Palestine: Two states: No solution

The revolt against Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza continues. It poses once again the question: For what type of state should the Palestinian resistance be fighting? David Green examines the question that has occupied the PLO for decades.

It is easy to understand what the Palestinian uprising is aimed against: the brutal denial of self determination for an oppressed people. But for what positive goals have the scores of Palestinian youth died in the current uprising? Above all what kind of state is the resistance struggling to bring into being?

The answer to this question has changed over the years and with it so has the attitude of the PLO to the Jewish population of Palestine and the borders of the proposed state.

Stooges

Prior to the 1967 war the PLO position (as determined by Fatah, the largest faction) was to see the Jews simply as colonial stooges. Consequently, the PLO Charter of1964 afforded only Jews of Palestinian origin the option to remain in the region following the destruction of Israel, a formulation excluding 95% of the Jewish population. In 1968 however, Fatah expressed the view that in a democratic Palestine:

'Jews will again live in harmony side by side with. . .Arab Palestinians.'

This novel argument clearly paved the way for a radically new notion of Palestinian statehood, one which was expressed that year at Fatah's Third Congress which called for:

'A democratic, progressive, non-sectarian state in which Jews, Christians and Muslims would live together in peace and enjoy the same rights.'

This formula in fact was in one sense a progressive break with previously dominant ideas within the resistance. In the 1950s and early 1960s the liberation struggle was led ideologically by pan-Arabist movements such as the Arab Nationalist Movement and later the Arab Liberation Front. In reality these movements reflected the narrow, conservative interests of one or more bourgeois Arab regimes in the area. These regimes used the Palestinian struggle as a Trojan horse for their own annexationist and sometimes anti-Semitic plans. The PLO's stress on the Palestinian and democratic character of the state cut against the land grabbing designs of the Arab states, and the stressing of non-sectarianism offset the danger of chauvinism and confessionalism dominating the resistance.

Yet Fatah's insistence on the 'Palestinian-ness' of the struggle created its own problems. Refugees suffering repression under despotic Arab regimes such as the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan were not to be 'diverted' by entering into struggle against them. Despite its formal 'independence' from the Arab regimes Fatah held to a strict policy of 'non-interference' in their affairs.

This view perfectly expressed the narrow class interests of the Palestinian bourgeoisie of the regional diaspora in places such as Jordan. But it was a deadly snare for the Palestinian workers and peasants. This was tragically underlined when Fatah politically disarmed the semi-insurrectional general strike in Jordan in 1970 (a movement in which the Palestinian refugees-70% of the Jordanian population-were central) and to the massacre of 2-3,000 fighters by forces loyal to King Hussein.

Up until 1973 no tendency in the resistance advocated a Palestinian 'mini-state' on the West Bank and Gaza. Such a proposal was rightly viewed as an unacceptable compromise of the legitimate right of the Palestinians to a state in the whole of Palestine.

In the early years after the 1967 war and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza the PLO designated all proposals for a mini-state as a plot by imperialism and Zionism to stabilise its rule and end resistance Arafat argued in 1970:

'We shall oppose the establishment of this state to the last member of the Palestinian people, for if ever such a state is established it will spell the end of the whole Palestinian cause.'

Yet the Jordanian attack on the PLO fighters in 1970 undermined support for a return of the West Bank to Jordanian rule (pre-1967 situation) and the sentiment for a separate state grew within the West Bank. The PDFLP (Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) increasingly articulated the idea of a West Bank 'national authority' as a transitional stage to a liberated zone-free of occupying troops but no longer under Jordanian tutelage.

Despaired

It took the defeat of the Arab states by Israel in the October war of1973 to bring this into the mainstream of PLO thinking. Instead of breaking with the bankrupt Arab national regimes and basing themselves firmly on the Arab workers and peasants of the region, the demoralised PLO leadership despaired of overthrowing the Zionist state and looked to US imperialism to help negotiate a political solution which would involve recognising Israel's right to exist. Arafat's deputy Said Hammami argued after the October war:

'Past decades of enmity do not provide a good ground for an immediate realisation of a state in partnership. I believe that the first step towards that should be a mutual recognition for the two respective parties.'

