poor food, the overcrowding and the harassment, she concluded: "At Hebron, as in all the other prisons, the prisoners now have their backs to the wall and feel they have nothing more to lose. An explosion is near, and, if nothing is done, it may be
That was at the start of August. On September 27, more than 2,000 prisoners declared an unlimited hunger strike. Within a week the number of strikers had risen to 10,000.
The 25 demands put forward by the prisoners' leaders include such obvious things as the right to collective prayer, improvements in visiting rights and air conditioning. But we should also underline the demand by the prisoners that they be allowed to choose their own representatives and the possibility for their delegates to move about in the prisons.
This right was won in the 1970s but was abolished 18 months ago by the Shamir government, after removing the former governor Levy Shaul amid accusations that he had "turned the prisons into holiday centres for terrorists"
Lawyers, freed prisoners and families spoke with one voice. The inhuman physical conditions of detention and the impossibility of putting forward demands and negotiating even at a local level, would inevitably lead to an explosion.
Unity of different factions
Two conditions had to be met for the hunger strike to be effective: unity in the prisons of members of different factions and for the Palestinian community as a whole to take up the prisoners' demands.
The strike committees were united, including both the Hamas fundamentalists and Communists, supporters of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations such as Fatah and opponents connected to the PFLP or the Democratic Front. Such unity has been rare in recent years, but it was indispensable not only for the organization of a strike in more than 20 prisons and detention centres but also to encourage the movement on the outside.
As Hani Baydun, a PFLP leader in the occupied territories who has just been 25 released from jail, said: "The political
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and well
from activity. Towards the end of the 1970s he made contact again and translated many Marxist and socialist works for the movement's German journals and publishing house. He also took part in the movement's debates.
In his greetings on Willy's 80th birthday Ernest Mandel wrote that Willy was one of those few "in Germany and the world... who embody in their own person the historic heritage of communism and guarantee its future". *
International Viewpoint # 238 • November 9, 1992
PALESTINE / OBITUARY meaning of this strike does not lie in the strike itself, in which all currents have taken part, but in its enormous popular support.
This shows that the most important force of the Palestinian people is not Fatah, Hamas or the Popular Front but the prisoners and their families. It is they who are paying the price and they who have forced Rabin, the security services and the politicians to reconsider the political situation".
The hunger strike has shown the enormous reserves of the Palestinian masses of the occupied territories and refuted superficial claims about their passivity or weariness. In recent weeks the atmosphere has been like that at the outbreak of the intifada. The Left Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (and even the Palestinians of Israel and the Syrians on the occupied Golan) have once again acted on the same wavelength with the active participation of the great majority of the population: mass demonstrations, confrontations with the army, hunger strikes by mothers and wives of prisoners, serving as a leaven for all kinds of solidarity actions with the strikers.
This resumption of popular combativity has obliged the army to react with extreme violence, killing several and sentatives, Rabin and police minister Moshe Shahal decided to do just that.
Just before the Yom Kippur holiday, the police minister announced the setting up of a special commission to study the prisoners' demands. At the head of this commission is Levy Shaul, the former governor of prisons fired for his "leniency" towards the political prisoners.
On the evening of Tuesday October 13, the president of the Association of Palestinian Lawyers in the occupied territories Mr. Ali Ghozlan, announced that the hunger strike had been suspended to allow serious negotiations with the Israeli authorities and that when these negotiations were over, the prisoners would decide if their demands had been met. If they decided they had not, the strike would resume.
At the same moment, the president of Meidan announced that the hunger strike huge Anssar 3 detention camp, was continuing. Two days later, however, it seemed that prisoners in all the camps had accepted food.
While all Palestinians see that the Israeli government has retreated, the decision to suspend the hunger strike has been the subject of controversy both among the Palestinian community as a whole and the prisoners in particular. As everyone was aware, more was at stake than simply prison conditions; everything suggested that the hunger strike might give a new boost to popular mobilizations against the Israeli occupation and a substantial improvement in the balance of forces for the Palestinians.
Popular movement frightens negotiators
This was precisely what Rabin and Shahal decided they had to prevent by opening negotiations. But this is also apparently precisely what the leadership of the main current in the PLO and of the delegation connected to it wanted. They were terrified that a resumption of the popular movement in the occupied territories would upset the current negotiations underway in Washington.
If such is the case, it would be a sign of terrible political shortsightedness on the part of the Palestinian leadership in failing to understand that a better relation of forces in the occupied territories would tend to extract better terms in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and reduce Israeli and American pressure on the Palestinian delegates.
As a union militant close to Fatah and by no means hostile to the negotiations put it: "the Palestinian delegation has, for the past year, rightly refused to make the negotiations conditional on an end to the intifada and could not in any case stop it. However the decision to halt the hunger strikes seems to run counter to this policy"
The advisers of the new Israeli prime minister also understand this, and a few prison reforms - however important they may be for the prisoners involved — are a very small price to pay to avoid the risks of an escalation of resistance. The latter might have upset the agenda of the negotiations — an agenda written by the Israelis, amended by the Americans and forced on the Palestinians. *