A people who won't go away
The Palestinian struggle endures
By Richard Becker
What is Israel? What is Palestine? Looking at a map, some
might answer that Israel is Palestine or vice versa. But Israel
is not Palestine; it is the negation of Palestine.
Israel's very existence has been predicated on the
elimination of the Palestinians as a people. That reality and
Israel's appointed role as policeman of U.S. imperialist
interests in the Middle East are the basic factors that have
made the Israeli-Palestinian struggle so intractable.
No one more epitomizes the drive to eliminate Palestine and
the Palestinians than the current Israeli Prime Minister, Gen.
Ariel Sharon. Sharon's claim that he wants peace is belied by
his blood-drenched career as a mass murderer of the Palestinian
and Lebanese people, from Qibya, Jordan, in 1953, to Beirut in
1982, to occupied Palestine in 2002.
Individual leaders aside, the question must be posed: How
can there be peace when one side, Israel, is a monstrously
built-up warfare state, born of the conception that, for it to
live, the other side must be crushed and eliminated?
The Palestinian people, defying seemingly insuperable odds
and obstacles, have refused to disappear or surrender.
Dispossessed and driven from most of their land in 1948 to make
way for an Israeli state, the Palestinians are continuing their
struggle more than a half-century later under the most
difficult of conditions.
U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jets and "Apache" helicopters
have reduced large parts of Palestinian cities and towns in the
West Bank and Gaza to rubble. Over the past 17 months since the
new Intifada (Uprising) began, more than 1,000
Palestinians--four times the number of Israelis--have been
killed and 20,000 wounded.
On Feb. 19 alone, 15 Palestinians were killed in the
heaviest bombardment since the Intifada began. The attacks
followed the deaths of six Israeli occupation troops on Feb.
18, the largest number killed in action in a single day.
All the Palestinian cities and towns in Gaza and the West
Bank are sealed off from each other, causing widespread
suffering and a severe decline in health conditions. Thousands
of Palestinian political prisoners are held under the most
deplorable conditions, routinely subjected to torture at the
hands of the Israeli secret police, the Shin Bet.
Despite its barbaric treatment of the Palestinians, Israel
is regularly hailed as "the only democracy in the Middle East"
by U.S. officials and the corporate media.
Creating 'a land without people'
Since the beginnings of political Zionism more than a
century ago, Israel's central leaders have shared a common
vision: the establishment of an exclusively Jewish entity that
would displace the indigenous inhabitants of historic
Palestine.
After Israel was established as a state by the
U.S.-dominated United Nations in 1947, this vision was
incorporated into the Israeli creation myths. Palestine was "a
land without people for a people without a land," said the
early Israeli leaders. Israel "made the desert bloom," they
proclaimed, ignoring the fact that most of Palestine was
neither desert nor uncultivated. Who, after all, had planted
the 100-year-old olive trees that covered much of the
region?
Modern political Zionism arose as one response to the racist
anti-Semitism that prevailed in so much of Europe. For many
decades in the late 19th and early 20th century, Zionism
represented a small minority among the Jewish people. Jewish
workers and intellectuals played a major role in the socialist,
communist and other progressive movements, fighting for
equality rather than separation. Before World War II, political
Zionism was generally regarded as a reactionary, utopian and
dangerous ideology in progressive circles.
From its beginnings, political Zionism was a consciously
colonial/settler project. Mainly European Jewish settlers began
arriving in Palestine in the 1880s. At the time, Jews comprised
about 5 percent of the population. But early Zionist leaders
like Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizmann knew that settlement
alone would not produce an Israeli state.
What was also needed was sponsorship for their project by
one of the big imperial powers. To the empires of Europe, the
early Zionist leaders offered a proposition: support our
project and the resulting state will serve your interests in
the region. This quid pro quo was essential. After all, the
empires of Europe had brutally colonized most of the world, and
were not in the habit of doing favors for anyone.
The British Empire, the largest, became the sponsor of the
Zionist project with the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in
1917, which stated that: "His Majesty's Government views with
favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people ..."
Interestingly, Palestine was still part of the Turkish
Ottoman Empire at the time, but the British were planning to
take over the entire region as part of the spoils of World War
I.
Chaim Weizmann outlined both the value that a future Israeli
state could have for British imperialism and the colonialist
character of the project in a prophetic 1914 letter: "Should
Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence and
should Britain encourage Jewish settlement ... we could develop
the country, bring back civil ization to it, and form a very
effective guard for the Suez Canal."
With British sponsorship and new sources of funding from the
U.S., the Zionist project took off after World War I. Jewish
settlements and land acquisition rapidly grew. Though now a
British colony, a de facto government, the Jewish Agency, was
set up in the Zionist-controlled areas, and began building its
own militia and, later, army.
Following the colonial-settler pattern--like that already
established in the U.S. and South Africa--when the Zionists
acquired an area, their aim was generally to make it
exclusively Jewish. Zionist settlements or businesses were
urged or required to hire only Jewish labor.
