Beyond the diktat
We publish below a transcription of a talk delivered at a meeting in Paris after the signing of the Israeli-PLO peace accords. The speaker has edited
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993
I PALESTINE of Israel is one of the biggest nuclear powers in the world, after the big five. It has at least 100 nuclear heads and we can be sure that any threat of destruction from the outside would end in this kind of apoc-
SALAH JABER — Paris, 19 September 1993
W E should begin by
making two conceptual remarks that merit being repeated
• First, revolutionary Marxists have a certain approach to national struggles. What is this traditional classic approach? It is that of supporting the just struggles of oppressed peoples independent of the nature of their leaderships. To support a struggle does not necessarily mean supporting its leadership. We wage a fight in favour of the emergence of an autonomous organisation of the oppressed classes within the national struggle; we do not hide this, and we do not put the class struggle on the backburner during the national struggle.
We denounce the tendency of national bourgeoisies, even the most nationalist, to never rise above the ceiling of compromise with imperialism, and we support the oppressed classes within the perspective of making the revolution "permanent". These are part of the historic acquisitions of our movement.
• Second, a lot is being said about how what is happening represents a break in the Zionist consensus. This is an analytical error, for there has never been Zionist consensus regarding the size of Israeli territory.! Only those who identify with Jabotinski's revisionist Zionism might believe that all currents of Zionism are inherently expansionist and want to create an Israel that stretches from the Nile to the
Euphrates.
There is Zionist consensus around the
"Jewishness" of the State, around the idea of the "ethnically pure" State that makes the Jewish State a racist State. From this angle, not only is there no split in Zionist consensus, but Peres and Rabin are fully part of this logic, body and soul. Anyone making a mistake about this runs the risk of falling into an array of ideological traps, from caricatures of anti-Zionism to those reeking of anti-semitism.
We support the struggle of the Palestinian people because we believe that the
Zionist State is the product of a colonial operation which was born with the expulsion of 80% of the population from its territory. This was a colonial operation rigged from the beginning, even before the 1948 war, because the 1947 UN partition gave the "Jewish State" areas where Jews were not in the majority or were just barely so.
During the war that followed, they went well beyond the borders of the "partition" and expelled 80% of the Palestinian population of this territory to establish a 90 to 95% ethnically pure State - with a small Arab minority, for tokens and alibis, granted second or third class Israeli citizenship.
We support the struggle of the Palestinian people against Zionism because we think that it is a legitimate struggle. But we approach this struggle as internationalists, that is to say we have our specific view of national questions. We do not share any mysticism about the land, for example. We do not seek to correct one historical injustice by committing another; we understand that Jewish immigration to Palestine is, in large part, a reaction to the racial oppression in the countries of origin, and that an Israeli national entity has been created.
I can't help but chuckle at those who speak of "Arab Jews" and "Palestinian Jews". There is an Israeli nation and this nation currently occupies the position of a racist oppressor. It is this oppression thus, the Zionist State — that must be destroyed. For Marxists, all bourgeois and oppressive States have to be destroyed; the
Zionist State cannot be "de-Zionised", in the same way that the South African State cannot be "de-racialised".2 There should be no illusions about a State removed from its socio-economic base. It must be destroyed - but not in the way of an Ahmed
Jibril, who dreams of throwing most of the
Jews "into the sea" 3
The destruction of this State will be the work of the Israeli working class, the strategic transmission belt of this struggle. To believe that the Zionist State can be destroyed from the outside is to be a proponent of holocaust in the region - the State alypse.
As an internationalist, I cannot personally identify a single square inch of land anywhere on the planet that deserves this. There is enough place under the sun for all nations; but we demand that they co-exist without any form of national oppression.
From this angle, what concrete forms does the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination take? First, it is clearly, at least, the right to self-determination for the population in the territories occupied in 1967. We mustn't forget that the Zionist problem — the Palestinian problem - did not begin in 1967. A majority of Palestinians, more than 60%, live outside Palestine's 1947 borders - that is, outside both Israel and the territories occupied in 1967.
What I call "the partial right to self-determination" refers to the right to self-determination for the Palestinian population in Jordan, where it is in a majority. This notion shouldn't be rejected on the basis of quotations from those Zionists who say that Palestinians need only take power in Jordan and abandon Palestine.
We are for the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy and for the establishment of a government — not "Palestinian" but Palestinian-Jordanian — of the working masses.
This "partial right" also refers to the right to self-determination for Palestinians everywhere where they are in a majority, including within the 1948 borders of the
Israeli State — such as in the Triangle or in
Galilee, Israeli regions with a majority
Arab population. These regions have every right to secede from the Israeli State and join the Palestinian State - which would clearly be the choice of the majority if it had that right.
