Palestine
The Al Aqsa Intifada - Collapse of flawed Oslo "peace" deal
The Al Aqsa Intifada which brought the Oslo process officially to its end, revealed the colonialist assumptions on which it was based and the shaky arrangements that were supposed to sustain it.
The two main purposes of the Oslo Agreements were
to ensure the political stability of the region so that it would be open to the capitalist globalisation process,
and to promise the Israeli state the continuation of its control over the 1967 Occupied Territories, with the collaboration of the Palestinian Authority oppressing any opposition and thus satisfy the economic and security interests of Israel.
Opposition Growing
The basic assumption behind the Oslo agreement was that Arafat would be able to fulfil the task of ensuring the security of Israel, without interference from democratic legal and political institutions, which would not exist in the regime he was to establish.
However, the layer of bureaucrats who were brought from Tunis and the corrupt economic and political system of which this layer is the main beneficiary, have caused rage and strong opposition - both within the democratic elite which emerged throughout the years of the "First Intifada", and was marginalised by Arafat, and among political and military leaders who represented that elite at the time.
Moreover, such criticism prevails also within the Fatah militia that Arafat allowed to be established, the Tantheem, who more and more show a tendency towards political and operational independence from Arafat, while challenging the Oslo process, to which they themselves were partner. Indeed, as the journalist, Danny Rubenstein states, (Ha'aretz, 18/10) Arafat does not control the uprising which broke out spontaneously and has been largely led by the Tantheem.
Basically untenable was the assumption that the strong police force, which the Oslo Agreements permitted Arafat to set up, would carry out the exclusive mission of ensuring the security of Israelis - soldiers, settlers and civilians inside the Green Line.
The recent Intifada made it clear that the Palestinian police, including the Preventive Security forces, perceive their duty as the protectors of their people when they are attacked by Israeli soldiers.
Moreover, the assumption that it is possible to create a kind of South Lebanon Army, out of the conquered and oppressed Palestinian people, has been shaken, since many Palestinian police have shown strong identification with the militant demonstrations, and even joined them in attacking soldiers and settlers.
As opposed to expectations, it became clear that Arafat could not as yet sign a settlement which included relinquishing the Right to Return and sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa compound.
Although at present there is no organised democratic opposition, there still exists in wide strata of the Palestinian people - here and in the Diaspora - a high level of politicisation and militant energy, which constitutes a serious threat to Arafat's leadership.
Erasure of the Green line
The Israeli 'Left' that initiated the Oslo process has repeatedly stressed its importance in implementing the "separation between the two people". (Let's 'separate in peace', call the leaders of Peace Now).
This slogan was reiterated like a mantra, despite the fact that both Labour and Likud governments had created a reality in which the settlements stretched to the outskirts of Palestinian towns and villages. These settlements were designed precisely to prevent separation and as such, leaving the idea of Palestinian "sovereignty" in their autonomous enclaves with no real meaning.
The assumption that it is possible to separate the state of Israel and the Occupied Territories of '67 through the Green Line has also been shown to be unrealistic. The ten days of the uprising of the Palestinian Arabs inside Israel revealed the malice and the stupidity of the slogan 'Two states for two people', which had been adopted for years by the more 'radical' parts of the Israeli Left.
The bearers of this slogan who ignored the existence of Palestinian Arabs in Israel, and did not foresee the strengthening of their Palestinian national identity. And indeed as Israeli commentators of the Al Aqsa Intifada said: 'the Green Line has been blurred.'
However was not only because of the strong identification of Palestinians in Israel with the uprising of their people in the 67' Occupied Territories., as shown in their demonstrations. Israel itself erased the Green Line long before, when Israel perceived its Arab citizens as enemies, and used against them the same methods of oppression which it uses against its subjects in the Occupied Territories: shooting live and rubber bullets at demonstrations in protest against Israeli oppression, demolishing 'illegal' houses, and confiscating lands and then building settlements which reach the outskirts of the Arab communities from whom the land was taken, thus preventing any development in them.
Here we have before us one of the inherent contradictions in the policy which the Jewish-Zionist state exercises towards its Arab citizens. On one hand, it wishes to differentiate between the two parts of the Palestinian people which were torn from each other in the 1948 war, and aims at separating them from each other.
However, on the other hand - in order to justify the existence of a Jewish state, Israel is compelled to repeat and underline the "security" reasons presumably preventing it from accepting Palestinian Arabs as equal citizens and from acknowledging them as a national minority.
Strengthening of 1948 Palestinians' national identity
The Israeli 'Left' has assumed that the policies to dispossess the Palestinians inside Israel, including the 'Judaizing' of the Galilee and the Triangle area (Um el Fahem region which borders the West Bank), would continue uninterruptedly. Ashkenazi (European Jewish) middle class yuppies, most of them 'pursuers of peace', who were looking for a suburban 'quality of life', built settlements in the Galilee and the Triangle. In their opinion, they maintained good 'neighbourly relationships' with their Arab neighbours with the youngsters of whom they organised workshops for "coexistence". The rosy picture that those 'progressive' settlers drew for themselves was also shattered during the last three weeks.
At the time of Yitzak Rabin's rule, the state budgets to the Arab local authorities were increased, as part of a political alliance that was established with the Arab Members of Knesset, (MKs) according to which they supported the government in the Knesset, although they were not part of the government.