It was to be expected that the mini-state proposal should provoke widespread opposition within the PLO. A 'Rejection Front' was formed, led primarily by the PFLP. Against the PDFLP's argument that a 'national authority' would be a transitional step towards the liberation of the whole of Palestine, PFLP leader George Habash insisted that in fact it would lead to the Palestinians being geographically, economically and militarily squeezed by Israel and Jordan. He also insisted correctly that a West Bank state would betray the interests and aspirations of Palestinians from the areas now within the borders of Israel: 'And the rest of our people? An essential contradiction will exist between the state and the Palestinian masses from the 1948 areas whose vital questions will not be solved by this state.'

Opposition

Indeed refugees from these areas, such as those living in Tel Zaatar, reacted with sustained opposition to the mini state proposal. Despite several correct criticisms the rejectionists were never able to break with Fatah and the PLO. The fundamental reason for this lay in the shared acceptance with Fatah, the PDFLP and indeed with every other tendency within the PLO of the crowning slogan of the 'Democratic Secular State'.

This slogan is a trap because of its silence on the class character of the state. A capitalist Palestine would without doubt remain cruelly exploited by imperialism while providing an opportunity for collaborators and careerists within the PLO to taste the fruits of office. But crucially the very notion of such a state being a desirable or necessary stage in the liberation of Palestine dictates a strategy which bases itself on forces other than the proletariat and peasantry of the region. Thus Fatah and the PFLP have a shared emphasis on diplomatic manoeuvre and isolated guerrilla actions which are ineffective against the Zionist military machine. An entirely bourgeois slogan demands that bourgeois methods are predominant.

Neither the minimum programme of a mini-state or the maximum programme of a democratic secular state offers the hope of a lasting and just solution for the Palestinians. The proposal for a West Bank state is not a sign of the maturity of the resistance but of its political weakness; a legacy of defeat.' What would it solve? The US and Israeli Labour Party are prepared to countenance one on condition that it continue to act as a reservoir of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods.

If such a state came into existence through a deal with imperialism and Labour Zionism it would involve the disarming of the resistance, leaving them even more helpless in the face of Zionism. It would leave Israel free to continue to threaten and divide the Arab world and so leave the region prey to imperialist exploitation and oppression. Of course, should a

Palestinian West Bank state come into existence as a 'liberated zone' in the teeth of oppo­sition from Zionism, revolutionary communists would bloc with the Palestinian masses to defend it. But no Trotskyist could take political responsibility for such a project. Our goal is quite different. Our slogan is for a unitary secular workers' state of Palestine.

This slogan affirms all that is positive in Palestinian thought on the issue to date whilst extending it crucially to embrace the question of social revolution. And raising this question points the way to the only means of breaking Israeli Jewish workers, or at least key sections of them, from the Zionist state.

Against the maintenance of the racist Zionist state in any form we advance a programme for a revolution based on armed councils of Palestinian workers, fighters, camp-dwellers and peasants, seeking support from those sections of the Israeli Jewish working class that can be won away from identification with imperialist interests, and from the workers of the surrounding Arab nations.

In this way the national and democratic revolution can be trade permanent revolution must be made permanent if it is to succeed in achieving its first goal of real national self-determination for all .Palestinians. The 18% of Israeli Arabs, as well as those in the West Bank are struggling to realise a Palestinian state in allofpre-1947 Palestine.

If this is to happen it must be led by the workers and peasants. But on the morrow of their victory they will be forced to pursue their independent class interests-for expropriation of the large landowners and businesses. If they do not they will be super-exploited even more intensely than before and this vicious exploitation will be justified by demagogic claims about the need to make sacrifices to build the new nation.

The Palestinian workers and peasants would also need urgently to extend the revolution into the surrounding Arab states, with their stronger working classes and more industrially based and diversified economies. The existence of huge Palestinian refugee communities in these countries makes this struggle all the more possible. A Socialist United States of the Middle East is the political expression of the interdependence of these struggles against imperialism and Zionism.

Fri 15, June 2007 @ 20:52