Finally, it is the right of those Palesti-
1. At the founding congress of the Zionist movement in
Basel in 1897, there was still discussion about the possibility of choosing territory in Africa. The theoretician of modern
Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was in favour of a "Jewish State", leaving open the question of its location.
2. A distinction should be made between "dezionisation", acceptable as a programme of democratic struggles in the
Israeli State itself, and the idea of a "dezionisation" of the
State in the reformist sense, which does not dismantle the
State's fundamental structures 3. Ahmed Jibril is the leader of the Popular Front-
General Command (PF-GC), based in Syria.
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CONTENTS the text and added explanatory notes.
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993 nian refugees who wish to live on Palestinian soil free from oppression. This doesn't mean going with "the key for the old house left in 1948" to kick out those living there now, if the house is even still there. Once again, there is enough place under the sun for everyone.
The right to live free from oppression is a right that we defend everywhere. That includes the right to immigrate, all the more unretractable for those to whom the land originally belonged. One of the pillars of Zionism is what is known as the "law of return", which says that any Jew — whether a Falasha from Ethiopia or a Jew from South Asia, Russia or Poland — automatically has the right not only to "return" but to immediate Israeli citizenship. However, those who had been there for centuries, and were expelled in 1948, do not have the right to return.
This law of return should be simply turned on its head, without for all that cancelling out the current law. By that, I mean that I am not against the right of Jews who, feeling oppressed where they currently reside, decide to move to another State, whether Israel, the United States or elsewhere.4 This is part of a democratic and internationalist vision of the problems of ethnic oppression that exist in the world today.
What was the Zionist dilemma after 1967? The State of Israel never accepted its 1948 borders as being final. This wasn't from a mystical point of view, but from the point of view of the "security" of Israel. It was explained that at the country's narrowest point there were only 14 kilometres between the sea and the border, that this was dangerous, and so forth.
During the June 1967 war, the Israeli State occupied a vast amount of additional territory. But this time the Palestinian population did not flee. It had learned the lessons of 1948, when the Palestinians had left in the belief that they would return keys in hand: "we left, we'll wait until the end of the fighting, and then we'll return." They had learned this lesson and stayed put in 1967.
As a result, Israel ended up with a bone stuck in its throat, one that it was difficult to swallow. This is why there has never been an official annexation of Gaza and the West Bank (except for Jerusalem East) -for the simple reason that annexing these territories and their Palestinian population would mean having to give them Israeli citizenship.
This would radically alter the demographic balance of Israel, and within two decades perhaps there would be an Arab majority given the different growth rates of the Arab and Israeli populations.
Faced with this post-1967 Zionist dilemma, three positions emerged in Israel, two of which are coherent with the third, thoroughly incoherent, sitting on the fence between the two.
The first, coherent position is the extremist and fascist-type solution in the tradition of Jabotinski. This is the "kick them out" solution - what is known as the "transfer" in Israel, a position that was held by people in the Shamir government. For these people, "Judea" and "Samaria" are biblical lands; the demographic problem is solved through expulsion.
The second, incoherent position is that of the Likoud Party. The idea is to hold onto the territories because they are "Judea" and "Samaria", without giving citizenship to the inhabitants, without official annexation, and with the establishment of a kind of apartheid. The historic leader of Likoud, Menachem Begin, recognised the notion of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. It can be found in black and white in the Camp David Accords that he signed in 1979 — there is nothing new about it.
The third, coherent position is that of the Labour Party, whom I like to call "enlightened Zionists". They say, "we maintain strategic and military control of the Territories through strategically-placed colonies and military bases." There would be checkpoints at all points of entry, thus ensuring the "security" of Israel while unloading the inhabited zones.
To begin with, this was the famous plan of Ygal Allon, Rabin's minister of Foreign Affairs in 1974. So history has more continuity than we thought! He called for withdrawing from the inhabited zones, maintaining military control over the West Bank and Gaza, and attaching the abandoned inhabited zones to Jordan. In this regard, there is an important difference with the present plan.
The Allon plan, still called "the Jordanian option", was formulated after King Hussein crushed the Palestinian resistance in his territory in 1971. After that point, it seemed feasible to formulate such a plan, and that is what Labour did at that time Traces of this plan can be found in the Camp David Accords and in the plan drawn up by Ronald Reagan, that great liberator of peoples who in September 1982 said, "There has to be a Palestinian entity linked to Jordan in the territories occupied in 1967." Traces can also be found in Bush's policy.
