A Palestinian capitalism?
WITH the signing of the "Gaza-Jericho first" agreement, the historic struggle between the Arab national project and the Zionist-imperialist project linked to the commercial-comprador Arab bourgeoisie has taken a new turn - both on the class front and that of the national stuggle.
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993 negotiations provide a key for understanding this. The Palestinian negotiators represented the interests of three factions of
Palestinian capitalism and two kinds of intellectuals.
While politically centred on the Palestinian question, this concerns the whole Arab nation.
Firstly, they represented the bureaucratic capitalism of the PLO leadership. This is a layer represented by the upper bureaucratic apparatus of the PLO, which
ADEL SAMARA* — Ramallah, September 17, 1993
A
CENTRAL Palestinian political current has renounced the Palestinian cause. This could signal the end of polarisation around this question. In other words, the Palestinian cause could lose its usual importance and be scaled down to the size of the Palestinian people itself.
This stage has been characterised by the popular initiative of the intifada, which was subsequently co-opted and tamed by the PLO's rightwing leadership (the Tunis leadership), which has sought to deny the intifada its own culture, leadership and economy. They wanted to submit the intifada to the needs of the project of Palestinian capitalism — integrated with and dependent on the world capitalist project in the Arab region.
There is nothing surprising about the fact that capitalism is harvesting the fruits of the national and popular class struggle. However, there is something specifically Palestinian about what has happened. Capitalism has been able to renounce the national rights of a people under the cover of representing that same people — without provoking a mass explosion!
This abrupt turn poses a series of questions. What future for the PLO after the signing of the accord? What is the tactic of the left? What is the future of Palestinian national rights? What will a future map of the region look like?
Ever since the mid-1960s, the PLO has had the slogan of armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine, which earned it real popularity, obvious after the defeat of June 1967, and which made it appear as a force fighting the Israeli occupation.
At that time, there was a relationship between the substance of the PLO and its form, which represented the hopes for liberation of different classes within the Palestinian people. But years of struggle convinced the pragmatique bourgeois wing of the leadership that it would not be possible to achieve liberation with its scanty resources. This led to a series of programmatic and tactical changes which led to a total modification of strategy, symbolised today by the limited autonomy of Gaza and Jericho.
Different social layers left and joined the PLO during this period. The leadership first of all represented the ideology of refugees and their aspiration to return - the aspiration of peasants thrown off their land, proletarianised by force and not by industrialisation, and wanting to return to their property.
### Maximising profit
But it came to represent the interests and ambitions of Palestinian capitalism, more specifically of its comprador-commercial layers who sought the best conditions for maximising profits. They cared little about the conditions in which these profits were made - at the expense or not of the national property. The scope of this capitalism is much more narrow than that of a traditional national bourgeoisie linked to production, whose goal is real independence. Palestinian capitalism's development is deformed, and it has adapted to its handicap. It is therefore not a candidate for productive investment and, as a result, will not wage a struggle for the protection of its national market.
As such, the PLO changed and adapted to the Israeli conception of the Palestinians. Israel was looking for an alternative Palestinian leadership, which did not have the PLO's objectives of securing self-determination and the right to return for refugees, and which accepted that Israel should be the "only legitimate" force of control over the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories.
This is what the Tunis leadership has accepted. How was this possible? The controls practically all that the leadership collected from emigrés and the oil nations in the name of the struggle against Israel.
This faction exercised power over the Palestinians, and invested overseas — without the need for a state. As for the struggle, it has known since the September 1970 massacres in Jordan that it would eventually be overtaken by the Israel-USA solution.'
Secondly, the financial capitalism of the Palestinian diaspora. This is a capitalism of entrepreneurs, services and middlemen. It has enriched itself in these areas, but without independence to be sure. It is a genuinely cosmopolitan capitalism and is the Palestinian expression of the essence of global financial capitalism; "national" and "geography" have no meaning for it. It is only concerned about possible profits. In other words, the financial capital transferred from the periphery to the centre loses its national identity and takes on the identity of the imperialist centre. For this reason, no doubt, the financial capital of the diaspora has not made any investment in the Occupied Territories. And any moves in that direction only began after the Madrid Conference.2
The loyalty of this capitalist layer is measured according to the size of its bank accounts and not by the acres of land lost during the Israeli occupation of Jaffa in 1948.
Thirdly, the capitalism of sub-contractors in the Occupied Territories. This dependent fraction enriched itself under the occupation, without independence. It has worked in joint ventures (with Israeli capital since 1967. It has the greatest interest in solidifying direct links with the occupier, since it was the first to establish common projects with it.
Fourthly, there are the westernised intellectuals disappointed by the left in the
*The author is a Palestinian economist who lives in the city of Ramallah. He is an independent Marxist activist who spent two and a half years in a Jordanian prison and five and half years in an Israeli prison.
