Socialist Action /June 2001
Palestine's Fight for Self-Determination
Challenges Apartheid Israel
By GERRY FOLEY
The deadly suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on June
1 highlights the increasingly poisoned relationships between the two communities
inhabiting the lands of historic Palestine. The immediate effect of this
desperate act has been to expose the Palestinian people to still more violent
attacks by the Zionist state.
In its June 3 issue, the Jerusalem Post
pointed out: "The U.S., which has until now routinely accompanied its
condemnations of Palestinian attacks with calls for restraint, refrained
yesterday from asking Israel to limit its response to the Tel Aviv bombing,
signaling it would be more understanding this time of an Israeli response."
The U.S. authorities apparently think that they
can afford to condone more openly Israeli attacks on Palestinians. In the
wake of the bombing, moreover, an Israeli mob attacked a Palestinian mosque
in Jaffa, the old Arab port city that is now an appendage of Tel Aviv, and
the Israeli and international press has been filled with declarations of
anti-Arab hatred by Israelis.
That such feelings exist among the Israeli population
is not a new revelation. But the shock caused by the bombing of a group
of teenagers at a disco, 19 of whom died, offered a perfect occasion for
expressing it.
Neither the Israeli nor the international capitalist
press asked the obvious question of what motivated a young Palestinian man,
hardly older than the bombing victims, to sacrifice his life. But the answer
is obvious.
For many months the powerful Israeli armed forces
have been waging a ruthless war against a practically defenseless people,
sending tanks, bombers, and missiles against poor Palestinian neighborhoods,
often miserable camps housing Palestinian families driven from their homes
in previous decades by Zionist ethnic cleansing.
The precarious Palestinian economy has been virtually
destroyed, shattering any hope of Palestinian young people for a future
or even a tolerable life. Even before the present undeclared war, the wretched
Palestinian GNP had declined by 20 percent in the wake of the so-called
peace accords signed in Oslo.
Under the cover of a war against terrorism, the
Israeli secret services have been assassinating Palestinian leaders, waging
a "dirty war" from a distance against the Palestinian movement.
In these circumstances, it is inevitable that Palestinians,
either individuals or organizations, will strike at the Zionist state in
any way they can and at any cost. Tragically, the Israeli population is
a much easier target than the Israeli armed forces. And that inevitably
increases the likelihood of incidents like the Tel Aviv bombing.
Given the growing desperation of the Palestinian
people, it is not possible to protect the Jewish population from terrorist
attacks except by separating the Arab and Jewish communities by a thoroughgoing
policy of apartheid and a new Middle East War that would offer the Zionists
an opportunity to expel the Palestinian population or a large part of it.
The refusal of the Israeli politicians to give
up the Zionist settlements in the West Bank (and their policy of continuing
to expand them) indicates that they are continuing to envisage the possibility
of new ethnic cleansing to establish their hold over all of historic Palestine.
The Zionist leaders, from their standpoint, are
also increasingly desperate. The Jewish population in the region is a shrinking
minority.
For example, News from Within, an anti-Zionist
magazine published in Israel, reported in its March issue on a special interdisciplinary
seminar held in Hertzliya on the "strength and national security of
Israel." The seminar noted that within 20 years, the Arab population
of the state of Israel will have risen to a third of the total.
One of its recommendations was that Zionists settle
in areas with big Palestinian populations "in order to prevent a contiguous
Arab majority that will geographically divide the country."
But given the present political conditions in the
Middle East, including the policy objectives of Israel's imperialist backers
there, it very difficult for the Zionists to strike for a general military
solution to their problems.
Thus, the Zionists and the imperialists have obviously
decided to let the conflict continue to fester and to use the increasingly
likely acts of desperation by Palestinians as an excuse for stepping up
the pressure on the Palestinian people and their leaders.
As we go to press, it seems that the Israeli leaders
are deferring major military reprisals against the Palestinians for the
sake of politically exploiting the shock created by the Tel Aviv bombing.
Nonetheless, they are inflicting economic reprisals by closing Israeli border
crossings to Palestinian workers.
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has tried
to defuse the current tensions by condemning the bombing and calling for
a halt to armed confrontations. But Israeli and U.S. officials are demanding
that he prove his peaceful intentions, apparently by repressing Palestinian
resistance, including arresting militants.
However, given the demonstrated anger of the Palestinian
masses, it is doubtful that Arafat could break the mobilizations.
And even if he succeeded, as long as the Palestinian
people have no hope of a better life, he could hardly prevent individuals
from expressing their hopelessness by desperate acts, like the Tel Aviv
bombing. In fact, there are indications that the Tel Aviv bomber acted on
his own.
Of course, the only way that the Palestinian people
could gain any hope for the future would be if the Zionists made important
concessions. But they have proven remarkably reluctant to do that. It is
now clear that the Oslo agreements did not represent real concessions but
only an attempt to corrupt the Palestinian leadership. They opened the way
for the creation of a Palestinian bureaucracy but left the people worse
off than they had been before.
In fact, given the long-term weakness of the Zionist
project, it is not likely that the Zionists can or will offer any significant
concessions to the Palestinian people. Thus, as long as Zionism is maintained,
the outlook is for increasingly poisoned relations between the Israeli and
Palestinian community and for new wars.
The only hope for peace, therefore, is for the
Jewish population of Palestine to abandon the Zionist project and try to
find a new framework for living together with their Arab neighbors, on the
basis of equality in a common country.
Socialist Action /June 2001 |