After several unfrutiful attempts, the relationship of forces in the Middle East evolved to the detriment of King Hussein, preventing him from going further in this direction. And from 1988, the Intifada totally shook up the relationship of forces, to the point of provoking fears of the revolt spilling over into Jordan — King Hussein's greatest fear.
In 1988, the Jordanian kingdom therefore officially separated itself from the West Bank, which he had annexed after the 1948 war. The Intifada therefore put an end to the "Jordanian option" as conceived by Allon and his successor and disciple on this question, Shimon Peres.
The Jordanian option - without the Palestinians — died as a result of the Intifada. It was necessary to find something else, to collaborate with the only other leadership, the most "moderate" after King Hussein, the leadership of the PLO. Recog nition and Israel negotiations with the PLO are not new; they began very officially at the end of October 1991, when Emperor Bush officially inaugurated the Madrid
Everyone knew perfectly well that the Palestinian delegation at these negotiations was acting directly on directives from the PLO. It was an unofficial, indirect, recognition. Today, it is official. Rabin and Peres understood that could get more out of an Arafat living in luxurious exile than they could out of delegates from the inside under the pressure of the Intifada
They chose to go around these delegates and secretly negotiated with Arafat By the way, you will notice that nobody is talking anymore about the head of the delegation, Haïdar Abdel Chafi from Gaza, who criticised the accords and was not present at the Washington signing, out of a feeling of personal dignity no doubt. Nobody is talking about him anymore; the media have erased him from memory (see
Another factor combined with the impact of the Intifada and the change of government in Israel: the evolution of the PLO and its principal wing, Fatah. This organisation was founded by a core of militants, including Yasser Arafat himself, from the fundamentalist current, the Muslim Brotherhood, a few of whose members worked in the countries of the Gulf.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded at a time when fundamentalism was used by the Saudis as a weapon against the Arab nationalist leader, Egyptian president Abdel Nasser. In the beginning, Fatah was a kind of anti-Nasserite springboard, playing a kind of nationalist one-upmanship on Nasser, but with a rightwing Islamic ideology.
4. The great majority of Jews in Russia and Ukraine hope to move to North America. The government of the United States, along with the Zionist government, have slammed this door shut in order to channel them — with the agreement of the Russian goverment - towards Israel
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International Viewpoint #249 October 1993
### Haîdar Abdel letter
Two weeks ago, our national leadership became aware of an accord reached between representatives of the PLO and representatives of the Israeli government at secret meetings held in the Norwegian capital. This accord had been approved by the Israeli government and Arab countries and awaited the approval of the Executive and Central Committees of the PLO We have important responsibilities in this crucial period: • We must sincerely and loyally express our opinion on the substance of this agreement and its eventual inherent dangers. • Our differences should not lead us to confrontation or to violence, because only our enemies will benefit from that. And this would sew doubt concerning our ability to free ourselves and exercise our independence; I insist again on the importance of reorganising ourselves on a healthy democratic basis. [...] Israel claims that it is not an occupying force, and the accord does not cotradict this. This means that the territories are not occupied but are the object of litigation - but it is important that Israel renounces this claim, that it ceases to set up colonies in the whole of the territories, including in Jerusalem [..] the accord implicitly recognises two distinct entities in the Occupied Territories: the Israelicolonial settlement entity and the Palestinian entity made up of the Arab towns and villages. The accord gives legitimacy to the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories themselves. There is no mention of the total withdrawal from the Occupied Territories in the framework of the second phase of negotiations, and the withdrawal from territories in Gaza and Jericho is only a re-deployment of the Israeli armed forces to specific zones. [...] No abstraction can be made of these questions, which were the cause of the impasse at the ten rounds of negotiations. There will no doubt be those who say that there was no choice, that Israel was pulling strings and will continue to behave as it wishes, given its military might that both we and the Arabs cannot and will not be able to match in the near future -and that therefore the best we can do is to resign ourselves to the "possible" and try to influence it in some way. In a way, this logic is unacceptable and senseless because our acquiescence legitimises that which is unacceptable and illegitimate. And it minimises the importance and urgency of our natural rights to self-determination and to an independent entity, as well as to the defense of our refugee brothers.*
This organisation has the merit, or the historical advantage, of having been the first to launch the armed struggle, in 1965, with all the psychological impact that has for an oppressed people. Thus, after the 1967 war, in the face of the radicalisation of the Arab masses in reaction to the defeat of the Arab regimes, Saudi Arabia chose to give a place of privilege to Fatah, inundating it with dollars, with an annual budget of tens of millions and then hundreds of millions of dollars. There has never been such a rich and corrupted liberation move-
The "five star" PLO, as grassroots activists call it, is a reality. Fatah very quickly underwent a bourgeois bureaucratisation, which led to its joining the PLO, an organisation founded in 1964 by the Arab League. At the same time, Fatah joined hands with the Palestinian capitalism of the disapora and the Palestinian bourgeoise of the territories occupied in 1967. It became the dominant faction of the PLO, which never had democratic functioning — the composition of its most representative organ is decided at the top. This is officially how it works and not some perversion of democratic centralism — the leadership determines the rank and file
This organisation had a margin for manoeuvre limited on the one hand by the pressure of the Palestinian masses and on the other by their Arab financial backers. It is within this margin that the Fatah leadership worked. It knew that its strength stemmed from the fact that it was the leadership of the Palestinian struggle, the majority leadership of the Palestinian masses, and that it could represent this struggle. This is why, for a long time, it represented this struggle partially, up to a certain point, to get the support of regimes that are among the most reactionary in the world, including the most reactionary State in the world, Saudi Arabia.
