Article from JLO # 6 (Nov./Dec./95)

The "peace treaties", sealed between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the state of Israel in the North American capital in 1993 and ratified this year with the "return" of some cities occupied by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank instead of putting a final stop to serious conflicts that devastates this region, as imperialism and its propaganda agencies try to impose upon everybody, only rekindled more deep tensions that surrounds the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people against the Zionist enclave of Israel.

The assassinations of greatest leader of Jihad, Fathi Chqaqi and of premier Yitzhak Rabin are at present a practical demonstration that the "Palestinian Question" widely differs from the farce put on by Yankee imperialism with the support of the PLO leadership in order to make a puppet manipulated by Israel and ironically called the "Palestinian National Authority" (PNA)

Rabin, who some days before had organised the terrorist attack that resulted in murder of the leader of Jihad, was assassinated when he just preparing to leave a rally of the labour party that governs Israel since 1992. The public act called with the slogan "in defence of the peace process" was in fact an electoral rally because of enormous growing of the Israeli right — the Likud Party, oppositionist chief force — that would require anticipated parliamentary elections prescribed for the next year. The leader of Likud, Bynyamin Netanyahu, would go to present in that week to Knesset (Parliament) a "motion of suspicion ". If it were approved, the general elections would be anticipated, with strong chances of a resounding labour defeat.

The great press and the Israeli police force presented the murderer, Nigal Amyr, like member of the Eyal, an extreme right group. Though the Rabin’s widow holds the Likud Party responsible for climate of terror prevailing in Israel, she was disputed under the accusation of inciting a civil war among the Jews itself. The only confirmed certainty is that the murderer would belonging the very Zionist establishment, position that would give him free access for shooting at the prime minister.

Despite several demonstrations favorable to Rabin’s assassination, proceeding chiefly from orthodox religious persons and Jewish tenant farmers from the occupied territories, who regarded him as a traitor, the climate of commotion stirred up by strong pressure from national and international media causing the Likud Party to support the composition of new Cabinet, headed by old chancellor Shimon Peres, securing the maintenance of the electoral chronogram previously established and, therefore, the maintenance of labour party members in power.

Imperialism went about quickly securing the continuity of "peace treaties" as an unreversible way between the PLO and Israel, presenting Rabin like the great craftsman and martyr of peace. This course was promptly followed by the "left" from the entire world. Gorbachev stated, "the Israeli people lost a leader of exceptional gifts" (Brazilian newspaper, Estado de São Paulo, 8 November 1995). The Brazilian Worker Party leader, Lula, in turn, went to the Israeli embassy to weep for the loss of "the greatest name of world-wide peace"(Folha de São Paulo, 9 November 1995).

On the contrary the Palestinian people went out streets, from the occupied territories to Lebanon and Egypt, for commemorating the death of the Zionist executioner who they know very much. It was Rabin who commanded the Zionist army in occupation of Palestinian territories in Six-Day War (1967). But he did not stop here. When he was defense minister in 1984, he decreed a law ordering to break the bones from hands of Palestinian children who would throw stones against Israeli soldiers. And, in order that there were no doubt about a possible regeneration in more recent period, Rabin himself, amid the negotiations to seal the peace accord in 1993, bombarded the Palestinian camps in the south of Lebanon, killing over 150 civilians and putting 300,000 refugees in the road escaping from cowardly the Zionist artillery.

It was a communiqué from Popular Front for Palestinian Liberation (PFPL), a leftist faction of PLO, which best summarised the sentiment of Palestinian people, "we would be more happy if we ourselves could have killed them."The Formation of Israel Like an Enclave of Imperialism in the Middle East

The end of constant massacres of Palestinian people as well as the fulfilment of their legitimate national aspiration for forming a real homeland is not the product of reactionary "peace treaties" or the creation of a Palestinian protectorate underneath boots of the terrorist state of Israel. For the revolutionary Marxists, the characterisation of Israel like an enclave of imperialism established against the struggle of Arabian masses from the Middle East is fundamental for we defend its destruction like part of a revolutionary program for the Palestinian workers.

If we dating back a little in the history of the creation of the state of Israel in Palestinian territory (1948), we will be able to understand the real essence of this operation directed initially by English imperialism and concluded by the Yankee one, aiming to extend its dominion over a region that is strategic from the viewpoints: economic, political and military ones.

The ideological make-up that would justify the creation of a country starting from an almost nothingness, British imperialism borrowed of the Zionist movement. Zionism (the movement’s name is derived from Zion, the hill on which the Temple of Jerusalem was located and which later came to symbolise Jerusalem itself) proclaimed the necessity of a "regeneration" of the Jewish people, who after the great Diaspora outside Palestine, around A.D 70, would have stray itself from its productive roots, being exclusively connected with business and financial activities. Theodor Herzl, one of founders of this movement, proposes "the conquest of work by the Jewish people" in return to "the Promised Land" already in 1901.  Under the slogan "a peopleless land for a landless people ", the Zionists forgot a little detail: the existence of a million of Palestinians who have lived there more than 18 centuries!

The historical context that marks the ascension of Zionism is in reality a deep crisis of the capitalist economy, immerse in its first great fight for market contest watching the resurgence of exacerbated nationalism that put the Jews, particularly the traders and loan sharks, into a very delicate situation. On the other hand, the victory of the Russian revolution would put objectively the possibility of absorption of millenary culture of the Jewish people into a level more higher than capitalism, and the sympathetic and multiethnic construction of a new social order, putting an end to murderer national discrimination prevailing in the old Russia. The Zionist movement, that socially represents the interests of the Jewish big and middle bourgeoisie, attempts to answer these two great questions: 1) the capitalist collapse that would elevate more and more the segregation and anti-Semitism and 2) the necessity of a deep delimitation with Russian revolutionaries who make possible the assimilation through newcomer socialism exactly in a country densely populated by the Jews.  

