"Bantustan" in the making
THE text below, submitted under the name of TIKVA HONIG-PARNASS, defends the views of the minortity in the Revolutionary Communist
League, section of the Fourth International in the Israeli State.
International Viewpoint #252 January 1994
DOCUMENT
T HE Accord, which began
with the Madrid Conference, is a product of power relations, both international and regional, itself, which favoured those willing to accept the conditions of surrender dictated to them by the United States of America (USA) and Israel. The entrenchment of USA's hegemony, following the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to Syria entering the USA's sphere of influence and the huge cuts in Saudi Arabian financial support, came together to strengthen the PLO's more compromising components and the class strata they represent.They came to the conclusion that there was no hope in fulfilling their interests for an independent political entity and that anyway their interests as capitalists can be fulfilled by integrating themselves into the "New World Order". The meaning of this integration: to accept the USA-Israeli solution for ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, including the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in their countries of residence. The assumption behind this "solution" is that it will also bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to an end — solutions which are vital conditions for stabilising the reactionary Arab regimes and for the continuation of imperialistic control over the Middle East's oil and other natural resources.
The Madrid Conference, and the agreement that followed it, also had the aim of terminating the Intifada. The Intifada was not just a struggle for political independence in the territories that were occupied in 1967. It also inscribed on its banner the aspirations for the national liberation of the whole Palestinian people and the re-unification in their homeland. These were the goals which the PLO established in order to give them organisational and political expression and also that of popular 24 struggle. Most of the Palestinian political currents therefore supported it, and so did we when we struggled for Israel to recognise the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
The Intifada inspired hope in the hearts of the two million Palestinian refugees in Arab countries, and reinforced their resolve to refuse to be integrated into them. In this way, the Intifada fermenting power among the Arab national movements and their resistance to the regimes exploiting them and the wealth in their countries.
The Intifada also succeeded in undermining the status quo that existed for twenty years in the Occupied Territories since 1967 - which caused the Israeli political and military establishment to come to the conclusion that it is no longer possible to maintain a situation of non-annexation and non-retreat, rather a political solution must be arrived at, that will grant a degree of sovereignty to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
It is true that the mass-based Intifada of the first two years subsided, and not just because of the brutal Israeli repression or a simple "tiring of the masses". PLO-Tunis bears great responsibility for this because it opposed and prevented support for a long-term strategy of popular resistance whose goal would be to build an organisational, economic and political infrastructure in order to attain complete separation from the occupation's institutions. In place of the massbased Intifada came military units' actions against soldiers and settlers, which were directly and substantially backed by hundreds of Palestinians, and won the moral support of most of the public. Still, in the Gaza Strip the mass confrontations with the army went on, particularly in the refugee camps. Therefore, a release from the burden of Gaza became an explicit Israeli interest, even for most of the Likud members. Moreover, most of the security establishment in Israel reached the conclusion that it is impossible to liquidate the Intifada, by military means. The mass exit into the streets following the political prisoners hunger strike only confirmed this notion for them — namely, that the Intifada can rise up again anew at any moment if the direct Israeli occupation continues. Hamas' strengthening in reaction to despair in the face of oppression reinforced this feeling
In the months preceding the Accord, it was already clear to the Israeli government that its attempts to strengthen the Palestinian delegation and to weaken the opposition to the Madrid process had come to naught. There were signs that the leftist fronts' (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) call for a "national dialogue" regarding the PLO's democratisation, the Accord and the Intifada was winning the support of parties like the Communist Party and public figures like Haider Abdel Shafi and others from within Fatah. Arafat has lost much of his authority in the Occupied Territories, including among members of Fatah itself, and in the eyes of thousands of Palestinian fighters in the camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. The PLO's disintegration accelerated and Rabin needed to decide quickly between the "dead horse" — the delegation - and the "half-dead horse" — Arafat, and chose the latter to sign the autonomy agreement with him. Arafat was also willing to compromise on the same minimum thạt he forbade members of the delegation to retreat from during the ten rounds of discussions, out of fear of an additional deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations and a total loss of control over the Palestinian national movement.
