Behind the twenty-first century Intifada
Introduction
As we go to press, the USA is making a serious effort to salvage the
Oslo 'peace process', as a central part of their strategy to mobilize
and impose a unity on the world bourgeoisie behind 'the war on terrorism'.
This follows a year in which it allowed Israel and the Palestinians to sink
into a one-sided, depressing and bloody conflict. The perception of America's
sponsorship of Israeli state terrorism against Palestinians is an important
factor in the ambivalent or even supportive response by many in the Middle
East and elsewhere to the terrorism directed at the heart of American military
and financial power. This has thrown the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into
sharp relief, making an analysis of the forces which drive the new Intifada
more urgent than ever.
When the World Trade Centre and Pentagon were attacked, the so-called
'Al Aqsa Intifada' had been raging for about a year and appeared to have
effectively sabotaged the attempt at bourgeois peace represented by the Oslo
accords. This has come about at a massive cost to the Palestinian proletariat,
which has suffered many more deaths and injuries than in the 1987-93 Intifada.
In particular the large number of fatalities among the Palestinian population
inside 'Israel proper' has brought the Intifada home in a way not seen
before, with places like Jaffa and Nazareth erupting in general strikes
and riots, and the main road through the northern Galilee strewn with burning
tyres in the first days of the uprising. On the other side of the Green
Line, the Israeli policy of assassination has steadily increased the death
toll, with each day providing ever more desensitizing details of the horrors
of nationalism and repression.
What has really distinguished the recent Intifada from the previous
one however, is the existence of a Palestinian statelet, whose policing
role and client status have been thrown into relief by the uprising. The
Israeli state began reoccupying the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)
controlled areas, apparently temporarily. Whatever the ultimate intentions
of the Israeli state, these incursions served as a brutal reminder to the
PNA that it is Israel's creation, and what they create they can also destroy.
The purpose of this article is not to predict future developments in
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but to put the recent Intifada in historical
context, and to understand it from the perspective of class struggle.
The response of many to the Palestinian problem tends to take the form
of an abstract call for solidarity between Arab and Jewish workers. At
the same time, the Leninist left legitimizes the nationalist ideology that
divides the working class, by affirming the 'right of national self determination'
and offering 'critical support' for the Palestine Liberation Organisation
(PLO).[1
]
At the time of writing, the Intifada shows little sign of superseding
this nationalist ideology. The Arab and Jewish workers are 'uniting and
fighting' - apparently with their bourgeoisies and against each other.
This article will outline some of the material reasons why concrete
examples of Jewish-Arab proletarian solidarity are few and far between.
Working class Jews have benefited materially from the occupation, and from
the inferior labour market position of Palestinians, both in Israel and in
the occupied territories. Since the mid 1970s this settlement (which we
will call Labour Zionism) has been in retreat and, increasingly, Jewish workers
have faced economic insecurity. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip was necessary in order to accommodate the Jewish working class in
Israel. The settlements in the occupied territories have played the role
of social housing to compensate for the increasing economic insecurity of
Jewish workers, and this has become an intractable problem facing the architects
of bourgeois peace.
A typical leftist position is to call for a 'democratic, socialist
state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews can live in peace'.[
2
]
This might appear relatively reformist to us, but a similar call for
a 'secular, democratic, bi-national state' is regarded as a wildly revolutionary
demand in Israel - even by relatively radical activists. Since the start
of the century the struggles of both groups of workers have more and more
come to be refracted through the prism of nationalism. Nevertheless the
dismal spectacle of proletarian killing proletarian is not predestined; nationalism
in the Middle East emerged and is maintained in response to the militancy
of the working class. For us, the ideology of nationalism, as it has manifested
itself in the Middle East, can only be understood in relation to the emergence
of the oil proletariat, and the US ascendancy in the region. For example,
the forms taken by Palestinian nationalism -notably the PLO - were a practical
response by the exiled Palestinian bourgeoisie to an openly rebellious
Palestinian proletariat. The US-brokered 'peace process' developed in recognition
of the PLO's recuperative role in the Intifada, while the collapse of Oslo,
and the apparent dramatic resurgence of Islamist antagonism towards the
USA, is linked to the PLO's failure to deliver even the basic demands of
Palestinian nationalism.
Therefore, first, we need to understand something of the international
context in the Middle East, in particular the hegemonic role of the USA
in the region.
The American ascendancy
The 1914-18 World War first showed the military value of oil. In its
aftermath, Germany's influence in the Middle East was drastically reduced,
and it became apparent to all the major powers that the Ottoman Empire could
no longer sustain itself (due in part to an Arab revolt which had been
aided by the British in 1917). Britain and France agreed to divide the
Middle East into spheres of influence, with Britain controlling Palestine.
While this was ostensibly to prevent Russia entering the region, Britain
also meant to keep French ambitions in Syria and Lebanon contained, guarantee
access to the Suez Canal and the keep the flow of oil from Iraq unchallenged.
By 1947 the British position in Palestine was no longer tenable, given
its decline as an imperial power. Exhausted by the Second World War, attacked
by militant Jewish settlers and, more and more, undermined in the foreign
policy by the United States, the UK staggered on until its engineered 'withdrawal'
in 1948, when the Israeli state was created.
That year saw the expansion and consolidation of the Israeli state
through war on its Arab neighbours, and the ascendancy of the US as the
dominant foreign power in the region. The USA's strategic interests were
threefold: to halt the spread of the USSR into the Mediterranean, to protect
the now-identified oilfields of the Arabian peninsula, and lastly to stymie
any continuation of British or French influence in the Middle East.
In the immediate post-war years, the US saw the old European powers
as its main rivals in the Middle East, rather than the USSR. The 1953 CIA-backed
Palavi coup in Iran - a response to Iran's nationalisation of British-owned
oilfields - had the effect of transferring 40% of Britain's oil to the USA.
The coup turned Iran into a US client state in the 'soft underbelly' of
the USSR's southern border, a bastion of 'western culture' in the Middle
East. Similarly, in the 1956 Suez crisis, the USA prevented Britain and France
from reasserting their national interests in Egypt, leaving these old imperial
powers to play second fiddle to America in the Middle East.
However, with Egypt brought into the Soviet orbit, following the Free
Officers' coup in 1952, and the signing of an arms deal with Czechoslovakia
in 1955, the US realized the Soviet Union was attempting to flex its muscles
in the region. Containment of the USSR now became the official watchword
of US foreign policy, which meant creating obstacles to Soviet influence
in the Middle East. The underlying policy was protection at all costs of
US economic interests.
America's economic interests in the Middle East
America's primary interest in the region is of course oil. As well
as placing the USA at the top of the imperialist pecking order, the Second
World War confirmed the Middle East's strategic centrality as a key source
of oil. A 1945 State Department report called Saudi Arabia 'a stupendous
source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world
history.' Little has changed since, except that, as America underwent its
dynamic Fordist expansion in the two decades after World War Two, the oil
acquired even greater value.
As car production and the petrochemical industry replaced railway construction
as a key locus of expansion, capital shifted from coal to oil, as the
key raw material. Sources of oil, especially the Middle East with its
vast reserves, became crucial. Its value thrown into relief by the energy
crisis in the 1970s, the US has stopped at nothing to secure the region's
oil before and above anybody else. A secondary, but not unimportant, source
of profit for the US is realized through the flow of Arab petrodollars to
North America in the form of military purchases, construction projects,
bank deposits and other investments, a phenomena which dates from the early
1970s.
Pan-Arab nationalism and the oil producing proletariat
At first, the newborn state of Israel played little part in the USA's
considerations. Indeed, during the Suez crisis, America had sided with Egypt
against Israel's expansionism. It was not until the rise of a more assertive
Arab nationalism in the 1950s that the US began to see the potential of
a developed strategic partnership with 'the Zionist entity.'
The growth of oil production in the Middle East had led to a rapid
modernization of previously traditional societies. A surrogate bourgeoisie
emerged from the military and the bureaucracy, committed to national accumulation
and oriented towards the USSR's model of capitalist development and opposed
to 'imperialism'.
The most coherent form of anti-imperialism was 'Pan-Arab' nationalism.
Pan-Arabism's origins lay in the Ottoman Empire, which had united Arabs
under Turkish rule, but which collapsed in the aftermath of the First World
War. The Middle East was then carved up by imperialist powers intent on
the conquest and control of new markets and strategically important raw
materials. However the new borders went against the grain of the 'common
language, customs and traditions' maintained by the inhabitants of the former
Ottoman Empire. In the Pan-Arabist ideology, a 'natural community', based
on the idealization of pre-capitalist social relations, serves to neutralize
class antagonisms. Though a modernist political movement, Pan-Arabism was
able to use this imagined 'natural community' to further its modernising
project, and to recuperate class struggle.
As a nationalist movement Pan-Arabism served to divide and to co-opt
the region's working class, thus helping to promote capitalist development.
Despite this, its orientation towards the USSR and its state capitalist
tendencies threatened the particular interests of Western capital.[
3
] Although these interests were by no means one and the same for different
Western capitals, in the long run Arab nationalism's state capitalist tendencies
threatened to deny western capital unhindered access to the Middle Eastern
oil fields.
But Arab nationalism, in the moments where it has coalesced into a
combative Pan-Arabism has been beaten into the dust by Israel. And economically,
the bourgeoisies of the various Arab states have, sooner or later, found
it difficult to resist the huge economic support a realignment with America
would mean.[4
]
The difficulty for the Arab bourgeoisie (and the PLO is no exception),
overtly Pan-Arabist or not, if they wish to avoid domestic challenges has
been how to credibly align itself with America while appearing to keep
alive the dream of Arab independence and the destruction of Israel.
An expression of this tension was the OPEC oil price hike in 1973,
which was seen as a response to the October War between Israel and the
Arab states. However the demands of the oil-producing proletariat meant
that in some countries, a disproportionate amount of the higher oil prices
imposed by OPEC were being spent on working class needs, rather than on
the high levels of technology needed for industrial development.[
5
]
America's strategic imperatives hardened around two perspectives: first,
containing the perceived threat of the Soviet Union, and second, crushing
or, where possible, co-opting the various expressions of Arab nationalism
which swept the region.
In addition to its customary method of foreign intervention - support
enthusiastically the most credible pro-western faction of the bourgeoisie,
co-opt as much of any popular movement as it was possible to do, and have
the unrepentant troublemakers eliminated - the US devised a sophisticated
way of portraying the Middle East as a part of the world that was in permanent
crisis and which, in any case, was impossible to understand. US policy then
became one of 'crisis management' and 'bringing peace to the world's number
one trouble spot.' Whatever the specific crisis, the oil and the petrodollars
kept flowing from east to west, and the United States has not been compelled
to strive for lasting bourgeois peace in the region.[ 6
]
Palestinian Nationalism as the bastard offspring of Labour Zionism
Although, Israel is near the Middle Eastern oil fields, it has no oil
fields of its own, which has added to its strategic vulnerability in relation
to its neighbours. However, its image, as 'a bastion of Western culture
in a sea of backwardness ruled by petty despots'[7
]
, has been used by the USA to maintain control over the oil fields.
From the late 1950s onwards, dramatically rising amounts of financial
and military aid made it plain that the US saw Israel as a strategic asset
which counterbalanced, and indeed was capable of overwhelming the Soviet
client states of Egypt and Syria. The wars of 1967 and 1973 demonstrated
to the Arab world exactly how powerful Israel had become. It was now the region's
superpower. The Israeli airforce, especially, could completely subjugate
the eastern Mediterranean area.
Israel also had a second use for US policymakers. Stung by its Vietnam
experience, and often prevented from intervening in the political hotspots
of the world as it would like by domestic opinion or concerns over its
international standing, the US frequently used Israel, particularly in the
1970s and 1980s as a conduit through which it could supply, or could entice
Israel to supply, money and arms to various counterinsurgency movements.
The ruling classes of Zaire, South Africa, Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala,
and Indonesia were some of those who benefited from timely Israeli aid in
their attempts to remain safe from challenge.
