palestinian ministate: by JON ROTHSCHILD Yassir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLOi, was received as a head of state by the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on November 13. A month earlier, on October 14, the General Assembly had voted overwhelmingly (105-4, with 20 abstentions) to invite the PLO to participate as the representative of the Palestinian people in the UN session's debate on Palestine. The October UN vote was followed by several other milestones in the PLO's march toward international recognition. On October 21 French Foreign Minister Jean Sauvagnargues held a formal meeting with Arafat in Beirut ond emerged from the discussion describing Arafat os "realistic, " "moderate, " and "a statesman. " On October 28 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization voted to invite the PLO to its general conference with observer status. On October 28 the Eighth Arab Summit voted o resolution designating the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Already this year, PLO delegations have attended the world conference on maritime law held in Caracas, the world conference on population in Bucharest, and the world food conference in Rome. But the UN appearance was the high point. "For Arafat to go to New York, " said a PLO spokesman, "is like a commando operation in Tel Aviv. " At the UN Arafat was escorted into the hall by the the turn of the PLO UN's chief of protocol. He was given a prolonged ovation by the delegates, with only a few exceptions. (The Israeli delegation had left the room.) "I have come, " Arafat said in his speech, "bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. " The international recognition the PLO has been gathering during the past few months represents a political defeat for the Israeli state. It has always been a cardinal point of official Zionist policy and ideology that there was no such thing as a Palestinian people (only "Arab refugees") and that the entire Palestinian movement (in whatever form and under whatever program and leadership) was nething but a band of bloodthirsty gangsters impervious to human reason. The Israeli delegation opposed inviting the PLO to New York on exactly that basis. When the vote came, Tel Aviv's only allies were the American, Bolivian, and Dominican Republic delegations, all three representatives of governmenis whose commitment to human rights in general and the fight against anti-Semitism in particular are world-famous. The diplomatic defeats for the Zionist state on the question of the status of the PLO are continuations of the political defeat represented by the October War of 1973. They likewise reflect the increasing strength and influence on the international scene of the Arab ruling classes. They do not, however, represent victories
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ARAB EAST for the Palestinian liberation movement or for the struggle for the Arab socialist revolution, of which the Palestinian movement is a part. Moreover, the isolation of the Zionist state and the political changes going on among the Palestinian leadership raise the very real danger of a new explosion of war in the Arab East - in spite of the continuing diplomatic whirl and the PLO's offer of the olive branch. The PLO: how big a turn? The international recognition of the PLO has been accompanied by the discovery by people like Giscord's foreign minister that the leadership of the PLO is not so revolutionary after all. It has also been accompanied by a serious turn in the strategy of the PLO, a turn that will be manifested by the PLO leadership's de facto recognition of the existence of the Zionist state. The preparation for that furn by the PLO has generated crises and shake-ups within the Palestinian movement, and it will undoubtedly continue to do so. That much has been noted by nearly everybody, both among the international revolutionary movement and among its opponents. But what has not been noticed so clearly (and is nevertheless crucial for understanding the evolution of the Palestinian movement and the tasks of revolutionary Marxists within it) is the essential political continuity of the politics of the PLO leadership. The present Palestinian organizations emerged as mass movements in the wake of the defeat of June 1967, which exposed the bankruptcy of the Arab regimes and their inability to defend the Arab nation against Zionist aggression or still less to wage a real struggle against the Israeli state. Before 1967 the PLO was a creature of the League of Arab States. It was a body with no mass base and functioned under the direct political tutelage of the Nasser regime. The discredit that fell upon the Nasser government because of the 1967 debacle also enveloped the old PLO. But to the surprise of the Israeli rulers, the 1967 war did not result in the demoralization of the Arab masses. During 1967 and 1968 organizations that had hitherto been small and relatively inactive picked up the challenge posed by the defeat and began to wage armed actions against the newly expanded borders of the Israeli state. By the spring of 1968, the new Palestinian movement had become a mass force in the Arab East. The PLO was shunted to the side. In its place emerged Fateh, the largest of the Palestinian organizations, and a number of other formations that