As the settler population increased from about 10 percent in
the early 1920s to nearly 30 percent by the end of the 1930s,
the discussion of "transfer" intensified. "Transfer" meant
moving the indigenous Palestinian Arab population out of
Palestine to make way for the future Israeli state.
None of what was going on was lost on the Palestinian
population. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s there were numerous
revolts against both British colonialism and Zionist
settlement. In 1936, Palestinians launched a general strike
that lasted six months, the longest general strike ever,
followed by three years of guerrilla warfare. It was not until
1939, the year that World War II broke out in Europe, that the
British Army succeeded in crushing the uprising. In the course
of the struggle, the British had aided the development of the
Haganah, the Zionist army.
As a result of these developments, by the time World War II
broke out, the Zionist forces had been greatly strengthened
while the Palestinians had been decimated.
David Ben-Gurion, who was to become Israel's first prime
minister, said in 1939 that World War I had brought the Balfour
Declaration; the second world war would result in the creation
of a state. This was, of course, before the Nazi holocaust--the
mass murder of six million Jewish people.
The capitalist governments of Western Europe and the United
States paid scant attention to the massacres of Jews and other
peoples while they were taking place. Riddled with
anti-Semitism themselves, they saw Nazi Germany as a club
against their main enemy of the time, the Soviet Union. They
also regarded it as an ideal business climate, since the Nazis
had crushed the labor unions.
So indifferent was the U.S. high command to the suffering of
those in the Nazi death camps that they refused even to approve
the bombing of the rail lines that brought the boxcars crammed
with victims into the camps.
But after the war was over, the U.S. leaders hypocritically
channeled world sympathy for the suffering of the Jewish people
into support for the creation of the Israeli state--at the
expense of the Palestinians. Under intense U.S. pressure, the
United Nations passed a resolution on Nov. 29, 1947, allocating
56 percent of historic Palestine to Israel, with 44 percent to
go to the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestinians
comprised 70 percent of the population at the time.
In the war that followed, Israel, with its superior economic
and military resources and its support from Europe and the
U.S., ended up conquering 78 percent of Palestine. The Israeli
military strategy was not just to conquer land, however, but to
drive out as much of the Palestinian population as possible
from that land. Nearly 90 percent of the Arab population was
forcibly "transferred."
Another of Israel's contradictory creation myths was that
the Palestinians who left in 1948 did so voluntarily.
Contradictory because, after all, if Palestine was a "land
without people," why would anyone have to leave? This myth,
along with others, has been demolished even by many Israeli
historians. (For example, see "Righteous Victims" by Benny
Morris.)
The remaining 22 percent of Palestine was divided. The West
Bank became part of Jordan; Gaza came under Egyptian
administration. More than 750,000 Palestinians were
dispossessed of their farms, shops and homes and forced into
wretched concentration camps.
The Palestinians had seemingly disappeared, as least for
much of the world. In the U.S. press they lost all nationality,
becoming only "refugees."
The process of disappearing the Palestinians was very
important to Israel. The post-war period was the epoch not of
colonialism, but of decolonization. The imperialist powers were
all being confronted by the rising national liberation
struggles in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle
East.
Especially under these circumstances, the Israeli leaders
and their U.S. patrons did not want Israel to be perceived as a
colonial-settler state. Their way out was simply to proclaim
that Palestine had been an empty, barren land. The fact that
tens of thousands of Israelis were now living in the homes of
Palestinians, working their field and harvesting the fruit of
century-old trees was conveniently forgotten in the glowing
accounts of Israel appearing in most U.S. media.
But the Palestinians have never forgotten the grave, almost
inconceivable, injustice done to them.
Serving Western imperialism
From its beginning, Israel required vast amounts of outside
aid--economic and military--to survive. In 1950, its imports
exceeded its exports by a ratio of 10 to 1. No economy can long
survive under those circumstances without massive assistance.
Because its population was overwhelmingly made up of European
immigrants, many of whom would have gone to the U.S. if given
the choice, the Israeli leaders were very aware that
European-like living standards had to be maintained. Otherwise,
much of the population would soon depart. The problem was,
Palestine was not in Europe, it was in the Third World.
In 1951, an editorial appeared in Ha'aretz, a leading
newspaper, outlining how the new state would repay the aid
extended to it: "Therefore, strengthening Israel helps the
Western powers to maintain equilibrium and stability in the
Middle East. Israel is to be a watchdog. ... If for some reason
the Western powers should sometimes prefer to close their eyes,
Israel could be relied on to punish one or several neighboring
states whose discourtesy toward the West went beyond the bounds
of the permissible."
An early opportunity to show Israel's "watchdog" role came
in 1956. That year, the nationalist Egyptian government of
Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, the strategic
waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Under Nasser, Egypt was seen as the leading force in the
decolonization struggle in the Middle East.
Nasser's "discourtesy" enraged Britain and France. Britain
wanted to regain control of the Suez Canal. France, which had
begun arming Israel the previous year, saw Egypt as the key
ally of the FLN-National Liberation Front, which was fighting
to free Algeria from French rule.