While the US bourgeoisie has tended to be pro-Zionist, Israel has 'never
been enough' to guarantee the security of their interests. They have had
to engage directly with the Arab states, and this has sometimes proved
to be a high risk strategy, which has not always gone the United States'
way. While the Gulf states and Turkey have been consistently unquestioning
about their role as clients, Arab nationalism, 'socialism', and Islamism
have each caused various Arab nations to take an intransigent position in
their relations with the US. Egypt under Nasser, Syria under Hafez al-Asad,
and Iran under the mullahs are some of the examples.
Currently two areas are still giving US policymakers sleepless nights.
The first is the rise of Islamism, which was initially promoted by the
USA as a counterweight to the USSR, but has become almost impossible -
or at least very difficult - for the US and its client states to recuperate.
From Syria to Jordan to Egypt, the jails of the Middle East are stuffed
with radical, anti-American Islamists.
The second problem is the recurring question of the Palestinians. Israel's
creation of a large Palestinian diaspora throughout the Middle Eastern
oil-producing proletariat led sections of the Arab bourgeoisie to take a
radical anti-US stance. As the 'guard-dog' of US imperialism, Israel provided
the external threat, which unified the emergent Arab bourgeoisies and mobilized
Arab workers. Whenever the Arab bourgeoisie has faced the threat of proletarian
antagonism, it has been able to deflect the anger of the proletariat against
'the real enemy', Israel. After 1967, the PLO became the main political
expression of Pan-Arabism.
In the face of Pan-Arab hostility, the Israeli bourgeoisie has sought
military alliances with non-Arab Islamic countries. However, Israel's association
with Iran was cut short by the overthrow of the Palavi dynasty in 1979.
The new Shi-ite regime was, if anything, more vehemently anti-western than
the Arab nationalists.[ 8
]
More recently Israel has found in Turkey a new non-Arab ally in the
region.
So the form of Pan-Arab nationalism, which was the ideological basis
for Palestinian nationalism, has been bound up with and maintained by
Zionism.[
9
] Like its nemesis, Zionism was also a nationalist political movement
based on the idealized 'natural community', in this case of Jews.[
10
] It is impossible to understand the present uprising, and the nationalist
ideology which pervades it, without understanding the nationalism it sought
to has oppose: Zionism. Until relatively recently its dominant form could
be called Labour Zionism, to which we now turn.
A tale of two national liberation movements:
Labour Zionism and the Palestinian National Movement
Labour Zionism and the militancy of the European Jewish working class
Labour Zionism has traditionally been based around various big institutional
structures, mainly the Histadrut and the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The
Histadrut is a state run 'trade union', which has always also been a major
employer. Even before the creation of Israel it was an embryonic department
of labour that also fulfilled the functions of a trade union for some sectors
of Jewish workers. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was established in 1903
as a fund for collecting donations from Zionists. Its main function has been
as the national land administrating body. It bought large amounts of land
in the name of 'all Jews' and controlled much of the land gained in the
'48 land grab. JNF land could only be let to Jews and worked on by Jews
and became state owned in '48. Eighty per cent of Israelis live on land
that was initially JNF owned, much of which is still controlled by the JNF.
The early Zionists were a bourgeois pressure group, who spent their
time lobbying various European leaders (including Mussolini). Unlike most
European Jews, these Zionists identified themselves as anti communists.
They saw their allies in 'honest anti semites' who would give them land
to rid themselves of the Jewish 'revolutionary menace'. They also courted
western European Jewish capitalists who wanted to avoid the continued immigration
of militant Eastern European Jews into their countries (which they saw as
compromising assimilation and encouraging anti semitism) and colonial states
who could give or sell them land (which didn't necessarily have to be Palestine
at this point). However, Zionism always needed to be a mass movement and
the early Zionists were happy to be flexible with their political allegiances
to facilitate this.
In its early days, Zionism was irrelevant to most working class European
Jews, whose allegiance tended to be to the revolutionary workers' movement
sweeping the continent.[
11
] As well as the militant Jewish proletariat many middle class Eastern
European Jews found that, when faced with right wing anti-semitism, the
only place for them was the left.
In order to appeal to this constituency, Zionists groups were forced
to emphasize their more 'socialist' aspects.[
12
] These aspects converged with the desire, expressed in Zionism, to
return to the pre-capitalist communal ties, which formed the very basis
of 'Jewish identity'. The more 'social democratic' elements of Zionist thought
became prominent and prevailed as the dominant form of Zionism, and this
is what allowed Zionist groups to gain a foothold in the Jewish workers'
movement.
Advent of Labour Zionism in Palestine
The early Jewish settlements were more or less commercial ventures,
which tended to end up employing Arab workers (often newly proletarianized
due to Zionist land purchases).[
13
] New Jewish immigrants looking for work sometimes even found themselves
looking for casual work on the same basis as the Arabs.[
14
]
The institutions of Labour Zionism began to become ascendant in the
Palestinian Jewish community around the 1920's. There had been an ongoing
struggle since around 1905 when, after the failure of the 1905 revolution,
many leftist Russian Jews turned to Zionism. The second wave of Zionist immigration
consisted mainly of young, educated, middle class, leftist Jews who wanted
to return to the land and work as pioneers. They became disillusioned with
Zionist colonization, which they saw as too capitalist to live up to their
hopes. In opposition to the Jewish capitalists, who were happy to employ
Arab labour power in so far as it was cheaper, they introduced the idea
that Jewish land and business should be worked exclusively by Jewish labour.
If a part of modern anti-semitism is a pseudo-anti-capitalism, in which
the Jew is equated with the abstract side of the commodity form - abstract
labour not concrete labour, 'rootless and cosmopolitan' finance and circulation,
rather than grounded, nationally based production[
15
] - at one level Zionism, with emphasis on productive labour and going
back to the land, is a response. It was thought that, in an exclusively
Jewish state, Jews would not be concentrated in certain trades and professions,
but play a full part in the capitalist division of labour. Hence their
slogans were: 'the conquest of land' and 'the conquest of labour'.
This led to a conflict between the older settlers and the new immigrants.[
16
] Jewish bosses who carried on employing Arab labour were picketed by
the Zionist trade unions.[
17
] The conflict was muted by the Zionist organisation, which used the
large part of its funds to subsidize Jewish wages so that employers could
use Jews as cheaply as Arabs. However there were still strikes. In response
to this, the right wing opposition organised scab labour into a 'national
trade union' with the help of Polish petit bourgeois immigrants, rich farmers
and factory owners. They also carried out attacks on working class organisations.[
18
] However, the left wing 'conquest of labour' Zionists got a big boost
from the Palestinian general strikes of 1936, when Jewish workers scabbed
on striking Palestinians.
By the 1920s the Histadrut organised more than three quarters of Jewish
workers and was the main employer after the British government. It also
ran the labour exchanges, and was very closely linked to the sales and production
co-operatives. With all this structure the Histadrut was a vital basis of
the Zionist organisations 'quasi government' which organised education, immigration,
economic and cultural affairs. So, even before 1948, the Zionist state
was becoming rooted in corporatist social democratic forms.[
19
]
Zionist ethnic stratification
After the massive land grab in 1948, the perennial problem of a Jewish
labour shortage emerged for the first time. European bourgeois Jews presented
Zionism to their funders and supporters as the solution to the militancy
of Jewish workers. However, most Jews, it turned out, didn't want to go
to Israel, and were more tempted by America or Western Europe. European Jews
were put off by the tiny state's territorial disadvantage in relation to
its hostile Arab neighbours, which in turn fed the imperative to expand:
unlike Egypt to the West and Syria to the North East, Israel could not afford
to lose a single acre of land. The consequent militarization of Israeli
society was a further disincentive to potential immigrants.
This problem was partially solved by the immigration of Middle Eastern
and North African Jews. However, many oriental Jews had no desire to move
to Israel, and were even opposed to Zionism, because it made their situation
more precarious, especially in Arab countries. Much of the Arab bourgeoisie
was attempting to promote pan Arabism as an opposition to Zionism, although
the oriental Jews were not subjected to anything like systematic genocide
on the level of the holocaust, there were pogroms in some Middle Eastern
countries. The establishment of Israel, the 1948 war and the subsequent
increase in Arab nationalism further destabilized the position of the oriental
Jews, and many of them emigrated to Israel.[
20
]
The oriental Jews were often proletarianized in the process of their
dislocation. Those who had professional qualifications found that these
were not recognized in Israel and assets were often taken on arrival.
In stark contrast, the occidental Jews received preferential treatment
in housing and employment, and some were able to use individual war reparations
from Germany as money capital. Frequently oriental Jews were also placed
in the transit camps and development towns which were closest to the borders,
and which were overcrowded as well as dangerous. In the case of the mainly
North African Jews dumped in border towns like Musrara, the state turned
a blind eye when they squatted in the houses of Arabs displaced by the
expropriatory war of 1948. So in practice the oriental Jews ended up guarding
the borders against the Arabs. So the application of labour Zionism in
Israel was based on ethnic stratification of the working class, not just
between Jews and Arabs, but also between occidental and oriental Jews. It
was the labour of the oriental Jews, as well as the few Palestinians who
remained, that became the driving force to 'make the desert bloom' into a
modern capitalist state.
However Israel has never had a 'normal' capitalist economy, due to
the disproportionate role played by overseas financial support. From the
1950s, about a billion marks was contributed annually by West Germany as
collective reparations for the Nazi holocaust. More significant has been
the contribution from the USA. 'In 1983, Israel with only 3 million inhabitants
received 20% of all-American aid. In other words, each Israeli family received
the equivalent of 2,400 dollars from the US government. However as the most
developed capitalist state in the region, the Israeli bourgeoisie had accumulated
its own potential gravediggers, in the form of a combative working class.
Jewish working class resistance and the imperative to expand
Unlike many other countries in the Middle East, Israel has always had
a relatively large working class concentrated in a small area. Ethnic stratification
has safeguarded against the emergence of a homogenous proletariat confronting
Israeli capital. However, in spite of this, the Israeli working class
showed itself to be combative. The major feature of class struggle in
this period was oriental Jews contesting their subordinate position in
Israeli society. Throughout the 1950s there were riots in the overwhelmingly
oriental transit camps about 'bread and work', which frequently turned
against the police. In 1959 the 'Wadi Salib Riots' started in a slum of
Haifa and immediately spread to other places with a large Moroccan Jewish
population.
As in Western European states, class conflicts in Israel were mediated
through social democratic institutions. However many of the militant oriental
Jews saw the Histadrut and the Labour Party as the enemy, and so these
institutions were often under attack. On one occasion, in 1953 the Histadrut
office in Haifa was subject to an arson attack by oriental Jewish demonstrators,
who saw its naked corporatism as one of the embodiments of their subordination
to the occidental Jews.
In the early 1960s, the Israeli economy was in a slump, partly due
to the drying up of the German war reparations, which had provided Israeli
capital with its initial kick-start. Many of the immigrants, who had moved
to Israel expecting a better life, now faced growing unemployment. Jewish
workers continued to make life difficult for the Israeli bourgeoisie, with
277 strikes in 1966 alone.[
21
] With the burning of the red flag (which symbolized the hegemony of
the Labour Party) becoming a routine feature at dockers' demonstrations,
it was clear that the social democratic forms of Labour Zionism were failing
to recuperate the struggles of Jewish workers.
The Post-1967 Boom
After the 1967 war the Israeli State not only still found itself surrounded
by hostile Arab states, but also ruling over the Palestinian population
of the occupied territories. A third of the population ruled by Israeli
State was now Palestinian. In the face of these internal and external threats
the continued survival of the Zionist State demanded unity of all Israeli
Jews - both occidental and oriental. But to unite all Jews behind the Israeli
State required that the previously excluded oriental Jews were integrated
within an extended labour Zionist settlement. Conveniently, the very same
circumstances that demanded the expansion of the labour Zionist settlement
also provided the conditions necessary to carry out such a major social
restructuring.