grew out of the old Arab Nationalist Movement (such as the Popular Front for 4 the Liberation of Palestine, led by George Habash, and the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a split from the PFLP led by Nayef Hawatmeh) . Fateh, the organization that is headed by Arafat and has since taken over the PLO, differed from the pre-1967 PLO in three fundamental ways. First, Fateh based itself on the notion of independence from the Arab regimes. The concept that the Palestinian liberation struggle had to be led by the Palestinians themselves and not by other Arab governments, whose lack of ability or desire to combat Zionism had been demonstrated only too amply, was central to the ideology of Fateh. Second, while the old PLO restricted its activities to the diplomatic and propaganda arena, Fateh relied on mobilization of the masses of Palestinian refugees, stressing the idea that if the liberation of Palestine could not be carried out by the Arab regimes, the task would have to be accomplished by the armed struggle of the Palestinions themselves. Thus, Fateh called for people's war against the Israeli state apparatus, and it defined itself as part of the worldwide struggle of the colonial world against imperialism. Third, and most important, Fateh carried out its words in practice, It did not restrict itself to explaining the need for armed struggle; it waged it. And not without considerable success. Throughout the latter half of 1968, all of 1969, and most of 1970, the Palestinian fedayeen waged daily raids on Israeli border patrols and occupying forces, inflicting casualties that were not at all insignificant in a country whose total population is only around 3 million. Fateh's power of attraction (and that of all the other organizations of the Palesfinian resistance movement) was based on the fact that it was actually waging a fight against Zionism; that is, it was the embodiment of the revolutionary will of the Palestinian and all the Arab masses to destroy the apparatus most directly responsible for their oppression: the Israeli state. In all these respects, the post-1967 Palestinian movement represented important advances for the Arab revolution. Nevertheless, from the very outset, the movement (or rather, the dominant section of it, represented by Fateh) suffered from weaknesses that limited its revolutionary role and were destined to clash even with Fateh's three basic ideas as enumerated above. The essence of those weaknesses can be summed up in this way: Fateh's political program never went beyond bourgeois nationalism (as expressed in the organization's programmatic goal: a democratic, secular state in Palestine). At the same time, the social base of the organization was limited to refugees, a fact that played the positive role of endowing Fateh with the revolutionary audacity characteristic of those who have nothing to lose, but also gener-
ated an ultimatism that left an unbridgeable gulf between the armed struggle itself and the ultimate programmatic goal. To put it another way, Fateh was an organization that was leading a mass movement but was unable to offer that movement either a revolutionary-socialist program to orient the movement's general strategy or a transitional program able to extend the base of the movement and lead it through the complexities of the social and political struggle of the region. This fundamental weakness was expressed in a number of specific propositions that became principles of the Fateh leadership. First there was the principle of "noninterference" in the affairs of Arab governments. In reality, this meant that Fateh would not attempt to take an active part in political struggles in Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria (not to mention Egyptl. A corollary principle was that the Palestinian struggle, while fraternally related to the more general Arab struggle, was nevertheless distinct from it. In practice, this meant that the ties between Jordanian peasants and Palestinian refugees in Jordan, for example, were held to be solely Platonic. On the one hand, Fateh consistently opposed Palestinian participation in peasant struggles in Jordan and Lebanon (on the grounds of "noninterference"); and on the other hand, Fatch never encouraged Jordanian or Lebanese peasants to mobilize actively against their own governments in support of the Palestinian struggle (on the grounds of Palestinian specificity). The concepts of noninterference in the affairs of Arab states and of Palestinian particularism were direct products of Fateh's bourgeois political program. That program envisaged the possibility of destroying the Zionist state without a thoroughgoing revolution in the social relations prevailing in the Arab East. In fact, the Fateh leaders regarded the struggle against the Zionist state fundamentally as a struggle to eliminate from Palestine one of the backward social forces that had already been eliminated from countries like Egypt, Syrio, and Iraq: namely, a religious community with a communal leadership enjoying vast privileges. The Israeli Jews were conceived of as simply a collection of co-religionists, not as a nationality. The Zionist state was regarded as an extreme form of religious communalism that had been imposed on Palestine by imperialism, which the Fateh leaders understood as an essentially political phenomenon consisting of the domination of weak nations by strong ones. Thus, to the Fateh leaders, the struggle against the Zionist state represented a convergence of the struggle against imperialism and the struggle against communalism; the goal was a sweeping secularization, that is, the abolition of religious privilege and of the Zionist-enforced isolation of the Jewish and
