earthquake, which is generally extremely limited in time, the general social crisis in Israel has not eased up one year after the war. On the contrary, it has intensified. First on the economic level: The restructuring of the army, the costs of its new, modern equipment, and the decline in production caused by the sixmonth mobilization are bearing down on the Israeli economy with an immense weight. The total cost of those three items is estimated to be 40 thousand million Israeli pounds, which is more than the Gross National Product. The loans and gifts from American imperialism, extensive as they are, have been less than what the government expected. The period of prosperity that had been opened by the 1967 war was coming to an end in any case; the October War only deepened and accelerated the economic crisis that was building up. Inflation has reached a rate never before seen in Israel. Last year it was more than 40 percent! The government, less inclined than •ever to strike at profits and at sectors privileged by Zionist policy (like the army or the immigrants) was obliged to present a budget in which social expenditures (health, education, and so on) have been drasfically reduced. If to all this it is added that the Histadrut (the so-called trade-union, actually one of the country's largest employers and a pillar of the state) has done everything it can to reduce cost-of-living bonuses to the lowest possible level and that all indirect taxes have been raised, it is easy to see that it is the workers who are footing the bill for the October War. The least favored layers have suffered a loss in buying power on the order of 30 percent!
Concurrently, the government has had to take economic measures (restriction of credit, limits on subsidies, freeze on public construction) that have caused bankruptcies and thrown many workers out of work. A whole series of financial scandals have broken out in recent months (Palestine-British Bank, Society for Israel, various sorts of corruption). The Israeli economy is sick, and the crisis, which has only just begun, is going to shake it very violently. Up to now, the government has been able to rely on one important factor: the lack of response from the working class, due above all to the absence of mass organizations able to raise a response. To be sure, the demonstrations of the Black Panthers (an organization of Sephardic Jews, Jews from Arab countries, who constitute nearly half of the IsraeliJewish population), the local strikes that have occurred, and the formation of some committees against the high cost of living have showed that sooner or later a response must be expected from the Israeli working class to the attack on its buying power. That explosion will be all the more violent the longer the Histadrut succeeds in holding it back. Up to now, however, the Israeli working class has not yet had its say about the crisis opened by the October War. But it is on the political level that the earthquake has reached its most intense level. The October War placed on the agenda the implementation of an overall accord aimed at stabilizing imperialist rule in the Arab region. For Israel this means the end of a seven-year period of an arrogant and aggressive policy based on occupation of the Arab territories conquered in 1967 and on permanent attacks on the neighboring Arab countries. Much has been said about the psychological effects of the October War on the Israeli masses, drunk for seven years on the victory of 1967. Much has been said about the protest movements that developed around the cease-fire, about the mass criticism of the political conceptions of the old governmental team of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan. But this development of consciousness -- very limited -- has not given rise to an alternative political leadership
21
ISRAEL capable of applying a more realistic policy in closer conformity with the overall project of U.S. imperialism. The Yitzakh Rabin government has only tried to gain time; it applies the U.S. policy as soon as Kissinger deprives the Israeli leaders of any choice. The first stage of the overall accord was reached rapidly, in the form of the "disengagement" in Sinai and the Golan Heights. Today Kissinger is pushing to move to the next stage. This is a vital necessity for American imperialism if it is to make its policy credible to the Arab bourgeoisies. Kissinger's trip to the Middle East and the United Nations' recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization are the first signs that the second stage has been broached. The Israeli government is unable to counterpose an alternative policy to Kissinger's project and the pressure of American imperialism. All it can do is quibble about "details" (the pace of withdrawal from the occupied territories, choice of the immediate negotiating partner, and the limits of the territories to be given back). It is clear that in the present context -- and this will not change unless there is a change in the overall policy of quieting the area down -- Israel can only follow Kissinger's orders. But -- and this is the main problem for the Rabin government -- a very significant part of the Israeli population is determined to do everything to prevent withdrawal from the West Bank of the Jordan River. For nearly seven years the government has been speaking of historic rights, military considerations, and anything else it could think of to justify Israel's permanent occupation of the Arab territories: investments, declarations on the eternity of the Israeli presence in the "historic sites, " education of the youth about the right of annexation. Today the government is faced by tens of thousands of Israelis who are committed to nonwithdrawal from the "historic territories. " "Wildcat colonization The recent attempts at "wildcat colonization" of the West Bank must be seen in that context. This is a question of a mass movement enjoying real popularity, a movement whose objective -- assertion of the definitive presence of Israel throughout the West Bank -- is considered a just cause by a good part of the population and many of the political parties, including the entire Dayan wing of the Labor party. These forces intend to respond to the "threat" of the Kissinger plan by taking initiafives that can sabotage the accords now being worked out and simultaneously mobilize the Israeli masses against any "government capitulation." 22
