Editorial
December 2000

Israel escalates Middle East crisis

The world has looked on with horror as Israel has killed over 250 people since September in its attempt to suppress a new Palestinian uprising. Day after day, Israeli soldiers have shot down Palestinians, many of them children. Sometimes they have done so with rubber or plastic-covered bullets, other times with helicopter gunships and rockets. Occasionally, the more lightly armed Palestinians have succeeded in killing a few Israelis.

There have been atrocities on both sides. On the Israeli side, we have seen a pogrom against Arab villagers inside Israel and deadly rocket attacks on entire civilian neighborhoods, and on the Arab side, a lynching and the terrorist bombing of schoolchildren.

But it is the daily Israeli army killings that truly define this conflict, not the occasional atrocities. The government believes that every last Jewish settlement, no matter how isolated or how fanatical, must be defended at the cost of Palestinian lives, rather than even the smallest withdrawal being allowed. And it is U.S. arms and money that allows Israel to continue its massacres in the Palestinian territories and to attack and threaten its Arab neighbors with near impunity.

Physicians for Human Rights has condemned the Israeli army's frequent use of live bullets against civilians. Their report notes that the firing of rubber-coated bullets at close range, something they were supposedly not intended for, is often lethal, and is prohibited even by Israeli army regulations. In addition, Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian activists via helicopter attacks is greatly escalating the conflict. A columnist in the Israeli paper YEDIOTH AHRONOTH wrote: "The use of helicopter missiles as a tool of assassination is a step toward the 'Lebanonization' of the territories."

CONTRADICTIONS SINCE OSLO

Since coming to power last year, the Labor-led government of Ehud Barak has zigzagged between accommodation and intransigence toward the Palestinians. This reflects real contradictions inside the Israeli ruling class as well as the masses. Israelis have failed to come to grips with the reality of what the 1993 Oslo Accords implied: a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza and the evacuation of the Jewish settlements that honeycomb those territories, plus a compromise over Jerusalem. In return, the Palestinians were to recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its 1967 borders.

Barak snubbed the Palestinians during his first year in power, concentrating instead on futile negotiations with Syria and later, on a unilateral pullout from south Lebanon. Finally, under Clinton's prodding, he turned to serious negotiations with Arafat at Camp David last July. Barak seemed to agree in principle to turn over most of the West Bank and Gaza and, more surprisingly, broke with years of Israeli stonewalling over Jerusalem to offer at least some limited Palestinian control over parts of East Jerusalem. Arafat found this proposal insufficient, especially on Jerusalem, and the negotiations collapsed.

Two months later, Israeli war criminal Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Lebanon during the 1982 war, made an armed visit to the most important Muslim sites in Jerusalem, asserting control over them by Israel. Palestinian youths began to throw rocks, the army opened fire, and the conflict has not abated since.

ISRAELI TONE-DEAFNESS

At one level, the spark was religious, but at a deeper level, the fire had been stoked by seven years of missed opportunities, as Israel refused to evacuate the settlements and to return even the whole of the Gaza Strip, let alone the West Bank. The rulers have convinced most Israeli citizens that it is they who have been "generous" since 1993, willfully ignoring the fact that the U.S. is the only country that shares such a view. Such views, articulated by Barak's government as well as the Right, all but assure the victory of Sharon's party in the next election (which will be held next spring), especially since Barak has by now completely alienated Israel's Arab minority, whose votes were crucial to his election.

This tone-deafness to Palestinian and world opinion is also linked to the small turnouts at Israeli peace rallies, even as the slaughter of Palestinians has mounted. Initially, only a few principled voices such as those of Women in Black were heard in protest. However, the potential for broader protests was shown at a rally in Haifa on Oct. 21, which drew 4,000 people, Arabs as well as Jews.

Although one speaker refused to criticize Barak, others such as Shulamit Aloni of the leftist Meretz party accused the government of "acting like nineteenth century colonialists," referring also to state-sanctioned "racism." Signs carried included slogans such as "Israel-Palestine, Two Peoples, Two States, Two Capitals in Jerusalem," "Evacuate the Settlements," and "Barak, How Many Children Did You Kill Today?" (LE MONDE, Oct. 24, 2000).

CRITIQUE OF LEFTIST ABSTRACTIONS

The failure to follow through on Oslo has created fertile ground for the growth of religious fundamentalism. Jewish fanatics increasingly hold the balance of power in the Israeli parliament. On the Arab side, Muslim fundamentalism has grown even faster. Groups like Hamas state openly: "We are coming to Tel Aviv. We are coming to every place in Palestine to purify it from Jews" (NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 28, 2000).

In correctly attacking Israeli colonialist policies and U.S. military aid to Israel, much of the world Left nonetheless remains silent about what the growth of Hamas, Hezbollah and similar groups means for the prospects of an independent Palestinian state, let alone the region. A Holocaust denier like former Stalinist Roger Garaudy, convicted in French courts for "provoking racial discrimination, hatred, and violence," has received favorable coverage from leading Arab publications such as the London-based paper AL HAYAT. (It should be noted that others writing for AL HAYAT condemned Garaudy's fantasies.) Even fewer have discussed the fact that, on Oct. 13, Hamas burned down the Hotel Windmill and several shops in Gaza City because they sold alcohol. What will such a culture war mean for women, or for non-Muslim Palestinians?

In their one-sided critiques of the Oslo Accords, some on the Left have returned to the pre-Oslo PLO demand of a "unified secular state for the whole of Palestine" rather than the two-state solution that has been the agreed goal since Oslo. In doing so, they are also helping to undermine the struggle of many Palestinians who want a foundation for peace and not a war to the end.

Such abstractions ignore the concrete historical and social fact that two nations, each with legitimate claims, have vied for the same territory. As Lenin once stated in a different context, that of supporting the right of secession of oppressed nations: "We do so not because we favor secession but only because we stand for free, voluntary association and merging as distinct from forcible association" (COLLECTED WORKS 23, p. 67).

No nation can itself be free if it oppresses another nation. This, however, does not negate Israel's right to exist as a nation. That is why we continue to support a two-state solution as an immediate goal, with Israel withdrawing completely from the West Bank and Gaza as well as East Jerusalem, and with some type of shared control of the Jerusalem religious sites. From a more long-term perspective, we also raise the banner of a free association among all the peoples of the Middle East and the world, on a socialist humanist basis.