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Christopher Towne is a member of the Connecticut branch of Socialist Action.
He visited Palestine from Nov. 1 to 24.
Crossing
into Bethlehem from Israel nowadays you are met with a scene from the pages of
Orwell. The Israelis have removed anti-apartheid graffiti from the wall
and erected two murals. One
states in three languages, "Go in peace," and the other
describes the relationship between the annexed city of Jerusalem and the occupied city of Bethlehem as one of
"peace and love."
Tourists
on their way to see the birthplace of Jesus may not even realize
they've entered martial law.
Along with the absurd facelift, plenty of things have changed in
Palestine since my last stay here two years ago. Abbas
and Fatah have accepted Western aid to crush Hamas. Militias are being disarmed despite continued
Israeli attacks and land theft. And basic Zionist law is being
challenged.
On
Nov. 5, when I entered Nablus, our driver avoided the main road that
bordered on Balata, the largest West
Bank
refugee camp. We heard shooting from that direction so I asked him what
the Israelis were up to. He
told me, "Not Israelis. Palestinian police."
The
Palestinian Authority (PA) had brought into Nablus hundreds of armed
police to disarm militias, obviously expecting confrontation. We heard
shooting for hours. Refugees
have every right to take back their stolen land and redistribute it.
Palestinians under occupation have every right to defend themselves
from attacks and theft. But on that day in Nablus, the PA would not
recognize the right for Palestinians to defend even the status quo.
The
Oslo agreements created the PA as a policing agent, not
a resistance force. Instead of uniting the various militias as a single
Palestinian army, it is actively disarming them and negotiating with Israel for permission to create a capitalist mini-state.
In
Halhool I met some locals and visiting French activists who were
helping with the olive harvest. We were assisting farmers that had been
victimized by the apartheid wall, which either made it difficult for
them to access their lands or just outright confiscated it for use by
Jewish settlers.
One
family we met had waited seven years just to plow the land. We picked
and pruned the olive trees, started a small fire for tea, and felt
pretty good about helping the family get past the soldiers. The next time, however, the military
was not impressed by the French and American volunteers. The family was
once again denied access to their land, belonging to them since before
the state of Israel was founded.
An
English-speaking soldier had an interesting take on the situation. He
believed the military presence was necessary because Israel had to broker between two extremist groups: Hamas and the radical Jewish
settlers. The absurd idea that an occupation mediates between
extremists should sound familiar to Americans fed up with this rhetoric
being used to justify the Iraq war.
Israeli
citizens may find comfort in Zionism by blaming the conflict on
extremists, but this is not the reality. Even in Hebron, where the settlers are the most brazen and
violent, the reality is not one of "bad apples." Radical
Zionists have been on a campaign to terrorize the population into
leaving, with some successes. They do this by threats, open harassment,
home invasions, vandalism, and violence.
They
have taken over homes above Palestinian shops to throw their garbage,
or bricks, upon them regularly.
Shop owners have had to erect nets to keep the filth off their
wares.
But
the problem in Hebron, and in Palestine, is not a small population
of extremist Jews. The Zionist
government was founded with the intent to continue expanding and
ridding the land of the indigenous population. The settlers have the
support and protection of the military, and without this the local
Palestinian population could have easily defended themselves. Israel is not mediating; it is using the settlers as a
battering ram.
In
Tel Aviv I met with folks at Kav La Oved (worker's
hotline) and got some good news. On Oct. 10 the Israeli Supreme Court
ruled that Israeli companies that employ Palestinians under martial law
must provide for them the same minimum wages and labor rights
guaranteed to Jews.
At
the same time, 90 West Bank workers employed by Yamit irrigation systems
went on strike to demand enactment of the ruling. In the beginning of
November, all 90 of the workers of the Sol-Or petrol container and
metal factory went on strike for the same demands. This small strike wave is impressive
in its simple demand: that Jews
and non-Jews should have equal rights in the workplace. Though the
victory brings hope, Israel fears becoming dependent on Palestinian labor and
has been steadily replacing them with foreign “guest workers.”
The
number of Palestinians employed inside Israel or in Israeli-controlled
industrial zones has dwindled from 180,000 in 1987 (before the first
Intifada) to 33,000 in 2004. It is unlikely that the Palestinian
capitalist leadership will aid in the fight for West Bank workers to
keep their jobs in Israel, preferring to profit from their own exploitation
of those men and women.
Nor
would they see the necessity of forming an alliance between guest
workers and Palestinians, demanding full rights for non-Jews regardless
of origin. Only a working-class leadership can remedy this.
The
Zionist government of Israel enforces its racist rule in a three-tier
system in which Palestinian refugees, Palestinians under occupation,
and Palestinian citizens of Israel are subject to different
laws from Jewish citizens.
Capitalist and middle-class Palestinian leaderships have led
recent fights for those in one tier, but not the others. Only a working
class leadership can unite Palestinians in all three tiers in a
combined fight to dismantle Israeli apartheid.
Additionally,
only a working-class leadership can unite Palestinians with Hebrew
workers and guest workers in Israeli industries to establish a secular,
democratic Palestine. Our
activism aims at ending U.S. aid to the apartheid government of Israel, and our strategy here must reflect the
complexities of the situation in Palestine. Israel is not a
"mistake" in an otherwise benevolent U.S. imperialism.
This
rhetoric only serves to justify imperialism, seeking merely to
streamline it by ridding it of the burden of Israel.
Instead,
our movement must seek to make it untenable to wage war on working
people anywhere.
We
must mobilize a powerful mass movement to counter Israel’s apartheid policies, while popularizing the ideas
of the anti-imperialist struggle in the Middle
East
and in the world.
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