Firstly, the 1967 war had forced the USA to commit itself to Israel
as a counterweight to the growing pan-Arab nationalism that was aligning
itself to the USSR. Secondly, the occupation of the West Bank provided Israel
with a large pool of highly exploitable Palestinian labour-power. It was
this cheap Palestinian labour-power, combined with growing infusion of US
aid that provided the vital preconditions for the rapid expansion of the
Israeli economy over the next ten years.
After 1967 the Israeli state was able to follow a policy of military
Keynesianism that was to see military expenditure rise to 30% of GDP by
the 1970s. Rising levels of public expenditure financed by a growing Government
budget deficits fuelled the economic boom. In doing so the government
was able to create a plentiful supply of job opportunities not only directly
through the expansion of public sector employment, but also indirectly
as the private sector expanded to meet the growing demands of the army.
The growing demands of the Israeli military for high tech weaponry provided
reliable profits for the five major conglomerates that had dominated Israel's
economy since the 1950s, and which were dominated by the occidental Jewish
bourgeoisie. However, the Israeli military also demanded the construction
of military bases, barracks and installations that provided business opportunities
for an emerging oriental Jewish petty-bourgeoisie that could make large
profits by employing cheap Palestinian labour-power.
In addition to meeting the needs of the domestic market, armaments
became Israel's most important export. With much of the public sector
now turned over to military accumulation, only those eligible for military
service could work in these industries. Even Israeli Arab 'citizens' were
excluded from this dubious privilege, let alone the Palestinians in the
territories, and so the 'strategic' (better paid) industries were by definition
available only to Jews (often oriental).
While the militarization of the economy helped to integrate the oriental
Jews, it reinforced the subordination of non-Jewish workers. In practice
Israel now had a two-tier labour market: Jewish and Palestinian. It is
notable that Israel's occupation of these territories had stopped short
of outright de jure annexation. This would have implied granting the same
limited citizenship rights to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, as had been granted to the Palestinians who had managed to stay within
the 1948 borders until 1966. The occupation allowed Israeli capital, particularly
in agriculture and construction, to pump surplus labour from Palestinian
workers without compromising the Jewishness of the state. The Palestinians
were not integrated into Israeli society: they worked in Israel by day,
then were supposed to return to their dormitories in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip by night. While the cheap labour power of the Palestinians fuelled
a construction boom on both sides of the Green Line, the Israeli economy
was further boosted by the territories' subordination as a captive market
for Israeli consumer commodities.
Furthermore, through the control of government contracts, and through
the imperatives of national security, as well as military and construction
development, the Israeli State was able to pursue a policy of rapid industrialisation
and import substitution. Sheltered from foreign competition by high import
tariffs and generous export subsidies, investment was channelled into the
development of modern manufacturing industry. This allowed Israel to replace
imports of foreign manufactures by domestically produced manufactures -
a policy that was to establish Israel as a relatively advanced industrialized
economy by the late 1970s.
The policies of military Keynesianism and rapid industrialisation led
to a huge balance of payments deficit as the demand of both the consumers
and industry ran ahead of supply. The balance of payments deficit was to
rise to a 15% of GDP. This deficit could only be financed with the help
of the generous stream of American aid.
So the rapid economic expansion and development of Israel in the ten
years after the Six Days War provided the material conditions necessary
for the expansion of the labour Zionist settlement. Whereas in 1966 unemployment
in Israel had stood at 11%, the economy could now be run at more or less
full employment. The Zionist state could now offer a job and rising living
standards in a modern westernized economy for all Jews who chose to live
there.
Settlements and the Labour Zionist settlement
Ever since the end of the Six Days War the policy of establishing Jewish
settlements in the occupied territories has been an important part of
the expansion of the Labour Zionist settlement to include the previously
excluded oriental Jews. Of course, the immediate aim of establishing settlements
was to consolidate Israel's control over the occupied territories. However,
the settlement policy also offered the poor sections of the Jewish working
class housing and job opportunities that allowed them to escape their subordinate
position in Israel itself. This was especially important in the 1970s, when
the lack of decent accommodation was leading to some homeless oriental Jews
to squatting empty buildings in rich occidental Jewish suburbs.
The settlements offered an alternative to this antagonistic direct
appropriation, by directing the antagonism elsewhere. They placed the
Jewish working class in the front line - in a direct and antagonistic
relation to the potentially insurrectional Palestinian proletariat. As
such it bound them to the Zionist State, which protected their newly gained
privileges against the claims of the Palestinians. By 1971, there were already
52 settlements.
The Israeli Black Panthers
However, not everyone was integrated into the Labour Zionist settlement,
and class struggles continued. Many young oriental Jews were excluded
from the 'benefits' of the occupation, because they had criminal records
and so were unable to get the good jobs and housing, which were supposed
to be the birthright if Jews in Israel. The post-1967 boom led to gentrification
in what had been border towns like Musrara, which squeezed out the poor
North African Jews. This was the basis of a new movement, the Israeli Black
Panthers.
Their social base was arguably more marginal than the movements of
the 1960s. However, their 1971 demonstration against police repression
attracted tens of thousands of people, and led to 171 arrests and 35 people
hospitalized during clashes with the police. They also flirted with left
wing anti-Zionists, and some even considered conducting talks with the
PLO. Some leaflets were written by members or sympathizers of Matzpen (small
but well known anti-Zionist group) and there were alliances at some points.
Comments by Black Panthers show a class position beginning to emerge: 'they
need us whenever they have a war', 'I don't want to think what will happen
when there will be peace', 'If the Arabs had any sense they'd leave the
Jews alone to finish with each other'.
However their critique of Israeli society was undermined by elements
who sought accommodation within Labour Zionism, and therefore argued against
making links with the anti Zionist left or, worse still, with those social
pariahs, the Palestinians. Various prominent members of the Black Panthers
were given better housing and jobs and left the group, which became increasingly
preoccupied with internal splits.
However, oriental Jewish dissatisfaction with the Labour Zionist establishment
remained strong, and co-opting Jewish radicals like the leading figures
of the Black Panthers were part of a climate where Jewish workers in general
expected a better standard of living than their parents. The need to guarantee
full employment for all Jews strengthened the negotiating position of Jewish
workers in wage bargaining, which was leading to problems of inflation for
the Israeli economy.
These problems were not unique to Israel - Western Europe and America
also faced a proletariat, which, rather than being content with the 'gains'
of the post-war settlement, were using it to impose more restrictions on
capital accumulation. In Israel, these problems were compounded by the restrictions
of intensive accumulation and by the imperatives of security.
Given this entrenchment of the Jewish working class, the policy of
intensive economic expansion based on import substitution had begun to
reach the limits of the narrow confines of the Israeli economy, by the
late 1970s. Economic growth of more than 10% a year achieved in the early
1970s subsided to a modest a modest 3%. This slow down was to prompt an inflationary
crisis that was to see prices rise by 100,000% in just seven years. This
crisis could only be resolved by seriously undermining the labour Zionist
settlement, with its relatively generous social wage.
The Inflationary Crisis of 1978-1985
Full employment in an economy dominated by a few large conglomerates,
sheltered from foreign competition by high tariff barriers, is a classical
recipe for inflation. The indexation of 85% of wage contracts to price inflation,
along with other welfare payments and other forms of income, meant that
any rises in prices were soon translated into rising wages, which in turn
led to rising prices, as higher wage costs were passed on to the consumer.
As a result the Israeli economy was highly prone to a vicious wage-price
spiral.
Military Keynesianism had led to an inflation rate of between 30%-40%
through most of the 1970s. However, by maintaining the fixed exchange rate
of the Israeli pound with the US dollar (despite the collapse of the Bretton
Woods fixed exchange rate system in 1973), the Israeli government was able
to hold inflation in check. Rising domestic prices were offset by the fact
that at a fixed exchange rate imports remained cheaper than they would have
been, which served to hold down the price index on which wage rises were
based. Of course, rising domestic prices under a fixed exchange rate regime
made Israeli industry uncompetitive, but this could be offset by raising tariffs,
increasing export subsidies and by the occasional controlled devaluation
of the Israeli pound.
However, the slow down of the economy combined with the changing political
situation in the Middle East brought about a decisive shift in economic
policy that was to unleash an economic crisis in the 1980s. This shift
in policy was brought about through the election of the Likud Government
in 1978, which brought to an end thirty years of Labour Party rule. The
realignment of the Right, together with splits in the Labour Party, enabled
Likud to benefit electorally from the continuing disenchantment of oriental
Jews with Labour. However, Likud's deflationary policies could only be implemented
by confronting the Jewish working class, whose entrenchment had contributed
to the inflationary crisis and the decline in profits for sections of the
Israeli bourgeoisie. Likud also faced a rearguard action against some of
its policies, from the 'Labour Establishment' of the Occidental bourgeoisie,
as the Histadrut endeavoured to keep the lid on the struggles of the Israeli
working class, such as the road-menders' violent pickets.
Arab states, expansion and the USA
Israel's decisive victory in the 1973 war had finally shattered the
unity of the Arab states. Israel's position in the Middle East was now secured
from the external threat of a hostile Arab alliance. However, the subsequent
realignment of Egypt with the USA cast some doubt on the long-term commitment
of the USA to financing Israel. If Arab states aligned with the USA, why
should the USA continue to pump billions of dollars into Israel?
Furthermore, with Egypt neutralized in the south the way was open for
Israeli expansion in the North and East. The annexation of the occupied
territories of the West Bank and the economic subordination of Jordan and
Lebanon offered a way out of the increasing restrictions of intensive accumulation.
But these policies ran against the interests of the USA. While the
USA wanted Israel as its imperialist guard dog in the Middle East, it
did not want this guard dog destabilising the region and upsetting America's
oil rich allies - such as Saudi Arabia. Likud's policy of creating a greater
Israel therefore required a loosening of the golden chains of US aid.
The flight of capital from the western economies in the late 1970s,
and the consequent growth of global finance capital, created the prospect
of reducing Israel's reliance on US aid. By following a policy of economic
liberalization and deregulation it was hoped that Israel could tap into
the flows of international capital and thereby reduce its dependence on
the USA. This policy of liberalisation advocated by the Likud Party also
accorded with many amongst the Israeli bourgeoisie who, facing declining
profits, wanted greater freedoms to find profitable areas of investment.
As a consequence, within weeks of coming to office, Milton Friedman
- one of the pioneers of what has now become known as 'neo-liberalism' -
was summoned to advise on a programme of liberalisation. As a result of Friedman's
advice the new Israeli government cut import tariffs and export subsidies,
relaxed controls on the transfer of currency in and out of the country,
and abandoned the fixed exchange rate of the Israeli pound with the US dollar.
Within weeks of its link with the US dollar being severed the Israeli
pound had lost 1/3 of its value. The price of imported goods rocketed raising
the price index. Within a few months the indexation of wages had led to
the inflation rate rising to over 100%. Following this acceleration in inflation
the Israeli pound was replaced by the Shekel as Israel's currency, at a
rate of ten pounds to the Shekel.
However, the liberalisation policy combined with the sharp cut in real
wages, caused by wage indexation lagging behind the acceleration in price
inflation, boosted profits and led to a renewed spurt of growth.[
22
] As a result, 1981 saw the Israeli economy regain the growth rates
of the early 1970s. Indeed at the time, with the world crisis still not
over, it was argued that Israel's high inflation rates did not matter.
With the external value of the shekel measured in dollars falling at the
same rate as inflation was eroding its internal value, it was argued that
in dollar terms inflation was more or less zero. Indeed, a zero rate of
inflation rate in dollar terms, compared with the much higher inflation
rates in the USA and elsewhere, implied a growing international competitiveness
of Israeli industry.
Such optimism did not last long. As economic growth began to falter
and the public deficit began to grow as a result of invasion of Lebanon,
fears grew that the high inflation rates could easily tip over in to an
uncontrollable hyperinflation. As a consequence, the Begin government introduced
a new set of economic policies aimed at gradually reducing the rate of inflation.