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PALESTINE
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993
Lebano
Lebanon
Syrla
Halla
Nazarell
Tel
Jerusalem
Gaza
Lebanof
Syrian
Syria
Jordan
Jordan people's national rights. Through the elimination of the Palestinian question, the whole region can come under American hegemony.
If the nature of capital in the region is taken into account, the economic scenario will develop in the following way:
First, the separation between Palestinian and Israeli inhabitants will be accentuated in the demographic and racial sense, in order to preserve the "purely Jewish" state.
During the transitional phase (or
Beersheba
PALESTINE PARTITION BEFORE 1947
Egypt Trans- Egypt jordan Occupied Territories. The culture of this group is founded on its adoption of capitalist bourgeois ideology, particularly in regard to private enterprise in the economic sphere. Its subordination to the most vile forms of Eurocentrism - which considers other peoples, particularly Arabs, as culturally backward — gives it an inferiority complex in relation to Israelis and the west in general.
This is why they have accepted the recognition of Israel, with all the concessions in the area of Palestinian rights that this entails, and why they are the sponsors of the PLO's joining of hands with the American administration. The main component of the delegation at the peace talks, they are now the zealous proponents of "Gaza-Jericho". We can add the intellectuals of the Communist Party (pro-Moscow) who suddenly discovered that the American option was inescapable and accepted it in the most pathetic manner.
In this sense, the negotiations started in Madrid are nothing but a never-ending capitalist conference, with the goal of organising the circulation of capital in the region, by freeing up trade on a regional level and orienting investment decisions towards sub-contracting, export industries, the purchase of Arab oil and the opening of Arab markets to products from imperialist countries, including Israel.
In this context, Palestinian capitalism has found a place — or rather a minor role - as have the other Arab bourgeoisies and the bourgeoisies of Israel and western countries in general.
It should be pointed out that there is no 12
UN
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Arab Israel areas Jewish Egypt Occupied areas territorles real link between the Palestinian capitalist project and the fall of the USSR, since the USSR never supported the Palestinian National Charter. Rather, we are seeing the maturing of the interests of Palestinian capital, for a dependent integration into the regional capitalist structure and into the structures of the periphery with the imper-
The Tunis leadership has not really invested in the Occupied Territories, and even less so during the intifada. It does not want the Palestinians to be able to be economically self-reliant, which would have made it possible for them to refuse liquidationist projects. Moreover, the Israelis have put pressure on the Palestinian people, imposing an economic blockade with the argument that the oil monarchies had suspended their aid to the Tunis leadership. This has left the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories in an asphyxiating economic impasse, to which has been added an unprecedented level of repression - accepted by most Arab and west-
The "Gaza-Jericho" accord fundamentally means that the Palestinians will fall under the hegemony and sovereignty of Israel, as an ethnic minority. It seeks to erase the political and national dimension of the Palestinian cause, through the pursuit of George Shultz's formula: "to improve living conditions in the Occupied Territories" 3 This means that the current PLO has to be transformed into a political party representing a national minority in Israel and that it has to abandon its status as the representative of the Palestinian phases), an organic link will be established between the economy of the Occupied Territories and the Israeli economy, which will make economic separation impossible or contradictory with the interests of social classes and forces within the Palestinian people.
A transit economy
This process has already begun. Indeed, during the most recent blockade, the Occupied Territories were consuming Israeli products, while the Palestinian work force was not allowed to enter Israel. In future, Gaza and Jericho will be two "doorways" into Arab markets. This means that the economy of Palestinian territories will be compartmentalised and will become a series of transit zones oriented toward Arab economies. It will be a mere transit economy.
We can sketch out the Israeli economic stand in the negotiations on the basis of a specific form of the division of labour.
Firstly, Israel will continue to develop hi-tech petrochemical and electronic industries and will be the technological centre of the region. The labour and capital will only be from Israel and the imperialist coun-
Secondly, Israel will put into place a series of traditional industries in three zones. This has already begun. There will be industrial zones with joint Palestinian capital in pre-1967 Israel. There will be industrial zones with joint Palestinian capital in the towns of the West Bank and Gaza. And there will be industrial zones (not only traditional) in the Israeli towns of the West Bank and Gaza. All these industries will essentially rely on cheap Palestinian (and perhaps Arab) labour
Israel will play a role in the construction of factories in the Occupied Territories. It will provide their buildings, machinery, capital, administration and markets.
Thirdly, the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories will be used as propaganda, interlocutors, and commercial and tourist agents in the building of links between Israel and the Arab countries. In this sense,
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DOSSIER
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993 the Occupied Territories will become a collection of cantons dependent on Israel, and their principal role will be that of transit agents for the export of Israeli goods to Arab countries. This means that those cantons labelled "self-governing" (or nonindependent Palestinian states) will be used as instruments of control, particularly in the economic sphere.
In the area of security, these cantons will become local Palestinian administrations military dependent on the Israeli administration. And there will inevitably be a common security policy between the leaders of these cantons and the Israeli authorities — based on opposition to negotiation and all struggles against Israel.
