While most workers in Europe and the
Americas were busy celebrating Christmas the Zionist bourgeoisie began a
long-planned bombing campaign against Gaza that according to Ehud Barak, the
war minister, is going to be an "all-out war" against Hamas.
In common with other reactionary
regimes in the region, like Turkey which bombed PKK bases inside Iraq, and the
Iranian regime which arrested many labour activists, Israel sees holiday
periods in the west as a good opportunity for killing and subjugating workers
and the oppressed in large numbers – without a big response from the
international labour movement and socialists.
On December 27 the Israeli ‘Defence’
Forces began airstrikes against the Hamas government and Gaza’s defenceless
civilians using F-16 fighters, Apache helicopters and unmanned drones. In
addition to killing many Hamas members, including three of its leaders, they
have killed over 430 people, among them many women, children and other
civilians.
The number of injured people,
currently around 2,200, is a clear testament to the fact that the bombing
campaign is not in any way a ‘defensive’ measure, nor has it anything to do
with being a ‘proportionate’ response to the launching of Qassam rockets and
mortars. The Israeli death toll of just four people, i.e., a 1:100 ratio
compared with the Palestinians, clearly shows the disproportionate
nature of the assault! The list of targets also makes it clear that this action
is actually meant to weaken the resolve of the Palestinian people and Hamas
(and maybe even to topple it). The Israelis have hit Hamas buildings, police
stations, the Justice Ministry, the Education Ministry, the Interior Ministry,
the Legislative Assembly, the Civil Defence Building, the Islamic University
and two mosques.
Gaza: the ‘unoccupied’ territory?
Much has been said about Israel’s so-called ‘withdrawal’ from the Gaza Strip in
2005. The Zionists’ apologists have even tried to make out that this was a step
towards setting up a Palestinian state. But crucially the Israeli military has
continued to control Gaza’s airspace, coastal waters and borders! In addition,
the preparations for this "unilateral disengagement" included the
state murder of many Palestinian leaders and activists in Gaza and the
bulldozing of dozens of homes near the Egyptian border.
Then the Gazans were officially said to be ‘unoccupied’ and not the Zionist
occupier’s ‘problem’! That left the Israeli imperialists free to seek another
arena for their military adventures in July-August 2006. But their humiliating
defeat at the hands of Lebanon’s Hezbollah further exacerbated their internal
crisis leading them back to Gaza in the hope of a quick and easy victory
against a weaker opponent.
The present airstrikes follow the
18-month Israeli blockade (with the help of Egypt) which has meant that nearly
95 per cent of Gaza’s factories have been closed down. A crippled economy has
inevitably produced a humanitarian disaster for the 1.5 million population:
unemployment now stands at 49 per cent with 51.8 per cent of the people living
below the poverty line.
The blockade was aimed at bringing
the Gazans to their knees, to make them accept that they are a ‘defeated
people’, to make them reject Hamas and pick leaders who are more acceptable to
imperialism. This was what the Zionist gave the Palestinians in exchange for
the six-month ceasefire!
Israel: the mighty warrior?
The crisis in Israel is nothing new. In addition to the headline grabbing
corruption and misconduct cases against politicians, like Ariel Sharon (and his
sons) in the 1990s, the scandals involving President Moshe Katsav in 2006 and
now Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; there has been the more important economic and
political malaise in Israeli society. This has made a big impact on the social
cohesion of the ‘Jewish homeland’ and has reduced drastically its military and
diplomatic weight in the region.
During the 2003-05 period Israeli
unemployment was consistently above 10 per cent. It has since dropped by about
0.6 per cent a year to the current 7.6 per cent. For the youth it was over 20
per cent for 2002-04. Although the overall economic situation has improved this
was mostly due to massive US economic aid during 2004-06. Even so, over 21 per
cent of the population still live below the poverty line! (Officially US
imperialism now provides Israel with military aid only. Starting in 2007, there
will be $3 billion a year for ten years.)
On top of these there was the
humiliating war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah which led to a number of top
military commanders and Amir Peretz (the trade unionist war minister!) losing
their jobs. Olmert and the Kadima-led government were fatally weakened. The
elections scheduled for 10 February 2009 are supposed to resolve the weaknesses
of the coalition government. However, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud is already
ahead in the polls and the leaders of Kadima (Tzipi Livni) and Labour (Ehud
Barak) are competing against each other for a bigger share of seats in the
Knesset.
Following George Bush’s veto against
bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities (because of the implications of such an
attack for the US in the whole region), and not having the military capability
for such an attack itself, Israel has now been forced to pick on an easier
target to save face.
Yet the Zionist bourgeoisie has no
clear strategy, even though some of the objectives are clear: redemption for
the military and political establishment following the 2006 fiasco in Lebanon
(and covering up for four years of bombastic rhetoric and deliberate leaks
about long-range bombing exercises in preparation for attacking Iran); boosting
Kadima and Labour at the expense of Likud; weakening Hamas and establishing new
‘facts on the ground’ before the next ceasefire is agreed; and improving their
position before the Obama government is sworn in.