Unmasking the attempts to present Zionism as a movement of characteristics common to socialism, Trotsky define the former as a tool of English imperialism. "The facts of daily life demonstrate us that Zionism is incapable of solve the Jewish question. The conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and threatening character. I do not believe that the Jewish question can be solved in the field of the decadent capitalism under the control of British imperialism" (Leon Trotsky, On the Jewish Question).

The victory of the Franco-British alliance against Germans and their allies, among which Turkey during the World War I, turns English imperialism into the great heir of the immense and age-old Ottoman Empire, that includes all the Middle East. In 1917, aiming to establish a "bridgehead" in that region, the English government support the establishment in Palestine of "a national home for the Jewish people" through the Balfour Declaration. All regions are divided up between France and England through secret agreements of "Sykes-Picot" publicly denounced by the Bolshevik party like the "share of the oppressed nations’ loots among den ".  Frontiers are defined; countries are artificially created like Transjordan (now Jordan) in 1921, everything functioning as the economic interests of European imperialism.

But Palestine is the only nation that will keep without any trace of autonomy, that is, a nation without state or national frontiers, under the English mandate approved by the League of Nations in 1922. Starting from then, with the support of oil magnates such as the Baron Edmond de Rothschild, British imperialism begins financing the massive Jewish immigration to Palestine (at that time with only 25,000 Jews), starting a process of occidentalisation of a enclave in the middle of East, in a region that would emerge due to its abundance in black gold and due to strategically military localisation.

With the Nazi ascension in Europe in the middle of 1930s, the Jewish people witness the reappearance of anti-Semitism is its more violent form.  The Soviet Union ruled by the Stalinist bureaucracy no longer represent an alternative of integration for  the Jews. On the contrary, under the Thermidorian shoe heel, the revolutionaries watch the revival of anti-Semitism that was not far behind to czarist old pogroms. Stalinism defined the Unified Opposition of Left, consisted of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukarin and others, as "union of nasty Jews, bribed to Gestapo." It is in this context that Zionism, up to then considered by Jewish workers as a capitulation to racist who used to advocate the expulsion of Jews from Europe, begins becoming solid as a great national movement of mass range.

In 1930s great migratory flow takes places; in 1935 the Jewish population in Palestine already amounted to nearly 400,000. Haifa, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, more would seem a European city amid the millenary culture of desert. The English imperialist objective had succeeded in consolidating itself with giant strides. The Jews, financed with massive aids of capitals, constituted a real state within the British protectorate in Palestine, including the creation of an army of their own. The militias of Irgun and Haganah undertook to exterminate Palestinians and Arabs. Their motto was, "a hundred thousand Arabian lives are not worth the nail of a Jew."  Zionism ended up by turning itself into a reproduction of Nazism against the Arabian peoples in their own territory.

In this same year, a great Palestinian rebellion bursts with the outbreak of a general strike that lasts about a year. Only in 1937, the English government obtains a truce because of shameful betrayal of Arabian high committee. In this period, England sends the "Peel Committee" to Palestine with the mission of investigating the conflicts in this region and it concludes that it is necessary to partitioned "the Holy Land" into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.

The imminent outbreak of the World War II obliges England — directly threatened by Nazism — to seek support from Arabian countries against Germany.  In order to arouse the Germanic liking and admiration for itself, it adopts in 1929 the so-called "white book ", restraining the entry of Jews in Palestine.  Too late; U.S. imperialism, emerging from world-wide scenery, embrace the Zionist cause and starts to supply heavy armament with the Zionist militias that ends up by threatening the very English army. With the victory of Allies and the emerging of North American hegemony, England has nothing left except withdrawing from scenery. The United Nations, substitute for the League of Nations, newly founded by initiative of the the United States and enthusiastic support of USSR, definitely votes in 1947 to partition Palestine into one Jewish state and other Arab-Palestinian one.  Besides allowing that the East go on being an area of Yankee influence after Yalta treaties, Stalinism starts to consider Zionism, in its labour version, as the political ally, with which will develop a popular front in Israel. By regarding the Arabian and Palestinian masses as antiquated and feudal ones, the old communist Palestinian party soon changes its name for Israeli party.

Even before of being the state of Israel made official, the troops of Irgun do again massacres against the Palestinians like in the case of the slaughter of the "Deir Yassin" village. It was the forewarning of Zionist terrorism that would devastate the Palestinian people up to now.

Exactly in the day of the official proclamation of the state of Israel, 15 May 1948, the first Arab-Israeli war is declared. Czechoslovakia (member of the Warsaw Pact) and the the United States supply war equipment for new Israeli army, then called Tzahal. After having gained a triumphant victory, Israel enlarges its territory, altering the frontiers originally defined by United Nations. The population balance in the new state of Israel was drastically altered during the 1948 war. The armistice agreements extended the territory under Israel’s control beyond the UN partition boundaries from approximately 15,500 to 20,700 sq. km (about 6000 to 8000 sq. mi.). The small Gaza Strip on the Egypt-Israel border was left under Egyptian occupation, and Jordan annexed the West Bank. Of the more than 800,000 Arabs who lived in Israeli-held territory before 1948, only about 170,000 remained. The rest, after being expelled from their land under the bombardment of Zionist aviation, became refugees in the surrounding Arab countries (Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syria), destitute of civil rights, dealt as second-rate citizens in their own old national territory and serving as cheap labour for driving the capitalist gear of the military enclave in Israel. The Arabian state in Palestine specified in the agreement only stays on the drawing board: it was a miscarriage!