Muslim communities from each other. That is, the goal of the struggle was to democratize and secularize Palestine in the same way Egypf had been democratized and secularized by the Nasserist revolution or Iraq democratized and secularized after the destruction of the monarchy in 1958. The future liberated Palestine, ruled by a democratic and secular state, would take its place among the modernized, anti-imperialist states of the rest of the Arab world and of the entire "third world." This political program, which served to isolate the Palestinian struggle from the workers and peasants struggle in the rest of the Arab East, also had immediate implications for the day-to-day conduct of the struggle. The masses of Palestinians in the refugee camps who rallied to the banner of the resistance movement (and especially to Fateh) were attracted to the movement not because it was preaching democracy, but because it was actually waging a real struggle against the Israeli state. When they entered Fateh, they were educated in the spirit of its program. But by its very nature, that program held out no possibility for the mobilization of the Palestinians around transitional demands. It barred the Palestinians from merging with the mass movements of the Arab countries surrounding Israel. It excluded the possibility of trying to draw the israeli working masses into the struggle against Zionism, holding a position on the Israeli-Jews that was not entirely free of chauvinism. It directed the Palesfinian masses solely toward the organization of the refugee camps so that they might become bases for the armed struggle against the Israeli state. As necessary as that armed struggle was and is, alone it was in no way sufficient for maintaining the mobilization of the Palestinian masses either in the refugee camps or in the territories under Israeli occupation. The dominant section of the Palesfinian resistance movement (that is, Fateh) suffered from a profound contradiction. The political program and strategic goal of the movement was bourgeois in nature, objectively expressing the class interests of the Palestinian bourgeoisie in exile. Objectively, the call for a democratic, secular state in Palestine meant the establishment of another bourgeois state, with its own class structure, national anthem, and seat in the United Nations. The leadership of the movement was petty bourgeois in composition and political consciousness. The social base of the movement lay among the declassed elements of the refugee camps; through 1967-1970 it never penetrated the Palestinian workers and peasants of the occupied territory in any serious way. This profound contradiction between program and base was to render the movement incapable of meeting the challenge of its tasks.
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ARAB EAST The first crisis Despite the intentions of the Fateh leadership, the dynamic of the Palestinian struggle inevitably clashed with the ruling classes of the Arab states within which the movement was functioning. The strongest base of the movement throughout 1968, 1969, and most of 1970 was Jordan, more than half of whose population is Palestinian. As the resistance movement grew, it progressively took over administration of the refugee camps. In defending itself against Israeli attacks and against attempts by the Jordanian regime to restrict its military operations against Israel, the movement found itself compelled increasingly to take administrative control over the western sections of Jordan. By the middle of 1970, the fedayeen had more than 10, 000 people under arms; a situation of dual power was emerging in Jordan. The more advanced sections of the Palestinian movement took steps to extend that situation. Popular militias were formed alongside the "full-time" guerrillas. In some areas, popular councils were created that represented potential organs of state power. The regime of King Hussein stood in serious danger. The leaders of Fateh, prisoners of their conceptions of noninterference in the affairs of Arab states and of Palestinian particularism, were completely unprepared for the intensity and barbarism of Hussein's response to the threat to his rule. In September 1970, when Hussein's army launched its assault on the Palestinian refugee camps, the resistance found itself focing an enemy of overwhelming superiority in troops and equipment. The fedayeen were isolated from the only force that could have saved them: the Jordanian peasantry and proletariat. The result was the destruction of the military power of the resistance, its political elimination from Jordan (followed in 1971 by its physical elimination), and the murder by Hussein's troops of as many as 10,000 Palestinians. Hussein's victory in the 1970 civil war inaugurated a general shift to the right in the politics of the Arab East. But not only that. It also cut the resistance movement off from its main social base, the