The death of Yasser Arafat on 10 November in a French military hospital has given imperialism a further opportunity to attack and undermine the Intifada, as BOB SHEPHERD reports.
From the moment that a severely ill Arafat left his compound in Ramallah en route to the hospital in France, the media were circling like vultures, eagerly predicting his death and the ‘opportunities that this would open up for the Palestinians and the peace process’. By this they meant that his death would allow representatives of the Palestinian ruling class to assume the mantle of power and take the final steps to confront the Palestinian resistance: leaders such as former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and the current Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurei. Abbas has become a millionaire from his corrupt dealings; when prime minister he branded the Intifada as ‘terrorist’. Qurei’s family is connected with a construction business involved in building the separation wall on the West Bank. These are the sort of leaders that imperialism favours.
For the majority of the Palestinian people, Arafat represented their national resistance, despite his treachery when he signed the 1993 Oslo peace agreement. As a bourgeois politician he was astute enough to realise that the resistance of the Palestinian working class and oppressed set limits on the extent of his capitulation. Hence he could not sign the Camp David proposals in 2000: he would have forfeited all support from the masses. Whilst he remained in power, the Palestinian bourgeoisie was prevented from pursuing its policy of complete surrender to Zionism.
However, with his death, an opportunity has opened up for the Palestinian ruling class to consummate its alliance with imperialism and Zionism. As Bush put it in his joint press conference with Blair at the White House on 12 November, ‘the months ahead offer a new opportunity to make progress toward a lasting peace…I look forward to working with the Palestinian leadership that is committed to fighting terror and committed to the cause of democratic reform’.
Within hours of Arafat’s death, Mahmoud Abbas had been elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). He is also, in all practical terms, running the Fatah movement as its new leader, Farouk Kadoumi, refuses to return to Palestine from Tunisia because of his opposition to the Oslo agreements. The election for a new President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is scheduled to take place on 9 January 2005 with Abbas the favoured candidate of the Fatah movement and the overwhelming favourite to win.
For the election to take place in any meaningful way the Palestinian leadership is calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the main population centres, the lifting of roadblocks to allow the free movement of candidates and voters, and the right of Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote. Sharon is under pressure from US imperialism to make some concessions, since it wants Abbas to be able to declare victory without it being undermined by open Israeli interference.
Opposition to Abbas will come from some independent candidates who will be standing on anti-corruption platforms, a joint candidate from an alliance of leftist parties which includes both the Popular Front and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. There was speculation that Marwan Barghouti, currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail, would stand. He would have had much popular support because of his leadership of the Intifada in the West Bank prior to his detention. However, he is also a prominent member of Fatah and the bourgeois leadership pulled out all the stops to prevent him from putting himself forward. Following a visit by Palestinian minister Kadura Fares, Barghouti stood aside and appealed to Palestinians to support Abbas.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad refuse to enter candidates in an election held under the auspices of the Oslo agreements. However a prominent Hamas leader in the West Bank, Hasan Yousef, just released from Israeli prison, issued a statement saying that Hamas might decide to support an independent candidate who supported national interests such as the right of return. Hamas’s real concern, though, is for there to be general elections: presidential, legislative and municipal. As Hamas’s Gaza leader Mahmoud Zahhar put it, ‘True national unity begins at the grassroots level, we must respect our people’s rights to freely choose their representatives’. Hamas is gearing up to participate in local elections and would like them sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shallah said that his movement was not ready to participate in a Palestinian Authority (PA) that was based on the Oslo agreements but ‘we are prepared to discuss any other formula grouping the PA and the Palestinian factions over common grounds’. He went on to say that Islamic Jihad was prepared to join the PLO if it is restructured on a ‘new democratic and struggle basis’.
All the Palestinian resistance groups are united in expressing their opposition to ‘inter-faction’ fighting in the election period. However, the Palestinian bourgeoisie clearly understands this to mean that the working class and oppressed should give up their resistance and allow the ruling class to conclude a shabby deal with the Zionists. The Intifada is under threat. We must redouble our solidarity efforts.