Cuts in public spending were combined with a policy of limiting the decline
in the exchange rate of the Shekel to the US dollar to 5% a month. Meanwhile
attempts were made to limit indexation of incomes.
The policy of limiting the decline of the Shekel had the immediate
bonus for the government's popularity by cheapening the imports of consumer
goods. But at the same time it also made Israeli exports uncompetitive.
Increasingly unable to compete Israeli firms began to go bankrupt and unemployment
began to rise. At the same time attempts to hold wages down led to growing
industrial unrest.
Following Begin's resignation in the Autumn of 1983, fears that the
government would be unable to prevent a sharp fall in the value of the shekel
led to a run on the banks as savers sought to change their shekels into
dollars. The Government was forced to nationalize the leading banks and
allow the shekel to fall against the dollar. In order to reassure the financial
markets the Israeli government was obliged to announce major cuts in public
spending and tight monetary policies.
These new policies were met with resolute opposition from both the
Histadrut and leading capitalists within the 'Labour Establishment'. The
Histadrut called a series of strikes that paralysed the country. Unable
to hold wages down, the twist to the wage-price spiral caused by the sharp
fall in the shekel led to an acceleration in the inflation of prices. On
the eve of the election in July 1983 the rate of inflation was approaching
400%. With wages rises lagging behind prices rises, this acceleration in
inflation had brought about a 30% cut in real wages.
Both Labour and Likud lost support at the election and were obliged
to join together to form a government of 'national unity', with Peres, the
Labour leader, as Prime Minister. Using his influence with the Labour establishment
Peres proposed a programme of emergency measures. A 10%s levy was imposed
on wages, indexation was to be suspended and a three-month wage-price freeze
was to be imposed. This was to be backed up by an unprecedented programme
of cuts to the budget deficit aimed at halving the budget deficit from
20% of GDP. By the time this programme was introduced in the autumn of
1983, after lengthy negotiations over the summer, the inflation rate had
reached 1000%.
Peres' programme proved to be a partial success. In the face of strong
opposition of the Histadrut, the Likud government had backed off tampering
with the indexation of wages and other incomes. However, interfering with
wage indexation seemed more legitimate in the eyes of the 'Labour Establishment',
when proposed by a leading Labour figurehead. By May 1985 the rate of inflation
had been brought back to 400% while, despite increasing opposition, the
budget deficit had been cut to 15% of GDP. Peres now announced another round
of measures. A further three month wage and price freeze was to be accompanied
by another round of public spending cuts designed yet again to halve the
government's budget deficit. At the same time the Shekel was devalued by
19% and then a fixed exchange rate was to be maintained with the US Dollar.
However, while it might have been possible to get the 'Labour Establishment'
behind these austerity measures, the antagonism of Jewish workers to another
round of belt-tightening threatened to break out of the constraints of
Histadrut recuperation. In the face of mounting wildcat strikes, the Histadrut
called a general strike that forced the government to allow a limited wage
'catch up' before the wage-price freeze, but this did little to mitigate
the 20% cut in real wages and the sharp rise in unemployment that had resulted
from Peres's first round of austerity measures.
The draconian policies of the Likud-Labour government eventually saved
Israel from hyperinflation. By 1986 the inflation rate had fallen to a
respectable 20%. However, in resolving the inflationary crisis Peres had
seriously undermined the Labour Zionist settlement. While real wages slowly
began to recover after 1986, unemployment had soared to levels that had
not been seen since the slump of the early 1960s and remained high throughout
the 1980s and early 1990s. Continued austerity measures through the 1980s
saw further cuts in the welfare budget and the erosion of social guarantees.
These were imposed on the Jewish working class, with the help of the Histadrut.
Politicians from both main parties now began to embrace 'neo-liberal'
policies, although actual progress towards deregulation and the privatization
of national industries was slow at first, due in part to the resistance of
the Histadrut, which owned many of the main state conglomerates. However,
unemployment, casualization, and flexible working practices were to become
a reality for increasing sections of the Israeli working class.
With the dismantling of the more social aspects of Labour Zionism following
the inflationary crisis of early 1980s, the policy of establishing settlements
in the occupied territories has become an increasingly important element
in binding the Jewish working class to the Zionist state. Indeed, as Likud
has recognized, the settlers have provided popular support for the long
term strategy of establishing a greater Israel which sections of the Israeli
bourgeoisie see as the means of breaking out of the chronic stagnation of
the Israeli economy since the late 1970s. To a certain extent the settlements
have shifted the political burden of the occupation away from the government,
particularly if it is Labour. Israel's reluctance to make concessions to
the Palestinians could be blamed on the intransigence and 'extremism' of
the settlers, who were compelled to identify with the imperatives of security
far more than the most 'hawkish' government.
On the other hand, the acceleration of settlement building represents
a minor compromise with the sections of the Israeli bourgeoisie, who advocated
de jure annexation of the occupied territories. Because the crisis
could only be resolved by dismantling the social wage aspects of the Labour
Zionist settlement, the settlements became both a form of social compensation
for poor Jews, and a form of de facto annexation, to realize the dream of
a greater Israel by other means. However, Israel is still not free of its
dependence on US aid, and so must curb its expansionist excesses.
Settlements and contradictions
The opposition to settlement building by many of the Israeli middle
classes who supported Peace Now compounded the problems of the Israeli bourgeoisie.[
23
] The occupation of Gaza and the West Bank has had a vital role in the
class compromise in Israel since 1967. Through the subordination of Palestinian
workers, combined with the benefits of US aid, working class Jews were
able to command higher wages than their Palestinian neighbours, and to avoid
the most menial jobs. Because of the occupation of the land, working class
Jews, who could not afford to live in urban areas, were able to get subsidized
housing (built by cheap Palestinian labour). So working class Jews were
dumped in what was in effect a security buffer zone in the occupied territories.
These measures were vital in reducing Jewish proletarian militancy,
but they led directly to resistance by the liberal middle classes and, more
significantly, by the Palestinians. The ongoing problem for the Israeli bourgeoisie
was how to maintain their compromise with the Jewish working class without
provoking the Palestinians too far. With the dense Palestinian population
crammed into an ever more cramped space by the encroachment of settlements
on which many of them were compelled to work, the early 1970s had seen rebellions
in the refugee camps of Gaza, which had been crushed (literally) by Sharon's
tanks. Since then, Gaza had been relatively quiet. But for how long? The
Israeli bourgeoisie was able to grant concessions to Jewish workers, but
it only had recourse to repression as a means of pacifying the Palestinians.
Any concessions to the Palestinians were likely to undermine the Labour
Zionist settlement.
In 1985 the occupied territories bore the brunt of the crisis. Rescuing
Israeli capital involved reinforcing the subordination of the Palestinian
bourgeoisie, by denying permits 'for expanding agriculture or industry that
may compete with the state of Israel'.[
24
] With increasing unemployment in the territories, Palestinian workers
were further compelled to find work inside the Green Line or in the construction
of Jewish settlements, which were expanding to compensate Jewish workers
for the lack of affordable housing in the urban areas of 'Israel proper'.
While the settlement construction provided Palestinian workers with revenue,
it was also a source of resentment, and the resistance this provoked provided
the rationale for intensified repression by the military government.
1985's 'Iron Fist', to contain resistance in the Occupied Territories,
went hand in hand with austerity measures, to contain the crisis at home.
The 'Iron Fist' intensified repressive measures, such as 'administrative
detentions' of Palestinian militants and collective punishments of the population
as a whole. This provides the background to the 1987-93 Intifada. Before
we move on to this, we need to look at the class composition of the Palestinians
...
The making of the Palestinian working class
A land without a people?
The myth of Zionist pioneers landing up in unpopulated desert and transforming
it into lush vineyards conceals a more commonplace transformation - of
Palestinians from peasants into proletarians:
The 'paradise' in the Negev desert, the flourishing cultivation of
citrus fruits and avocados on the coastal plain as well as the industrial
boom (even on the scale of a very small country) presuppose the complete
despoliation of the Palestinian peasants.[
25
]
This process was already underway when the first Jewish colonists arrived,
and is still not complete. Capitalist development penetrated the Middle
East for the first time in the years following the end of the Napoleonic
Wars. The Ottoman Empire which dominated the region had already been in
decline for a century, though it would last a century more, and the readjustment
of the balance of power following France and Napoleon's defeat, formalized
in the years after the Congress of Vienna, opened the way for a new exploitation
of the region, just as the Industrial Revolution was gaining momentum in
Britain.
Britain and Austria, though rivals in other areas, agreed upon the
need to prop up the Ottoman Empire as a barrier to Russian expansionism
into the east of Europe. Later Germany became the Ottoman Empire's main
backer. In this period, parts of the Middle East found themselves invaded
by the new capitalist mode of production. The indigenous textile industry
of the area, particularly in Egypt was destroyed by cheap English textiles
in the 1830s, and by the 1860s British manufacturers had begun to grow cotton
along the Nile. In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened, its purpose to facilitate
British and French trade. In line with this modernization, the origins of
primitive accumulation in Palestine can be dated back to the Ottoman Empire's
1858 law on landed property, replacing collective ownership with individual
land ownership. Village tribal chiefs were transformed into a class of landlords,
who sold their titles to Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian and Iranian merchants.
The pattern throughout the whole period was very much one of uneven development,
with a foreign bourgeoisie taking the initiative and the
indigenous bourgeoisie, such as it was, remaining weak and politically
ineffective. At the same time, vast areas of the Middle East where there
was no perceived economic benefit were left alone, and there the traditions
of subsistence farming and nomadism continued.
Under the British Mandate, many absentee landlords were bought out
by the Jewish Colonisation Association, leading to the eviction of Palestinian
sharecroppers and farmers. Given that the 'dispossessed fellah had to become
an agricultural labourer on his own land', a decisive transformation of
the relations of production had begun to take place, leading to the first
signs of a Palestinian proletariat.[
26
]
This process took place in the teeth of violent opposition by Palestinians.
The watershed in the succession of revolts was the 1936-9 uprising. Its
importance lay in the fact that 'the motive force of this uprising was
no longer the peasantry or the bourgeoisie, but for the first time an agricultural
proletariat deprived of means of labour and subsistence, along with an
embryo of a working class concentrated essentially in the ports and in
the oil refinery at Haifa.'[
27
] It involved attacks on Palestinian landowners as well as the English
and Zionist colonists, and forced Britain to limit Jewish migration to Palestine
for some years. Although it was the British army who did the shooting,
with a little help from the Haganah, the left-wing Zionist militia, the
local tribal chiefs also played a key role in breaking the rebellion.
The 'nakba' (catastrophe) of 1948 - the creation of Israel - can be
seen as the legacy of this defeat. Although the 1936-39 uprising showed
that a proletariat was beginning to emerge in Palestine, the Palestinian
population in Israel was still largely peasant at that time. The new state
used the legal apparatus of the British mandate to continue the dispossession
of the Palestinians. Under this law, peasants who fled only a few hundred
metres to escape a massacre were considered 'absentees' and had their land
confiscated. However the few who managed to remain inside the 1948 borders
were compensated with citizenship rights for their forcible separation
from the means of production.
The proletarianisation of the Palestinian peasantry was extended in
the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. This fresh wave
of primitive accumulation not only took the form of land grabbing. It also
involved Israeli capital asserting control of the West Bank's water supply,
by digging deeper wells than those of the Palestinians. As a result, the
Palestinian refugee population outside Israeli jurisdiction was severed
from its ties to the land, while only a minority of those inside Israeli
jurisdiction still possessed land. In both areas, the Palestinian population
has largely become proletarianized.
The suppression of the local Palestinian bourgeoisie
While the expropriation of the Palestinian peasantry brought about
the formation of a proletariat, the emergence of an indigenous industrial
bourgeoisie was suppressed. Where one existed, it was hopelessly weak and
unable to compete with Israeli capital, despite the fact that 'The wages
paid by the Arab bosses are even more miserable than those paid by their
Zionist masters'. Palestinians from the territories occupied the lowest
position in the Israeli labour market, lower down than even Palestinians
with Israeli citizenship. In the aftermath of the 1967 war, Palestinians
who worked in Israel were considered collaborators by Palestinian nationalists.[
28
] However Israel's laws forbade Palestinian businesses which might compete
with Israeli ones, so it was eventually recognized by even the most hardened
nationalists that working in Israel was the only source of revenue for many
Palestinians.