refugees living in Jordan. And if eliminated any possibility of the fedayeen continuing their Jordanbased armed actions against the Israeli military. The center of the resistance movement shifted to Lebanon. In the wake of the Jordanian civil war, the leaders of the Palestinian movement were faced with a critical choice. Sections of the movement produced impressive analyses of the reasons for the defeat in Jordan. But the majority of the leadership, especially the Fateh leadership, chose to maintain its old policy and simply adapt it slightly to the new circumstances. The policy of "noninterference" 6 was continued - this time in Lebanon. The fedayeen in Lebanon remained just as isolated from the struggles of the Lebanese peasants os they had been from the Jordanian peasants. When the Lebanese government assaulted the fedayeen camps (acting under the same sort of compulsion as Hussein had), the Fateh leaders sought to avoid a repetition of the Jordanian defeat by consistently making concessions to the regime, promising to restrict operations against the Israeli army, and decisively rejecting any "interference" in Lebanese politics. With armed actions from Jordan out of the question and those from Lebanon vastly reduced, the resisfance movement stood in danger of losing its major power of attraction for the Palestinian masses: the fact that it was waging an armed struggle against the Israeli state. Deprived of its mass base and in danger of falling under the tutelage of the Arab regimes in the same way the old PLO did, the resistance movement fried to assert itself, maintain its appeal, and prevent the Palestinian problem from being again shunted aside. It continued the armed struggle in the only way it could: small but spectacular actions carried out by teams of guerrillas. Politically, the Fateh leadership defended itself by falling back on ultimatistic pronouncements bordering on bombast, declaring repeatedly that there could be no settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict without liberation of all of Palestine and putting diplomatic pressure on the Arab states to prevent them from initiating any settlement behind the backs of the Palestinian people. The resistance movement stood at an impasse. It was unable to continue the struggle against the Israeli state the way it had before. At the same time, the leadership of the movement, steadfastly maintaining the old combination of a bourgeois political program and day-to-day ultimatism, was unable to develop any new ways of continuing the struggle. October 1973 The October War of 1973 changed the whole situation. The results of the war and the emergence of an Arab finance capital with substantial power in international politics placed the problem of finding a "peaceful settlement" of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the order of the day. (See INPRECOR, No.3, July 4, "Eight Months After the October War: A New Situation Emerging, " and No.10, October 17, "An Arab and Iranian Finance Capital Emerges.") In the immediate aftermath of the War, the resistance leadership issued a few of its usual pronouncements (For us there is no cease-fire, " "The resistance recognizes no disengagement, " etc.). But as soon as it became clear that there was a real possi-
the fact gave Fateh its revolutionary content against imperialism & zionism in real life."
"the thing that bility of an Israeli withdrawal from some of the territory seized during the 1967 aggression, the resistance leadership began to alter its position. The central operating concept became preventing Hussein from reestablishing control over any territory the Zionist state might be compelled to relinquish on the West Bank of the Jordan River. The drive of the PLO to gain recognition as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people (the next logical step in which is the establishment of a Palestinian government in exile) does not represent any change in Fateh's programmatic goal. It is simply the continuation and application to the current circumstances of the organization's basic precepts ever since its foundation: independence from the Arab regimes and confinement of the Palestinian struggle to the limits of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The establishment of a government in exile and the drive to establish a Palestinian state on any territory from which the Israeli army withdraws flow from Fateh's strategic policy with iron logic. Under the present circumstances fighting for a state on the West Bank is simply the most effective way of continuing the struggle for a democratic, secular state in Palestine. The fight for the West Bank state expresses on the one hand the real advance that the post-1967 resistance leadership represented over the old PLO. (The old PLO of Shukhairy would undoubtedly have accepted Hussein's recovery of the West Bank in exchange for the appointment of a few PLO officials to posts in the Jordanian government. There can be no doubt at all that it was waging a struggle that such a solution would be the one preferred by all the Arab states of the region, with the exception of Syria. The Shukhairy PLO would have engaged in no battle with the Hussein regime over control of the West Bank.) On the other hand, it expresses the fundamental incapacity of a bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leadership