Israeli soldiers carry off "wildcat colon." The bloc that has organized the wildcat colonization has two components with different political programs. The first is the youth of the National Religious party, educated for years in the spirit of holy war to preserve the territorial unity of Palesfine and Israeli domination of the "holy places. " The political program of this component, founded on the mystical hysteria fostered by certain religious authorities, would have no practical consequence if another leadership were not also entrenched in this movement, a leadership that has a precise political plan that is not necessarily identical to the motivations and objectives of the masses it is leading. That second component is the leadership of the far right, often high-ranking military officers, whose objective is to take power and establish a new type of state from which the last remnants of democratic rights will be eliminated. For the far right, possible Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is only an opportunity to create an atmosphere propitious for an overthrow of the regime. As the revolutionary Marxists have explained in their leaflets, the two components of the wildcat colonization movement are complementary. Sabotage of the Geneva agreements and annexation of the West Bank imply a new war in the near future; that would necessitate rapidly overcoming the social crisis now shaking Israel; it would thus necessitate an even more brutal strong state able to reduce all opposition to silence and reestablish the
military apparatus and "national consciousness, " both shaken since the October War. The Labor government has great difficulty in reacting to this offensive by the far right. It cannot let these groups organize wildcat colonization; but to send the army against them would raise the threat of civil war. On the other hand, the government has no means of opposing this movement effectively. The whole policy of the Zionist movement was founded on "wildcat colonization" of Palestine. For the past seven years, the Labor government has systematically refused to educate the population in preparation for a more realistic policy based on withdrawal from the occupied territories. In addition, an effective response from the government would require that the Histadrut call a mass mobilization, especially of the decisive layers of workers, on a clear basis that would engender a split in the Labor party and a dangerous dynamic among the mobilized masses. That is why up to now the government has been content to hold back the effects of the wildcat colonization as discreetly as possible, taking care to keep confrontations with the "colons" and their ideology to a minimum. The opposition to the wildcat colonization movement has thus been led by the left Zionist organizations (primarily Hashomir Hatzair and Moked). But as Zionists, their opposition is necessarily limited to the "illegal" aspect of the colonization. Their opposition is placed in the context of putting pressure on the government to put an end to the excesses of the wildcat colonization. Their main slogan was "Colonize the Negev, not the West Bank. " Moked, which was able to organize occupations of the firm of General Ariel Sharon (one of the unofficial leaders of the wildcat movement) and of the central headquarters of the movement, was not even able to exploit the fact thai arms were discovered in that office. They were aware of the explosive import of the discovery. The flagrant contradiction between the desire to effectively oppose the fascistic moves of the right and. the Zionist basis of their own ideology and practice makes it impossible for groups like Moked and Hashomir Hatzair to really counter the Zionist right.
No compromise with Zionism!
That was the central theme of the intervention of the revolutionary Marxists of Matzpen-Marxist.
In leaflets that were massively distributed in all the big cities of the country, we explained that
"there is no such thing as legal colonization, "
that the "wildcatters" drew the justification for their actions from fifty years of Zionist history, that the government was incapable of effectively countering the moves of the wildcat colons, and that there was no point in putting pressure on this government, which in any case had spent seven years creating the contradiction it is now trapped in: having to submit to American pressure to withdraw from the West Bank after having asserted the inalienable right of the Jews to keep control of this territory. We added that only a mass response on the basis of unconditional withdrawal from all the occupied territories and defense of the rights of the working class -- its right to organize to defend its own interests -- could block the fascist aims of the wildcat colons. In reality, it is the working class that is the target of Ariel Sharon and his group. It is the working class that will have to bear the costs of the war he is consciously preparing, costs that would be paid both in human life and in loss of democratic rights. It is therefore in the interests of the workers to struggle against the wildcat colons, and the only objective capable of creating the preconditions for new relations with the Arab environment is not submission to the Kissinger plan but rather unconditional withdrawal from all the Arab territories seized in 1967. In spite of their numerical weakness, the revolutionary Marxists were able to intervene in a massive and diversified way into the conflicts over the wildcat colonization: leaflets, high-school demonstrations, participation in the occupations organized by the left Zionists, participation in an initiative (temporarily unsuccessful) aimed at "colonizing" Arabs into a village from which they had been expelled. Our intervention was based around the only real answer to the dilemma "wildcat colonization" or "legal colonization": Down with the occupation! Unconditional withdrawal from all the occupied territories! Our presence was especially noted in the demonstration of the Black Panthers demanding the release of their leader Charly Bitton, in which we explained the relationship between the release of Bitton and the struggle against colonization. The abstention of the other currents in the anti-Zionist left from this struggle only reaffirms the critical situation into which they have been thrust by the October crisis. The spontanéists of the Tel Aviv Matzpen and especially the Revolutionary Communist Alliance have accepted the Kissinger plan and thereby the existence of the state of Israel. They are thus incapable of presenting any alternative slogans to those of the Zionist left and can only tail after the movement and directives of the left Zionists. As the social crisis deepens and as Kissinger's moves
23
CATASTROPHE provoke significant cleavages within the Zionist state itself, it is more than ever crucial for the anti-Zionist alternative to be heard. That is the only alternative that can put an end to the conflict that pits the Israeli-Jewish masses against the Arab masses. It is more than ever necessary to raise a body of transitional slogans and a clear anti-Zionist propaganda that say No both to the Zionist far-right, which by calling for the annexation of Arab territories is preparing a predatory war, and to those who accept the Kissinger plan, which is aimed at stabilizing the region at the expense of the PalesINDIA BY PIERRE DUPONT_ The