ONLY a small minority of the world's Jewish population lives in Israel. There are many more Jews in the United States; probably as many in New York as in Israel itself. As a solution to the problem of anti-Semitism, Israel is no solution.
The roots of today's conflict over Palestine lie in the wave of anti-Semitism which swept eastern Europe in the last part of the 19th century. The founder of modern Zionism, Theordor Herzl, wrote his book *The Jewish State* in 1896. At that time the idea that a Jewish state would solve anti-semitism was fiercely contested in the world's Jewish population; many Jews in Eastern Europe adhered to the mass socialist movement.
Until the end of the first world war, Palestine was part of the Ottoman empire. After the war, it became a British protectorate. In 1917 British Zionists managed to persuade the British government to declare in favour of the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. This was summarised in the 'Balfour Declaration'.
British imperialism hoped to stabilise its grip on the area by creating a loyal, client population – as a counterweight to the Arabs and rival imperialist powers.
Until 1917 there had only been 60,000 Jews in Palestine. Between 1919 and 1923 this increased to 100,000.
Massive campaign
Under the protection of the British and with the authority of the Balfour declaration the international Zionist movement waged a massive campaign for Jewish immigration to the Holy Land.
By 1931 the number of Jewish settlers in the *Yishuv*, the immigrant population, had risen to 117,00, or 17 per cent of the population.
Money poured into the country from wealthy backers abroad to buy land. Every effort was made to join up existing strips of *Yishuv*-controlled land, and to exclude Arab labour. Arab goods and produce were boycotted. The *Yishuv* became a self-governing and near autonomous community, relentlessly pushing back the boundaries of Arab-controlled land.
Palestinian anger at the erosion of their territory and their treatment by the British resulted in the massive uprising of 1938, brutally crushed by the British army, together with Jewish irregulars.
The shock of the Holocaust boosted support for a Jewish state. In 1947 the United Nations decided on the partition of Palestine. In 1948 Britain withdrew and immediately war broke out, which pitted the neighbouring Arab armies against the well-armed and motivated Israeli forces.
Disappeared
The resulting Israeli victory created a new state way beyond the borders agreed by the UN. The West Bank was absorbed into Jordan. Palestine had disappeared.
Zionism had thus won its most decisive victory. The new state it created was based on the expulsion of the Palestinians, an expulsion based on terror. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were now in refugee camps, from which they have never departed.
From the first Israel was a pro-imperialist state. Its very existence gave imperialism, especially American imperialism, a decisive foothold in the region.
This became important during the 1950s, as pan-Arab nationalism began to rise. Nationalist regimes came to power throughout the Arab world, most importantly Nasser's regime in Egypt.
In 1956, Nasser decided on the nationalisation of the Suez canal, then owned jointly by France and Britain. To defeat this, Britain, France and Israel launched a joint invasion of Egypt in October of that year. World-wide protests, joined by US president Eisenhower as a means of boosting US influence in the Middle East, forced the withdrawal of the invading armies.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was formed in 1964.
The PLO rapidly created its own armed detachments, the *Fedayeen*. Sections of the PLO, especially the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Democratic Front, evolved in a left-wing direction.
Tension between Israel and its neighbours, especially Nasser's Egypt, reached flashpoint in 1967. Israel launched a blitzkrieg attack in June that year, destroying the Egyptian airforce on the ground. The armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan were devastated.
Israel conquered the West Bank from Jordan, and the Gaza strip and Sinai desert from Egypt. The Palestinian populations of the tiny and over-populated Gaza strip, and the West Bank, came under direct Israeli control. To this day, the occupied territories have not been returned.
Catastrophe
Most Palestinians considered the 1967 defeat a catastrophe. This reinforced the idea that they had to rely on their own struggle to win their national rights.
But the Fedayeen fighters faced a major strategic problem – their reliance on bases in neighbouring Arab states controlled by reactionary regimes.
In September 1970 King Hussein of Jordan turned on the powerful PLO forces in his country, launching his army in a war to drive them out.
The PLO made its new headquarters in Lebanon, where it was allied with powerful Arab nationalist and left-wing militias.
However, in 1976 the Palestinians became once again the victims of intervention from reactionary Arab regimes. In the 1975-6 Lebanon civil war, the right-wing Maronite Christian militias were defeated by the nationalist-Palestinian-left wing alliance.
Fearing the consequences, Syria's Hafaz Assad sent his army to occupy much of the country.
The Palestinian position in Lebanon was dealt a final blow by the Israeli invasion in 1981. Despite a courageous defence of Beirut the Palestinian fighters were forced to leave.
Thus the fedayeen were dispersed, and the Palestinian population in Lebanon became the victim of terrible atrocities, noticeably the horrific massacre at the refugee camps in Sabra and Chatila.
This was carried out by Maronite militias, under the supervision of the Israeli army.
In 1974, after the Arabs had been defeated in the 1973 war, the PLO leadership made a new political turn. Its historic programme – for a 'democratic, secular Palestine', in which Israeli Jews would be united with Palestinian Arabs on the basis of equality, was in practice abandoned. Arafat now fought for a 'two-state' solution, involving a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
It is against this idea that the Israeli policy of creating new settlements on the West Bank is aimed. The West Bank and East Jerusalem, won in 1973, have been effectively incorporated into Israel.
Miltary defeat
Since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the military struggle of the Palestinians has been effectively defeated. But the Palestinian masses in the occupied territories, especially the youth, replied in the mid-1980s with the *Intifadah* – the mass civilian uprising.
The Intifadah put Israel on the defensive again. Its brutal suppression of the uprising gained international condemnation.
The Gulf war was a new defeat for the Palestinians. Imperialist domination of the Middle East is now much more powerful than in the 1950s. Reactionary Arab governments have more and more openly distanced themselves from the Palestinian cause.
The cause of Palestine cannot be won outside of an overturn of imperialist rule in the Arab East. That means that the national struggle of the Palestinians must be linked to the fight of Arab workers to defeat the reactionary Arab regimes, who have stabbed the Palestinian struggle in the back at every turn.