Socialist Action /November 2002
Costs of War Against Palestinians Throws
Israeli Regime into Crisis
By GERRY FOLEY
In-fighting among the Zionist parties has now forced the Israeli premier,
Ariel Sharon, to call new elections for February. Sharon pointed out that
elections are risky for the Zionist state in the current situation. In fact,
the economic costs of the war against the Palestinians and the world economic
crisis are creating potentially serious divisions among the parties that
support the Israeli state.
Sharon blamed the right-wing National Union for the snap elections, claiming
that it posed onerous conditions for joining the government, which was certainly
true. But Sharon was also pressed by his right-wing rival within his own
Likud party, Binyamin Netanyahu, who also demanded snap elections.
In fact, even if the National Union came into the government, it would
give Sharon only a paper-thin majority, 62 out of 120 seats in parliament,
liable to be blown away by the slightest political turbulence. His government
majority is already is a museum of neo-medieval monsters. The classical
right party, Likud, has only 19 of the 55 seats while the others are held
by religious parties.
The collapse of the Israeli National Unity government, including both
the Likud and the Labor Party, was a result of growing economic difficulties
that are making it more and more difficult to reconcile the different interests
of the Israeli population and the Zionist rulers.
The immediate issue that brought the cabinet down at the end of October
was a budget bill that combined generous subsidies to the ultra-Zionist
colonies planted in predominately Arab areas with drastic cuts in social
benefits for the Israeli poor and elderly.
The Zionist settlements on the West Bank and Gaza represent the unavowed
and unavowable continued goal of the Israeli rulers to "Judaicize"
the entire land of Palestine and thereby to subjugate or drive out the Palestinian
people.
But this is a goal that most of the Israeli community is no longer willing
to sacrifice for. Israeli polls show that only 20 percent of the Jewish
population supports the settlements. The overwhelming majority thinks that
they should be removed to clear the way for some kind of compromise settlement
with the Palestinians.
The "Palestinian state" offered by the Oslo peace accords,
which remains the basis of all attempts to negotiate a settlement with the
Palestinian leadership, is obviously impossible if the territory allotted
for this ministate is dotted with fortified Zionist settlements connected
by roads under the control of the Israeli military.
In fact, the underlying cause of the present Palestinian uprising is
that under the so-called Palestinian Authority the Palestinian people of
the West Bank in particular found themselves suffering a still more onerous
Israeli occupation because of the Zionist settlements and the deployment
of the Israeli army to defend them.
Moreover, the Zionist settlements in the Arab lands conquered by Israel
in 1967 were established and are peopled by Zionist holy warriors who make
no bones about their intention to drive out the Palestinians.
A recent example is the illegal Zionist settlement at Havat Gilad. The
Israeli government sent in soldiers to dislodge the illegal settlers but
it was the Palestinians living in the area who paid the main price. The
settlers continue to defy the Israeli army with essential impunity.
The liberal Israeli daily Haaretz (Nov. 1) reported the case
of one Arab family, the Abdullahs, whose olive grove borders on Havat Gilad.
When they called on the army to protect them from the settlers, it declared
the area a closed military zone and forced them out.
After the army had left and the Palestinians could return, they found
that 80 of their 210 olive trees had been stripped of their fruit and that
many had their branches broken. They started picking the remaining olives,
but then a group of 20 settlers arrived, five of whom were armed. They drove
the Palestinians away and took the olives they had picked. Such robbery
has become common and a scandal even among liberal Zionists.
Support of the settlers has become the most glaring example of the sacrifice
of the interests of the majority of the Israeli population to the long-term
Zionist goals that mean endless war. But in general, the Israeli economy
is reeling under the weight of the cost of the war against the Palestinians,
as well as the crisis of the world capitalist economy, to which Israel has
totally mortgaged its future.
The Oct. 22 issue of the British Guardian reported that Uzi Dayan,
chairman of the Israeli National Security Council, estimated that suppressing
the Palestinian uprising was costing the Israeli economy about $3 billion
a year. There was no hope, he said, that Israel could solve its financial
problems as long as the war continued.
Sharon's answer to the problem is to ask the United States to bail out
the Zionist state. The Oct. 22 Guardian reported that his government
was working up a request for $10 billion in additional aid. Israel is already
the largest recipient of U.S. aid, getting $2.1 billion a year, most of
which goes for military equipment.
Tourism revenues have dropped by half and foreign investment by two thirds
since the start of the latest Palestinian uprising High tech industries
were the driving force of an economy that is isolated in its region and
enjoys no important natural resources. Now the bursting of the dot-com bubble
has hit Israel especially hard. Official unemployment is over 10 percent.
Inflation is already at 7 percent.
The economy overall not only failed to grow in the past two years but
declined by 1.5 percent for this year and by 0.5 percent for the year before.
But given its demographic growth, Israel needs a growth rate of 1.8 percent
annually as a minimum. Growing unemployment makes it difficult to attract
new Jewish immigrants and to maintain the foreign labor force that the Zionist
bosses have been bringing in to replace Palestinian workers in agriculture
and the building industry.
Moreover, according to Le Monde of Oct. 15, real incomes of Israelis
declined by 4.5 percent in the first seven months of this year and 5.8 percent
for the second trimester.
The government austerity programs have already sparked a series of general
strikes by Histadrut [the historic Zionist labor and social organization,
which is a pillar of the Labor Party] and prolonged strikes by municipal
workers. Under these pressures, Labor's departure from the government could
be seen coming from way off. No negotiations or even the obvious reluctance
of the Labor tops to be separated from the fleshpots of the state machine
could prevent it.
The immediate result is a polarization of Israeli politics. Sharon tried
to avoid quick new elections by making an alliance with the ultraright bloc,
the National Union, at least one of whose components, the Moledet party,
calls for outright expulsion of the Palestinians.
However, the National Union's conditions for joining the government reported
in the Nov. 1 issue of Haaretz mean total confrontation with the
Palestinians and open defiance of the U.S. attempts to save its face and
that of its right-wing Arab allies.
The National Union demanded that the government declare formally that
the Olso agreement is dead, that it make a decision in principle for dismantling
the Palestinian Authority and disbanding its security forces, that it lift
the restrictions on continued expansion of the Zionist settlements, and
that it declare that "under the present circumstances" a Palestinian
state is "irrelevant."
Clearly, the crisis of the Israeli economy is forcing the Israeli population
to face the fact that the continuing war on the Palestinians is an insurmountable
obstacle to their aspirations for a better life. Hopefully, that will lead
them to look for alternatives. Ultimately, that can only mean giving up
the idea of an exclusively Jewish state and seeking a basis for living together
with the Arab people of Palestine and of the region.
Socialist Action /November 2002 |