The Organization for Democratic Action
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ODA Position Paper on the Intifada of al-Aksa
Ariel Sharon's visit on September 28 to the al-Aksa compound � followed
by clashes there in which Israeli police killed seven Palestinians � has
triggered an explosion spreading beyond the Occupied Territories into
Israel itself. The fury has made clear to all that the Oslo Accords are
finished. The groups that were party to these accords have suffered a
major, perhaps mortal, blow. As a political party, the Organization for
Democratic Action (ODA � Da'am in Arabic) closely follows these events.
Our activists within the borders of 1948 take part in them, listen to
people, and visit the families of the dead and wounded in Um al-Fahem,
Majd al-Krum, Nazareth, and elsewhere. The level of mass participation
and confrontation within the 1948 borders, including especially the
massive closure of roads, is unprecedented even when compared with Land
Day in 1976. When Minister of Police Shlomo Ben Ami calls the events "a
civil revolt", he is not far from the mark.
All the understandings and arrangements by which Israel ruled the
Occupied Territories (by means of the Palestinian Authority) and its
Arab citizens (by means of the Supreme Monitoring Committee) have
collapsed. This debacle heralds the start of a new era. Whereas the Oslo
Accords assumed Israeli supremacy, their failure has shown the masses
blocking the roads that it is in their power to change the situation.
The martyrs � nearly eighty now in Israel and the Territories � went to
their deaths because they were no longer willing to yield up their fates
to the leaders who had taken part in shaping Oslo.
When we analyze the events, however, we must distinguish absolutely
between, on the one hand, the heroism and self-sacrifice of youths who
go out to express how fed up they are with the American-backed Israeli
oppression, and, on the other hand, the Arab leadership, whether in the
Territories or in Israel, which has consistently neglected the economic
interests of the people in order to advance those of its own particular
class. It is important to bear this distinction in mind, lest we pin our
expectations on the wrong persons in the lengthy struggle that lies
ahead.
The ODA has been claiming for some time that during the past three
years, a change of opinion has occurred in the Arab world, including the
Territories. In contrast with the situation that prevailed in the days
of the Madrid Conference (1991), the Arab world is no longer willing to
accept American-Israeli dominance in the region. Hafez al-Assad
epitomized this new attitude when he refused to accept an agreement that
would deprive him of a small strip of lakeshore. The US and Israel
refuse to see this change. Israeli supremacy and Arab subordination
remain the basic ingredients in their recipes for peace. Yet the change
in Arab opinion is clear and strong. Thus, as the date for signing the
final-status agreement approached, Arafat felt that what he was being
asked to agree to would cost him his head. At Camp David, therefore, he
didn't tell Clinton, "I don't want to," but rather, "I can't."
The Barak government too collapsed as Oslo's moment of truth approached.
He rules today without a parliamentary majority. Both of the two major
players, then, lack popular support. It is not in their power to put
through an agreement that would, in effect, streamline the Middle East
for globalization. Likewise, the status of the US has declined: witness
its inability to keep oil prices down.
Many questions arise as the clashes complete their second week: Whose
fault are they? Did Arafat initiate them, capitalizing on Sharon's
provocation? Is he able to stop them? What now is the place of the Arab
citizens in Israel? What is the role of its leadership? Are we heading
toward war?
In this position paper we shall try to answer these questions, but first
we must draw a second clear distinction, namely, between the clashes
within the borders of Israel and those within the Territories.
Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line share common roots and feel
deep solidarity, but the political apparatus in each case is utterly
different. Within Israel, the intifada now taking place is a spontaneous
popular uprising, as yet without leaders and without specific demands.
It expresses a deep rupture of all former understandings between Jews
and Arabs. In the Territories, on the other hand, although the events
are much more powerful than anyone expected so soon � and have taken
many lives � they still remain within the basic American rules: as of
now, for example, there has been no declaration of statehood.
The "al-Aksa intifada"
The uprising in the Territories was partly spontaneous, partly not.
Earlier, at Camp David, Clinton made a major mistake by showing himself
to be clearly on Israel's side. He blamed Arafat for the summit's
failure. Then certain American columnists undertook a vendetta against
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who �although the recipient of much US foreign
aid � had failed to push his Palestinian proteg� in the direction
Washington wanted. Despite such pressures, however, the Arab world
didn't budge. It signaled, instead, that the Clinton era was past and
that the next president had better be fairer.