to lead a consistent struggle against Zionism - for the very simple reason that such a struggle requires a struggle against capitalist social relations throughout the Arab region. The acceptance of a West Bank ministate by the PLO (which implies acceptance for a certain time of the existence of the Zionist state and the repression of all those not inclined to go along with that policy) is, to be sure, a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. But it is a betrayal that derives not from the PLO's abandonment of its earlier positions but rather from the continuity of those positions. It is the inevitable betrayal by a bourgeois leadership of the struggle for national liberation in the era of imperialism. The leadership of the PLO still holds to its longterm goal of establishing a democratic, secular state in Palestine. In any case, that is what Arafat said at the United Nations. And there is no reason not to believe him on this score. For the Fateh leadership, the democratic, secular state was never conceived of as a transitional or immediate demand. It was the programmatic goal, the ultimate target. In the past, the Fateh leaders believed that conditions in the Arab East were such that this goal could
Nations was a means of solidifying the decision of tinian people. Arafat's appearance at the United the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palescompletely isolated, and the PLO was endorsed as choice but to back up the PLO. Hussein became
Sadat and Faisal had no ship had stood its ground, favoring a West Bank state. Once the PLO leaderreached bridging Hussein's position and the position and any suggestion that a compromise could be
PLO leaders then firmly rejected the Hussein plan ership was won over to the Abu lyad position. The "main enemy." Thus, the majority of the PLO leadfion on the grounds that Hussein's plan was the Front of Refusal was won over to the Abu lyad posisection of the left wing of Fateh friendly to the cate of the West Bank state. In this situation, a
Abu lyad, which has been the most vigorous advo-
Hussein, clashed with the wing of Fateh led by clined to seek a compromise between the PLO and the situation. The pro-Saudi wing of Fateh, in-
The PLO itself was divided on how to deal with people of the West Bank thus required a struggle.
than Hussein as the rightful representative of the Forcing the Rabat summit to endorse the PLO rather than does the PLO. Hussein represents a more reliable and stable force compromise between the PLO and Hussein, since gation. Faisal was also favorable to working out a negotiating with an independent Palestinian delegime would be more inclined to accept than that of a solution the Israeli re- the Geneva conference, PLO were included in the Jordanian delegation to to the next step of the negofiating process if the
Sadat recognized that it would be easier to move stance so as to provide himself with a left cover. and to obtain the PLO's approval for his negotiating
Sinai peninsula to pacify the Egyptian population under way are to recover enough of the occupied Sadat's principal concerns in the negotiations now
Anwar el-Sadat and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. the main members of which were Egyptian President Between these two camps was an intermediary one, of the Arab East. that could be useful in countering U.S. penetration moting a potentially friendly state in the region potential of the Palestinian movement and of proBank state as a means of defusing the revolutionary cracy, which views the establishment of a West
This camp is also supported by the Soviet bureauas a source of continuous political disturbances. they exacerbate the unemployment problem and act of the refugees to leave Syria and Lebanon, where ministate as a convenient means of inducing some government. These two regimes see the Palestinian Arafat), the Syrian government, and the Lebanese of the majority of the PLO leadership (including ducers in a capitalist state. This camp was composed finian exiles and transform the refugees into pro-
Palestinian entity that would "ingather" the Palesment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, a new etc.). The second camp advocated the establish-
Jordanian state with a token Palestinian ministry,
Hussein's domination, reestablishment of a united of a federated Palestinian-Jordanian state under the Palestinians in one form or another (Formation
It counterposes maintenance of Jordanian rule over ment of another state between Israel and Jordan. represented by Hussein. This camp rejects establishof the Palestinian people. The first was the camp nize the PLO as the sole legitimate representative that preceded the Rabat summit's decision to recog-
Three positions were taken during the maneuvering
Rabat and after bankrupt past.
present difficulties does not lie in a return to the
For the Palestinian movement, the way out of the
Arafat that they are "unrealistic" and "utopian. "
turn, are defenseless against the charge raised by torted form to Palestinian opposition to the PLO's of Refusal, while they do give expression in a dishas been projected. Thus, the members of the Front fered. No way out of the pre-October War impasse
No explanation for the past defeats has been ofcontinue doing today what it used to do in the past.
