Palestinians mourn Arafat but struggle for liberation will continue

Obituary: Yasser Arafat

Palestinians mourn Arafat but struggle for liberation will continue

MANY PALESTINIANS will view the death of Yasser Arafat with a mixture of
sadness and a wish that the Palestinian Authority he led, had done much more
to end the poverty and oppression that blights their lives.

Rotem and Gal, Maavak Sotzialisti, Israel

Whatever doubts some Palestinians may have had about his leadership they
will see in his death a snapshot of the brutal oppression and tenuous
existence they face on a daily basis. Arafat remained a virtual prisoner in
his compound for three years, a situation which undoubtedly contributed to the
illnesses from which he died.

He is seen by most Palestinians as a symbol of the longstanding Palestinian
struggle against Israeli occupation. His past, as a guerrilla leader since the
1960s and as one of the founders of the Fatah organisation and the PLO
(Palestinian Liberation Organisation), gave him a special status among the
Palestinian masses. It is hard for many Palestinians to think who could play
the same role or have the same authority as Yasser Arafat.

But while respect will be shown for the role he played amongst many
Palestinians, there will be others who rightly question Arafat’s (and the
other PLO leaders’) tactics and strategy in attempting to win Palestinian
national liberation.

In the earlier years of Fatah and the PLO this was armed attacks by
secretive guerrilla groups, as opposed to mass action by the working class and
peasantry armed for self-defence. Later on Arafat and other leaders attempted
to form diplomatic alliances with corrupt Arab regimes and negotiate with
imperialist powers.

Black September

WHEN ARAFAT was faced with a revolutionary situation, he unfortunately
betrayed such movements. September 1970 in Jordan was one such example, where
large sections of Palestinians and Jordanians rose up against the corrupt
regime of King Hussein.

Arafat and the PLO leaders could have led a revolutionary struggle for
power which would have changed the whole face of the Middle East. Instead,
Arafat made concessions to King Hussein and tens of thousands of Palestinians
were killed in the retribution by the Jordanian army that followed. This
defeat became known as Black September.

Having been driven out of Jordan, the PLO leadership established itself in
Beirut. In 1975 a civil war developed between the PLO and the right-wing
Christian Phalange militia.

In 1982 Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) under the command of Ariel Sharon
rolled into Lebanon in support of the Phalange and laid siege to West Beirut
where Arafat was holed up. That August, a US-brokered deal saw the PLO
leadership go into exile in Tunisia. In September, under the gaze of the IDF,
the Phalange militia massacred up to 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and
Shatila refugee camps.

Exile meant that Arafat and the PLO no longer had the same intimate
connection with the Palestinians and also alienated them from the conditions
that the majority of Palestinians faced.

The distance between the Palestinian masses and the leadership based in
exile was clearly demonstrated at the beginning of the first Intifada
(Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories which began spontaneously in
October 1987 and lasted until 1991/93).

The PLO leadership in exile was completely taken by surprise by this event,
as was the Israeli regime. The first Intifada provided the basis for the
growth of a new leadership from below in the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

Oslo agreement

AFTER THE signing of the Oslo agreement (Israeli/Palestinian peace accords)
brought the Tunis leadership back to the occupied territories, tensions and
disagreements developed between it and the local leadership which have
remained in different forms up to the present day.

At the beginning of the 1990s the pace of the Intifada had slowed as a
consequence of years of struggle without the defeat of the Israeli military
occupation of the territories. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the
support of Fatah for Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War left the PLO
politically isolated and financially bankrupt.

Under the pressure of US imperialism, which feared future upheavals in the
region, the Israeli ruling class took advantage of the PLO’s weakened position
to force it into negotiations and to accept the Oslo agreement. This deal was
never meant to give the Palestinians national liberation. It was designed to
grant a Bantustan-type prison existence to the Palestinian masses with the
Palestinian Authority (PA) acting as guards and the Israeli state as prison
governor.

The Israeli ruling class preferred to deal with the old weak leadership
from Tunis which was not as militant as the leadership on the ground. Arafat’s
regime represented the capitalist interests of the Palestinian elite and was
totally dependent on the Israeli ruling class for its existence. As such it
could not and never has intended to solve the problems of the Palestinians.