Arafat chose to bring down the Camp David summit over the issue of
al-Aksa. He ignored matters that were at least as important, such as
getting rid of the Israeli settlements and solving the refugee issue. He
stuck with al-Aksa, because he knew that around this point he could
mobilize the whole Muslim world. After the Sharon visit and the
killings, he used the resulting demonstrations and the heavy-handed
Israeli response to improve his bargaining position � taking care,
however, not to burn all bridges. It is no accident that the people who
stormed Israeli positions were not his uniformed security forces, who
maintained a fairly steady, if ineffective, contact with their
counterparts in Israel's army. Rather, Arafat sent two groups: unarmed
stone-throwing youngsters and the "tanzim" ("organization"). What is the
Tanzim?
This is a force composed of members of Fatah, the Arafat faction within
the PLO. Its members are to be distinguished from the people he brought
with him from Tunis. Arafat turned the "Tunisians" into the core of the
PA's ruling establishment, but he also built up and armed the leaders of
the local popular movement, including many who took part in the original
intifada ten to thirteen years ago. These make up the Tanzim. They bear
grudges against both Arafat and the corrupt "Tunisians", but they do not
constitute any alternative to the PA. In the recent events, Arafat has
used the Tanzim in order to avoid committing his official security
forces (although the latter too have occasionally taken part in the
disturbances). The Tanzim activists have agreed to this arrangement in
order to improve their position with regard to the future distribution
of power.
At the forefront of the clashes, along with the Tanzim, are young men
and children throwing stones. Here Arafat has attained the height of
cynical cruelty: If he sent only stone-throwers into the battle, Israel
would be under great pressure not to use live ammunition, as in the old
intifada days. But by sending stone-throwers side by side with the armed
Tanzim, he gives Israeli soldiers reason to shoot. The stone-throwers
then become martyrs, and the much larger number of Palestinian
fatalities improves Arafat's status in international eyes.
In the interim Oslo agreement, Arafat agreed that Joseph's Tomb and the
Gazan settlement of Netzarim would remain in Jewish hands. Yet now he
sends stone-throwing youth together with the armed Tanzim against
Israeli guns in order to "reconquer" these places, while dimly in the
background stand his uniformed police. In a people's war, indeed, you
send all you've got to fight the enemy, but when you have an armed
force, why expose unarmed people to bullets and missiles? If ever Arafat
does return to the negotiating table, having amassed in his view enough
"points", he had better be in a position to explain to the families for
what grand purpose he sacrificed their children.
The purpose he has in mind is far from grand. No doubt the young men
throwing stones would like the current battles to become a War of
Independence, freeing them from the Israeli yoke � from the roadblocks
and the settlements. But this is far from being Arafat's program. He is
dependent on the US and Israel down to the very last rifle. Without
their approval he has no money to meet his budget. Indeed, without their
approval he cannot travel or make a phone call or turn on an electric
light, for all these things remain under Israeli control. (Barak, for
example, has just closed Gaza's airport.) Arafat is in no position,
therefore, to throw off the American framework and opt for a lengthy
guerrilla war. Instead, he attempts to buy time, hoping that the US will
finally agree to give him the bit more rope he wants. On the one hand,
then, he refrains from declaring a state and burning the bridges. On the
other hand, he refuses to sign a final-status agreement ending the
conflict. The narrow space between these alternatives is dangerously
volatile, as the present explosion shows. In the absence of an
independent, revolutionary leadership, the "al-Aksa intifada" can lead
to nothing except protracted conflict.
"The intifada of the child"
On September 30, one day after the killings at al-Aksa, a television
camera picked out 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dira, crouching in fear beside
his father at Netzarim Junction in Gaza until Israeli fire killed him.
In response, the Palestinians in Israel took to the streets. This death
on camera brought into focus feelings of humiliation and helplessness
that had continued to accumulate through the last decade.
It has been a decade in which the whole Arab leadership, from the
Islamic movement to Azmi Bishara, tied the fate of its people to the
Labor Party and the Oslo Accords. In return they received precisely
nothing. Israel's Arab population, numbering more than a million � about
a fifth of the total � has no place in the nation's planning. The Arabs
are not part of the country's hi-tech revolution. Their rate of
unemployment and poverty increases with each passing year. Their average
income is less than half the Jewish. Their living space shrinks because
most of their land reserves have been confiscated. They have no
industrial areas, as Jewish towns do. Many remain without sewage
systems. Their roads are a mess. Only 5% of the university students are
Arab... The list goes on and on.