From ancient Egypt, a group of young army officers emerge rebelled against the shameful betrayal of King Faruk I who, during the war, supplied defective rifles for his army, took power in its hands led by Nasser. It is the beginning of Arabian nationalism that as soon spread like a fuse through Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. In 1956, Nasser nationalise Suez Canal that was under the control of the great world powers and that was the most strategic economic point of all the Middle East, through where two thirds of oil addressed to Europe moves. The reaction of imperialism is immediate. Britain and France, the main stockholders in the canal, prepare a military operation called "Suez Expedition ". It is up to the enclave of Israel to play the role of gendarme in imperialism in that region. Since they had got tanks and fighter planes much more sophisticated and in greater number than the Egyptian artillery had, they occupy the Sinai desert until the banks of channel. Soon afterwards they hand over control of this region to the the United Nations forces, following the direct orientation from Yankee imperialism.

Almost eleven years later, now supported by a military aid from USSR that finds itself compelled to interfere with scene of military operations in the Middle East in favour of Arabs owing to danger of a imperialist military foray in the Soviet eastern territory, Nasser takes up again the cause of Suez, demanding that UN troops withdraw from Egypt. This gives Israel cause for coming into stage with green traffic light from USA. The Israeli air force attacks, winning war in only one morning. Its armoured cars are sent for all fronts. In six days Egypt loses Gaza and Sinai till Suez. Syria losses the strategic Golan Heights. Israel gets back from Jordan its territory west of the Jordan River incorporated in 1948 and definitely occupies the Palestinian sector of Jerusalem, succeeding in quadrupling its armistice frontiers. Without a direct action of masses and due to strong imperialist military power, a new defeat is imposed on Arabian bourgeoisies. This constitutes a disaster of enormous proportions to Palestinian people who starts living in the occupied territories in their capacity as political prisoners. Starting from Palestinian military bases installed in Southern Lebanon, it was followed by several guerrillas’ fights that still exist until today.

The essence of all military conflicts waged in this region resides the very arena of international class struggle. Israel is a military enclave artificially lied in the heart of the East, fundamental in repression of world-wide imperialism’s interests in a strategic region (due to oil reserves) for functioning of capitalist economy of planet. It duty of all over the world proletariat, including Jewish one, to destroy this imperialist gendarme so that we can enormously impel peoples’ fight against the capitalist exploitation.

The struggle of Palestinian people represents the vanguard of Arabian masses against the Israeli enclave, which makes the proletarian revolution in all Middle East possible. They are undoubtedly both the first victims of Zionism that intends to exterminate them as people and the object of oppression of Arabian bourgeoisies who one moment use them as cannon fodder in their shady deal with the Zionists, the next change into dangerous enemies, who do not hesitate in discharging against them violent attacks.

The very appearance of Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was conditioned on attempt of Arabian bourgeoisies to manipulate for own benefit the Palestinian struggle. Entrusted with structuring the PLO in 1964 by Nasser, Ahmad Chukeiri, its first president, does schedule in original program neither the defence of a Palestinian state nor the destruction of Israel.

With the failure of the Nasser leadership, after humiliating defeat of Arabian countries in 1967, the commando force Al Fatah (Victory) grows. Arisen in the end of 1959 and led by Yasir Arafat and Abu Lyad, this military organisation openly would proclaim the necessity of destruction of Israel, putting itself politically aside the official OLP of Chukeiri.  

It is Al Fatah that will direct the resistance to Israeli military occupation in the Gaza Strip. For three years the Zionist army has been failed to put the popular rebellion down in that area. Shortly afterwards in 1968, in the Jordanian city of Karameth, the fedayeen (Palestinian warriors), coached by Al Fatah, succeed in defeating the Zionist army, creating in the first time the symbol of victorious Palestinian resistance.

In the next year, Arafat takes over the PLO that adopts in its constitution charter "the destruction of imperialist enclave as preliminary condition for union of Arabian peoples." From then on, the PLO structure itself as a real Palestinian state without territory, creating institutions such as the Palestine National Council, a real Parliament with representation of its several social and political factions.

To revolutionaries, a proper characterisation of the PLO must begin with the thought on its class character determined by adoption of a democratic-bourgeois political program that supports the restoration of capitalist economy in Palestine even if the social representation of bourgeoisie into the PLO were extremely minority because of the forced expropriation carried out by Zionism in 1948 and 1967. However, the key question is to determine the field of battle of world-wide worker class in confrontation between the Palestinian masses and the Zionist enclave subsidied by foreign financial capital. In this case, there cannot be the least hesitation among the revolutionaries. We are in the military camp of the PLO, though the dynamic imposed by its leadership tends to institute a democratic-bourgeois regime extremely unstable because of the arming of the Palestinian masses, if it would triumph over Israel. Trotsky would define a just position in view of Spanish Civil War, "Should the communist party wash its hands before the conflict between monarchist and republican bourgeois? The defence of such policy would be a suicide . . . In these conditions, the heroic struggle of workers had to fortify the republican government, at least temporarily. Only brainless persons, who analyses the events through banal sentences can deny this" (Leon Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution and Tactics of Communists).