on the basis of asserting that the resistance must of the West Bank state. But they have done so simply fion Front) have condemned the PLO's acceptance
PFLP and supported by the pro-Iraqi Arab Liberathe "Front of Refusal" (which is led by Habash's coherent strategy to Arafat's. The organizations of is what makes them incapable of counterposing a in the Palestinian movement to understand this point The inability of the opponents of the new turn with-
That is where the betrayal lies. struggle that the PLO is now prepared to abandon. imperialism and Zionism in real life. IF is just this rather the fact that it was waging a struggle against revolutionary content was not its program, but of this turn is that the thing that gave Fateh its through armed struggle. The most decisive aspect ment of the concept (and practice) of achieving it donment of its previous program, but an abandonWhat the PLO's new turn amounts to is not an abanwant." years, social changes could produce the results we with the Israelis as good neighbors for a number of spondent Jim Hoagland. "If we can live in peace a Palestinian leader told Washington Post correworst way to solve our problems with the Israelis, "
Palestinian state on the West Bank. "War is the evolution beginning from the establishment of a believe that it can be achieved through a peaceful be achieved only through people's war. Now they
ARAB EAST
the Rabat summit so as to prevent Sadat or Faisal from undoing it in the future. The UN speech, then, marked a turn in the PLO's diplomatic struggle. The PLO has now achieved what appears to be decisive recognition from the Arab states. (The summit decided that the PLO, in its capacity as the representative of an embattled country, was entitled to a grant from the oil producing countries. It was set at $50 million, which we assume will adequately cover operating expenses.) The next step for the PLO is to obtain the same sort of recognition from American imperialism in order that Washington may order Tel Aviv to negotiate with the PLO over the future of the West Bank. For that, however, Arafat will have to come up with some serious guarantees. And therein lies the problem. The establishment of a Palestinian ministate between Israel and Jordan is in no way incompatible with the interests of U.S. imperialism, provided such a state would not serve as a focus of political upheaval and revolutionary agitation. Washington's basic concern is to maintain capitalist exploitation and political stability in the region. Both the Israeli state and the Hussein regime have demonstrated that they can do this and do it well. The PLO has made no such demonstration. It is not difficult to imagine what the PLO will have to do if it is to win Washington's confidence. First, it will have to formally renounce armed struggle as a means of liberating Palestine. This Arafat has already come close to doing. In an interview with the American television network ABC granted just before he left for New York, Arafat said: "As the chief of the PLO 1 accept no terrorist action. I say categorically, terrorism is incompatible with our humanitarian principles, It is not possible for us to adopt terrorism, especially against civilians. " His remark about the olive branch and the freedom-fighter's gun has an analogous meaning: If Washington can convince the Israeli regime to be reasonable, the PLO will abandon armed actions; if Washington cannot do this, the armed actions will be continued as a way of putting pressure on both Washington and Tel Aviv. But more than that will be necessary. The PLO will also have to prove that it is capable of repressing those forces in the Palestinian movement that are not willing to accept the West Bank state or the formal cessation of armed struggle. Moreover, should American imperialism decide that the PLO is serious about its commitment and ability to meet these guarantees and should the Israeli state actually be compelled to cede some of the West Bank to the PLO, there will be a standing threat by Washington or Tel Aviv to militarily intervene swiftly and massively if the PLO were ever to prove ineffective in suppressing the revolutionary movement in the new Palestinian state. The fedayeen who yesterday had pointed their Kalashnikov rifles against the occupying troops of the Israeli army would have to point them instead at the Arab workers and peasants of the West Bank. The armed forces of the PLO would be transformed into the guardians of bourgeois law and order, much as the Bengali Mukti Bahini were transformed into the shock troops of the Mujibur Rehman regime after Bangladesh won its independence. A Palestinian state in the West Bank established under such conditions would in no way be a step forward for the Palestinian liberation movement or for the Arab revolutionary struggle. It would rest on the political (and perhaps physical) elimination of the Arab vanguard, the demobilization of the Palestinian masses, the de facto recognition of the security of the Zionist state, and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause as a mobilizing factor in the Arab East as a whole. If is only under such conditions that U.S. imperialism would tolerate the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank. The state would not have been won through struggle, but through an agreement (backed up by the threat of armed force) to cease the struggle. The winners in such a settlement would be American imperialism, the Arab bourgeoisie (including its Palestinian component), and the Zionist ruling class. The Palestinian masses would be the