This intifada too has had its harbingers: the events at Um al-Sahali in
April 1998; those at al-Roha in September 1998; those at Lod in June
1999. In all these instances, people showed they were ready to confront
the police in order to defend their homes and the little that is left of
their lands.
Ehud Barak, who owes his position to the Arab vote, preferred to form a
right-wing coalition with the National Religious Party (Mafdal) and
Shas. Barak is Arab-blind. (Scolding them for the recent disturbances,
he reminded them that they live in "a model democracy".) The Arab hatred
for him has begun to surface, although the demonstrators have yet to
define their grievances in political terms. Till now we see an
outpouring of pent-up rage. True leaders have yet to emerge and
formulate specific long-range demands.
An abyss has opened between the Arab population and the Israeli
establishment. The police have used live ammunition against the
demonstrators, killing at least eleven so far � an unprecedented number
of fatalities. (Land Day in 1976 claimed six lives.) The police failed
to prevent a pogrom in which armed Jews from Nazareth Illit swept down
on Arab Nazareth, killing two and wounding many more. All over the
country, Jews have taken the law into their own hands, destroying Arab
property and threatening Arab lives. (Guns exist in practically every
Israeli household.) These things are happening, we should remember, not
under the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu, but rather under that of Ehud
Barak, whom Arab voters helped put in office.
An abyss has also opened between the masses and the Arab leadership,
including the Knesset members, who placed themselves at the service of
Barak as they had at the service of Rabin and Peres before him. This
leadership comes from among bourgeois elements and academics in Israel,
who � after the collapse of the worldwide socialist camp � grew weary of
bearing the stigma of being Arab. The Oslo Accords opened a golden
opportunity for them to find a niche in the Israeli establishment,
serving as "bridges for peace" between the "Jewish state" and the Arab
world. Even as the latter was rejecting normalization with Israel, these
leaders were promoting it (much to their discredit in Arab capitals).
One ought not to be fooled by the seemingly radical rhetoric of leaders
from Hadash, the Islamic Movement, or Balad (Bishara's party). Indeed,
they attack the symbols of Zionism, such as the flag and the hymn, but
they carefully refrain from attacking Barak, whose government they would
join at the drop of a hat. They prefer a headline or an appearance on a
talk show to the day-to-day grind of relieving the hardships of Arab
life in this country. When and if the dust settles after the present
upheaval, how shall the Arab leaders justify their support for Barak?
How justify their policies of the last decade? Over and over they
claimed that it is possible to live in co-existence with Zionism. During
the Rabin years, Hadash leaders even announced, "Zionism has changed."
Only one left-wing party called on the Arabs in Israel to cast a blank
ballot rather than vote for Barak, and this was the ODA.
The political alliance with Labor cannot continue. We continue to hold,
as we always have: the Arabs in Israel deserve a leadership that will
connect them to the Arab world as a whole, including their people in the
Territories. They deserve a leadership that will strive to detach itself
from the American Falcon, teaming up instead with an anti-capitalist
global program.
Diplomatic contacts
The recent meeting of Arafat and Barak in Paris (October 5), which aimed
at a cease-fire, ended in failure. The US agreed to conduct these talks
with the participation of French president Jacques Chirac and UN
Secretary Kofi Anan, both known for their good connections in the Arab
world. This was the price that Washington had to pay in order to
conciliate the Arabs, after betraying its lack of neutrality.
Arafat's purpose was to attain a broad-based international investigation
into the causes of the violence and improve his bargaining position
against Israel. Barak and Albright, however, were only willing to accept
an investigation by the two sides plus the US. They brought heavy
pressures to bear and reached, they said later, an understanding � but
Arafat did not sign. Chirac objected to the proposal and influenced
Arafat, who canceled his verbal assent, and the talks collapsed.