The PLO will play the lead role in the greatest chance of heading its "national revolution" in Jordan, a completely artificial creation of British imperialism in the ancient Palestinian territory, handed over the Bedouin oligarchy so that would rule over a population greatly composed of the Palestinians. In the middle of 1970 accusing the "defeatist". A reference to constant defeats embittered by King Hussein before the resolution 242 from the United Nations, whom would reaffirm the right to existence to Israel regime, the PLO raises the slogan: "Every power to resistance!" taking over the control of cities to the north of country as well as the suburbs of Amman. The King Hussein, with military support of Syria, hurls its army against the fedayeen, causing over 5,000 casualties among Palestinians combatants who, on September, are expel from Jordan. The military inferiority and basically the lack of a proletarian strategy are the factors determining the defeat of the PLO that, from then on, will favour terrorist actions against Israel, especially outside the Middle East.

Refugee in southern Lebanon, scattered in camps near to main cities, the Palestinians form an important alliance with the resistance of Lebanese workers ins struggling against the puppet regime of French imperialism. Once more there was the possibility of a revolution; this time with distinctly proletarian characteristics, seeing that the social division in Lebanon labelled by the world press as Christians versus Moslems would reveal in fact a fight between exploiters and exploited.

Because of the threat of loss of the control over Lebanon, French imperialism set in motion its enclave in that region that, under the Nazi-Zionist command of Menahem Begin, triggers in June 1982 a military operation of invasion to Lebanon, cynically called "Peace in Galilee ". Conspired with Falangist militiamen, the Zionist army massacres over 2,000 civilians in Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatila. It is only the first warning of that it is willing to annihilate the PLO. The Arabian bourgeoisie do not delineate the slightest reaction and even collaborate with the military operation. Despite a merciless siege for two months over Beirut — a siege that would remind of Nazi siege in the Warsaw ghetto — the PLO troops succeed in doing an honourable withdrawal. Even though with the occupation assured, the Zionist army fails in achieving its goals, namely, to annihilate the PLO and to assassinate Arafat. On the contrary, for first time in its history Israel is shaken by gigantic demonstrations, with over 300,000 people impelled by pacifist petty bourgeois opposition going out the streets for demanding the end of murderous policy of Likud. It is this moment that one perceives the lack of a revolutionary party that would call Jewish and Palestinian worker for unite in order to defeating the regime of terror of Israel.

The PLO leadership starts giving to understand that would be willing to accept to negotiate with Israel in the terms of the "Camp David" accords (product from a new correlation of forces starting from the Yom Kippur War) signed by Sadat and Begin in 1978. These would stipulate the acceptance of a relative autonomy in territories occupied by the Zionist army as well as the return of Sinai to Egypt, which took place indeed in 1982.

On December 1987 Palestinian young people trigger in occupied territories an uprising known as the Intifada (revolution of stones), taking unawares the very PLO. The movement, that sets itself up as a series of strikes and barricades directed against the atrocities of Zionist army, results in 1,000 dead just in first year of hostilities. It is in this context that Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) will arise, disputing the deeply conformist line adopted by the PLO.

Making use of Intifada (supported only formally like weapon of international bargain), the PLO leadership in meeting of the Palestine National Council in 1988 decides to accept UN resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), officially admitting the existence right of Israel. Arafat starts a real crusade around the world in order to sell the image of a new PLO, open to dialogue and to collaboration with Zionism. It is a positive expression of the political inconsistency of a petty bourgeois leadership deficient in a revolutionary program capable of leading the Palestinian masses to victory, adopting the pendulum line between inconsistent "guerrilla attacks" and opportunism that capitulates before the genocidal Zionists.

Giving continuity to its new policy now called "commitment" (term borrowed from Italian Eurocommunism), the PLO carries out with Israel a series of secret negotiations that culminate in international peace conferences in Madrid and Washington, where finally Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sign the well-know peace accord that prescribes the formation of a "Palestinian National Authority" over a small part of occupied territories in 1967. The PLO, totally broken up, begins being considered by greater and greater sectors of Palestinian people as the old Arabian bourgeoisie with its nationalist outbursts but always ready to a rotten agreement with the Zionists, provided that its interests be preserved.

The world-wide bourgeoisie and Zionism hurry up in presenting the peace treaties between Israel and the PLO as a thorough display of new world order inaugurated with the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The Zionists boast about giving territories up as irrefutable proof of its disposition to pacifically live with the Arab-Palestinian people. The PLO, in his turn, regards the "declaration of principles" signed in Washington as a first step towards constitution of a national state. But the only thing that Zionism and the PLO has in common, besides plentiful demagogic verbiage spread through the world, is fear that the Palestinian masses’ struggle evolve into a revolutionary situation and escape from its respective controls.  What is then the real nature of peace treaties and its meaning for world class struggle?

To Israel, it is basically a question of overcoming two vital problems that threaten to wreck its social regime put on militarism and plunder of Palestinian people, namely, its deep economic crisis and the necessity of putting an end to Intifada that continuously lasts six years.

The collapse of Israeli economy, evidenced in incessant fall of the stock exchange and in deep slowdown of imperialist investments in its industrial state, is product of very international capitalist crisis, especially of gigantic North American budget deficit that engenders considerable reduction of affluence of capitals. Built with enormous estate-owned subsidies from Yankee imperialism, the enclave of Israel does not survive without this armamentism-led "aid" like propelling element of its economy. With the down fall of USSR, the the United States begin a process of nearness with Arabian bourgeoisies.  The installation of a powerful military base in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War and the treaties of military co-operation signed with Syria and Egypt made Israel expectant of a still greater cut-out from USA subsidies and investments in its war-led economy.

The sealing of "peace treaties" by Israel means the demand for "distension" the region as well as the possibility of attracting investments from other imperialist blocks such as Japan, for instance. In addition, it serves for making easy the entry of Israeli products in Arabian economies up to then obstructed by Jewish sanctions owing to occupation of the Zionist army in Palestinian territories.