The Palestinian bourgeoisie decomposed into three fractions.[
29
] Some of the richer refugees formed a mercantile and financial bourgeoisie
in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and other Arab countries. The local bourgeoisie,
such as it was, consisted of small entrepreneurs, craft workshop owners
and farmers. The suppression of productive capital by Israel made it impossible
for the local bourgeoisie to develop the productive forces. Those who tried
formed a miserable petit bourgeoisie, sharing many of the same day-to-day
privations and humiliations as their proletarian neighbours in the occupied
territories, although not the basic one: separation from the means of production.[
30
] Others have become a 'lumpen-bourgeoisie', who became rich from the
PLO pumping half a billion dollars of aid money into the territories between
1977 and 1985. Their money was spent exclusively on their own individual
consumption, and they have therefore attracted the resentment of the Palestinian
proletariat and petit bourgeoisie.
It was the displaced bourgeoisie in the diaspora, which formed the
class basis for the PLO and the Palestinian 'state in exile'.
'The sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people'
Even as Pan-Arabism lay defeated in the aftermath of the 1967 war,
the seeds of its renewal (in admittedly a less virulent strain) germinated
in the new coherence and organisation of Palestinian nationalism and the
PLO specifically. This situation, and the first Intifada (1987 - 1993)
have kept alive the flames of anti-Americanism in the Middle East and challenged
the legitimacy of the pro-western bourgeoisie's across the region. However,
the actions of the PLO, representing the exiled Palestinian bourgeoisie,
were unsurprisingly often at odds with the needs of the proletarians whose
struggles were shaking the oil-producing countries.
The PLO vs. the self-activity of the proletariat
Sixty per cent of the Palestinian population ended up in refugee camps
outside Israel and the occupied territories. The process that had transformed
most of them into proletarians also dispersed them throughout Lebanon,
Jordan, Kuwait and Syria. Those who migrated to wealthy Gulf States like
Kuwait were able to command high wages, even relative to those of Israeli
Jewish workers. Most were less fortunate, and became a catalyst for class
conflicts throughout the region.
It was the Arab leaders (together with the mercantile and financial
Palestinian bourgeoisie) who helped to set up the PLO in 1964, as a means
of controlling this diaspora. Due to their failure to prevent the nakba
of 1948 and their impotence in the face of Israeli military might in 1967,
the Arab bourgeoisie faced revolts in their own countries.
Jordan
In Jordan, the Palestinian refugees were now armed due to the war,
and outnumbered the sparse Jordanian population. Although the PLO was
seen to constitute, a state within a state, the Palestinian refugee population
was ungovernable even by them. In the late 60s and early 70s the refugee
camps were armed and autonomous from the PLO, and they didn't allow the police
in. In addition to this the PLO was using Jordan as a base for attacks on
Israel and so the Jordanian state was exposed to reprisals from Israel.
The Palestinian proletariat's struggles in Jordan were extinguished
by the 'Black September' massacre of 30,000 Palestinians by the Jordanian
army in Amman, 1970. This was facilitated by the PLO's agreement with
the Hashemite regime: in accordance with the conditions negotiated with
the Jordanian state, the PLO withdrew from Amman, thus allowing the massacre
of the proletarians who remained in the city.
Lebanon
Many of those who survived fled to Lebanon and the Arab bourgeoisie
was now faced with a combative proletariat concentrated in over-crowded
refugee camps. 14,000 ended up in Tel-Al-Zatar in the Lebanon by 1972, an
industrial area containing 29% of Lebanese industry. In 1969 the refugees
and other proletarians seized weapons, occupied the factories and tried to
transform Tel-Al-Zatar into 'a no-go zone safe from the Lebanese army and
the state'.[
31
] As the Lebanese state, such as it was, tried throughout the 1970s
to break the power of the working class, the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese
proletarians participated in kalashnikov battles with the Lebanese police.
The presence of arms allowed for strikes which brought about the destruction
of Lebanese industrial life.[
32
]
There was also a limited workers' council movement. Given the weakness
and division of the Lebanese bourgeoisie, a major strike of workers in
the fishing industry culminated in a drawn-out civil war, which became the
battleground for the competing strategic ambitions of the USA and the USSR,
via their respective intermediaries, Israel and Syria.
Flushed out of Jordan, the PLO were now seeking to create another 'state
within a state' in the Lebanon. However, they had little interest in the
autonomous struggles of the Palestinian refugees to emancipate themselves
from the hell of their proletarian existence. Instead, they wanted to keep
in with the Lebanese and Syrian bourgeoisie. The general instability and
weakness of the Lebanese state meant that the strength of the proletariat
had to be crushed by Syrian and Phalangist troops, with the help of the
Israeli navy.[
33
] Still hanging on to desperate illusions in nationalism, the Palestinians
called on the PLO for help.
Unsurprisingly, the PLO had no interest in helping this struggle, deeming
it a diversion from 'fighting the real enemy, Israel'.
When the strugglers asked for military aid for the struggle in Tel-Al-Zatar
the leadership of Fatah answered - 'Al Naba'a and Salaf and Harash are
not similar to Aga, Haifa, and Jerusalem which are occupied.'[
34
]
In exercising its 'right to non-interference', the PLO helped to ensure
that the revolt was crushed and the 'no-go zone' turned into a graveyard
for proletarians. Despite their role in the counter-insurgency at Tel-Al-Zatar,
the last thing Israel wanted was a stronger Lebanese state. On the contrary,
both Israel and Syria sought to encourage the 'balkanisation' of the country
so as to better their strategic position. The fragmentation of the Lebanese
bourgeoisie into warring factions provided the pretext for the intervention
of these neighbouring powers in the civil war. In Israel's case, there was
an added motive for engagement in Lebanon: the presence of the PLO.
The PLO's pursuit of a 'state within a state' could not co-exist with
Israel's imperatives in Lebanon. The mass presence of Palestinians got in
the way of their strategic interests, and Israel's wish to drive out the
PLO, led to the 1982 invasion of Beirut. The basis of the PLO's nationalist
appeal had been their willingness to engage in armed struggle against the
Israeli state. However their expulsion from both Jordan and Lebanon showed
their weakness in the face of Israeli military might. Their humiliating evacuation
from Beirut confirmed that they had failed to deliver on their strategy
of armed struggle. A similar pattern to Jordan then ensued, with the expulsion
of the PLO clearing the way for Phalangist massacre of Palestinians in the
refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, with the help of the Israeli army.
The Israeli invasion of Beirut was also humiliating for the 'anti-imperialist
camp'. With Egypt now in the US orbit, Syria was the main pro-USSR power
in the region. However, not only was the PLO brought to heel by the Israeli
invasion, but the Syrian army was forced to withdraw.
It was increasingly clear with every confrontation that the Palestinians
could expect little help from the Arab states. The 1967 and 1973 wars
had effectively undermined Pan Arabism, and confirmed Israel as a military
superpower in the region. The Arab states had little political will to attack
Israel. Despite its rapprochement with Israel, Egypt was made more welcome
than the PLO at the 1987 Amman summit, indicating the increasing orientation
of the Arab states towards the USA. Arafat was snubbed by King Hussein, and
it was clear that the Iran-Iraq war was more of a priority for the delegates
than the Palestinians. This confirmed the widespread perception among residents
of the occupied territories that no one but themselves could overcome Israeli
domination.
The Intifada (1987-93)
The initiative for the Intifada came from the inhabitants of the Jabalya
refugee camp, in Gaza, not the PLO, who were based in Tunisia and were
completely caught by surprise. It was a spontaneous mass reaction by the
Jabalya residents, to the killing of Palestinian workers by an Israeli
vehicle, which quickly spread to the West Bank and the rest of the Gaza
Strip.
In the long term, the Intifada helped to bring about the diplomatic
rehabilitation of the PLO.[
35
] After all, the PLO might prove to be a lesser evil than than the self-activity
of the proletariat. However, the strength of the PLO's negotiating hand
depended on its ability, as the 'sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian
people', to control its constituency, something which could never be taken
for granted, especially now that its strategy of armed struggle had proved
fruitless. This made it difficult for them to recuperate an uprising initiated
by proletarians, who had little interest in nationalism, and who hated the
Palestinian 'lumpen-bourgeoisie' almost as much as the Israeli state.
A 'national liberation' struggle?
The 1992 bulletin Worldwide Intifada #1 attempts to counter the conventional
leftist perspective on the Intifada, by emphasising the contradictions
between different classes of Palestinians[
36
]. While the perspective of Worldwide Intifada #1 is obviously superior
to support for 'national liberation', their argument has certain weaknesses.
Although Worldwide Intifada #1 correctly identifies nationalism as containing
the 'seeds of defeat' for the 1987 Intifada, they discuss nationalism in
the abstract, as if it is some kind of psychological trick played on the
Palestinian working class by the Palestinian bourgeoisie.[
37
] True, nationalism is an ideology. However this ideology is more than
a mere deception: it has power because it has a material basis in everyday
life.
However it is clear that many elements of this Intifada went way beyond
nationalism. While many commentators take it for granted that, right from
the start, the Intifada was a campaign to set up a Palestinian state, the
early days of the uprising suggest otherwise. When the IDF interrogated
the first hundred rioters they arrested, they found that these proletarians
were 'unable to repeat the most common slogans used in the PLO's routine
propaganda, and even the central concept of the Palestinian struggle - the
right to self determination - was completely alien to them'.[
38
] What a scandal!
The Intifada as class struggle, and class struggles within the Intifada
The subordination of the Palestinian bourgeoisie took the form of the
suppression of Palestinian capital accumulation by the Israeli state, so
that the Palestinian bourgeoisie were unable to develop the productive forces
adequately. Although some Palestinians were employed in Palestinian workshops,
farms and small factories, these were confined to sectors that did not compete
with Israeli capital. Therefore an excessive portion of the Palestinian
bourgeoisie's money was spent as revenue on personal consumption, rather than
as money capital on productive consumption. The fact of mass unemployment
and poverty for proletarians, existing alongside the conspicuous wealth of
the 'lumpen-bourgeoisie', sharpened class antagonisms, which came to the
fore in the first days of the 1987 uprising.
The first few days of the uprising in Gaza saw thousands of proletarians
looting the crops of neighbouring landlords. Many landlords were forced
to publish drastic rent reductions. Rich locals appealed to the IDF to
protect their property. The battle cry of the rioters was, 'first the army,
then Rimal!'[
39
] Rimal was a rich Palestinian suburb of Gaza City. When the Israeli
authorities issued new identity cards, in order to clamp down on the uprising,
this was the area they chose as a soft touch to pilot the scheme. Fortunately
for the PLO, it was sufficiently unified to gain a toehold in the uprising,
via the emergence of the United National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU).
This was based in the Territories and so had more credibility as a means
of recuperating local militants, than the Tunisian based 'five star PLO'.
Therefore it was best placed to try to turn the uprising from an attack on
all forms of bourgeois authority, into a concerted 'national' effort to
set up a Palestinian state in embryo. However, given the intransigence of
the Israeli state, this presupposed making the territories ungovernable,
a situation that could easily get out of hand.
A month after the first day of the uprising, the UNLU issued its first
communiqué, addressing first 'the brave Palestinian working class',
then the 'brave, militant shopkeepers', and hailing the PLO as the 'sole
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people'.[
40
] A year later, the proletariat and the petit bourgeoisie were all lumped
together as the 'heroic masses of our people', but throughout the communiqués,
the PLO remain the 'sole legitimate representative'.[
41
]
Despite the supposed cross-class unity promoted by the UNLU, the petit
bourgeoisie often had to be intimidated into closing their shops on strike
days. Sometimes, a child standing outside a shop holding a lit match could
be enough to remind them that their shops could be targeted for reprisals.