Barak came home without an agreement. The options open to him are hard:
He can form a national-unity government with the Likud, using
overbearing force to quell the violence � thus securing his power for
the present while closing the door on the peace process. Or he can make
yet another attempt to call Arafat to order and drag him into signing an
accord. The Americans are pushing for the second alternative, but it is
doubtful whether Arafat, at this stage, can afford to be seen yielding
to the Israeli conditions.
The US does not want to see the Middle East go up in flames. As of
today, it is attempting to bring about a summit at Sharm al-Sheik that
will include Bill Clinton, Hosni Mubarak and Kofi Anan. It is hard to
predict whether this initiative will work. Clinton, Barak and those Arab
states that back Oslo are extremely concerned lest war break out at this
time. They will do all they can to calm things. A total explosion would
cost them all dearly in political terms.
>From the recent events we may draw several conclusions:
1) The US is losing control in the area. The Clinton regime based its
regional strategy on two axes: a) war with Iraq, which conceals an
implicit threat against the other oil-producing countries; and b) the
Oslo Accords, including absolute support for Israel. The latter was to
emerge as the regional economic power.
Both of these axes have fallen apart. Despite the long siege, Iraq has
managed to endure. Secondly, the Oslo Accords appear to be finished. The
most recent expression of Washington's weakness was its inability to use
its veto (it abstained) in the UN Security Council when the latter
condemned Israel in the light of the al-Aksa events.
2) The Arab world can no longer be managed as in the past. Its masses
will not tolerate both their own dictators and the dictates of the World
Bank. The huge demonstrations throughout this world against the US and
Israel are a warning to dictatorial regimes such as those in Egypt,
Jordan and Syria. All are on thin ice. Or to vary the clich�, they find
themselves between the American hammer and the anvil of their
poverty-stricken peoples.
3) The Israeli political system, which conducted the Oslo process, has
reached a dead end. Barak does not have a coalition of doves that can
approve concessions � even partial, symbolic ones � on the Golan Heights
or in Jerusalem. Israeli society is immersed in a religious and
nationalistic fanaticism bearing strong marks of Fascism. The result is
likely to be entrenchment in militant right-wing positions.
4) The Arab population in Israel will have to formulate its demands
anew. It will have to open a militant, independent struggle to force the
Israeli government to stop blocking its development, its sources of
livelihood and its possibilities of decent housing. The Arabs cannot
carry out this struggle as part of the Labor bloc, but only as a
militant opposition. The present task is not to lobby in the Knesset,
but rather to mobilize the people for struggle. The people on the street
must have input into the decisions of the leaders. There is no reason
why more than a million citizens should not use their popular and
electoral power to defend their interests.
5) Nine years ago the US and Israel rejected the alternative of an
independent Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories, preferring
the approach that is signified today by the names "Madrid" and "Oslo".
In taking these steps, the two rejected the principle of solution by
compromise. Just as Washington was to get hegemony over the world, so
Israel over the Middle East. The principles of Oslo express a total
Israeli victory. At the same time, however, they transformed the
conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis into a struggle for
existence, destined to continue beneath the surface when not bursting
forth in violence. The architects of Oslo proved that there can be no
reconciliation between the Palestinian movement for national liberation
and Zionism, just as, in South Africa, there could be no reconciliation
with apartheid. It was apartheid that had to be transformed � and not
the demand of the blacks for equality.
The situation in the Middle East reflects what is happening all over the
globe. The new world order that began to emerge after the Gulf War is
already collapsing. From Seattle to Jakarta, from Prague to Mexico City,
millions struggle for a change in the global capitalist system. Zionism
is an integral part of this system, and its fate will be determined
together with it.
The Oslo Accords fostered an illusion that a Zionist Israel with
adjusted borders could co-exist with an Arab world led by pro-American
regimes. Now these accords have reached an impasse. All who were party
to them � and who had expected to benefit at the expense of the masses �
today find that their feeding trough is broken.
A solution to the difficulties of the Middle East must be sought far
from American hegemony. The ODA does not believe it possible to achieve
it without real progress toward a radical change in the industrial
centers of the world. Not the Palestinians alone, or even the Arab world
alone, can create a political and social alternative to the order that
Washington wants to impose. The global economy must change. From
capitalism serving a tiny group � whether uncontrolled capitalism as in
America or flexible as in Europe � there must be the shift to a
socialism that serves all. The ODA sees itself as a component in a
worldwide movement that is beginning to move away from capitalist
globalization toward socialism.