Despite huge resources intended for its repression by Zionist troops, the continuity of Intifada that takes hold of occupied territories is one of causes by which Israel seeks its "peace ".  The systematic closure of its frontiers for Palestinian workforce, much more cheap and apt to more heavy services, owing to constant Palestinian uprising as well as countless strikes comprising the Arabian and Palestinian workers living in Israeli great cities, have already caused financial loss of about 80 billions of dollars only last five years.

The opposition of Likud, in contrast to what spread by great press, does not concern contents of "peace" agreements, for it itself initiated them together with Begin, but concern their pace and guarantees that must be given to Jewish tenant farmers living in the middle of firing line of intifada.

Yasser Arafat and the PLO, handling the Palestinian people’s aspiration to conquest their homeland, strive to show that the establishment of the "Palestinian National Authority " in some cities from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is only the first stage for the construction of a sovereign Palestinian state.  Nothing more false and deceiving! In fact, the attempt to set up a collaborationist regime in a small strip of territories occupied by the Zionists (it represents about 2% of territory confiscated by UN in 1947) corresponds to a strategy of predominant sectors of Palestinian people, great traders and bankers in deportation attracted by promises of capitalist investments in the region, around 2 billions of dollars only from the United States. The PLO majority leadership in spite of focus of opposition such as the FPLP of George Habache, ended up by sealing an accord surrendering the retaking of occupied territories and put an end to all military actions against Israel. This signifies a historic betrayal against Palestinian people who fight for destroying the terrorist enclave of Israel. The PLO leadership becomes police of its own people when enters into Israeli military camp in order to repress the intifada and other political movements that still fight for the definitive victory of the Palestinian masses.

The "peace" agreements established the "return" of 7 cities in the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip. Owing to presence of Jewry (about 500), the city of Hebron (with 100,000 inhabitants) will be kept under the mixed control of the PLO and Zionist army. The " Palestinian National Authority" will not have status of state and will prohibited from installing military bases in "unoccupied" territories. The Israeli army will go on lodged in the region, with unrestricted domain over rural zones surrounding the cities and control over all land and sea access. The biggest Arab-Palestinian city in the region, Jerusalem, will continue under absolute Israeli occupation.

The prohibition of any return of the Palestinian refugees who are scattered through all the Middle East and who represent more than the double of current population from "returned" territories will be remain. In the cities under the control of the PLO, a Palestinian police force was formed in order to repress "demonstrations contrary to Israel interests ". Only allowed to carry "light" military equipment, under no circumstances this police can detain Israeli citizens. In the cases in which the Palestinian police are not able to put down popular revolts, the Zionist army has full freedom to intervene. The "peace accords" also presuppose release of political prisoners accused of having committed "homicide" against any Israeli citizen, like is the case of Brazilian Lâmia Maruf, sentenced to life imprisonment in Zionist prison.

Speaking of "autonomy" or "authority" is at least a grotesque reactionary farce. Israel does not even permit to the Palestinians the more basic right such as right of access to water resources. In a region of basically agrarian economy, the Palestinians are prohibited even to dig wells for home consumption. The unique trace of "Palestinian authority" is the formation of a National Council, a king of Parliament composed of 82 members elected in cities under the control of the PLO. In any case, Israel has a right to veto any measure approved by Palestinian "Parliament" but that come to offend Zionist interests.

On these conditions, the current policy adopted by Zionist State called "pacifist" is very similar to policy of racial segregation followed in South Africa in the middle of 1950s (apartheid), when it created the famous Bantustans, "free" territories entrusted to collaborationist tribes so that would put the riots of Negro people down.

With the complete political demoralisation of the PLO, that started playing the role of "Zionist police" in occupied territories reaching the point of imprisoning several activists contrary to "peace treaties ", the organisations that used to demand the destruction of Israel and the continuity of the intifada have greatly grown in its political influence, especially the organisations of fundamentalist character connected with Arabian bourgeoisies still belligerent to Israel (Syria and Ira), such as Hamas, Jihad and Hezbolah, emerging as a radicalising alternative to historic betrayal of the PLO.

The strategy of Hamas and Jihad consists in convert the character of the intifada to spectacular actions of terrorism against Zionist targets scattered in all over the world. In doing this, they weaken the Palestinian masses’ uprising, isolating them more and more from methods of permanent mobilisation, such as strikes and popular marching. These organisations bet on obtain the rupture of agreements between the PLO and Zionism, not by action of very insurgent masses, but through parliamentary strengthening of Israeli ultra-right, which objectively means to collaborate with the preparation of a attack still more violent and brutal against the Palestinian people in the models perpetrated by Likud in Sabra and Chatila.

Only the formation of a democratic revolutionary party, section from Fourth International, will be able to guide the proletariat and Palestinian masses in a consequent struggle against the Zionist enclave and collaborationist leaderships such as the PLO.  This is the basic task of all those who have engaged in the glorious fight of Palestinian people in this generation. To leave this task in hands of leaderships theocratic and similar to Zionism as far as concerned to racism, such as Hamas and Jihad, signifies to commit other betrayal, so serious like what committed by sealing the OLP-Zionism pact.