There was also pressure from the militant proletarians in the front-line,
who argued, 'we are prepared to give up our lives for the struggle, is it
too much to ask you to give up some of your profits?'[
42
] However, it would be a mistake to assume that the petit bourgeoisie
were simply dragged kicking and screaming into the Intifada, although there
was an element of this. Shop and workshop owners had their property confiscated
for refusing to pay taxes to the military government, and shopkeepers in
Beit Sahour launched a three month 'commercial strike' in protest at these
measures. In order to develop as a proper bourgeoisie, they needed their
own state, with a decent amount of land. In practice, instead of assisting
their development into a fully-fledged bourgeoisie, the property confiscations
for tax refusal accelerated their proletarianization. 'Commercial strikes'
often had the effect of simply driving Palestinian merchants to bankruptcy.
Although to a certain extent, all classes could play their part in
the disruption of the Israeli economy, by denying the military government
its tax revenue or by boycotting its commodities, the most visible disruption
of the Israeli economy came from the working class. In the wildcat general
strike of December 1987, 120,000 workers failed to turn up to their jobs
in Israel. This coincided with the citrus harvest, for which Palestinians
constitute one third of the workforce. This cost the Israeli agricultural
marketing board $500,000 in the first two months of the uprising, due to
lost orders for the British market. Many Palestinians also worked as day
labourers in another key sector, the construction industry on both sides
of the green line. They were capable of achieving what both the PLO and the
peace movement could only dream of: bringing settlement construction to
a grinding halt.
The 'rebellion of stones'
There is a story of an argument during the Intifada. When someone tried
to assert their authority by claiming to be one of the leaders of the Intifada,
a 14-year old held up a stone and said 'this is the leader of the Intifada'.
So much for the UNLU! So called 'leaders' got attacked by Palestinians at
demonstrations where they became too moderate.[
43
] The PNA's current attempts to militarize the present Intifada have
been a tactic to try to avoid this 'anarchy' occurring again.
The widespread use of stones as a weapon against the Israeli military
amounted to recognition of the failure of the Arab states to overcome Israel
by conventional warfare, let alone by the PLO's 'armed struggle'. 'Unarmed'
civil disorder necessarily discarded 'the warfare logic of the state'[
44
] (although it should also be seen as a response to a situation of desperation,
where death as a 'martyr' could seem preferable to the living hell of their
current situation). To some extent, the stone-throwing outflanked the armed
might of the Israeli state. In order to maintain the funding and support
of the US, Israel had to keep up appearances as an embattled democracy besieged
by barbarian hordes, and killing too many unarmed civilians could damage
this, at a time when Egypt's pro-US position was threatening to undermine
Israel's role as a strategic asset.
This is not to say they refrained altogether: by mid-June 1988, 300
Palestinians had already been killed by the IDF. However the personal dilemmas
of the experience of confronting unarmed civilians with lethal force added
to the pressures on the morale of Israeli soldiers. They were supposed to
be part of this mighty army, which had defeated Egypt and Syria, and here
they were being ordered to fire live ammunition at kids armed with stones!
This contributed to a revival in the 'conscientious objection' movement.[
45
]
The stones were also a great leveller, as they are a weapon everyone
has access to. The Palestinian proletariat were quite literally taking
the struggle into their own hands, after years of unsuccessfully appealing
to the Arab bourgeoisie. At the forefront of the struggle was a new generation
of young proletarians, who had grown up under occupation. However, as it
developed from a spontaneous proletarian uprising into a national movement
under the auspices of the UNLU, the Intifada came to express an uneasy alliance
between the proletariat and the petit bourgeoisie.
The response of the Israeli bourgeoisie
In the 1970s/1980s, the Israeli government was adamant that it would
have nothing to do with the PLO. This political consensus included the
'left' of Peace Now. However, the blatantly puppet 'village leagues' represented
a total failure to set up an alternative Palestinian leadership that they
could do business with.
The Intifada pushed Peace Now in a more radical direction, because
smaller peace groups were already making links with the Palestinians,
which generally took the form of 'humanitarian' support. The peace camp's
long-term strategy required a 'partner for peace', and the failure of the
'village leagues' made the PLO the only show in town.
Furthermore, the Israeli bourgeoisie was running out of options, due
to the unfeasibility of the idea toyed with since the mid 1980s of transferring
Palestinians en masse to Jordan. Jordan already had its own Palestinian
problem, and by the late 1980s the last thing King Hussein wanted was more
of them to deal with. Palestinian bureaucrats in the occupied territories,
whether appointed by Jordan or Israel, had been forced to resign, or face
revolutionary justice. If this was an example of how much the Jordanian
regime was preferred to Israel by his future subjects, King Hussein was only
too happy to ditch his claim to the West Bank.
In spite of these factors the Likud wing of the unity government was
intransigent, but the USA was under increasing international pressure
to end its diplomatic boycott of the PLO. While Likud's instincts tended
towards outright repression, there was a limit to what could be achieved
by brute force and terror, given the growing pressure from the USA and
the Israeli conscripts' lack of stomach for an orgy of killing. Besides,
it had been the 'Iron Fist' which had helped to create the conditions
for the revolt in the first place.
When the USA agreed to recognize the PLO if there was a de-escalation
of the conflict, which entailed the PLO recognizing Israel, Israeli PM Shamir
was forced into granting concessions. His offer of 'free and democratic
elections' for Palestinian delegates who would 'negotiate an interim period
of self governing administration' was also made conditional on the de-escalation
of unrest.
Although the PLO had formally recognized Israel's 'right to exist'
as early as December 1988, the process of Israel recognizing the PLO was
far from complete. The process of getting PLO and Israel to the table became
a stalemate, never getting beyond talks about talks, and the Israeli tactic
of political stalling (while steadily murdering Palestinians) seemed to
be paying off. The Israeli economy, cushioned by US aid, could absorb the
initial shock of the economic disruption; but the longer it went on, the
more the Intifada was exhausting itself. As time went on what little Palestinian
economy existed was being destroyed. Meanwhile Israeli capital could cast
about for alternative sources of cheap labour power, to outflank the Palestinians
and squeeze them out of the Israeli labour market.
The Islamists
There also began to be a bitter turf war over who was to become the
top guard dog on the Palestinian streets. The nationalist gangs were already
in rehearsal for their future role as guardians of bourgeois law and order
and private property relations. With the uprising exhausting itself, the
proletariat in the occupied territories was being decimated by faction fighting
and 'collaborator killings', with more Palestinians being killed by other
Palestinians than by Israeli forces in Spring 1990. Many of these 'collaborators'
were looters or class struggle militants.
Others involved were part of fairly new groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In its attempt to create an authentically Palestinian counterweight to
the PLO, Israel had encouraged the growth of the Muslim brotherhood in
the early 1980s. After the Brotherhood had proved its anti-working class
credentials by burning down a library for being a 'hotbed of communism',
Israel started supplying them with arms.[
46
] Because they believed Israeli domination could only be overcome once
the Palestinians were all true-believing Muslims, it seemed that their growth
might dampen resistance to the occupation. However, the Intifada saw the
politicisation of the Islamists, as Islamic Jihad and Hamas. In their attempts
make an impact and challenge the PLO, the Islamists organized strike days
contrary to the UNLU calendar. These 'strikes against the peace process'
confirmed them to be 'an authentic, indigenous and mass opposition' to the
PLO.[
47
]
However, although Hamas wished to undermine the PLO, they didn't want
to replace them. Their more-militant-than-thou competition with Fatah (the
military wing of the PLO) was rather aimed at guaranteeing themselves a
role in the character of the future Palestinian state. Not only did they
reject the 'peace process' and its accommodation with Israel, they also
rejected the very idea of a secular bourgeois state. Despite its 'rejectionist'
stance, Hamas ultimately sought accommodation with the PLO, because it wanted
to influence the form of the Palestinian state.
The initial stages of the Intifada had included an element of revolt
against the institution of the patriarchal family. Palestinian women had
refused social invisibility, and had confronted the military. In Ramallah,
a group of girls stoned their parents, when they tried to stop them from
rioting! For Hamas, a Palestinian state by definition had to be a Muslim
state, implying the imposition of Sharia law to restore the very forms
of 'low intensity social control' which the Intifada had called into question.
The Gulf War
The 'peace process' was further dragged out by the Gulf crisis, which
called Arafat's divided loyalties into question. While much of the Arab
bourgeoisie sided with the USA, Arafat could not afford to do this because
of Iraq's pro-Palestinian stance and mass Palestinian support for its confrontation
with the USA. The Gulf War finally undermined illusions in a 'progressive
nationalism', backed by the now-defunct USSR. At the same time, the Scud
attacks on Israel bolstered its public image in the west as a bastion of
democracy in the midst of aggressive 'rogue states'.
Despite the new global reality following the collapse of the USSR,
Israel has continued to remain a vital strategic asset for US capital.
Those few Arab states which had oriented themselves towards Moscow meanwhile
had to begin the tentative realignment towards the west for a new sponsor.
Almost immediately the recalcitrant Arab bourgeoisies were presented with
an opportunity to demonstrate their grasp of the 'New World Order' by siding
with the coalition against Iraq. Almost all the significant Arab capitals
took this step. More and more the Gulf War appears as a case of America,
cut suddenly loose from the constraints of the Cold War, simply demonstrating
in the most brutal and arbitrary terms how complete was its domination
of the oilfields of the Middle East. And the moment the 'rogue client state'
was truly threatened by a Kurdish uprising in the north and a Shi'ite rebellion
in the south, the US let it off the hook, preferring an Arab regime it could
demonize and punish periodically to the possibility of having itself to
crush a social revolution which would have risked the further intensification
of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East.
The Gulf War was part of a general recomposition of the region's working
class. The mass expulsion of Palestinian workers in Kuwait contributed
to the general impoverishment of the Palestinian proletariat, some of whom
had enjoyed living standards even exceeding those of their Jewish neighbours
from the wages being sent by relatives in Kuwait.
The blanket curfew imposed by Israel during the war increased economic
hardship in the territories. It gave Israeli bosses the chance to sack
many Palestinian workers on the basis that they had obeyed the curfew, or
that they hadn't obeyed the curfew, or they should obey the curfew in the
future. This in turn sharpened class antagonisms in the territories, leading
to theft and general lawlessness. During the curfew, shops that were seen
as overcharging were attacked and forced to lower their prices.
The Road to Oslo
With the US in a position of unrivalled hegemony over the Middle East
in the aftermath of the Gulf War, and the threat of Islamist militancy largely
contained for the time being by the indigenous bourgeoisies, notably in
Egypt and Syria, the only problem which remained for the US was that of
the Palestinians. Popular support for the first Intifada was undoubtedly a
threat to US interests, and the Oslo 'peace process', on a rhetorical level,
was nothing less than an end to the years of conflict and the crisis management
that successive US administrations had been compelled to undertake.
Given that America's Arab allies had passed the crucial loyalty test of
the Gulf War, the 'New World Order' opened the possibility of Israel's
redundancy as the USA's main strategic asset in the region, when much
of the Arab bourgeoisie was acquiescent, and Israel's failure to resolve
the Palestinian problem was threatening this much-trumpeted new era of bourgeois
peace.
For the Israeli state, making concessions to the Palestinians meant
the possibility of having to confront their own working class. However,
with the Israeli economy still reeling from the crisis and the Intifada,
they still needed US aid, which could be used to pressure the Israeli state
into a settlement with the Palestinians.
By 1989, the US had become increasingly frustrated with the lack of
progress in resolving the Intifada. Israel was supposed to be one of its
regional policemen. Instead, it had a domestic uprising on its hands, which
was threatening to destabilize the region, because of the Palestinian diaspora.
Shamir was in no position to resolve the situation - especially now that
the unity government had collapsed and he was under pressure from right-wing
coalition partners.