The standard of living under the PA regime declined severely, hand-in-hand
with the continuing oppression by the Israeli Defence Forces. At the same time
a small elite enriched itself on the expense of the masses. Billions of
dollars in aid has flowed into the coffers of the PA, ostensibly to improve
infrastructure etc, but an International Monetary Fund and European Union
audit revealed that $900 million was missing.

Without any solution to the problems of daily life the peace process
couldn’t last for long. This was the basis for the second Intifada.

Second Intifada

THE SECOND Intifada was aimed against both the Israeli regime and in a
distorted way the PA (This uprising was sparked by Ariel Sharon’s provaocative
visit to the site of the al-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem, in September 2000). The
first reaction of the PA leadership was to condemn this outburst of the
Palestinian masses. Only after they were unable to hold back the movement did
they try to lead the Intifada.

Over the last few years the Israeli blockade on Arafat in the PA
headquarters in Ramallah, gave him back the status of a symbol of the
Palestinian resistance.

However, despite the fact that for many years Ariel Sharon, the Israeli
prime minister, yearned for Arafat’s death, the news about Arafat’s
life-threatening illness came at a very inconvenient time for him. In addition
to the fear of being blamed for his death, and the effect it might have on the
Palestinian street, the death of Arafat actually poses serious questions
concerning the strategy of the Israeli ruling class.

For the last few years the main claim of the Israeli regime was that Arafat
was an obstacle to any negotiation between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. This was one of the main arguments Sharon used to justify the
disengagement plan.

The death of Arafat could lead to events which dramatically change the
situation in Israel and the PA. Many names have been mentioned as candidates
to replace Arafat as the PA president and the leader of the PLO and Fatah: Abu
Alla, Abu Mazen, Mohammed Dahlan, even Farouq Kaddoumi (who opposed the Oslo
agreement at first) and Marwan Barghouti, who has sat in an Israeli jail for
more than two years and holds credit for that in the Palestinian street. But
none of them have the credit Arafat had as a symbol and a guerrilla fighter.

Even during Arafat’s life we saw early struggles over the future control of
the Gaza strip, when last summer Dahlan’s faction in Fatah challenged the
control of Arafat’s armed forces.

More complicated

NOW THE situation has became more complicated, since Hamas have also laid a
claim for a share in governing the PA. Hamas enjoy mass support in Gaza, but
if it became part of the PA this might change over the long run and could
cause enormous pressure to be exerted on the PA by the imperialist powers who
could oppose its inclusion.

At the end of October Sharon won the vote on the ‘disengagement’ plan in
the Knesset (Israeli parliament). The Israeli ruling class wants to withdraw
from the Gaza strip (while still controlling its borders) but many of the
Likud MPs from Sharon’s party are opposed to removing the Jewish settlements
there, which has exerted huge pressure on the Prime Minister.

Sharon suffers from a lack of support inside his party, and his
governmental coalition includes less than half of all MPs and therefore the
government is unstable.

At the moment he claims that nothing has changed since the death of Arafat,
but there is strong pressure from inside the Likud for cancelling the
disengagement plan and going back to negotiations with a new future partner.

The option of a government of national unity (bringing together Likud and
Labour) is still open but it seems like the next general elections in Israel
are only a matter of a short time away.

The death of Arafat has released forces of instability that were hidden
beneath the surface, building up for a long time. These pressures did not
develop because of the personality of Arafat but because of the inability of
capitalism and imperialism to solve the daily problems of Palestinian and
Israeli workers.

The solution is way beyond the hands of capitalism and its agents. The
problems of the masses can only be solved by the organisation of society under
a socialist plan to reconcile national differences by establishing two
socialist states as part of the struggle to build a socialist federation on
the basis of equal rights in the Middle East.


Bantustans were the poverty-stricken tribal areas designated for black
people under the South African Aparthied regime. It was a means of denying
citizenship to black people and guaranteed a source of cheap labour for the
South African capitalist class.

Back


How can a Palestinian state be achieved?

IMPERIALISM, BOTH in the past and today, bears the main responsibility for
instability and the oppression of national rights in the Middle East.

Because the region is so strategically and economically important to the
imperialist powers they have always been particularly quick to defend their
interests by deploying the tactic of divide and rule and by backing
dictatorial regimes.

US imperialism has seen Israel as its client state in the region since
Israel’s inception, it was an imperialist wedge against the threat of
socialism and the Arab revolution.

