Conflict in Gaza
After bloody clashes with militias linked to Fatah
and Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, the Islamic organisation,
Hamas, took control of the Gaza strip on 13 June. Predictably, this has
led the Israeli state, the US and other powers to express support for
Fatah. Meanwhile, the people of Gaza are stuck under economic siege and
in fear of further violence. KEVIN SIMPSON reports.
MEDIA HEADLINES ACROSS the world described this as
‘civil war’, yet the vast majority of Palestinians took no part in the
clashes. Instead, this was a struggle for power between Hamas and Fatah
and had little to do with ‘Palestinian national unity’, despite the
claims of both sides. As usual, it was the majority of Palestinians, the
impoverished working class and middle class, who suffered the
consequences as 120 people died and there were over 500 casualties, many
of them civilians.
Palestinian civilians faced possible death if they
went out on the streets. There was no access to food and water. Gaza’s
hospitals became a battleground as militia gunmen stalked the corridors
looking to execute wounded opponents.
The majority of Palestinians were terrified. The
latest clashes piled even more despair on a desperate population.
Despite these conditions, as television footage showed, a heroic
minority was prepared to come out on the streets to disarm militia men
with their bare hands! If large independent Palestinian working-class
organisations had existed in Gaza, they could have organised such
actions on a mass scale which could have held back the militias from
taking over the streets.
US imperialism and the regional capitalist powers
have shown out-and-out hypocrisy in their response, decrying the ‘Hamas
coup’. They rushed to defend Fatah, the same organisation which in
previous years they described as ‘terrorist’. The Bush administration
demanded ‘democracy’ in the Middle East. When the Palestinians elected
Hamas in a free election, US imperialism, working with the undemocratic
Saudi Arabian dictatorship, did its utmost to remove it from power.
US imperialism encouraged armed clashes between
Fatah and Hamas militias by providing $80 million in weapons for Abbas’s
own militia. As the recently retired UN envoy to the Middle East, Alvaro
de Soto, explained in a leaked confidential report to his superiors:
"The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so
much so that, a week before Mecca [the Mecca agreement in February
2007], the US envoy declared twice in an envoys’ meetings in Washington
how much ‘I like this violence’, referring to the near civil-war that
was erupting in Gaza". (Guardian, 18 June)
Repercussions
THE REPERCUSSIONS OF Hamas’ defeat of Fatah in Gaza
will exponentially add to tensions across the region. Western
imperialism is now faced with an unfolding nightmare. US imperialism and
the reactionary Arab elite in Egypt and Saudi Arabia regard Hamas’
victory as strengthening their enemies in the region: the Syrian and
Iranian regimes.
Who talks of peace now? Who even remembers the Oslo
peace accords signed by the Israeli government and the Palestine
Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1993 and supported by the US
government, which most capitalist commentators said would end the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict? See what happens if you mention Bush’s
2003 ‘road map to peace’. Palestinians will point to the photo galleries
of their young loved ones, cut down in the prime of life, casualties of
the murderous, imperialist-backed occupation by the Israeli military.
Every time imperialist and regional capitalist
politicians come up with a new proposal, none of the real problems of
national oppression and mass poverty are actually addressed. In fact,
they get worse.
These events have their roots in Israeli ruling
class oppression of the Palestinian people which began with the driving
out of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 when Israel was
created. This suffering was multiplied by the occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Israeli-Arab six-day war, whose 40th
anniversary passed in June.
In the intervening years, so-called ‘peace’
agreements have been designed to insitutionalise the oppression of the
Palestinians. This is because capitalism cannot afford the political and
financial costs of genuine Palestinian liberation. The Oslo accords,
which led to the formation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA),
installed Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement which led the PLO into power,
as the outsourced local jailers of the Palestinian people. Since Fatah’s
defeat, sections of the Israeli media have described Gaza as ‘Hamastan’
and blame ‘Islamic terrorists’. But commentators conveniently forget to
mention that the Israeli secret services supported Hamas after it was
founded in 1987 in order to undermine its stronger rival at the time,
the PLO.
However, the PLO leadership rapidly lost authority
among Palestinians because of endemic corruption, spiralling poverty and
no abatement of Israeli military attacks. This led to a growth in
support for Hamas, which was seen as a more honest alternative to Fatah.