The main currents that demand anyway to be the legacy of the Fourth International have in their overwhelming majority have capitulated sometimes for Arabian capitalism, sometimes for Jewish Zionism. One of first resolutions of the Fourth International led by Michel Pablo after that the the United Nations shared the Palestine, was marked by lack of revolutionary banners. It adopted the bourgeois democracy as alternative to Zionist regime of Israel, though would correctly denounced the confiscation of the Palestinians made by imperialism with the support of USSR, in the following terms, "Down with the share of Palestine! For a united and independent Arabian Palestine with full rights to Jewish national minority! UN ‘mediators’ and ‘observers’’ out of the country! For the election of a Constituent Assembly with secret, universal suffrage! For agrarian revolution!" (Fourth International, June 1948).

It was understandable that Arabian nationalist bourgeoisies and political bodies such as the PLO would insist on staying in stage of a "lay and democratic Palestine" as a way of being in opposition (according to their own style and class interests) to imperialist enclave in the Middle East. Even if unconditionally positioning themselves on the field of battle of Palestinian people oppressed by imperialism in their legitimate national aspiration, that is, the conquest of a homeland; the internationalist revolutionaries can not refrain from proclaiming loud and clear that the most consequent way of fight for a Palestine homeland is to defeat the imperialism in its enclave with the method of socialist revolution and with a establishment of a proletariat dictatorship in Palestine, making possible the formation of a Socialist Federation of Arabian Soviet Republics.

The viewpoint from Pablism in the leadership of the Fourth International was to set the democratic-bourgeois regime (therefore capitalist) against the racist, militarist and capitalist state of Israel as well as to attempt to pass on the idea of defence of a democratic program calling a Constituent Assembly like a legitimate transitional demand. The revisionist "reading" of the Transitional Program would start crawling. In May 1948 Israel declared its first war of annexation to Palestinian territory. It was up to the revolutionaries to advocate not democratic banners (which could be right in other situation), but to adopt a program that would strengthen the Palestinian people in the middle of a civil war for taking power by a popular armed insurrection in main cities of Israel then numerously inhabited by Palestinian and Arabian workers. It was a lack of a strategy and of a revolutionary party in the heart of Palestinian masses led by an old collaborator of Nazis and Mufti from Jerusalem, Aminal-Hussein, that turn them subordinated to impotence of Arabian minorities before Israel military offensive, being resoundingly defeated in 1948. As regard mention of defence of a "agrarian revolution" in the middle of the stage of capitalist decomposition, it only can be conceived, at least, as integral part of the socialist revolution that, to The Fourth "Pablist ", was not from afar put into that region.

The heirs more associated with the state from Pablism, met in the Unified Secretariat alongside its existence always were about legitimating the existence of Israel under shoe heel of petty bourgeois pacifism. In more recent military conflict of the region (Persian Gulf War) when Iraq was cowardly bombarded by Yankee imperialism, the Pablists whisper the slogan of "peace ", equalling a oppressed nation to imperialist aggressor and justifying this criminal policy in the name of authoritarian character of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Trotsky defined thus the revolutionaries’ position before a war with these characteristics: "In a war between a civilised imperialist democratic republic and a barbaric and backward monarchy from a colonial country, the socialists should take sides with oppressed country, even though monarchist, and against the oppressor country, however much be democratic (Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 2).

The defeat of Iraq, supported by Palestinian people, represented a great advance in imperialist foray in all the Middle East. To the Unified Secretariat, the most important still is "democracy" and "pacification" of all conflicts in the Middle East. It is not surprising that the Mandelists are in the forefront of support to "peace accords" with Zionism and that they turn themselves into political tail from the PLO.

The Morenists, grouped in the unsteady the LIT (International League of Workers), are characterised by huge capitulations to nationalist and petty bourgeois leaderships of Arabian peoples, which incidentally it is not privilege of their policy for this region. To Nahuel Moreno, even the racist demonstrations of Arabian bourgeoisie are "progressivist ", "for they destroy the Zionist state" (Correio International , # 28). It is possible that Arabian nationalism be a "progressivist" expression, even if more limitedly, when it confronts imperialism or its Zionist enclave in Israel. This posture is completely opposite to one what supports the more reactionary expressions of old dominant classes in the Middle East, namely, Islamic racism and fundamentalism that benumb the conscience of struggling masses and prevent the unification of Jewish and Palestinian workers in order to weaken, since its inside, the state of Israel.

The LIT assume as its own the program of foundation of PLO, advocating that "the establishment of a lay, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state will be able to eradicate from the Middle East oppression, destruction and war" (Correio International #52). One thing is we place ourselves at the same military side of the PLO (obviously before its capitulation to Zionism) or any other organisation that fight against the imperialist enclave of Israel — and in this way the revolutionaries imposes no political or programmatic condition for standing on this side of the barricade — but this does not mean that we must lower or even nullify our program in favour of the democratic-bourgeois platform of nationalist or petty bourgeois leaderships of Palestinian people.

Capitalism in its current phase of imperialist decadence concentrates in only one stage a series of questions of its historical development. A solution of a national millennial contradiction, as in the case of Palestine, comes up against the narrow limits of dependent capitalism of the region. It is task of revolutionaries to incorporate the national demands not into a bourgeois program, as the LIT does, but into general dynamic of the socialist revolution.  The transitional program, analysing the task of Trotskyists in the backward countries, thus defines their responsibilities: "Colonial and semi-colonial countries are backward countries by their very essence. But backward countries are part of a world dominated by imperialism. Their development, therefore, has a combined character: the most primitive economic forms are combined with the last word in capitalist technique and culture. In like manner are defined the political strivings of the proletariat of backward countries: the struggle for the most elementary achievements of national independence and bourgeois democracy is combined with the socialist struggle against world imperialism." (Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program —"Backward Countries and the Program of Transitional Demands").