In October 1956, Israel launched a surprise attack on Egypt.
A few days later, British and French paratroopers landed in the
Suez Canal zone and elsewhere in Egypt. The aim was to
overthrow the Nasser government and return the Suez to British
control. As its reward, Israel would keep Gaza and the entire
Sinai Peninsula.
Nothing could have made Israel's role clearer than the 1956
war. But the results of the war did not stand. Worldwide
outrage opposed this blatant imperialist intervention. The
Soviet Union threatened to intervene on the side of Egypt. And
the U.S. opposed the attack, though for very different
reasons.
The U.S. did not want to see its imperialist rivals, Britain
and France, strengthened in the Middle East. The British and
the French had been the main colonial powers before World War
II. After the war, the U.S. was determined to become dominant
in the region. Britain, France and Israel were all forced to
withdraw, and a message was sent to the Israeli leaders from
Washington: You will serve our interests, not those of our
rivals.
In the late 1950s and 1960s, U.S. military aid poured into
Israel. With invaluable assistance from the U.S., Israel
developed nuclear weapons.
In a lightning strike in 1967, Israel achieved its goal of
conquering the remainder of Palestine--the West Bank, including
East Jerusalem, and Gaza--along with Egypt's Sinai and Syria's
Golan Heights. After 1967, U.S. aid flowed like a river. Israel
began receiving an average of $3-$4 billion per year in
official aid and billions more as well. No other country in the
world has received anything like the amount of assistance given
to Israel. The U.S. built Israel into the fifth-ranking
military power, despite having a population of about 5 million
people.
Israel repaid this aid in many ways. In the mid-1970s,
Israel intervened to support the fascist elements in Lebanon's
civil war. In 1978 and 1982 it invaded Lebanon, and in 1982
occupied Beirut. In 1981, Israel destroyed an Iraqi nuclear
power plant.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Israel gave key support to the
apartheid government in South Africa, particularly at times
when it was "inconvenient" for Washington to be seen openly
supporting the racist regime.
Israel helped train and arm the Guate malan army when it was
carrying out genocide against the Indigenous peoples of that
country, and when the U.S. Congress had cut off direct aid to
Guatemala.
The Israeli secret police helped to train the torturers in
Chile and other countries of Latin America after
CIA-coordinated military coups in the 1970s. Israel gave
military aid to Taiwan, and supported right-wing dictatorships
in Africa.
Re-emergence of
Palestinian struggle
With the conquest of the remaining 22 percent of Palestine
in 1967, it might have appeared that the fate of the
Palestinians was sealed. This was certainly the dominant view
in Israel, whose leaders had been waiting for the right moment
to seize the West Bank and Gaza ever since 1948.
But in a seeming paradox, the 1967 war led to a dramatic
revival of the Palestinian movement.
The rapid defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan--the war lasted
just six days--ended any hopes that the Arab states were going
to overcome Israel's military superiority in the near future.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands more Palestinians were
brought under a very brutal military occupation regime.
The Palestine Liberation Organization emerged in 1967 as an
independent entity and began a multi-faceted struggle against
Israel. The PLO and its constituent organizations like the
Palestine National Liberation Movement (Fatah), the Marxist
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and
others organized trade unions, women and youth organizations,
as well as armed forces.
The Israelis used the most brutal forms of repression to try
to crush the struggle. Shootings, arbitrary arrests, wholesale
torture, expulsions, house demolitions, massive uprooting of
fruit and olive trees, extreme economic deprivation--these and
more were the tools of the occupiers.
In Jordan, where displaced Palestinians and their
descendants comprise 70 percent of the population, 15,000 PLO
fighters and civilians were massacred in 1970-71 at the orders
of the pro-U.S. King Hussein. Israeli troops stood ready across
the border in case the king's army faltered.
Eleven years later, the PLO was driven out of Lebanon and
thousands of Palestinians massacred.
Again and again the Palestinians have been counted out--in
1948, 1967, 1971, 1982. After the Gulf War and the collapse of
the Soviet Union, which had given the PLO invaluable support,
Bush the first and Clinton believed they could liquidate the
Palestinian struggle through the Oslo "peace process."
Now, in 2002, the prospects for the Palestinians look bleak
on paper. They face not only the overwhelming firepower of
their direct oppressor, Israel, but also the undisguised
hostility of the world's lone superpower--U.S. imperialism.
The Palestinian people are suffering greatly today, but they
have not been defeated and the Israelis are not winning. In
fact, the steadfastness of the Palestinian struggle is now
creating cracks in the Israeli establishment.
While the Palestinians have not been defeated, they cannot
achieve victory by themselves. They have held off combined
forces of great power, but cannot overcome them alone.
What is needed is heightened solidarity--both in the Middle
East and elsewhere around the world.
What is needed most of all is more support for the heroic
struggle of the Palestinian people from inside the United
States. It is only due to the intervention of the U.S. that the
suffering of the Palestinian people has gone on for so
long.
What the last half-century shows more than anything else is
that Palestine will be free.
Reprinted from the Feb. 28, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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