So far, however, instead of leading
to national unity and strengthening of the Kadima-Labour coalition the Gaza
campaign has brought differences in the cabinet to a head. Ehud Barak, the war
minister and leader of the Labour party, is jockeying for position against
Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister and the new leader of the Kadima party.
According to an Israeli official, interviewed by the Financial Times (3
January), "… Livni is in favour of pure dissuasion." This means
bombing large numbers of Hamas targets and then warning Hamas that "if
they don’t stop rockets we will go back and hit them even harder."
Ehud Barak favours the "international approach." This means "…
not to stop until we have some kind of internationally-backed agreement that
will supply monitoring or other guarantees to considerably reduce Hamas
attacks." Barak is so keen on this that earlier this week he briefed
Israeli journalists on a French proposal for a ceasefire (although there are
conflicting reports about exactly what he said). This was quickly denied by
Olmert and Livni. The disagreements have become so bad that on Friday (2
January) Haaretz, the ‘liberal’ newspaper, even called for a
"ceasefire at the top" of the Israeli government!
The Arab regimes and the bankruptcy
of Arab nationalism
The systematic bombing of Gaza once more lays bare the total bankruptcy of
Palestinian nationalism – and Arab nationalism as a whole. For the
Palestinians, as well as all Arabs, the dead-end of the previous ‘armed
struggle’ that continued until the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982,
and the numerous negotiations which never question the borders imposed by the
imperialist robbers and looters, has led to more and more brutality,
depravation and desperation for the masses. In return, this desperation has
spawned the courageous, but highly misguided, and ultimately futile, acts of
the new guerrilla movements. The old policy’s bankruptcy is now displayed in
starker terms by the Islamic groups’ suicide bombers who repeat the mistakes of
the previous generation in a callous way that wastes their lives without
advancing the mass struggle.
Despite all their attempts the
Israelis will not manage to undermine Hamas and other Palestinian groups
advocating resistance to the Zionist onslaught. The Zionists will actually
boost support for them as they did with Hezbollah in 2006. This is because
these movements – for now – have become the only hope of the oppressed and
exploited masses.
As we have seen, so far the main political
casualties have been the ‘Palestinian Authority’, Abu Mazen and his Fatah
group; all the reactionary Arab regimes that imperialism regards as ‘moderate’,
especially Egypt (with its direct role in the blockade of Gaza) and Saudi
Arabia; and the Arab League with its empty words. These regimes and movements
are now clearly seen as imperialism’s tools for smashing all struggles in the
region.
The ‘international community’
The ‘international community’ – the imperialist countries and their various lackeys
masquerading as the international champions of democracy – have been very ‘even
handed’ in their condemnation of violence on both sides. However, they
conveniently forget to mention that the violence of the Israeli imperialist
state cannot be equated with the actions taken by the Palestinian masses or
Hamas’s embryonic state structures. The Security Council of the United Nations,
the co-ordinating committee of the imperialist countries, held a meeting on 28
December when it issued a press statement – not even a resolution – and
"expressed serious concern at the escalation of the situation in Gaza and
called for an immediate halt to all violence." It thus equated the
violence of the oppressor and the oppressed!
It also "… called for all parties to address the serious humanitarian and
economic needs in Gaza and to take necessary measures, including opening of
border crossings, to ensure the continuous provision of humanitarian supplies,
including supplies of food, fuel and provision of medical treatment." So
in addition to Israel the Egyptian government is also not taking any notice of
this.
Of course, even when the UN adopts resolutions, like 242 following the Six-Day
War in 1967, and calls for the "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from
territories occupied in the recent conflict" Israel takes no notice!
(There is a long list of UN resolutions and international conventions, like
Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, that Israel ignores and the
‘international community’ turns a blind eye to this defiance.)
The ‘international community’ can
never seek to expose the root causes of the region’s problems. These go back at
least 90 years, to the Sykes-Picot agreements that dismembered the defeated
Ottoman empire and divided it between British and French imperialism; splitting
up the Arabs among many states and denying the Kurds a nation-state of their
own. Then there was the British mandate over Palestine and the Balfour
declaration. Then the 1947 UN vote rewarded the terrorism and ‘ethnic
cleansing’ of the Zionists and sanctioned the creation of a colonial-settler
state as the most reliable base for imperialism in the region (and then
consistently supported all its aggression and violence to this day).
All of these agreements are the
basis for today’s domination and exploitation of the region’s workers. However,
the conduct of the imperialists during the past six years has shattered the
illusions of many people in the region. The masses have seen how under the
pretext of promoting democracy, US imperialism has toppled the Baathist regime
in Iraq, overlooked the abuses by its friends and allies, and has provided ever
more blatant support for Israel in carrying out its policies. The Bush
government has even questioned and ignored election results it did not like!