The bankruptcy historically confirmed of the set of nationalist and petty bourgeois variants (Nasserism, the PLO) made anti-Zionist movements of Islamic fundamentalist character to enormously grow, reaffirming more than ever the necessity of building a party that aspires to condition of revolutionary leadership of Palestinian masses. The maturing of a program that acknowledges the defence of a Soviet Palestine based on councils of Palestinian and Jewish worker and peasants is the single way of unifying the alliance of workers independent of nationality in the context of a socialist regime that remove the private property of means of production.

The capitulation of the Morenists to democratic-bourgeois program signifies, as a last resort, a betrayal to very Palestinian people, since the realisation of their homeland will not proceed by hands of a rotten capitalism incapable of meeting the more elementary aspirations of the oppressed peoples.

Without a shadow of a doubt, it was Altamirism that operated more zigzags regarding the Palestinian Question and the state of Israel. The deceased Fourth Internationalist Tendency, an composition without principles between the PO (Worker Party) of Jorge Altamira and the POR (Revolutionary Worker Party) of Guillermo Lora, managed to form a small group of militants in the Middle East called the LOP (Palestinian Worker League). During this period, they adopted positions closer to Morenism when they used to state, "The only feasible historic way out is a democratic republic in Palestine based on destruction of Zionist state." (Causa Operária, # 76).

The political inconsistency of the Fourth Internationalist Tendency soon brought it to "blow up ", making the LOP to disappear as Trotskyist organisation in Palestine. Altamira and his Partido Obrero began changing their positions and looking upon Zionism with other eyes. . .

With the rise of Islamic groups to political leadership of so-called "Palestinian Cause ", playing the lead role in terrorists attempts all over the world, notably in Argentina, the Partido Obrero realises that its support to destruction of state of  Israel could affect its so dreamed electoral aspirations. (Altamira is everlasting candidate of PO whatever election may be.) On the occasion of brutal attempt on Association of Mutual Succour to Jews (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, the Poder Obrero not only attended but also enthusiastically convoked, together with the Israeli Embassy and Argentinean Zionists, a walk in support to the state of Israel. In addition, it required from the Menem. Government hard repressive measures against the possible responsible for the attempt, that is, activists someway associated with organisations struggling against the Israeli terrorist enclave.

Instead of being a slander or exaggeration on our part, it is very Partido Obrero that reclaims its attitude, "the Partido Obreiro was the unique leftist current that not only took part in act against the attempt, but also convoked its anticipation . . . . On day 20, we guaranteed the mobilisation of our party in that act highlighting the slogan ‘the genuine solidarity is to do justice ", due to relation with the historical motto ‘justice and punishment for all culprit’." (Poder Obrero # 424).

It seems unbelievable, but the PO and Altamira demand that Menem "do justice" and they censure him for his slowness in take steps. Would it be possible to believe that a person who claims to be "revolutionary" can trust to bourgeois state and its courts the task of "doing justice" against organisations or militants who makes use of mistaken methods of terrorism as way of political struggle? Apparently Menem listened the PO complaint for he created the Super-Secretariat of Security, a governmental department concerned with repression of the Argentinean worker and popular movement.

The position adopted by Partido Obrero in the AMIA case was repudiated by Argentinean leftist vanguard. This obliged the party to do a series of theoretical rectifications in its programmatic arsenal. According to Altamira, the Zionist state in Israel would be no longer an enclave of imperialism in the region, but it would be in the condition of an oppressed semi-colony, equal to other countries from the Middle East. In controversy with the MAS about the character of Israel, Poder Obrero come out with: "That Israel is a terrorist state according to the MAS estates (in Solidariedade Socialistas # 479) is a legitimate statement, but only in certain conditions" (Prensa Obrera # 426). Afterwards it adds, "The state of Israel is a nation artificially created by an international agreement between North American imperialism and Russian bureaucracy. It was born like a Yankee semi-colony. The same happens with Lebanon that up to 1975 was a colony from French imperialism" (Idem).

This is the most spectacular case of change of position in Trotskyist movement in recent 50 years. Israel starts being considered a semi-colony of Yankee imperialism, equal to Lebanon or other oppressed countries. According to this reasoning, the conflict Palestine versus Zionist state becomes a conflict between peers. It is a "pity" that the Palestinians have not received from U.S. imperialism over 500 billions of dollars in financial and military aid, not to mention nuclear weapons parked in Israeli territory and aimed at the heads of all Arabian peoples! What would be the "certain conditions" in which the state of Israel, after exterminating more than 100,000 Palestinians and Arabs in all its cruelties through region, would stop being a "terrorist" state? It is up the PO itself to answer this to Palestinian combatants who used to impose the heroic resistance of the intifada.

There are still some revolutionary and truly internationalist sectors of Trotskyist movement that, from a right criticism to "peace treaties" considered incapable of "putting an end to Palestinian massacres ", draw mistaken conclusions on real confrontations between Palestinian people and their organisations and the terrorist enclave at the service of Yankee imperialism. They believe that "supporting the substitution of the state of Israel for a Palestinian bourgeois state is equivalent to hurl Jews at sea." If we will give consequence to statements like these, we will conclude that the proletariat should adopt before all Zionist wars against Arabian peoples as well as before the intifada nowadays greatly led by Islamic fundamentalist organisations a defeatist position, that is, defeat of both sides. Though they advocate "the necessity of destroying the racist state of Israel ", they do not "see" starting from what concrete point we will be able to crush the state of Israel. If it is true that Arabian bourgeoisies and monarchies have already shown, from political and military viewpoint, thorough signs of impotence to defeat Israel, this does not signify that, in the confrontation between one oppressed nation and other set up like war machine, we should adopt neutrality or defeatism. The intifada is today the spearhead with which the Palestinian people will defeat Zionism. To give our position up in this trench in the name of reactionary character of Hamas or Jihad, independent to proclamations against Israel, is objectively to desert to the military camp of Zionism and its murderous regime. The support of the revolutionaries to genuine claim of Palestinian homeland — that will only be able to take place thoroughly over Israeli debris — is unconditional and independent of its political leadership, however reactionary and theocratic it is.

