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Palestinian struggle needs worldwide solidarity
by Gerry Foley
The Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas proclaimed
on Aug. 31 that it had finally avenged its leaders
Adel Aziz Rantisi, who was the victim of an Israeli
missile on April 17, and the invalid Sheikh Ahmed
Ismail Yassin, who was blown away by an Israeli
missile as he came out of his mosque on March 22.
Two suicide bombers, reportedly from a Hebron cell of
Hamas, blew themselves up in two Israeli buses in the
southern Israeli town of Beer Sheva, about 30 miles
from the Gaza border. Sixteen people were killed in
the bombing, including a three-year-old boy.
Palestinian crowds in Gaza celebrated the bombing as
revenge against their Zionist tormenters. It was a
rare emotional satisfaction for them since the Israeli
army kills Palestinians every day, including children
and teenagers, and destroys the homes and livelihoods
of still more. The entire Palestinian population is
being plunged deeper and deeper into insecurity and
misery.
However, in this context the concept of revenge loses
all meaning. Who is being avenged, when the sufferings
of Palestinians and the toll of Palestinian deaths
constantly increase?
The Israeli government’s response to the bombing was
revealing. The government blamed the success of Hamas
on the failure of Israeli intelligence to penetrate
the Hamas cell in the Hebron area. It claimed that it
had been tipped off about other suicide bombing
attempts in recent months and thus had been able to
foil them. Supposedly, the “intelligence failure” that
was to blame for the Beer Sheba bombing was an
exception.
This explication belied other official claims that the
suicide bombing had succeeded because the “security
fence” had not been completed in the Beer Sheba area.
But it is more credible since many experts have
pointed out that the fence cannot stop well-organized
guerrillas.
It indicates that there are two sides to the
desperation of the Palestinians that leads thousands
and even tens of thousands of people to cheer for
bombings that kill ordinary people, including small
children. One side, obviously, is fury, but the other
side is a demoralization that leads some Palestinians
to collaborate with the Israelis.
The Israeli services are obviously finding Palestinian
collaborators, despite the fact that such spies risk
their lives and the honor of their families. The
explanation given by Palestinian collaborators who
have been willing to talk to the press is that they
became convinced that the Palestinians could not win
and so decided to cast their lot with the stronger
party.
Both the fury and the demoralization illustrate the
cost of the Zionist genocide against the Palestinians,
not only for the Palestinians but for humanity as a
whole. It lowers the general standards of human
conduct. It turns some into fanatical killers and
others into traitors. All of humanity is degraded, as
in the case of the Jews who betrayed other Jews to the
Nazis in order to prolong their hopeless and wretched
lives.
It is necessary to raise a worldwide outcry over the
damage that Zionist crimes create for all humanity, in
order to defend the rights of the Palestinians here
and now and help to raise the morale of the oppressed
people. It has to be explained to the Jewish
population of Israel that their government’s assault
on the Palestinians is contributing to the rise of a
slaughterhouse world in which no one can have
security.
The Palestinians need to be convinced of wide
solidarity in order to stem the processes of social
breakdown in their own community, of which the Zionist
collaborators are only one aspect. In fact, the long
delayed “revenge” for the murders of Yassin and
Rantisi came at the same time as internal tensions
have been increasing within the Palestinian Authority
and between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
The most ominous sign was the attempted murder of
General Tareq Abu Rajab, vice director of the
Palestinian Authority’s general security service, in
an ambush near the Shate refugee camp in Gaza. He was
badly wounded and two of his bodyguards were killed.
According to the Italian left daily Il Manifesto, the
ambush was generally attributed to the New Al Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade, a group supposedly close to Arafat’s
rival, Mohammad Dahlan. Abu Rajab was not a high
profile official, but was known for his loyalty to
Arafat. There continue to be speculations about the
authors of the attack, but so far no one has
questioned that they were Palestinian. The attack
raised the specter of internecine warfare among
Palestinian factions.
Dahlan has been pressing for “reform” of the
Palestinian Authority, which would amount to reducing
Arafat’s control. The Palestinian Authority
legislature and premier have also been pressing for
changes along that line. However, the more militant
elements among the Palestinian organizations fear that
the attack on Arafat means preparation for some sort
of deal with Israel, since the old charismatic leader
is a bridge between more militant and more
opportunistic elements, and thus becomes an obstacle
to a deal that would involve jettisoning the
militants.
In a concession to the demands for “reform” and “more
democracy,” the Palestinian Authority has begun
registration for the first municipal elections in the
areas supposedly under PA control in eight years. But,
according to the liberal Zionist daily Haaretz of
Sept. 4, potential Palestinian voters have been
showing little enthusiasm: “While more than 1000 voter
registration centers opened throughout the Palestinian
territories, turnout was light on Saturday morning, in
part because of voter apathy and a widespread belief
that the elections will not bring real change.”
The last elections, in 1996, were boycotted by Hamas
on the grounds that they were held under the Oslo
Accords, which it opposed. This time, the Islamist
organization has indicated that it will participate in
the elections. But so far this does not seem to have
increased the interest in them among Palestinians.
In the circumstances that prevail in the areas
formally under the control of the PA,
parliamentary-type elections cannot have much
credibility. The PA itself barely functions. The areas
it is supposed to run are really occupied by the
Israeli army or under its guns.
The only kind of democracy that could mean anything
would be the election of local committees directly
tied to the struggle of the Palestinian people. But
that would mean a social revolution, the creation of a
new kind of leadership.
And it would require a program that can unite the
Palestinian people in the fight and offer a
perspective of victory. It would have to be a program
that would inspire the anti-imperialist struggle
throughout the Middle East and win even broader
international sympathy.
Such a transformation of the organization of the
Palestinian struggle is of course very difficult. But
it is more and more essential to halt the processes of
social breakdown and reenergize the fight of the
Palestinian people for their rights and their lives.
It would go a long way toward changing the times we
live in and toward restoring human values and
aspirations on a world scale. It could be greatly
facilitated by building a broader international
movement in defense of the Palestinian people.
The article above first appeared in the September 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
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