File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0112, message 187


Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 01:31:55 +0200
From: Ilan Shalif <gshalif-AT-netvision.net.il>
Subject: Re: AUT: Aufheben article on Palestine/Israel


Hi People
Johnny offered us the link.
I followed it... and thought it might be interesting for list people
to hear some local person notes in the margins of the text.

I wrote some notes on the margins of the first few paragraphs.
It is too big project to rewrite the whole article from the
point of view of local libertarian communist.

Alf Heben wrote:

> The recent Aufheben article on Palestine/Israel (from
> Aufheben #10) is now available on the Wildcat site (in
> English):
> http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/material/aufh10b.htm
>
> Johnny

******In particular the large number of fatalities among
the Palestinian population inside 'Israel proper' has
brought the Intifada home in a way not seen before, with
places like Jaffa and Nazareth erupting in general strikes
and riots, and the main road through the northern Galilee
strewn with burning tyres in the first days of the uprising.
********

13 persons murdered by Israeli police in the few days of the
demonstration is really unacceptable, but it was with out
proportion to the hundreds of Palestinians murdered in the
occupied territories.

The most outrageous activity was the blocking of the
"Wady Aarah" traffic artery in one of the most central roads
from the center of Israel to the North East regions.

******** The response of
many to the Palestinian problem tends to take the form of
an abstract call for solidarity between Arab and Jewish
workers. At the same time, the Leninist left legitimizes the
nationalist ideology that divides the working class, by
affirming the 'right of national self determination' and
offering 'critical support' for the Palestine Liberation
Organisation (PLO).[1***********

The position of the Israeli libertarian communist organization
(of Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel) was for about
40 years that only social revolution of the whole region
will solve the conflict between the Israeli Jews and the
Palestinians and other Arabs of the region.

We claimed that the recognition by the regions revolutionaries
of the right of self determination of the Jewish working people
will enable them to join the revolution with out fear of being
victims. ("On the model of the right to divorce make many
margins happier".)

After the 1967 war our position was - "Israel out of the
occupied territories without interfering with what the
people there will do". (For long, the Palestinians of the west
bank and the East bank wanted to do away with the
kingdom, but were deterred by Israeli threats.)

The two states for two nations is for long the position of the
Zionist extreme left, the various Leninists, and surprise
surprise also more than half the palestinian citizens of
Israel.


> This article will outline some of the material reasons why
> concrete examples of Jewish-Arab proletarian solidarity
> are few and far between.

It is also the case among the Jewish working class. Part of it
is it being an immigration country. The other part is that the
Israeli working class was till not long ago under the rule of the
national socialist labor party who ruled the country till 1977.

Most of the Palestinians working people were not allowed
to work in the advanced working places which are still
reserved to Jews.

> Working class Jews have
> benefited materially from the occupation, and from the
> inferior labour market position of Palestinians, both in
> Israel and in the occupied territories.

They benefited more by the fast development of the country
to the modern capitalism than any other thing. This development
was of course possible as Israel was promoted by money and
trade conditions to enable it fill the job of imperialist tool in the region
(mainly) and the world.

The majority of Jews settled in the occupied territories are city
dwellers who got there cheaper apartments as initiative.

The real settlers of the settlements that are not only there for cheap
housing, are not really regular working people. They are extreme
religious nationalists subsidized heavily by government budget.

Not may of them are working in other than serving their system.
The majority of working people just have to see how the government
spend the money on the settlements instead of on the working people
needs.

> Since the mid 1970s
> this settlement (which we will call Labour Zionism) has
> been in retreat and, increasingly, Jewish workers have
> faced economic insecurity. The occupation of the West
> Bank and Gaza Strip was necessary in order to
> accommodate the Jewish working class in Israel.

The retreat of the older Zionist Labor settlements was result of two
factors mainly. First, the Zionist Labor party who ruled the country
lost to the more national-capitalist right. The second was that only
the small minority of these settlements were relevant to security as
the borders moved.  Though the 1967 war was at the pick of economical
recession due to restructuring forced by the world bank & company,
it was motivated by the East West conflicts more than any thing.
(Like the 1957 Sinai/Sues war)

The Jewish working class was most devoted to the state and not in
need to being pampered by war spoils.