This leadership had to remain at the head of the struggle of the Palestinian masses, because it relied on the pressure of these masses. But the more it was cut from its mass base, the less this pressure worked and the more it could take the natural path of its social interests — those of a bourgeoisified bureaucracy, of a State apparatus without a State that wants a territory.
This territory will have to be flooded to stamp out this inferno of Middle East politics, for decades one of the major factors of radicalisation in the region. In 1970-71, in Jordan, there was the decisive step in the bureaucratic degeneration the Fatah/PLO institution. It had begun well before, but the separation of the bureaucracy from the mass base in Jordan was essental.
The second decisive step was the Beirut evacuation in 1982. The apparatus found itself in exile with its dollars, far from the Palestinian masses. There is no longer a mass base exercising direct pressure on it. After the Gulf War, there was a new change in the relationship of forces -obviously as a consequence of the US-led war, but also because of Arafat's monumental blunder in gambling on Saddam
Arafat was then in the position of having to prostrate himself both before his Saudi financial backers — to get them to restart their financing of his bureaucracy — and, to be sure, before the American government, which he has been courting for years. In 1982 he publicly praised Reagan and later did the same for Bush.
According to the American press, he had even planned to publicly hand over his pistol to Bill Clinton, who didn't quite appreciate the idea. But this is an eloquent statement on Arafat's personality.
The current accords are a modified Allon plan. Israel no longer deals with Jordan, going over the heads of the Palestinians. Rabin and Peres negotiated with a PLO leadership which definitely has nothing to do with what this leadership might have been when it represented a leadership of struggle — bourgeois, nationalist, but a leadership of struggle all the same.
The current plan does not call for the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the territories occupied in 1967, but a re-deployment, and the terms have not been chosen lightly. A full military withdrawal from these territories is out of the question. It will remain at a series of strategic points, notably along the Jordan River which is a strategic line for Israel; it will withdraw from the inhabited zones.
This re-deployment had even been requested by the former head of the High Command of the Israeli army, Dan Shomron, who said, "We are playing the role of a police force, and in the process are corrupting our army — our "Haganah", our glory, which is not a police force. We need only get out of the inhabited zones and let the Palestinians settle things between themselves. We will encircle them. We will control everything. They are not a threat for us because they have no heavy armaments,
Stone-throwing is fine when you have the army in your streets; but if the army is stationed several kilometres away, you need something entirely different from
5. See International Viewpoint No 242, February 1993.
6. The first groups of the Haganah were formed in 1920 It is the military wing of official Zionism and was created in 1936
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DOSSIER 6
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993 stones to fight them.
This is the spirit of the current accords, the difference being that the role that King
Hussein was supposed to play will be played by the Arafat leadership, which
Israel and Washington have understood to be the best option. According to
Newsweek, for several months now King
Hussein has assigned elements of his personal guard to protect Arafat, and that the
Israeli Mossad and CIA have contributed to ensuring his safety.
Arafat has become the goose that lays the golden egg, the one who is going to do what is needed. The accords call for a
"strong police force", but no army nothing that can threaten the security of
Israel, no missiles or heavy weaponry.
For these policing tasks, Rabin, Peres and Arafat are not relying on the population on the ground. All of a sudden, Israel, which has always refused refugees' right to return to the territories occupied in 1967, has accepted that Arafat will bring Palestinians from the outside. These are troops of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), stationed in Jordan and Egypt, attached to the armies of these two countries - the most conservative, "dumb and disciplined" Palestinian troops.