The Accord - The
Declaration of Principles
There are two parts to the Accord The first discusses the declarations concerning mutual recognition between the sides and on the condition of Israel's recognition of the PLO. This introduction constitutes the framework and it is the condition (again, Israel's) for the
International Viewpoint #252 January 1994 second part, which includes the details for the "Gaza and Jericho First" plan.
A. The mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel
The PLO recognises the right of
Israel to exist in peace and security, declares its renunciation of the use of terror and violence, and promises to punish anyone who trespasses on this commitment, and also to erase the articles in the Palestinian Charter opposing Israel's existence. In exchange,
Israel recognises the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people (thereby recognising the existence of the
Palestinian people and its legitimate
"political rights".
The three declarations - of mutual recognition, the renunciation of terror, and erasing the articles in the Charter — touches the very heart of the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict, as a conflict between the
Zionist movement, and the State of
Israel as the embodiment of its aims, and the Palestinian national movement.
Therefore, Yasser Arafat's renunciation of "terrorism", in the past and in the future, is most important for Israel because it is a de-legitimation of the Palestinian national movement's struggle. In his declaration, Arafat stripped the PLO of its essence and agreed to its definition as a "terrorist" organisation that has no justification for its actions. Likewise regarding the Palestinian Charter amended in 1968. Relinquishing the vast majority of the Charter's articles is like a relinquishment of the organisation's quasi-constitution which reflected its general strategy, even if the emphasis on mass struggle had been transferred over the years to the political-diplomatic arena. The Charter remained the relational framework for judging and evaluating changes in policies that were mostly approved by an artificial majority in the PLO institutions.
As Matzpen! explained (in the pamphlet Our Position Towards the PLO'), Fatah's conception of the "Armed Popular Struggle", which had been adopted by the PLO, was that *the recruitment and the independent organisation of the Palestinian people for the liberation of their homeland, and (the removal of the
Palestinian issue from the hands of the
Arab countries (will mean) that their liberation will be based on their desire to fight by all available means against any power that tries to block their road to national liberation." From the notion of
"armed struggle" stemmed the strategic necessity of the revolutionary struggle against the Zionist State, against imperialist control in the region and against the Arab regimes. So we reasoned, together with progressive forces in the whole world, our support for of the PLO;
namely, due to the challenge it presented to the imperia-
/wtNew World Order list order in the region and its being an igniter of national movements there, while working against the institutions of the colonialist Zionist regime responsible for dispossession, occupation and wars, while serving as a bridgehead for imperialism in the region.
In these three declarations the PLO wiped out, with one blow, the whole justification for using any available means in its struggle. In this way, including signing the Accord and postponing the discussion on the "Right of Return", despite strong opposition by some leaders in Fatah itself, the PLO relinquished another aspect of its character: its claim to represent the whole of the
Palestinian people, including the refugees and the Arabs in Israel, to whom the PLO continued, until recently, to pay lip service. By doing so, the PLO hammered the last nail into the coffin of the
Palestinian national movement, and split the Palestinian national problem into local problems of Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and so forth, similar to what happened to the Kurdish national problem.
Israel's recognition of the
PLO, therefore, is not recognition of the same organisation which for may years had denied its legitimacy, but rather of "a mere shadow of that organisation"
(according to Shimon Peres).
On the other hand, the PLO's recognition of Israel is a victory for Zionism. During all the years of the Israeli occupation we were witnesses to efforts by the Zionist left to view the occupation of 1967 as the main reason for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while systematically concealing the roots of the conflict: the dispossession of the Palestinian people by the Zionist movement and the role played by Zionism and the State of Israel for imperialism in the region. Suddenly, since the signing of the Accord, we are witness to numerous articles and utterances calling the conflict by its real name-
"the conflict
- between Zionism and the
Palestinian national movement." We are witness to a national sigh of relief over the end of that conflict
- which depended on the recognition by the Palestinian national movement of Zionism's righteous path and on the Palestinian national movement absolving it of blame as a colonialist movement of dispossession.
The PLO supplied this recognition, of
Which Zionism had need, as is deduced from the "renunciation of terror".