> The settlements in the occupied territories have played the
> role of social housing to compensate for the increasing
> economic insecurity of Jewish workers, and this has
> become an intractable problem facing the architects of
> bourgeois peace.

After the war, lot of US money and profits from Sinai oil
contributed to the flourishing of the economy.

Gradual absorbing of the occupied territories markets and work force,
contributed too for the bloom. If at all, economic security of Jewish
workers increased immensely - including upward mobility from
jobs the Palestinians filled.

The need and option of bourgeois peace came about during the first
Intifada, but even that more because of US and imperialist interests as
in Palestine and the other Arab countries the Islamic fundamentalism
increased its influence. On the other side, economic boom, development of
the capitalist class and the return of the Labor party to the center of government,
enabled the first steps towards a bourgeois peace.

The real working class people did not gain a thing from the occupation
itself.
The failure of the "bourgeois peace" in the region was the result of
reluctance of the majority of Israeli people - brain washed for years,
to let the Palestinians have their own independent state in the occupied
territories. (Capitalist interests are not clear cut either as part of
the capitalists prefer Bantustan kind of peace.) When it was found that
the Palestinian capitalist class cannot convince/force the Palestinians
to compromise so much, the bourgeois peace process was stuck.

> A typical leftist position is to call for a 'democratic, socialist
> state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews can live in
> peace'.[2] This might appear relatively reformist to us, but
> a similar call for a 'secular, democratic, bi-national state'
> is regarded as a wildly revolutionary demand in Israel -
> even by relatively radical activists.

As written above we called for social revolution in the whole of the
region (called by capitalist Middle East) and not the building of any
kind of a state or states.

I wonder if you will find more than few people among the Israeli
Jews who will support it. You will find more who will support
our position.... and of course much more who support really
two equal status states for two nations.

> Since the start of the
> century the struggles of both groups of workers have
> more and more come to be refracted through the prism of
> nationalism. Nevertheless the dismal spectacle of
> proletarian killing proletarian is not predestined;
> nationalism in the Middle East emerged and is maintained
> in response to the militancy of the working class.

Some people Just do not have all the pieces of the puzzle.
When my parents immigrated to Palestain from Ukraine,
there were here about 600,000 palestinians and 60,000
jews - at least half of them in religious charity status.

The build up of about 5 million working class of Jews in industrialized
Palestain was mainly through a heavily subsidized process
in which Jews of underdeveloped countries and the bankrupt
Eastern block were transformed to a working class of a developed
country. Of course they all know it was possible because
of the robbing of the country from the Palestinians and the services
in the region for imperialism.

We still have to convince them that they are not going to
loose from the reconciliation with the palestinians. The
deep economic recession due to the present Intifada may
do the trick.

> For us,
> the ideology of nationalism, as it has manifested itself in
> the Middle East, can only be understood in relation to the
> emergence of the oil proletariat, and the US ascendancy
> in the region.

I am not going to open the Arab nationalism subject here
in which the Palestinian nationalism is unique part.
For sure the replacement of direct rule by British colonialism and oil
interests by indirect US imperialism, global interests and oil interests,
Naserism, USSR temporary influence in the region, 1957 Suez war...
All contributed their share, and especially the intensive education
of the palestinians in the refugee camps and universities.

> For example, the forms taken by Palestinian
> nationalism -notably the PLO - were a practical response
> by the exiled Palestinian bourgeoisie to an openly
> rebellious Palestinian proletariat.

I just wonder... There was very small Palestinian bourgeoisie
Before 1948, and not much of it in both the west bank, and the
refugee camp. The corrupt leaders of the PLO were more
thieves than real bourgeoisie.

The Palestinian proletars in exile were mainly the employees of
non Palestinians. The form of Palestinian nationalism -notably the PLO -
was powered mainly from the inability to absorb the Pa


> The US-brokered
> 'peace process' developed in recognition of the PLO's
> recuperative role in the Intifada, while the collapse of
> Oslo, and the apparent dramatic resurgence of Islamist
> antagonism towards the USA, is linked to the PLO's
> failure to deliver even the basic demands of Palestinian
> nationalism.

It is not so much the failure to deliver the basic demands
of Palestinian nationalism as the failure to keep the quality
of life of the people from deteriorating - due to Israeli harsh
measures mainly and Palestinian authority corruption as
addition.

In a way, Most of the problems of the occupation remained
and added hardship tipped the balance.



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