With the election of a Labour government committed to accelerating
the 'peace process', Hamas wanted to consolidate their base as the main
'rejectionist' alternative to the PLO. The killing of six Israeli soldiers
in December 1992 by Hamas guerrillas was proof that Israel's cultivation
of political Islam as a counterweight to the PLO had paid off, though not
in the way that they had hoped. If the rise of Hamas had lethal side effects,
it also provided a pretext for the IDF to go in hard in Spring 1993. Gaza
bore the brunt of this, because of its perceived role as 'base for Hamas'.
As part of this general wave of repression, Israel also imposed 'indefinite'
closure on the territories, using the pretext of 'anti-terrorism'. This
meant that 189,000 Palestinians were unable to get to work in Israel. The
policy of closure has been used on and off throughout the 1990s, as 'collective
punishment' for suicide bombings and other attacks. After the closure of
the Occupied Territories in March 1993, which created labour shortages in
construction and agriculture, the government gave the green light to the
employment of guest workers.
The Intifada thus forced the Israeli bourgeoisie to end the Palestinians'
exclusive monopoly of the bottom end of the labour market, and find a
less volatile source of cheap labour power. Given their entrenched position,
it would be problematic to force Jewish workers into this role. At the beginning
of the Intifada, construction sites in Jerusalem had unsuccessfully tried
to recruit Jewish labour for the double the normal Palestinian wage. Obviously
Jewish workers tend to be more loyal to the state, and would tend to identify
with its security imperatives. However, pushing them to the bottom end
of the labour market would involve a renegotiation of the post-1967 class
compromise, and there was a shortage of Jewish labour as it was. In the
1980s, more Jews were leaving Israel than were coming in.
The collapse of the USSR seemed to provide the solution, in the form
of a new wave of potential immigrants. This was not without its problems,
because the new immigrants had wanted to go to America and to make up
for being stuck in Israel demanded their share of the Zionist cake. The
bottom end of the labour market was a far cry from the professional careers
many of them had previously occupied in the USSR.
Furthermore, Israel needed US aid to absorb the new immigrants, and
because of the frustration of the US bourgeoisie over Israel's stalling
over settlements, Bush Snr had threatened to refuse loans in 1991, and made
it clear that Israel could not absorb the new immigrants without some substantial
progress on resolving the Intifada.
The Russian immigrants have become a bone of contention in Israeli
society, because of the widespread perception that they have been accommodated
at other Jewish workers' expense. The need to accommodate the influx of
Russian immigrants is linked to rent increases in 'desirable areas' -
pushing out poorer Jews and increasing the demand for settlement expansion.
This resentment, combined with a generalized anxiety about the erosion
of the exclusively Jewish character of the state, has fuelled rumours about
the lack of authenticity of the new immigrants' 'Jewish identity'.
These anxieties have been further fuelled by the increasingly widespread
use of non-Jewish guest workers from Eastern Europe and the Pacific. Mainly
from Romania and the Philippines, although some of them are from Jordan
and Egypt, the guest workers are generally employed through agencies like
Manpower. They endure very bad working conditions, very poor housing, and
there are frequent cases of physical assault by employers.[
48
] Workers' passports are kept by the agency as a matter of course and
so they are tied to their job if they want to stay in the country. Many
employers withhold pay, and have their staff deported if they try to demand
their wages. Recently workers have been made to pay agencies a deposit that
they only get back if they complete their contract. With these conditions
it's not surprising that many migrant workers decide they'd rather work
illegally.[
49
] Most male migrant workers work in construction and agriculture, but
particularly construction. The construction industry is constantly wanting
to employ more migrant workers and the government is always putting limits
on the number of visas they'll issue, creating a market for the illegal
workers. Migrant workers work for less than Palestinians in Israel and
from the territories, and in one case this has led to a pogrom in a Palestinian
town in the Galilee against Jordanian and Egyptian squatter workers.
Massive Palestinian unemployment, a leadership challenge from Hamas
and Arafat's isolation over his support for Iraq in the Gulf War all contributed
to the weakening of the PLO's negotiating position. While the rise of Hamas
represented the more rejectionist politics of the local petit bourgeoisie,
the mercantile and financial capitalists of the diaspora were more willing
to accept the impoverished Palestinian statelet on offer. After all, they
did not need land in order to realize their profits, and unlike the local
petit bourgeoisie, were not confronted by the daily realities of Israeli
rule. On the other hand, the relative security of their position might be
put at risk of they stuck their necks out too much against the 'New World
Order'.
The Oslo 'peace process' (1993-2000)
Known early on as the Gaza Jericho accords, the Oslo accords were a
rehash of deals that the PLO had been rejecting for years. The PLO were
offered Gaza and Jericho to administer, as a first step. Even though more
land was grudgingly given, Israel still controls the borders, foreign policy,
etc. However, the deal was so humiliating for the PLO that even Israel was
concerned that they'd stuck the boot in too much.
In Cairo, Israel's environment minister warned that a 'defeated' PLO
was no more in Israel's interests than a victorious one. 'When you twist
Arafat's arm in the name of security, you have to be careful not to break
it. With a broken arm, Arafat won't be able to maintain control in Gaza
and Jericho.'[
50
]
The agreement has often been compared to the system of 'bantustans'
which existed in South Africa. The continuation of the settlements and the
construction of settler-only roads have reinforced this similarity.
Most Palestinian nationalist groups opposed the Oslo Accords from the
outset but decided to stick to their role of 'loyal opposition'. Hamas has
continued its attacks on Israelis but not on the Palestinian National Authority
(PNA). At the beginning of PNA rule Hamas said "We welcome the Palestinian
Security forces as brothers", and pledged "the cutting back of separately
called strike days to lighten the economic burden of our people". Leninist
groups, mainly the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine)
and the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) have less
support than Hamas and appear to be ineffectual, they oppose Oslo but didn't
advocate active struggle against the PNA or even against Israel, at least
until the commencement of the Intifada.
The policing role of the PLO
In spite of the role of the 'loyal opposition', the resistance in the
West Bank and Gaza didn't just fade away when the PNA came into force. Arafat's
arrival in Gaza on July 1st 1994 was not the triumphant hero's welcome
he had hoped for, and the PNA ran about desperately trying to whip up mass
popular excitement about his return from exile.
The proletarians of Gaza were more interested in the prices of basic
commodities. The price of vegetables were pushed up 250%, by the relatively
free export conditions given to the Palestinian agricultural produce in
the Israeli market under the 1994 Paris Protocol. Israel helped to wind
up the situation by immediately putting a closure on the Gaza Strip and
killing Palestinians in the resulting riots.[
51
] Hamas killed Israelis in retaliation and the new PNA denounced attacks
on Israel and pledged to co-operate with Israel against any future attacks.
This led almost immediately to big rallies protesting against the PNA's
stance.
For Israel, Palestinian autonomy in the most populated areas meant
shifting the political burden of public order onto the shoulders of a
Palestinian bourgeoisie, unfettered by the checks and balances of Israel's
Western European-style democratic forms. The PNA spend the majority of
their budget on security (most of the money earmarked for economic change
has been 'lost' by the infamously corrupt PNA), with one policeman for every
thirty Palestinians.[
52
] They have brought back the death penalty, which has been used to stage
public executions of 'collaborators' during the new Intifada, and imprisoned
countless people without trial - generally their political opponents.
Despite all this repression within the PNA areas there have been protests
and general strikes against the PNA treatment of Hamas militants. In the
refugee camps in Gaza, which Arafat has always been notoriously reluctant
to visit, there were gun battles between PNA security and camp residents
several times during the summer of 2000; with opponents being arrested and
held without trial. 200 teachers ditched their union for being too close
to the PNA, set up an independent union and closed the schools and began
a long running strike.[
53
] Many of them have been imprisoned. Also recently, 20 academics and
professionals living in the PNA areas published and distributed a manifesto
criticising the PNA.
The Peace Process and Israeli capital restructuring
For the section of the Israeli bourgeoisie, who sought accommodation
with the Palestinians, Oslo represented a third way, between the intensive
accumulation of the 1970s, and the expansionist dreams of a greater
Israel. If not by conquest, then by greater integration into the economy
of the region, would Israeli capital seek out new areas of investment. Import
controls were to be abandoned, to increase competition, and the big state-
owned conglomerates were to be privatized, with an expansion of the role
of private sub-contractors and employment agencies. For the Israeli state,
this meant disciplining the Israeli working class, at the same time as shifting
the political burden for social control of the Palestinian working class
onto the shoulders of the new Palestinian statelet.
However the panacea of Oslo faced opposition from proletarians, both
Israeli and Palestinian. In 1996, three years after Yassir Arafat and
Yitzhak Rabin had shaken hands on the White House lawn, the Likud government's
attempts to introduce privatisation led to a wave of industrial unrest,
while the construction of a tunnel in Jerusalem sparked riots, which caused
the highest number of Palestinian fatalities in twenty years of occupation.
Neverthless, these struggles had no connection, and the attempts at economic
rationalization represented by Oslo continued largely unhindered.
The Palestinian working class
Oslo has bought the Israeli bourgeoisie time to replace the cheap but
disruptive Palestinians with cheaper and less volatile labour. Thousands
of Palestinians were sacked during the Gulf War. This was possible because
they could be replaced by guest workers, as discussed above. The use of
migrant labour has allowed Israel to put a far more effective blockade on
the territories than they ever could in the last Intifada. The blockades,
which were imposed when the PNA came to power, made it difficult or impossible
for Palestinians to get to work in Israel. This helped to create the conditions
for massive unemployment in Gaza, with workers having to get through the blockade
somehow to assemble at road junction 'slave markets' in Jaffa, instead of
employers going to pick workers up from the 'slave markets' in the territories.[
54
] However, as Peres put it in November 1994, three months after riots
at the Erez checkpoint, 'if Palestinians can no longer work in Israel,
we must create the conditions that will bring the jobs to the workers.'[
55
]
This is being done in two main ways. Some Palestinians work in the
new industrial parks, more of which are planned for just inside the Jordanian
and Lebanese borders.[
56
] Many other Palestinians work for Palestinian sub-contractors. The
sub-contractors import Israeli raw materials and pay very low wages. The
resulting commodities are retailed by Israeli companies, enabling the Israeli
bosses to increase their profits because of the Palestinian wage levels.
This new co-operation between the Israeli and Arab bourgeoisies has not
only worsened the labour conditions for the Palestinian proletariat, it
has also has extended the proletarianization of the Palestinian petit bourgeoisie.
For example Israeli and Palestinian Investors are currently setting up
a large industrial park to produce dairy products just on the PNA side
of the border, with Tnuva, one of the largest Israeli food companies. This
will undermine and probably bankrupt most of the Palestinian milk farmers
who currently employ 13% of the Palestinian workers in the territories.
The Palestinian bourgeoisie have accepted their subordination to Israeli
capital, firstly because it profited them, and secondly because a complete
disengagement from the Israeli economy might expose them to the competition
from neighbouring capitals with access to cheaper labour power. This would
involve further confrontation with the working class. However, the Israeli
and Palestinian bourgeoisie (as well as the Jordanian) all share a common
interest in preserving the territories vast pool of cheap labour, to attract
Israeli, Palestinian and international investment.
Jewish working class
Although Palestinians are being progressively squeezed out of the Israeli
labour market, the guest workers are not the ideal solution. Ideally,
Israeli capital needs to impose worse conditions on the Jewish working
class. However, when Likud tried to introduce more privatization in 1996,
there was an upsurge in Jewish working class unrest.
Oslo represents a further attempt to continue splitting the Israeli
economy into high wage jobs and casual badly paid jobs, and to renegotiate
the post 1967 class compromise. Oslo's attempt to 'normalize' trade relations
with the Arab world can only mean that the working class in Israel will
be exposed to the competition of the lower paid workers in neighbouring
states. This is very profitable as their wages are even lower than those
of the Israeli Palestinians. The peace deal with Jordan included arrangements
providing for the free movement of capital so Israeli businesses immediately
moved to Jordan to use the cheaper labour force. This increased unemployment
of working class Jews in areas like Dimona, and female Arab textile workers
in the north, leading to an unemployment rate of 8% and rising.
