Daily Times

The tactic of armed
struggle continued until the 1980s but proved to be futile. However, the revolutionary upheaval of 1987, the first Intifada, shook the Israeli state and its tremors were even felt in the corridors of power in Washington, Paris and London. That led to the beginning of the process of a negotiated settlement with the Oslo Accords of 1993, where ‘a two-state solution’ was advocated by imperialism and the Palestinians were promised superfluous concessions. However, if the armed struggle did not bring Palestinian liberation any closer, the process of negotiations with the reactionary Zionist leaders under the auspices of imperialism made the dream of independence look more distance and keeps on dimming. The ‘two-state’ formula is virtually dead. Gaza is now being called the largest open-air prison in the world, incarcerating 1.7 million people. If the Palestinians are suffering from the military and economic brutalities of the Zionist state then every war, attack and hostility brings more insecurity and isolation for the ordinary people of Israel. With the present capitalist crisis on a world scale, the economic attacks and austerity measures against the Israeli workers and the youth have been intensified by the regime in Jerusalem. Trotsky had written a decade before the physical creation of Israel: “Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character.”

The collapse of the left wing organisations in the PLO and the capitulation of the Al-Fatah leadership to imperialism have led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism that has further complicated the situation. The leader of the PA (Palestinian Authority), Mahmood Abbas lost even the scraps of credibility and was denounced by the Palestinians as a traitor for appearing on Israeli television to cede the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their own homes within the ‘internationally recognised’ borders of Israel, in his case the Galilee town of Safed. The West Bank, which is being ruled by the PA, is littered with Israeli settlements and harrowing check posts. Mr Abbas is trying to raise his ruptured credibility by trying to get a better status for the PA in the UN, which is both worthless and farcical. His regime is riddled with corruption and mismanagement. Ironically, it is being used by the Israeli state to repress the Palestinian masses in the West Bank. Its economy is in dire states and cannot even sustain the expenses of the security forces. The latest issue of The Economist writes, “Yet Israeli commanders shudder at the chaos that might ensue if the PA’s 50,000 security people were unable to put food on the table. Indeed, Israel has been so worried by the PA’s budget crisis that in the past three months it has advanced $ 200 million to the PA and issued Palestinians in the West Bank with several thousand more permits to work in Israel. “It’s in Israel’s interest to preserve the PA,” says an officer, examining various contingencies. The repression of the Palestinian workers and youth by the secular, nationalist and liberal PA regime is no less severe than that of the Jewish state.

Until the late 1980s, the main force of the Palestinian struggle, with the support of the vast majority of the Palestinian masses, was the PLO. The Israeli intelligence agencies applied various tactics and methods to try to damage and destroy the PLO. That also included internal sabotage and creating conflicts within the movement. One of the most crucial strategies was the use of Islamic fundamentalism to drive a wedge in the Palestinian liberation struggle. This has also been the methodology of US imperialism to sabotage and attack left wing movements, trade unionists and Marxists in the so-called Muslim countries since the 1950s. We have seen this CIA-sponsored sabotage in Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia and several other countries. For decades, the Israeli state sponsored, financed and propped up Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other Islamist organisations in the Palestinian movement. Apart from vast amounts of material that gives pertinent evidence of this covert relationship, a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, ‘How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas’, exposes the connection even more. It says, “The Israeli government officially recognised a precursor of Hamas called Mujama Al- Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools…Mahmoud Musleh, now a pro-Hamas member of the Palestinian legislature, recalls how usually aggressive Israeli security forces stood back and let conflagration develop…they hoped we would become an alternative to the PLO…Mahmoud Zahar used to meet Israel’s then defence minister Yitzhak Rabin, as part of the regular consultations between Israeli officials and Palestinians not linked to the PLO. Mr. Zahar, the only Hamas founder known to be alive today, is now the group’s senior political leader in Gaza.”

As the imperialist-created Mujahideen in Afghanistan and Pakistan mutated into al Qaeda and the Taliban, Hamas became a Frankenstein’s monster for the Israeli imperialists. However, the anti-Americanism of the religious fundamentalists is diametrically opposite to the anti-imperialist struggles of the revolutionary masses. Hamas’ appeal in Gaza comes from its superficial image of resistance to occupation. Hamas won the election in 2006 because the masses were tired of the corruption of the PLO leaders and their connivance with Israel. But if the question of liberation is posed purely in nationalist terms, then it is not possible to find a solution of the Palestinian question. It is not possible to solve the problem of the Palestinian people by firing rockets at Israeli towns and villages. Killing of children and ordinary people of Israel only ends up in corroborating the vicious Zionist state and gives it justification for its increased brutalities against the Palestinian masses and other oppressed peoples. Hamas’ methods are not new. They have been tried and tested by the PLO in the past and have led only to one bloody defeat after another. No amount of sympathy for the sufferings of the Palestinians can alter that fact.

(To be continued)

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com