1. Matzpen is the Hebrew language paper of the RCL
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International Viewpoint #252 January 1994
B. The Accord - "Gaza-Jericho First"
As was said, the main questions were postponed to the stage of discussions that will supposedly take place in another two or three years on the final status of the Territories, at which the Palestinians will be free to raise any issue and Israel will be under no obligation to accept their demands. This applies to the settlements and Jerusalem, to Israel's commitments to a general withdrawal, and of course the Accord does not in any way recognise that the Territories are "occupied" or provide any guarantee for the establishment of an independent Palestinian State or the right of return - neither of the 1948 nor of the 1967 refugees.
The Israeli army is not going to withdraw to the 1967 borders. Both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) will continue to guard the settlements, the roads leading to them and the "peace of any Jew moving about in the streets of the occupied territories." From the strategic points to which it will withdraw, the IDF will be able to quickly intervene whenever it perceives that Israeli interests are
In the areas that will be evacuated, the PLO will be responsible for establishing order, for putting down the Intifada — which, at the moment, can and also needs to escalate — and the opposition that supports it. According to declarations by Rabin and Peres, the IDF's "dirty work" is being transferred to the Palestinians themselves, who will be able to perform it "free from human rights organisations and appeals to the high court." However, since Israel and the PLO cannot completely trust the local police forces to people whose solidarity was forged during the Intifada, military forces loyal to Arafat will be brought in from abroad in addition to the local recruits. Co-operation between the Israeli police, the Shabak, and the Palestinian police will only gradually increase with time.
The Accord's economic aspect — neo-colonialism
The goal of the economic accords is to preserve the Palestinian's dependence on Israel. Until now the two economies relationships were a classic example of the colonialist division of labour: the centre sells its industrial products and the periphery sells its labour. Various arrangements in the Accord ensure this "co-ordination", among others, by "joint 26 projects" built on Palestinian labour, Israeli knowledge and financing from the major capitalist countries.
All of the promises about the opening up of possibilities for economic development are a smokescreen, when the major natural resources — the land and the water - remain under Israeli control. The Palestinian economy is also designated the additional objective of being a reservoir of cheap labour, that it is to be a sub-contractor for Israeli companies which will export to the Arab world thereby making the products "kosher" for the Arab consumers. Thus, we have before us neo-colonialism which will replace the Zionist Israeli colonialism. Prospects regarding the final status of the Occupied
Territories
Supporters of the Accord are assuming that, come the final stage of the talks, Israel will display "good faith and/or that international political circumstances will bring pressure to bear on Israel for the establishment of a Palestinian State.
The main question is: What is the degree of sovereignty that Israel will be prepared to grant Palestinians? Today's fact on the ground, and the maps which were submitted to the Palestinians in the Taba talks point to "settlement clusters" which will separate concentrations of Palestinian populations, breaking their territorial continuity, which is a condition for building a centralised political entity or a centralised development plan.
What international political circumstances can change in the context of the "New World Order" that will pressure Israel to break the Accord's framework and to relinquish its sovereignty over East Jerusalem and, in actuality, over Greater Jerusalem (from Ramallah to Hebron), and to dismantle the settlements? What can change the power relations between Israel and the Palestinians, when the Palestinian leadership itself opened the door for the normalisation of relations between Israel and the Arab countries, thereby decreasing their chances of pressuring Israel and the United States? The dismantling of the Palestinian refugees' influence, and to a weakening of the Palestinian leftist fronts power in Diaspora, who represented the refugees interests in the PLO.
What can be the prospect for change in power relations when the PLO leadership (read Arafat) every-day become increasingly captive to their commitments to the Accord: to establish political, security and economic co-ordination with Israel,to repress the Intifada and the opposition, to persuade various sectors of the population to participate in the normalisation of relations with the Israeli establishment, and to create a joint economic system that will facilitate Israel's neo-colonialist control in the region.
Continuation of the indirect occupation is an ideal solution for Israel and for the representatives of the region's new order. Therefore, Israel's "good faith" or the hoped for vital pressure will in another three years result, at most, in the establishment of a Palestinian entity in which authority will be divided in a functional manner between Israelis ad Palestinians: Israel will continue to be responsible for the settlement clusters and for the security of its citizens in roads and streets. It will continue, to a large degree, to control the bridges to Jordan and the land, water and the Palestinian economy while exploiting the masses of Palestinian workers, this time in partnership with the Palestinian bourgeoisie.
This will be the Palestinian Bantustan state, whose establishment will only increase the apartheid that already exists throughout Palestine. *