As well as leading to lay-offs in the private sector, the Oslo settlement
involves increasing the economic insecurity for public sector workers.
Loads of public sector Jewish workers are now on temporary contracts, especially
women, young people and new immigrants, and there is also the use of subcontracting
in the public sector so the working conditions are worse. Jews on the dole
are now being forced to take any job, an experience familiar to us. The
Histadrut is covering less workers all the time, naming itself the 'new Histadrut'
and carrying out surveys on why people don't trust it. Recently there was
a big strike by an independent railway union demanding that the Histadrut
recognize it. There has also been an attempt to set up a union for temporary
workers.[
57
]
In an attempt to keep the Jewish working class quiet, these measures have
been accompanied by an increase in the pace of settlement building in
the occupied territories. Although each new agreement brokered by America
includes an Israeli promise to stop building settlements, the Israeli bourgeoisie
has no choice but to ignore these promises in order to accommodate the needs
of Jewish workers. Currently Israel has been trying to avoid this problem
by 'judaizing' Arab areas within the green line, a policy which led directly
to Israeli Arab involvement in this Intifada.
The twenty-first century Intifada
Known as the Al Aqsa Intifada because of its connection to Sharon's
provocative visit to the Al Asqa mosque in September 2000, it was, at least
at first, like the 1987 Intifada, spontaneous, driven more by the enormous
frustration of the Palestinians than by any strategic decision by the Palestinian
leadership'.[
58
] The spark for the explosion of proletarian anger was the killing of
seven Palestinians by Israeli riot control police at the Al Asqa mosque
the day after Sharon's visit - and the much publicized killing of a 12-year
old at Gaza's Netzarim junction. As discussed above there have been almost
continuous struggles in the Gaza strip and the West Bank. However, as the
most sustained revolt since the last Intifada, this has earned the monika
of 'Intifada'.
As already discussed, this struggle follows a period of conflict between
the Palestinian proletariat and bourgeoisie. There were clashes between
demonstrators and Palestinian police in Ramallah in September 2000, the
month before the beginning of the Intifada. It is then timely for the Palestinian
bourgeoisie to have mass proletarian anger turned away from them and towards
'the real enemy', as they would put it. Furthermore, in the recent uprising,
Hamas have helped to restore the PLO-PNA's legitimacy with its constituency,
by joining the NIF, the new umbrella body of all the nationalist bodies
to control the uprising. The Fatah-based Palestinian police also help ensure
that the uprising follows 'the war logic of the state', by militarising
the struggle.
Nevertheless, like the previous Intifada, the fresh uprising is not
entirely chained by the logic of nationalism, or support for the Arab bourgeoisies.
There have been mass protests throughout the Arab world, and not just
among the Palestinian diaspora. In Jordan, there were clashes with the
Jordanian army by 25,000 Palestinians, leading to a ban on anti-Israeli
demos in Jordan, and Egypt has seen the largest and fiercest student protests
since the 1970s.
Israeli Arabs[
59
]
Furthermore there has been a blurring of the green line with the greater
involvement of the Israeli Arabs being a distinctive element of this Intifada.
Israeli Arabs were involved in the 1987 Intifada, but they played mainly
a supporting role to the Palestinians in the territories. Despite their
supposed 'democratic' privileges, they have never been fully integrated into
the Israeli state. This was emphasized in 1976, when several Israeli Palestinian
farmers were shot dead while protesting against land confiscation. This massacre
came to be commemorated in annual general strikes on this day, 'Land Day'.
On Land Day in 1989, young Israeli Palestinians blocked roads, threw petrol
bombs at police cars and cut water pipes to Jewish settlements. Because
of such incidents during the 1987 Intifada, elements in the Israeli bourgeoisie
began to see them as a Fifth Column within the Green Line, and to demand
that compulsory military service be extended to them, so as to guarantee
their loyalty to the state. In the 1987 Intifada, Israeli Palestinians only
faced plastic bullets. This time the stakes have been upped for them because
of the killing of 12 Israeli Arabs by the security forces in the first few
days of the Intifada.
In fact one of the main build ups to this Intifada has been the struggle
of Israeli Arabs being evicted as a result of the government's policy
of 'judaizing' the Galilee.[60
] Almost every week over summer 2000 there was at least one house demolition
in the villages in the Galilee and whole villages were coming out in support,
bringing them into more or less constant conflict with the police. This
policy of 'judaizing' the Galilee has included the harassment of Israeli
Arabs who are on the dole. In Nazareth the office was moved further away,
people's paperwork was constantly lost or manipulated - in one case a whole
village was cut off for refusing work that they hadn't been offered! This
has led to big demos and fighting with cops. In one case, a crowd of Nazarene
women smashed their way into a benefit office.
In the first days of the uprising, whole villages in the Galilee were
on strike and the main road through that area was strewn with burning tyres.
Israeli Arabs have also shown themselves to be increasingly disillusioned
with the electoral process. Ninety per cent of Israeli Arabs voted for Barak
at the previous general election, which is generally thought to be why
he won. At the 2001 election there was a concerted campaign by Arab 'community
leaders' to persuade Israeli Arabs to vote for Barak - anything to avoid
Sharon - the response was an almost total election boycott. Indeed some
Israeli Palestinian workers' response to 'their' Arab MKs (Members of the
Knesset - the Israeli parliament) was to chase them out of villages when
they came to canvass.[
61
]
Further discrediting of the PA and militarization of the struggle
The PNA's role in the present struggle must be seen as an attempt by
the PNA to control and profit from the mass resistance. There is still
a strong mass element to this Intifada and the PNA is trying to use it
to consolidate - or gain - their control over the 'Palestinian 'street'.
The PNA also need to make sure that they retain the loyalty of their own
police force. Many of the Palestinian police are Fatah militants. While
they do not have any compunction about attacking demos against the PA, they
can be reluctant to fire when Palestinians attack the Israeli state. Besides,
they would rather the anger of the Palestinian proletariat was turned against
the Israeli cops and soldiers than against them. As discussed above the
summer of 2000 was characterized by violent battles between PNA police
and the 'street', after the lack of progress in the Camp David agreements
between Arafat and Barak. The struggles took off when the state armed police
force took the side of demonstrations and fired on the IDF. This, in turn
provided a pretext for the IDF to shoot to kill and for the full weight
of Israeli military power, including helicopter gunships, to be brought
down on the heads of the Palestinian population.
Due to the role of the PNA, this Intifada, especially when compared
to 1987s 'rebellion of stones' is a highly militarized affair. While the
stone throwers of 1987 might have discarded 'the warfare logic of the state',
the same cannot be said of the paramilitary Palestinian police force. One
consequence of this is the involvement of a far narrower cross section of
the Palestinian population - with the protagonists being mainly male and
between 17 and 25 years old. Another is a far higher level of Palestinian
fatalities than in the last Intifada, allowing the PLO to scrape back some
credibility and to get rid of some unruly poor people into the bargain.
To a limited extent, the transformation of a spontaneous popular uprising
into a quasi-military conflict bolsters the PNA's 'state in embryo'. After
all, a state presupposes the ability to defend your borders. On the other
hand, Israel's crushing military superiority has led elements within the
PLO to attempt to try to de-escalate the conflict. These elements have sought
to reassert the mass civilian character of the uprising.
The impact of the new Intifada
Despite the Israeli state's attempts at the substitution of guest workers
for Palestinians, one of the main effects of the new Intifada has again
been a slump in the construction industry, due to the cutting-off of cheap
Palestinian labour power. Israel's economic growth was expected to drop
to 2% in 2001, from 6% in 2000. House prices in Jerusalem have already fallen
20%, since last year. While many of these figures have been put down to
the world pressures of economic slowdown, it is clear that the Intifada is
aggravating global pressures, when you consider the halving of Israel's
$2 billion-per-year trade with the territories. Although world market conditions
are given as the official reason for this year's 50% decline in foreign
investment, the Intifada is hardly going to attract foreign investment to
Israel. On the other hand, the Tel Aviv start-up industry is still booming,
indicating the relative strength of capital accumulation in Israel, cushioned
from many of capital's normal economic imperatives by US aid of over $4
billion per year. However, this aid is a double-edged sword, because its
dependence on US goodwill thus limits the freedom of action Israel has in
its efforts to crush the revolt.
Even before their crushing election defeat, the Intifada had thrown
the Labour Party into crisis, partly because of the intractable problems
with settlements discussed above. Despite Sharon's role in fuelling it,
the bourgeoisie politically rehabilitated him. While his reputation as a
'hard man' made him the natural choice for the right, more liberal voters
were not put off by his bogeyman status in the prevailing climate of national
emergency.
The new uprising has also led to major shifts in foreign policy among
the Arab states. Gone is the conciliatory tone towards Israel; more importantly,
gone too is the consensus over Iraq that America and Britain had kept
in place since 1991. As one of the few perceived leaders of pan-Arabism
and an enthusiastic supporter of the Palestinians, Saddam Hussein has been
undergoing rehabilitation in the Middle East, and the sanctions regime is
near to collapse. At least until recently, Bush's partial disengagement
from the peace process - in reality, unequivocal support for Israeli policy
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - meant that it was hard to see how the
current Intifada could be ended quickly. Popular Arab opinion was hardening
against the United States.
With the Intifada, increasing unrest within the Arab states, such as
Egypt and Jordan, the Arab bourgeoisie were forced to convene the first
Arab summit for four years, and to allow Iraq to the table. Egypt recalled
its ambassador from Tel Aviv for the first time in 18 years, and four Arab
states terminated diplomatic relations. However, it is important not to
overemphasize this shift - Lebanon and Jordan are still keen to build the
jointly funded industrial parks to get the most out of the peace dividend
- if it comes. Jordan and Egypt have also banned anti-Israeli demonstrations.
As for the Western bourgeoisie, it is divided over its relationship
to the Middle East generally. This was demonstrated by the isolation of
the USA and Britain when they resumed bombing Iraq shortly after George W
Bush became president. Palestinian diplomats are looking for European allies
- most likely France.
For the time being, the Israeli bourgeoisie has had to subordinate
its long-term ambition to 'normalize' its trade relations with the rest
of the Middle East. With the election of Sharon, this has been struck of
the agenda. However, now that the Israeli bourgeoisie has abandoned the
'peace process',[
62
] it is more dependent than ever on the goodwill of the West, in particular
the financial support of the USA, which has to balance its support for Israel,
with consideration of its other interests in the region. This makes Israeli
policy very confusing: sending the tanks into Gaza one minute, withdrawing
them the next after a ticking off by the USA. A main tactic of the Israeli
state has been the assassination of Palestinian, often Hamas, leaders.
The mass public anger among Palestinians whenever this occurs only shows
the extent of the popular appeal of Hamas. However it is easier for the
Israeli bourgeoisie to present this kind of state violence as legitimate
than the indiscriminate killing of children (although they seem to be unable
to 'take out the terrorists' without killing other people in the process).
Despite the limitations imposed on its actions by the USA, the Israeli
state has been able to get away with a great deal of slaughter, thanks
to the lack of any real working class response. While the Intifada has
triggered rebellions by Arabs, both inside the Green Line and in other parts
of the Middle East, Jewish workers appear to be identifying with the imperatives
of security, although there is also evidence of disaffected conscripts smuggling
weapons 'to the other side' - which has been blamed on drug abuse in the
army. Obviously, suicide bombings of buses, discos, shops and other busy
areas reinforce divisions between Jewish and Palestinian workers. Other Jewish
workers are residents of the settlements, which have come to be regarded
as legitimate targets for Palestinian guerrilla attacks. In addition to
the unleashing of all of the Israeli military's firepower against the proletarians
of the occupied territories, the arming of the settlers has further set
proletarian against proletarian.
Conclusion: from rebellion to war?
The 'peace process' signalled the Israeli bourgeoisie's acknowledgement
th