Whilst US imperialism also leans on the conservative, right-wing Arab
regimes to varying degrees at different times, Israel remains their primary
point of support in the region. What is more, Bush and his cohorts are
currently amongst the most crudely pro-Israeli of any US government.

Consequences

Meanwhile, the European imperialist powers, terrified of the consequences
of developments in the Middle East, are campaigning more strongly than Bush
for a "viable Palestinian state". They decline to say what this actually
means.

This is because they have no answers on the central issues of contention –
the right of return, Jerusalem, water rights and land rights. In reality a
so-called Palestinian state under capitalism would be a tiny impoverished
statelet, its borders decided by Israel probably on more unfavourable terms
even than the Oslo Accord.

Genuine Palestinian statehood would threaten the power, prestige and
profits of the capitalist elite in the Middle East and of imperialism. It
would fuel the national aspirations of other nationalities and minorities in
the region.

It could also develop into a radical alternative for the Arab masses to the
corrupt pro-imperialist regimes in the region and would therefore be a threat
to imperialism’s strategic and oil interests.

The Palestinians are facing constant oppression and the likelihood of
repeated bloody occupations and incursions by the IDF. They are in a desperate
situation.

Palestinians clearly have the right to armed self-defence against the IDF
onslaught. However, attacks on Israeli civilians are counter-productive
because they drive the Israeli working class into the hands of their own worst
enemies; Sharon and the most reactionary elements of the Israeli ruling class.

Of course, the Palestinian people can’t postpone their struggle until most
Israeli Jews accept the need for a genuine Palestinian state. But as well as
organising mass opposition to the occupation, the Palestinian struggle needs
to help undermine the support of Israeli Jews, particularly the working class,
for Israeli capitalism and all that goes with it. The Palestinians will not
win the right to self-determination by military struggle alone.

What about Israel?

MARXISTS OPPOSED the establishment of Israel, recognising that it was built
on the suffering of the Palestinian people, and moreover would become a bloody
trap for the Israeli Jews. However, Israel is now in existence and over time
the population have developed a national consciousness.

Given this, to deny the Israeli Jews the right to their own nation, is a
violation of the right to self-determination. Moreover, it is unachievable
given the military backing of US imperialism from the Israeli state.

There is an historical logjam. Just as the military might of Israel cannot
crush the Palestinians’ unquenchable desire for a state, the Israeli Jews’
national consciousness could not be destroyed.

For the Palestinians to achieve victory it is essential that they split the
majority Jewish working class from Sharon and the Israeli ruling class. This
can only be done by supporting the existence of two states – Palestinian and
Jewish – on a socialist basis, as a part of a voluntary confederation of the
Middle East with democratic national rights for all minorities.

A socialist Middle East could provide the full economic and social
resources to absorb the millions of Palestinians who would be given the right
of return and guarantee increased living standards for the whole population.

That is why the building of strong working-class movements on both sides of
the national divide in Israel and Palestine, committed to a socialist
programme, is such an urgent task in the region.

  • The immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces from all Occupied
    Territories – Gaza and the West Bank.

  • A mass struggle throughout the region against imperialism and capitalism –
    the root cause of the conflict.

  • The right of Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupying forces. For a
    mass struggle to fight for genuine national and social liberation. For the
    establishment of popular, democratically controlled grass-root committees to
    provide leadership to the struggle. The right of these committees to provide
    democratically controlled armed defence.

  • The mobilisation of workers and youth internationally to aid the
    Palestinians’ struggle for democratic, national and social rights and for a
    socialist solution in the Middle East.

  • The right of Palestinians to self-determination, including an independent
    state. For a socialist Palestine and a socialist Israel, as part of a
    voluntary socialist confederation of the Middle East, with full rights for
    minorities.

  • An end to Sharon’s war of re-occupation and his reactionary, capitalist
    government. An end to the use of Israeli soldiers as cannon fodder by the
    Israeli ruling class and army generals. For the right of all conscript
    soldiers and reservists to refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories.

  • A united struggle by Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinian workers, youth
    and community activists against Sharon’s aggression and the occupation. End
    institutionalised racism and discrimination towards Israeli Palestinians. For
    a struggle of the Israeli working-class – both Jewish and Palestinian – to
    overthrow capitalism.

  • A struggle by the masses of the Arab states against the corrupt,
    reactionary, capitalist ruling Arab elites. For a socialist Middle East.

Extracts from a
feature article by Hannah Sell in the socialist, 17 May 2002