Many people in the region now know
that the bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries is the cause of their
problems and that it therefore cannot play a part in finding a solution. Any
leaders who try to build up hopes in talks, or worse still, talks about talks,
with the imperialist robbers and looters will not be trusted. Even those who
keep quiet about the imperialists’ and Zionists’ abuses have lost much of their
support and authority.
The dead-end offered by Hamas
The Israelis, even with the latest artillery bombardment and troop deployment
inside Gaza, will not be able to overthrow Hamas. Hamas was born of the
inevitable need of the Palestinian people to resist the Zionist occupation and
the denial of basic national and human rights after Fatah surrendered itself to
the needs of imperialism in the region. (This is also true of Islamic Jihad and
other Islamic fundamentalist groups.)
Through necessity an alternative was
born. The Palestinian masses urgently needed someone to protect them from the
Israeli onslaughts while the bureaucrats and corrupt officials of Fatah and the
‘Palestinian Authority’ were busy making deals with the imperialists and
Zionists in Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, Wye River, Sharm al-Sheikh and Annapolis.
However, this alternative movement –
and later leadership – was based on the same reactionary Islamic ideology that
has for decades served as imperialism’s best safeguard against the development
of revolutionary Marxism as a material force within the masses. The ideology
that US imperialism – under the Democratic government of Jimmy Carter – began
financing and promoting in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet
invasion! The same ideology that drowned the Iranian revolution in blood and
prevented the workers from seizing power.
The CIA and Saudi-funded ‘Islamic
resistance’ to the Stalinist invasion of Afghanistan and the ‘Islamic
revolutionary regime’ in Iran were important bases for the development and
spread of Islamic fundamentalism (in various forms) to as far away as the Philippines
and Indonesia to Algeria and Morocco. Following the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the discrediting of all forms socialism and communism, this ideology
had an open field to spread its sweet-tasting poison. And there was no one
thirstier than the most downtrodden people among the Muslims – the Palestinian
masses and the Shia of Lebanon.
The long-term effects of this
ideology on the Palestinians will be devastating. The Hamas leadership is
peddling the same bankrupt nationalist strategy of Fatah, but with a new
Islamic veneer. Not only will it not liberate the masses, but it will end up
making the same mistakes and sort of deals with the enemy. And the methods that
Hamas and the other Islamic groups use to pursue the Islamically-refurbished
bankrupt policies are more self-destructive and doomed than those used by Fatah
(and the other PLO groups) in the 1970s.
It is important for all those who
have demonstrated against the recent atrocities during the past week –
throughout the world, all over Asia and the Middle East (including Israel),
Europe, and both North and South America – that although we fully support the
Palestinian people’s rights and their resistance to imperialism and Zionism, we
do not support the Hamas leadership in any shape or form. We must make a
clear distinction between the masses and the leadership that has been pushed up
by their wave of radicalism – and for now – rides it.
The revolutionary Marxist
alternative
The only way forward for all workers and the exploited and oppressed masses of
the region, be they Arab, Jewish, Kurdish, Turkish or other nationalities, is
to fight a joint struggle against the imposed and artificial borders of
imperialism which have separated and weakened them. The removal of these
borders is bound up with the toppling of the stooges of imperialism, whether
they are sheikhs, kings or ‘hereditary presidents’. Smashing the imperialist
yoke weighing down on the region and overthrowing capitalism are part of the
same struggle. The ‘road map’ to true peace and the liberation of the workers
and exploited masses starts with the establishment of a federation of workers’
states in the region.
Any significant advance for the
Palestinian masses must and will only come through the development of a
regional revolutionary Marxist alternative to the failed ideologies and
movements which have sought to find ‘national’ solutions to a problem which
transcends the region’s borders. An alternative that mobilises the workers and
all exploited and oppressed masses for the struggle to overthrow capitalism in
the Middle East.
Such a movement must not only
condemn Israel’s current attack on Gaza and the massive casualties it has
caused; but also US imperialism for its consistent and unswerving support of
the Zionists against the Palestinian masses; all other imperialist governments,
the UN and the ‘international community’ with their complicity in these
atrocities through silence, indifference, and even blaming the Palestinians;
the leadership of reactionary Arab regimes, particularly Egypt and Saudi
Arabia, for following the diktats of Washington; the leadership of ‘radical’
regimes such as the Islamic Republic of Iran and Syria in the cynical
exploitation of the Palestinian cause for advancing their own interests; the
leadership of the Palestinians, Fatah and Hamas, for their bankrupt nationalist
policies that will never liberate the masses; and Hamas and other Islamic
groups for offer nothing other than more suffering and sacrifice in a struggle
that is isolated from the class struggle of the workers and exploited and
oppressed masses of the region – a struggle that is doomed to failure because
of its reactionary Islamic ideology and self-destructive methods.
A regional revolutionary Marxist
movement will raise international solidarity with the Palestinian masses in
their struggle for justice and freedom to a higher level. We look forward to
the day when the resistance of the Palestinian masses to Zionism’s policies is
linked with the struggles of the region’s workers to overthrow capitalism and
create a socialist society.