17,000 troops will be brought in to control Gaza and 4,000 for the small town of Jericho. Arafat does not have confidence in people on the inside - neither does Israel, of course. They are bringing in an army to repress any signs of struggle of those who will consider, and rightly so, that the struggle cannot end like this — those who cannot accept that colonies should remain in place and that the army should remain in territories occupied in 1967.
Of course, this is not to mention the others - the refugees from 1948! Gaza is inhabited overwhelmingly by such refugees, that is people who before 1967 were struggling for their rights even though they were not living under Israeli occupation. There are also a lot of 1948 refugee camps in the West Bank - and let us not forget that important part of the Palestinian people that lives in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
As for the Jordanian option, it is not entirely buried. Arafat and the PLO have been making official pronouncements in favour of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation for years now. By the way, the choice of Gaza, a nightmare for the Israeli army, is understandable; but why the small town of Jericho? It is not because Arafat has made a tour of the city with a lot of fanfare, but simply because it is the closest Palestinian population centre to the Jordanian border.
Before putting in place an amended
Jordanian option, there will first be a test with the two territories. If Arafat's PLO proves capable of controlling the situation, the process will continue; if not, it will be brought to a halt.
Schlomo Gazit, the former head of
Mossad, declared in Newsweek that he had confidence in the ability of Palestinians around Arafat to control the situation. But
Israel has kept the right to pursue people in the Occupied Territories, or to pursue them indirectly through coordination between the Mossad and Shin Beth and the services of the PLO. This coordination has already begun, with troublemakers being singled out alongside the request that the PLO
"neutralise" them.
Thus, this is even a worse case than the classic case of "decolonisation" in which a colonial bourgeoisie takes power and sets up a bureaucratic bourgeois State. Here, we are dealing with something more like a bantustan. The PLO will have to act, if only by virtue of the relationship of forces, as an extension of Israeli policy — of
Israeli repression by other means. We are going to see one type of repression replaced by another.
The last component of this plan mentioned by Peres in Washington is that of the Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli common market. The State of Israel wants to develop imperialist or sub-imperialist type relations with the Arab hinterland. This already exists partially, with the Israeli merchandise that gets into Arab markets under false pretenses. Soon, this will be done officially, out in the open.
This is a good bet for Israeli capitalism, for the Israeli bourgeoisie, as well as for the Palestinian comprador bourgeoisie, which is represented by Arafat and supported him (see the article by Adel Samara in this issue).
So what position should we take on the accords? Should we be mourning after the signing of the accord? Certainly not. We can reasonably expect that it will create a more favourable dynamic for the class struggle — on the one hand in the Israeli State where it will dampen the "spirit of the ghetto"; on the other, in the Palestinian population, one of the peoples of the region that has never had an autonomous class
But saying that the accords might improve the conditions for social radicalisation does not mean that we support them. If Carter had defeated Reagan in 1980, that would probably have been better for the class struggle in the United States. But those who go on to deduce that Carter had to be supported against Reagan in the elections are taking an extremely grave qualitative leap.
It is one thing to say that objectively one bourgeois solution is preferable to another, because it is less repressive and so forth. Entirely different is the logic of the lesser evil which makes one support, for example, a moderate capitalist against a fascist. There is nothing to choose from.
In any question of this type, there has to be a common denominator, a common basis, whose presentation can be fine tuned according to the situation. It is abstract internationalism to believe that you can have the same position with the same formulations on both sides of the barricades in a war of national liberation, for example. It is abstract because we do not all have the same tasks, because we do not all face the same problems.
The common basis today should be to say that these accords are the product of a relationship of forces that make them a diktat, because they do not recognise the minimal rights of the Palestinian people - the right to self-determination, the rights of the 1948 refugees and so forth.
It is also to say that it is up to the Palestinian people to decide in a sovereign and democratic way if it is satisfied by these accords, and this goes for the 60% of Palestinians who are not in the current territory of historic Palestine, too. We must assert that we commit ourselves to support the right of Palestinians to continue the struggle against the presence of colonies and the Israeli army in the territories occupied in 1967. This is a just struggle that we will support against all repression, including obviously against the Palestinian bourgeois repression now being prepared
Beyond what should be said about the accords themselves, everything depends on the political context in which one finds oneself in each country.
Clearly, in the Arab region revolutionaries will have a very critical approach towards the PLO leadership, which is in league with Arab regimes. On the other hand, on the Israeli side, an entirely different tone is necessary.
First and foremost, the accords should be denounced as a Zionist diktat with the following argument: it is the right of the Palestinians to eventually support the accords in their majority; but it is our duty to say that it is a diktat that does not reco gnise the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.
Anything that goes beyond the common denominator - the denunciation of the accords themselves — changes according to the context in which the struggle has to be carried out.*
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