Sharon’s Gaza ‘pull out’
On 26 October the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) voted in favour of Sharon’s disengagement plan from the Gaza strip. This was carried through only with the support of the Israeli Labour Party as Sharon’s Likud party split down the middle with almost half its MKs voting against. The plan supposedly agrees to the evacuation of the settlers and the dismantling of the settlements from the Gaza strip and from four small settlements in the West Bank in the summer of 2005.
However things are never as they seem when the actions of the Zionists are examined. For a start the vote on 26 October was not a vote on beginning the actual demolition of the settlements, it was just a preliminary stage and the whole issue will come back to the Knesset at the end of March 2005. No compensation will be paid out to any settler wanting to get out of Gaza until that vote takes place in March. In the meantime building and development of settlements in Gaza can continue to ensure ‘support for the needs of daily life’. The road to the final dismantling of the settlements and the exodus of the settlers will be long and tortuous and with Sharon attempting to get as much political capital as possible out of it.
Dov Weissglas, Sharon’s senior adviser made clear what lies behind the Gaza ‘disengagement plan’ in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz at the beginning of October: ‘The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process…When you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem’. Asked why the plan had been conceived he said ‘Because in the fall of 2003 we understood that everything was stuck. And although by the way the Americans read the situation the blame fell on the Palestinians not on us, Arik (Sharon) grasped that this state of affairs could not last, that they wouldn’t leave us alone, wouldn’t get off our case. Time was not on our side. There was international erosion, internal erosion. Domestically, in the meantime everything was collapsing. The economy was stagnant and the Geneva Initiative had gained broad support. And then we were hit with the letters of officers and letters of pilots and commandos [letters refusing to serve in the occupied territories]’.
Weissglas makes the political aims of the ‘disengagement plan’ clear: ‘the disengagement supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will be not be a political process with the Palestinians’. ‘Disengagement’, when it comes, will create in the Gaza strip a vast prison camp for the Palestinians, one where the Israelis will control the borders, the air-space and the sea. The response of the Zionists to any act of Palestinian resistance will be similar if not worse than the destruction caused in the so-called ‘Days of Penitence’ operation which left over 100 Palestinians dead in Gaza.
Operation ‘Days of Penitence’
On 28 September the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) swept into northern Gaza, an area which includes Jabalia refu-gee camp and Beit Hanoun, for Operation ‘Days of Penitence’. Up to 100,000 people were put under siege by a force which included around 200 armoured vehicles. Over the next 17 days the IDF remained in control of this area and when they eventually withdrew they left at least 107 Palestinian dead and 431 injured. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) produced a report on 16 October which detailed the carnage, destruction and terror the Zionists had inflicted.
Most of the casualties were caused by tank shells and helicopter missiles fired into densely-populated areas. Of the 107 reported dead at the time of the report, 27 were aged 18 or under. This includes nine school children aged 15 and under. Two schoolteachers were also killed. During the occupation at least 91 homes were destroyed and 101 damaged. This affected a total of 1,508 Palestinians, with 675 being made homeless. The majority of homes destroyed were in Jabalia refugee camp with over 90% of those made homeless already refugees. This was the most intense house demolition operation in northern Gaza since the start of the Intifada.
The report makes the point that in the same period as this destruction was taking place in northern Gaza, IDF house demolitions left 482 people homeless in Rafah. In 2004 an average of 1,360 Gazans per month or 45 people a day have been made homeless by such wanton destruction. The Zionist operation also left a total of 19 public and commercial premises destroyed, including a mosque, and a further 16 damaged, including school buildings and other mosques. The report details some of the damage to schools:
‘Tank shells and bullets were fired at schools destroying walls and classrooms, windows and window frames and leaving blackboards pitted with holes. Bulldozers destroyed boundary walls. A resident school attendant’s shelter was also demolished. Furniture was damaged and equipment including computers, fax machines, fans and stationery was looted. The cost of repairing the UNRWA schools will be close to $100,000.’
Large tracts of agricultural land, in particular olive groves and citrus trees, were flattened in the Beit Hanoun district. The IDF also destroyed 30 greenhouses. Since the Intifada began in September 2000 the Israelis have destroyed over 50% of all arable land in Beit Hanoun. Nothing will change with an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza: they will continue to undertake such operations with complete impunity.
FRFI 182 December 2004 / January 2005