losers. Whether this project can be brought to fruition, however, is entirely another question. The sudden increase in mass activity against the Israeli occupation among the Arabs of the West Bank, which has now attained its highest level since 1967, demonstrates that the PLO may have serious difficulties in proving its ability to contain the struggle of the masses. The PLO is seeking to use that struggle as a means of exerting pressure on Washington and Tel Aviv in its fight for direct negotiations between the PLO and the Israeli state. But to whatever extent that struggle gets out of the control of the PLO, Washington and Tel Aviv will be that much less inclined to accept the PLO's guarantees. Paradoxically, the mobilization of the Palestinian masses of the West Bank in favor of the PLO's project may be the very factor that prevents the project from being realized. The PLO leadership has made its intentions clear. But between intention and capacity there is a wide gulf. Toward a fifth war The danger of a fifth Arab-Israeli war derives fundamentally from the crisis now racking Israeli society. Tel Aviv's international isolation, reflected in the UN vote on the PLO, is virtually complete. The political crisis of the ruling class provoked by the "earthquake" of the October War and its after-
9
ARAB EAST math has steadily deepened. (See "One Year After the 'Earthquake, '" INPRECOR, No.11, October 31.) Now, the economic crisis has provoked government measures whose effects on the Israeli masses will be nothing short of catastrophic. On the morning of November 10 the Israeli pound was devalued 42 percent, one of the largest single currency devaluations in the recent history of capitalism. In addition, a series of measures were taken that the government deemed "necessary to the success of the devaluation. " The price of bread was doubled, the price of sugar tripled; the price of cooking oil went from 1El.05 to 1£2.60; the prices of water, gas, and electricity for home consumption increased by nearly 100%. Import of thirty so-called luxury items (including automobiles and televisions) was suspended for six months; taxes on thirty-nine other items were increased by 10-20%. The travel tax (charged for taking a trip out of the country was increased by 25% and from 10% to 15% of the fare. State food subsidies were cut in half. The price of meat was raised to an average of nearly $5 a pound. According to the government's own statistics, the cost of living went up by 17% in one day! And this in a country in which retail prices have already risen 34% since January 1974 and in which the inflation rate could reach 50% next year! As if to leave no doubt about where the government's priorities lay, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin also announced that the "defense" budget, which accounted for 17% of the gross national product before the October War, would increase to 33%. Minister of Finance Yehoshua Rabinovitz explained that the measures of "austerity" were essential for stopping the "hemorrhage" of currency. Israel's balance of payments deficit for 1974 is expected to be more than 53.5 thousand million, three times what it was in 1972. Currency reserves have been halved during the past ten months (to $900 million) and the country is already $6 thousand million in debt. "If this hemorrhage had continued, " Rabinovitz said, "in six months our economy would have suffered terrible upheavals, and we would have had 100,000 unemployed. *"The immediate aim, " commented the November 16 issue of the British weekly The Economist, 'is to improve Israel's balance of payments by 5700 million a year, by a sharp cut in private consumption of some 51 billion (milliard) a year. Although special taxes have been slapped on banks and insurance companies, and capital gains tax is being increased to 50 per cent, it is the wage-earner and housewife who will feel the new austerity most." Moreover, the crisis is not simply conjunctural. "Until last year, " The Economist wrote, always been able to cover its trade deficit rather casily from international aid, funds raised by world Jewry, and government bond sales. Not so this year. 10
American assistance, now running at a record $900 million a year in grants and $400 million in loans, plus world Jewish support - likely to touch $600 million - add up to $1.9 billion. But the likely deficit is $3.5 billion. "Before it all happened, devaluation fears had led to a build-up of speculative positions against the Israeli pound. Unwinding these should lead to an inflow of $400 million. International aid agencies, which have long disapproved of Israel's spendthrift economy, may also now lend some help. The International Monetary Fund, for example, has just announced a $39 million loan to Israel. But it is doubtful if the traditionally vital support raised by charity from international Jewry will pick up yet. Wealthy individuals, mostly in the United States, are themselves reeling from inflation and collapsing world stock exchanges. Recent financial scandals in Israel have not helped either." Under these circumstances, the declaration of the devaluation and the austerity measures were so universally detested that even the Histadrut, the so-called trade-union that is actually a pillar of the state apparatus, felt obliged to issue a protest. Workers From the Hotikvah quarter - the worst slum in Tel Aviv, inhabited mostly by Sephardic Jews -acted more directly. They took to the streets, stoning buses and stopping traffic. Later, about 300 workers from the same neighborhood attacked police guarding stores and broke into several stores, carrying off whatever they could get. A battle with the riot police took place: about thirty people were reported arrested. The November 12 Le Monde reported that strikes took place in several factories to protest the austerity measures. The combination of the economic and political crisis is a deadly one for the Israeli ruling class. The intensity of the economic disaster is obviously rooted in Israel's character as a Zionist state - the enormous military budget and the economic isolation of the country from the neighboring countries being the two clearest Zionist-determined causes of the crisis. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the ruling class to stifle opposition to the government's various economic measures on the grounds that national unity against the Arab aggressor must be preserved. The most obvious solution to the crisis would be for the United States to bail Israel out of its economic difficulties. In exchange, Washington would require political concessions from the Israeli regime, possibly including recognition of the PLO as a negotiating partner in one form or another, due regard being given to Tel Aviv's need for a face-saving formula. (Negotiations between Israel and a "united" Arab delegation including members of the PLO
might be such a formula.) Over the long term, Washington could point out to Tel Aviv, a general settlement of the conflict in the region with the establishment of a Palestinian ministate of the sort described above could allow Israel to reduce its defense budget vastly. This could go a long way toward easing both the political and economic crisis. This sort of solution is clearly the one desired by U.S. imperialism, which still has to rely on Israel as its most reliable gendarme in the Arab East and has no desire to see its junior partner suffer economic collapse. It is also a solution that could look very attractive to wide sectors of the Israeli ruling class. In fact, if Israel were a normal bourgeois
Israeli cop takes demonstrator away. state, it would be safe to predict with certainty that this solution would be adopted. The problem is that Israel is not a normal bourgeois state. If is a bourgeois state, all right, but it is also a Zionist state. That is, it is a state devoted to the project of "ingathering" all the world's Jews, a state that has ingathered its current population on the basis of dislocation of the Palestinian Arabs and can preserve its existence as an exclusively Jewish state solely on the basis of maintaining hegemony over the Arab East. For seven years the Israeli government has insisted on the inalienable right of Jews to keep control of the West Bank; it has defended Jewish colonization of the West Bank on the grounds that the entire country was established through such colonization (which is true). It has created a chauvinist hysteria against the PLO in particular and the Palestinians in general that the government itself is now a prisoner of. Additionally, a substantial sector of the Israeli ruling class, including a good number of leading generals, is prepared to take any measure necessary to block the developing negotiation process. These sectors, personified by the maniacal General Ariel Sharon and supported by leading Labor party figures such as Moshe Dayan, dream of returning to the swaggering arrogance of 1967-1973 by unleashing yet another blitzkrieg against the Arab states. They reason that if such a war were launched, U.S. imperialism would have no choice but to accept the fait accompli and back up Israel with all the weapons it would need. And they are probably right. The immediate danger derives from this: The peculiarities of the Zionist state are such that the combination of economic and political crisis, international diplomatic isolation, and the conjuncturally Favorable military relationship of forces could lead a decisive sector of the Israeli ruling class to reject Yassir Arafat's olive branch and Henry Kissinger's charm and opt instead for yet another lightning war of aggression. It is hardly necessary to dwell on the threats involved in such an action. The Arab East today stands not merely at a crossroads but on a razor's edge. The alternative to a new conflagration appears to be a historic attempt to impose the "peaceful solution, " which means American imperialist hegemony and the crushing of the vanguard of the Arab revolution. On the other hand, the bankruptcy of Zionism and the Arab ruling classes was never more crying. The attempts to impose the "peaceful solution" will be met by increasing opposition among the Arab masses as the real character of that solution becomes more clear. The choice facing the Israeli-Jewish workers - economic catastrophe and perpetual warfare or a break with Zionism and integration into the revolutionary struggle of the Arab world - is being posed ever more sharply. More than ever it is clear that the "Arab-Israeli problem" is soluble not in Palestine itself but only on the scale of the entire region, through a socialist revolution that can create the conditions for the economic development of the region and for the elimination of national oppression in all its forms. It is for that alternative that the revolutionary Marxists in the Arab region are working today, both in the Arab countries and in Israel itself. Today their size is small, but it will grow larger, not only because their solution is the only one that is just, but also because it is the only one that is realistic. O
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POLITICAL