Voting the ‘wrong way’
DESPITE ‘PEACE’ AGREEMENTS, Israeli settlement of
the West Bank increased by 50% from 1992-96. Palestinian areas were
subdivided and separated from each other and Palestinian workers were
barred from Israel, further increasing poverty. There are now 450
Israeli military roadblocks and 70 permanent checkpoints in the West
Bank. This in an area one-third the size of greater London!
Under pressure from US imperialism, Abbas called
elections in January 2006. To the horror of the Bush regime, Hamas won.
Ever since, US imperialism, the EU powers and Israeli capitalism have
implemented collective punishment on the Palestinians for ‘voting the
wrong way’. The intention was to force out the Hamas government. The
Israeli regime withheld $800 million in tax receipts owed to the
Palestinian government. The EU and US cut off economic aid. At the same
time, the Israeli military continued a bombardment against Gaza and the
West Bank killing over 700 Palestinians.
All Hamas had to offer its electorate was
anti-imperialist and anti-Fatah rhetoric, and the memory of its armed
attacks on Israeli civilians. While the CWI supports the right of the
Palestinians to defend themselves, we do not support military attacks on
Israeli civilian workers and young people, which drive them into the
arms of the most reactionary political forces in Israel.
Last year’s Palestinian public-sector workers’
strike against non-payment of wages indicated the pressure on Hamas.
Pressure from Arab elites in the region – from an opposite standpoint –
led to the formation of a ‘national unity’ government made up of Hamas
and Fatah in February this year. But the new government solved none of
the terrible problems Palestinians face daily.
Oxfam, the campaigning charity, reported on the day
of the Hamas takeover that one family in 15 has debts greater than
$25,000. A Palestinian school headmaster only earns $9,000 a year!
Society is disintegrating. One of the only growth industries is
kidnapping. Young people turn to crime or join the militias to survive.
Now Palestine consists of two statelets: Gaza,
controlled by Hamas; and the West Bank, supported by Israel, the US and
EU, with Fatah as the major force. Given the terrible and deteriorating
social and economic situation, more conflict is on the agenda.
Abbas has dissolved the unity government, declared a
‘state of emergency’ and installed Salam Fayyad, its former World
Bank-trained finance minister, as the new prime minister. Yet Fayyad’s
party list only received 2.4% in the recent general elections. Ismail
Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, has insisted that the old government
will remain in power. Once again the hypocrisy of US imperialism and
other western powers on the issue of ‘democracy’ is exposed for all to
see, by their desire to support an unelected Fatah regime against the
elected Hamas.
What will Hamas do?
IT IS NOT clear whether Hamas will attempt to attack
Fatah offices and leaders in the West Bank or step up rocket attacks on
southern Israel. While the evidence suggests that Hamas carefully
planned its takeover, as in its January 2006 election victory, its
leaders were surprised by the ease with which it was accomplished.
This is because many Fatah militia men were paid
fighters and not ideologically motivated. During the armed
confrontations Fatah organisations in Gaza fractured, with big sections
going over to Hamas. Fatah fighters had no real confidence in their
leaders, some of whom were renowned for their acceptance of Israeli
domination, corruption, and links with criminal gangs. Principal among
these was Muhammad Dahlan, who many young people in Gaza nicknamed
‘Dahlan Rice’, after the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
Following the Hamas takeover, local Fatah leaders
announced a new interim committee to lead the organisation in Gaza,
condemning the ‘collaborators’ who used to head the organisation and
claiming that Hamas would not harm ‘good’ Fatah members. Incredibly,
other Fatah hardliners have described the same individuals as part of
the ‘mutiny trend’ who capitulated to Hamas. On 18 June former Fatah
secretary in Gaza, Husam ‘Udwan, called for the formation of an
emergency committee to punish Dahlan for this ‘crime’.
It is not clear to what extent Hamas will apply
strict Islamic law. Despite claims by Hamas spokespeople that Gaza was
an Islamic state, it is more likely that it will tread carefully.
However much Hamas leaders boast about the ease of their victory, the
measures they take will be based on how much support they think they
have among Palestinian people. They understand that this has fallen in
the last few months, and that they do not have the same extent of
grassroots support, for example, as Hezbollah does among the Shia
community in southern Lebanon. One initiative they could take is to
strive to obtain the release of Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC
journalist, to broaden their support.
But, as is the case across the Middle East, no one
force is able to determine events. Other Islamic-based militias could
carry out rocket attacks on Israel, leading to a ground incursion into
Gaza, or the Israeli military could carry out pre-emptive air-strikes.