Standing at margin of concrete struggle of Palestinian people, idealising the "purity" of a revolution without tactical mediations such as the formation of unique fronts of action used by Lenin to crush Kornilov or starting from abstractions such as "Worker State from the Middle East" without any reference to the struggle of oppressed nationality — the revolutionary party will never qualify as a real mass leadership that reserve the right to fight with proper methods from worker class (strikes, riots, uprisings); on the contrary, it should start from same military camp against the imperialist gendarme of Israel.

The victory of Palestinian people, even if in the event of a bourgeois leadership over Israel, would signify a huge impulse in all proletarian struggles of the planet against imperialism and, in private, the ante-room of socialist revolution in the very Middle East.

The "return" of some cities from occupied territories by Israeli army to the PLO hands definitely converted this organisation into Zionist police agency over its own people. The confrontations between the PLO and activists from the intifada are frequent, resulting in imprisonment of several leaders of Hamas and Jihad. The whole political bankruptcy of petty bourgeois strategy of the PLO shows the huge necessity of immediate formation in the heart of the Palestinian masses of a revolutionary worker party whose first task would be a deep programmatic delimitation with all nationalist, petty bourgeois and theocratic variants.

The determinant question at present is to know what will be fate of the intifada, that is, how to turn it into bearing point in defeat of imperialist gendarme of Israel, which depends necessarily on its power of galvanising an ample mass movement, that gets on well together worker strikes, popular marches and military operations aiming at the uprising of Arabian and Israeli big cities and the conquest of power.

In order to this becomes a real possibility two elements are essential:

The first element concerns the establishment of union among Palestinian worker from occupied territories and Arabian, Palestinian and Jewish worker from big Israeli metropolis such as Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv. The more impoverished Jewish workers are, in their absolute majority, persons of Sephardim origin (Arabian), little integrated into Zionist economic regime; on the contrary of Archenazim aristocracy (Jews of European origin) or the Nazi-Zionist tenant farmers from agricultural settlements. This union should be built from a base of common worker organisations that are diametrically contrary to official syndicalist structure dominated by bureaucracy of the labour party. Without the effective alliance between the Arabian, Palestinian and Jewish proletariat, having as common axis the demolition of the capitalist and racist regime of Israel, the intifada may be definitely sentenced to isolated actions even if with brave resistance, but that will never aim at monster’s heart.

The second element concerns systematic political denunciation of Islamic fundamentalist or guerrilla populist-front leaderships (FPLP) that today still guide the intifada due to historic capitulation of the PLO. These groups, more and more isolated from mass actions, understand the fight against Israel from an exclusively military viewpoint. This bargain makes the Arabian bourgeoisies (Syria, Iran and Iraq) have best conditions of negotiating territorial agreements with the state of Israel, which it does exclude the probability of they start accepting some rotten accord just like the PLO.

Their goal in proclaiming a fundamentalist republic in Palestine is entirely reactionary from viewpoint of historic interests of proletariat — socialism — and deeply weakens the union of worker of the whole Middle East, independent of race or religious creed. In spite of the necessity of establishing a plain delimitation with these organisations, we should emphasise that the revolutionaries combat them starting from the viewpoint that their actions are useless for the proletarian revolution. But this does not mean that revolutionaries hesitate between to support these organisations or the Zionist state and the world-wide imperialism. We severely condemn the repression against the activists from these organisations by any bourgeois state, whether it is USA or Argentina. As for confrontations between the Zionist enclave and Hamas, we really place ourselves in military camp of the latter in loyalty to discipline of our own program and strategy.

The delusions that could be aroused in more long-suffering and sceptical sectors of population by the farce of "peace" treaties vanish even before reaching larger scope. The enduring and growing humiliation imposed by the Zionists with the recent creation of the unlucky "Palestinian National Authority" have contributed enough to this. The revolutionary tension that pervades the occupied Palestine does succeed in being broken neither by fierce military reaction nor by the PLO-Zionism pact. There is an entire stage open marked by resistance and strenuous battles that will shortly destroy down to the ground the treacherous accord and keep steadily in view the definite aim of achieving a real national state.

The only alternative capable of giving a thorough solution to national rightful claim of the Palestinian people as well as setting free the masses and worker from the region of their excruciating and age-old sufferings is the defence of a Soviet Palestine based on councils of Palestinian and Israeli workers and peasants. The only expropriation of the voluminous Zionist capital, supplied during decades by Yankee imperialism and incapable of being captured without destroying the state of Israel, will secure the rebuilding of Palestine under new basis bringing to its children peace and progress so yearned for more than 50 years of imperialist war of robbery in the region.

The perfect defeat of so-called "pan-Arabianism ", limping regarding Israel, showed that was impossible to seal the union of oriental peoples under the baton of nationalism and late capitalism, dependent of world-wide imperialism. The better that the Arabian bourgeoisies could do was to form an oil-producing cartel, the OPEC, worried about caring its own interests and indifferent to more elementary needs of the exploited masses. The real union of all millenary peoples living in this region will only be possible in the context of a Socialist Federation of Arabian Soviet Republics. It is up to the world party of the proletarian revolution, the Fourth International, to carry out this task until the ultimate victory.