At that time an assumption prevalent in progressive academic circles in Israel was that the 'Israelisation' process of Arabs in Israel, was at its prime, at the expense of their identification with their people in the '67 Occupied Territories ("Palestinisation").
Sami Samoha, Professor of Sociology at Haifa University determined that it was inevitable that the Palestinians in Israel will accept the Jewish state, which was passing through a deep process of democratisation, "simply because they have no better alternative to their lives in Israel. The prospect of living in a Palestinian state certainly holds no charms for them. Thus it is clear that life in the Jewish - and democratic - state of Israel, with all its defects, is still the best deal on offer".
The individual and collective disorganisation of the national Arab minority was of no interest to the Israeli Left. As said before, the main dimension of their world view is that of the security of the state of Israel and its existence as a 'Jewish' state.
But once again the massive demonstrations of Palestinian Arabs in Israel confirmed that within their society, which supposedly was destined to be fragmented and atomised, a sense of solidarity with their brothers and sisters on the other side of the Green Line has been growing as part of the strengthening of their Palestinian national identity, alongside with their willingness to struggle persistently for radical equal citizenship in Israel.
However, they are calling not only for "equality of rights" on the individual level, but are demanding the recognition of their collective rights, such as returning the lands which have been stolen from them, granting them cultural autonomy etc. Moreover, they are challenging now the very legal and ideological foundations of the Jewish-Zionist state in which their oppression is structurally inevitable.
Old Zionism vs. Neoliberalism
It seems that Israel is ready to take off the gloves now that the cracks have been revealed in the colonialist structure that Zionism erected. Confronting the genuine national desires within the Palestinian people is bringing the Labour establishment to show its real face.
There are no more deceiving attempts to claim that there are substantial differences between Left and Right - attempts that have continued since the beginning of colonisation in Palestine. The Labour Party is almost liquidated by now, as is the 'political centre' that Barak founded before the last elections - 'One Israel'.
The majority of the Labour representatives will support a united national government, together with the Likud headed by Sharon, which will adopt a policy of slaughter and bloodshed to oppress the opposition in the Occupied Territories, and to force the Palestinians to accept the Israeli-American dictates.
This has, from the very beginning, been the strategy of the Zionist Labour Movement - conquering the land in 'peaceful ways', by adding another acre and another goat, and simultaneously getting ready to exploit fully the military power which was developed over years- as was the case in the 1948 war. This is the future plan of a united government after the failure of the diplomatically enforced surrender.
The Israeli public opinion has also been prepared as in 1948, to accept a blatant and cruel policy of force. A Gallup Poll reports Israeli society has become seeped in religious-nationalistic fanaticism . Not a day passes without reports of persecution of Arab citizens, beatings, arson, and attacks onroperty.
Most of these events are not reported to the police or even to Human Rights organisations, mainly due to the lack of confidence in legal authorities, which have been strengthened in the recent demonstrations.
In no small way the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the Zionist Left, which assumed it was possible to reach the realisation of the Oslo Agreements by convincing the Israeli public with arguments such as "security" and "separation", - but without any change in the prevailing discourse justifying Zionism and without recognising the impact of what the Palestinians call Naqba ( the impact of the defeat of 1948).
We have indeed witnessed supposedly new trends of 'Post Zionism', which presented a local version of neo-liberal and multi-culturalism ideology of the capitalist globalisation era.
The representatives of the new bourgeoisie which emerged with the development of the Israeli economy, and their mouthpieces - the Labour Party and the left Zionist party Meretz - who initiated the Oslo Agreements have meanwhile failed to achieve the goal of ensuring political and 'security' stability.
It should be noted that large parts of this new bourgeoisie, (including professionals and academics, the majority of whom are Ashkenazim) are the biological and ideological offspring of the Zionist Labour movement that founded the state of Israel.
There is a structured contradiction between their class interests regarding a free economy and privatisation - and their Zionist commitment to the existence of a Jewish state, to rule over the entire area of historic Palestine. The latter demands the continuity of some of the ideological and socio-economic collectivist dimensions of traditional Zionism, which may be an obstacle to a wild free market, and to the ideology which legitimises it.
Within this inner contradiction in the policy and ideology of the political establishment in Israel, the classic Zionist trend of 'Blood and Soil', of conquest and direct brutal oppression, has so far won over. It indeed seems that Barak and his followers in the Labour party have decided to disconnect themselves from the unholy alliance with the Israeli big industrialists who are seeing the destruction of their dreams of the "new Middle East".
They are now trying to protest against Barak's attempts to unite with Sharon and are calling upon him to establish a coalition with Shas (an ultra-orthodox party representing largely n African Jews) - the same Shas of which, at the time Barak's government was being formed, the same people repeatedly cried, "Anybody but Shas!"
A wide consensus is now emerging around the continuation of the Zionist project in its year 2000 version, which is no less brutal than its previous versions. However, the unity between Right and 'Left' will inevitably widen the cracks in the Israeli-American project: it will strengthen the opposition of the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line, and within Israeli society will hopefully create a solid core which will be able to disconnect itself from the new nationalistic alliance.
This may well ignite the fire of true solidarity with the Palestinian people among the masses in the Arab world - all of which threaten American imperialism and its Israeli clients in the region.