During the armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas, Israeli tank fire
killed five Palestinians, four of them children, east of Rafah (Ma’an
News Agency, 16 June).
Heightened tension
THE IMMEDIATE CALLS for an ‘international force’ to
be stationed in Gaza have evaporated into thin air. This would be a
suicide mission for any country involved. It may be the case that some
UN force could be deployed along the Gaza-Egyptian border, but this
would also be risky for the countries involved.
Tension has increased as the Israeli regime has cut
off fuel supplies to all outlets except the main power station. There
are press reports that the new defence minister in the Israeli
government, Ehud Barak, is calling for a ground invasion of 20,000
Israeli troops to wipe out militias firing rockets on southern Israel.
This is not the most likely immediate outcome, since the Israeli
military wants to avoid a repeat of the debacle it faced in Lebanon in
summer 2006, when it committed ground troops to ‘destroy Hezbollah’. The
military fears an ‘Israeli Baghdad’ or, as some of the Israeli press
have said, a ‘Palestinian Mogadishu’. The latter refers to the takeover
of Somalia’s capital by militias in the 1990s which led to the retreat
of US and Pakistani forces stationed there under a UN mandate. However,
new Israeli incursions into Gaza cannot be ruled out in the next few
months, especially if rocket attacks continue.
Under these circumstances the impression is given
that workers and young people across the region can do nothing. But the
alternative is a further drift into bloody conflict. In fact, the
conditions are there for a struggle against capitalism and poverty on
both sides of the national divide.
Like many Palestinians, the CWI does not support the
political positions of either the Fatah or Hamas leadership.
Unfortunately, recent developments have proved embarrassing for some
left groups internationally who have supported both of these
organisations over the years. Hamas’ politics, although couched in
anti-imperialistic rhetoric, is hostile to the workers’ movement and
socialism. Their military attacks on Israeli civilians are incorrect and
counter-productive. Fatah policies have zigzagged over the years between
exerting diplomatic pressure on the imperialist powers to grant
Palestinian national liberation or carrying out armed attacks against
Israeli civilians.
The effect of mass movements
AS THE PRESENT situation in the Palestinian areas
shows, none of these tactics has worked. Only an independent
working-class movement on both sides of the national divide offers a way
forward for the region. If a mass movement of Palestinians had developed
in Gaza and the West Bank, in opposition to the murderous tactics of the
Fatah and Hamas militias, demanding fundamental social change and
defending the rights of all nationalities, this would have had a massive
effect in Israel.
For it is not just among the Palestinians that there
is deep discontent with the ruling class. The Israeli elite has never
had such a lack of authority in its history. The army chief had to be
replaced because of the Lebanon defeat. The finance minister faces
accusations of siphoning money off from a charity which organises tours
of concentration camp sites in Europe. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister,
has only 1-2% support. There is unprecedented wealth polarisation.
Neo-liberal economic policies, including wide-scale privatisation, have
led to a backlash with 59% of the population now supporting a ‘socialist
economy’ (in this case, a desire to return to the pre-cuts welfare
state), according to a poll from the Israeli Institute for Democracy.
An opinion poll by Near East Consulting, one week
before the latest Gaza clashes, showed that 50% of Palestinians trusted
neither Abbas nor Haniyeh. Over 60% think that rocket attacks have no
positive effects.
Imperialism has nothing to offer Palestinians and
Israelis alike but more suffering. Hopes for a UN-mediated solution will
be sorely disappointed. But other ‘capitalist’ solutions will also
founder. Recently, there have been suggestions in the western media that
perhaps a ‘three-state solution’ should be put forward. Or perhaps the
incorporation of the West Bank into a federation with Jordan. However,
the latter has been proposed before. It would not be accepted by the
Jordanian ruling elite because of the instability it would build into
the country. Neither would the Palestinians accept being swallowed up by
a regime renowned for its discrimination, lack of democracy and
brutality. What none of these ‘solutions’ explain is how the genuine
desires for a decent life for all Palestinians and genuine national
liberation will be fulfilled. The failure to do this has led to decades
of conflict.
The majority of Israelis and Palestinians have no
trust in their ruling elites solving the present conflict. Movements
based on the interests of the majority on both sides of the national
divide need to be built, dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist
system that perpetuates division and conflict.
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