In spite of Israeli state repression and the economic blockade of the Occupied Territories, the Palestinian popular masses turned against Madrid and the negotiators in the last three rounds. The successful military operations of the Islamic movement turned popular opinion against the negotiations. This explains the need to make progress in the talks, so that the reins of control remain firmly in the hands of the Tunis leadership, all the more so since the negotiating partners know very well that never has the time been so ripe to push through a solution - given that the capacity for popular resistance is currently at its lowest point.
Until now, rejection of the "Gaza-Jericho" accord has not taking the form of confrontation. This can be explained by the desperate conditions of the population, as well as by the absence of an alternative programme for mobilisation against the right, a programme which should have been developed since 1982 at least.
All these weaknesses taken together have meant that the accord has not produced an explosion against the current solution. I don't think such an explosion is likely in the current circumstances, unless that confrontations spark the fires of civil war between the opponents and the Palestinian and Israeli architects of the agree-
The current solution means that the struggle between the Arab national project and the Zionist imperialist project will henceforth take on very different characteristics. Whereas before the Palestinian leadership and the cause itself were the driving forces of this struggle, now the leadership has closed this chapter and become part of the imperialist-Zionist-Arab comprador axis.
Only in this context will the Arab-
Israeli conflict assume its true dimensions.
Only in this situation will we see a direct confrontation between an unaltered Zionist project and the Arab peoples, whereas before the conflict was between Israel and the armies of the Arab regimes.
In this new period, it will be up to Israel to perpetuate the paralysis of Arab economic development, to fight democracy, national culture and the aspiration towards Arab unity. In short, Israel will have to, as a result of its unchanged Zionist structure, prevent all progress of the
Before, the Zionist state fulfilled this role through the use of military force and was faced with armies. Now it will be faced with the peoples themselves, and this is an important feature of the coming period. Israel will support any Arab regime to forbid democracy and perpetuate
Further expansion
Its determination to bring in millions of Jewish immigrants from various coun tries in the world (including Afghanistan and Pakistan) necessarily implies geographic expansion, well beyond the borders of the West Bank and Gaza.
With the domination of the peripherytype capitalist mode of production, the national question will no longer be a justification for subjecting wage labour to capital. Each class (as a class or as a fraction of a class) will confront the other, as much in the Arab countries as in Israel. A new natural space will be created for social struggles, in the place of the national
But perhaps it would be more correct to say that the Arab nation will be the theatre of a transformation of relations between the social struggle within and the national struggle against Israel — led by the impoverished classes both against Israel and the Arab regimes. This means that the Arab bourgeoisies will continue to represent the bourgeois version of Arab nationalism, with the impoverished masses representing the potential nationalism that
Recent events indicate that this hidden Arab nationalism will take the road of class confrontation with the bourgeoisies in power and national confrontation with Israeli capitalism, which itself will largely replace imperialism as the main obstacle to Arab and Palestinian development.
The Palestinian left has had no programme since 1987 - that is, since the Popular Front returned to the Executive Committee of the PLO, partially under pressure from Moscow.4 From that time, the left has rallied to the programme of the right as a recalcitrant ally — always complaining but never prepared to elaborate its own political programme.
The left rallied to the programme of the Palestinian state, as it is understood by the right — the recognition of Israel, its role in the region and its appropriation of Palestinian land. From that time, the left's specificity has been eroded and it has ended up being a component of the PLO, which is not a nationalist united front but an institution controlled by the right
The left had many opportunities to assert its own identity and to develop an alternative programme — for example, at the time of the Fatah split in 1982, the 1985 Arafat-Hussein agreement, or even recently during the Madrid Conference.S But these events did not lead to the cristallisation of a clear leftwing position.
While a clear leftwing position is necessary today, it would not bring immediate results. The left must insist on the following points:
• The signataries of the Gaza-Jericho accord do not represent the Palestinian people and each signatary only represents him or herself. None of them were elected or mandated.
• More importantly, the left should understand that confrontations in the future will not be nurtured by nationalist or sentimental reactions. It must develop a social, economic and political programme and not be satisfied with a mere programme of national liberation.
• The left must fight for the rights of the working class, for the protection of the small peasantry, and set up democratic in-
• Only the left can fight for women's rights and women's liberation.
The struggle that awaits the left will be long and the defeat of the last 50 years is not simply an accident, but a total defeat. The will to recover is not enough; unrelenting work will be required
Against the normalisation
We can add that the possible alliance between national radical forces, revolutionary communists and radical Muslims in the Arab region has to bring together popular national classes under the call for a total boycott, thus economic, of the new Israeli-Palestinian alliance.
The form and characteristics that the struggle will take on in the region will not become clear unless the Arab ruling classes are integrated into this new Israeli-
American-Palestinian alliance. But an
Arab national front against the normalisation is already on the order of the day. *
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