Socialist Outlook May 1996
One of the most obscene sights of recent politics was the grin with which PLO leader Yasser Arafat greeted Israeli PM Shimon Peres on the day when Israeli ’precision bombing’ slaughtered over 100 Lebanese civilian refugees sheltering at a UN base in southern Lebanon. Within a week, Arafat had persuaded the Palestine National Council - the PLO’s ’parliament in exile’ - to drop the central points of the 1964 Palestine Charter. Arafat’s role as Israel’s lackey has never been so publicly and humiliatingly flaunted.
Israel’s response to the massacre was characteristic. Officials blamed the victims for their effrontery in sacrificing themselves by not accepting Israel’s dictat to leave their homes and villages, and attempted to present Israel as the true victim of this ’unfortunate mistake’. The response recalls the appalling comment of former PM Golda Meir that "We may eventually be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our children. But we will never be able to forgive them for forcing us to kill their children".
At one level, Israel’s attack failed. The final agreement with Hizbollah, under which both sides agreed to refrain from targeting civilians, merely restated the situation which has existed since the previous ceasefire in 1993. Despite Israeli propaganda claims, Hizbollah has not been shelling Israeli civilians or territory since then. Indeed, in implicitly recognising Hizbollah’s right to attack Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon since 1978, the agreement actually was a setback for Israel.
But this is only the superficial aspect of the attack. Not for the first time, Lebanon has been the stage for a proxy war between other powers. In 1982, Israel devastated Lebanon in an attempt to destroy the PLO. This war created the conditions leading to the present attack. The power vacuum left in Lebanon, and the resentment at Israeli militarist arrogance, immeasurably strengthened Hizbollah, which has since acquired a national legitimacy as the only Lebanese force effectively combating occupation.
Meanwhile, by effectively disabling the exile leadership of the PLO, Israel enabled the rise of a new, Palestine based, leadership of the national struggle. This leadership, through the Intifada, posed a more serious challenge to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip than decades of the PLO’s diplomacy and guerrilaism. And this success, which meant the new leadership was as much of a threat to Arafat and his team as it was to Israel, created the community of interest between Israel and Arafat which lies behind the Israel-PLO ’peace agreement’.
This agreement reached its conclusion at the meeting of the Palestine National Council, when an overwhelming majority of the delegates (many hand-picked by Arafat) voted to repeal all sections of their charter which denied the legitimacy of the state of Israel. The session was boycotted by supporters of the PFLP and DFLP oppositions within the PLO, while prominent Palestine based leaders such as Hanan Ashrawi and Dr Haidar Abd al-Shafi voted against the changes.
As most commentators have noted, the latest attack was designed to bolster Peres in the Israeli elections, due later this month. A series of suicide bomb attacks on Israeli civilians - most carried out by desperate Palestinians from the miserable refugee camps of Gaza, not by Hizbollah guerrillas from south Lebanon - has eroded the massive opinion poll lead which Peres held when he took over from his assassinated predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin. By making the Lebanese pay, and by humiliating Arafat, Peres hopes to claw back some support.
But the PLO leadership and the Israeli public are not the only audience which Peres is addressing. This attack is also a warning to Syria, which has been reluctant to enter the ’peace process’ without guarantees of the full return of the occupied Golan Heights, and of greater autonomy for Palestine. Syria is concerned by the recent military cooperation agreement between Israel and Turkey, under which Israeli pilots are allowed to carry out ’training flights’ in Turkish airspace.
This agreement is Israel’s greatest success in its search for allies in the periphery of the Arab world since the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979. It threatens a two-pronged attack on Syria, and is also seen as a threat by Iran. While undoubtedly putting pressure on Syria, the agreement will also reinforce the Islamic opposition in Turkey. The recent expulsion of four Iranian diplomats for contact with fundamentalists in Turkey suggests a developing alliance between Israel and Turkey ("the only Western style democracies in the Middle East", according to the Guardian, 11 April 1996), together with the USA and European states, against popular dissent across the Arab and Muslim world.
The Lebanese people have been the latest victims of this alliance. Continuing Palestinian unrest, and growing dissent in Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia, means that they will not be the last. And the continuing failure of the secular left in the region leaves the political terrain open for fundamentalist populism.
Israel’s northernmost town, Kiryat Shmona, has often provided the excuse for Israeli attacks on Lebanon. According to the Israeli embassy in London, "at least 83 civilians have been killed and 336 injured in attacks across the Lebanon border on northern Israeli towns, including Kiryat Shmona, since 1968. These included the slaughter of 21 child hostages at a school in Ma’alot" (Guardian, 20 April 1966). Those of us with long memories will remember that the children at Ma’alot were in fact killed ’accidentally’ by the Israeli army rescue, and not by their Palestinian captors. The number of Israelis actually killed over the same period in Katyusha attacks from southern Lebanon is extremely small - far fewer than those killed in one year’s road accidents in this country of notoriously aggressive drivers.
Although Kiryat Shmona has become almost a byword for the threat to Israeli civilians, the reality is far different. Socialist Outlook supporter Inbar Tamari, who grew up in the town, recalls a quiet town subject to occasional security scares. However, her parents would not take her and her sisters to the air raid shelters since they did not take the threats seriously. Children were not prevented from playing in the streets or hiking in the countryside, and the town did not live in fear.
The year preceding Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon was one of the quietest the town had known. When rocket attacks resumed with Israel’s attack on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, many people in Kiryat Shmona blamed the government for upsetting the previous accord. "It is true that most people in Kiryat Shmona vote for parties of the right," says Inbar. "However, this is more for class than for nationalist reasons. The right parties are populist, and appeal to the poor population of towns like Kiryat Shmona, and other small towns far from the border. Unfortunately, Labour and most of the other ’left’ parties appeal to the middle class voters of the main towns of central Israel. The Israeli left has not yet managed to build a mass, class based, opposition to populist nationalism".