The challenge to Palestinian and Israeli socialists alike is to learn the lessons of past defeats. The mobilisations over these last days have drawn in new layers and opened new doors looks at an explosion that was inevitable.
The spark which triggered it was the Israeli decision to open a tunnel through the Old City of Jerusalem, supposedly to give tourists better access to the Western Wall of the ancient Jewish temple. Statements from both Netanyahu and Foreign Minister David Levy have since made clear they will not concede on this - or any other matter which suggests the future of Jerusalem could be up for negotiation.
Palestinian resentment at Israel's refusal to honour even the minimal concessions promised in the Oslo and Cairo accords forced Arafat to call protests but these spun out of his control. Once again, as at the start of the Palestinian intifada in December 1987, apologists for Zionism have described the Palestinian resistance as planned and co-ordinated. This is a distortion.
As with the intifada, this rising of the Palestinian masses is as much a challenge to their recognised leadership as it is to the Israeli army of occupation.
Inis ume, une leadersap Is nol In exile, seeking diplomatic channels to negotiate with Israel. The leaders have returned to Palestine and face mounting anger as the scale of their capitulation to Israel, and the humiliating contempt in which the Israelis hold them, become ever more clear. Michel Warshawsky of the Alternative Information Centre in Jerusalem pointed out at the summer school of the French Revolutionary League, 'The Palestinian Authority today has less autonomous room for manoeuvre than the PLO and the Unified Leadership of the Intifada had in 1989.
In a further change from the intifada, this resistance is armed. The Palestinian security forces up to now have faithfully executed Israel's aims and repressed the Palestinians as mercenaries. some may he atSTATE - the opportunity must not be lost tempting to regain credibility by detenaing unarmea ralesanian civillans against Israeli brutality while others seem to have concluded that they were deceived into believing the 'peace process' was in their interests.
When armed Palestinians have previously fought back against the Israeli - from the battle of Karameh in 1968 through to the siege of Beirut in 1982 - they have inflicted heavy casualties, and gained limited political victories. For the first time, such resistance is taking place inside Palestine It would be a mistake to just blame the new Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyanu for the collapse or the peace process'. Long before his narrow election victory, it was apparent that Israel had no intention of honouring its commitments. Former PM Yitzhak Rabin, having signed a detailed timetable for Israell military withdrawal from the occupied territories, then claimed that "There are no sacred dates". He and his Labour successor, Shimon Peres, reneged on firm promises including the release of political prisoners, the return of refugees forced to flee in 1967, freedom of movement between the West Bank and Gaza, and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Hebron.
As Warshawsky also noted, 'There is no crime against peace that the PeresRabin team did not commit". In that sense, Netanyahu's victory in the Israeli election, wnile a aereat tor tne Labour Party's strategy for, containment of Palestinian resis- This rising of the Palestinian Lance. Was d masses is as much a consequence, not a cause, of challenge to their recognised the collanse of leadership as it is to the the sham Israeli army of occupation. peace process' But this resistance is weakened as a result of the capitulation by its former lenders.
In 1987, when the intifada erupted, an entire generation of young activists - manv of them schooled and tested in Israeli prisons - rose to prominence at the head of a mass popular upsurge of frustration and anger.
They created a genuine revolutionary leadership, which took effective control of large parts of the occupied territories, controlling not only security but also economic affairs, education, health, welfare and most other aspects of civil society.
This example threatened not merely continued Israeli control over Palestine, hut the future of all of the undemocratic Arab regimes. It was necessary for Israel to come to terms with the exiled While the Labour Party delayed meeting its commitments in the hope of profiting politically and further weakening a discredited PLO leadership, before having to pay a much reduced price, the Likud insisted on the price as a reason to reject the entire package. The bulk of the Israel peace movement, which effectively retired from activity rather than press its government to honour its commitments in the agreements, contributed to their fail' ure. The Palestinian lett meanwale seems almost to have given up the struggle, and conceded leadership of any resistance to the fundamentalists.
But a struggle based on religious obscurantism can never defeat Israeli occupation and end the partition of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinian people. It cannot even mobilise the whole of Palestinian society, let alone offer a way forward for warweary Israelis.
The challenge to Palestinian and Israeli socialists alike is to learn the lessons of past defeats. The mobilisations over these last days have drawn in new lavers and opened new doors - the opportunity must not be lost.