[Socialism Today, No 15, February 1997, p. 16-18]
An incipient revival of the Intifada, along with a sharp polarisation within Israeli society, have put both Netanyahu and Arafat under pressure. Kevin Simpson writes.
Netanyahu’s reckless attempt to reverse the ‚peace process‘ following his victory in Israel’s May 1996 general election triggered a new explosion among Palestinians and a sharp polarisation within Israeli society. Intense opposition at home, together with renewed pressure from US imperialism, forced Netanyahu back into negotiations with Arafat, producing the recent deal on Hebron. This clumsy about-turn has shattered Likud’s demagogic ’security‘ policy.
The Hebron deal, however, has far from stabilised Netanyahu’s government. Through its offensive against the working class, the government provoked a general strike on 30 December, which paralysed the Israeli economy. This intense class polarisation heralds the emergence of the Israeli working class as an independent force, with a number of trade union leaders calling for the formation of a new workers‘ party.
Likud grabbed power again in May through a demagogic opposition to the Oslo accords, promising a ‚hard-line‘ against the Arabs to defend Israel’s ’security‘, and especially to defend the Jewish settlements in the occupied areas. The opening by the Israeli army of the Hasmonean tunnel, which allows visitors to pass from the heart of the Muslim Old City to the Wailing Wall, was a calculated provocation. But Netanyahu got more than he bargained for. There was a spontaneous uprising of Palestinians, an incipient revival of the Intifada. The Palestinian police, who had previously been holding down Palestinian activists, refused to stand by while the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) massacred their own people and they opened fire on the Israeli forces. For the first time in recent history, armed Palestinians fought back against their occupiers, inflicting the heaviest losses on the IDF since the invasion of Lebanon.
The fury on the streets reflected the Palestinians‘ growing disillusionment with the results of the ‚peace process‘ and with the role of Arafat. Last August, there was a demonstration in the self-governing Palestinian Authority against repression by the Palestinian police and corruption among Arafat’s ruling clique. Anger has also been fuelled by the rise in unemployment and the sharp reduction in the incomes of many Palestinians, especially in the areas affected by the Israeli state’s ‚internal closure‘ policy.
With the whole negotiation process under threat, both Arafat and Netanyahu were forced to change their tactics. Arafat was forced to move quickly to control the masses and his own security forces. He supported the initial actions of the police, which boosted his popular support. The September uprising strengthened Arafat’s demand for renewed negotiations. Backed by diplomatic pressure from several Arab regimes and the US, he appears temporarily to have gained some tactical advantage in the negotiations with Netanyahu’s government, which was knocked off balance by the reaction to its provocative policies.
Netanyahu, for his part, has been forced to abandon the Likud ideology he trumpeted before he took over the government. Under the pressure of the Israeli capitalists and the imperialist powers, and in the face of the revolt he managed to detonate in September, Netanyahu has been forced to recognise that the ‚Oslo‘ policy of the Rabin-Peres government is the only viable policy for the Israeli ruling class. The logic of Likud policies would be a second Intifada and yet another war between the Israeli state and one or more of the neighbouring Arab regimes. US imperialism, which ultimately pays the Israeli state’s arms bill, is not prepared to accept a new Middle East conflict as the price of Likud policies.
Since the November presidential elections in the US, the Clinton administration has applied enormous pressure on Netanyahu to return to the negotiating table and sign an agreement on Hebron. President Mubarak of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan played an important role in pressurising Arafat to accept the further concessions demanded by the Israelis.
Within Israel a rift was beginning to open up between the Netanyahu government and key sections of the ruling class and the state machine. After the armed clashes in September, a group of thirty-three reserve army officers published a statement attacking the reckless policy of the Likud government, denouncing Netanyahu’s attempt ‚to drag us into an unjustifiable war and evaporate any hopes for peace‘. The intelligence service had openly warned Netanyahu that the opening of the tunnel – which means the presence of Israeli security forces at the heart of the Old City – would lead to widespread conflict. Following the clashes, there were press reports of a possible army coup, prompting Netanyahu to sack a leading army general for visiting Peres, the Labour Party leader. An opinion poll carried out in December indicated that 47% of Israeli Jews believe that the polarisation in the country could lead to civil war. All these pressures forced Netanyahu into a humiliating climbdown over Hebron, exposing Likud policies as empty, reactionary rhetoric. Netanyahu has been forced to abandon the settlers and the far-right Zionists who spearheaded his conquest of power.
While a humiliating climbdown for Netanyahu, however, the Hebron agreement is still a further betrayal of the interests of Palestinians. Four hundred fanatical, reactionary Jewish settlers, together with 15,000 Palestinians, will still be living in Israeli-controlled areas of the city of Hebron. A hundred and fifteen thousand Palestinians will live in the remaining eighty percent of the city. The power supply will remain under Israeli control, as will most of the religious shrines.
The Palestinians will be allowed only 400 police in Hebron, far fewer than the IDF will be allowed. Only a proportion of the Palestinian police will be allowed to carry weapons at any one time, and the Palestinian authority has to commit itself to rooting out any opposition to negotiations amongst Palestinians. The Hebron agreement still leaves Israeli authorities occupying more than 80% of the West Bank. The target date for withdrawal is postponed for another two years beyond the original Oslo accords‘ deadline.
The partitioning of Hebron will not resolve the tensions. Negotiations will continue, no doubt with further interruptions. Even an agreement between Israel and Arafat on the establishment of a ‚de-militarised Palestinian state‘ will not end the conflict. In reality, such a deal would mean the imprisonment of the Palestinians in a Middle Eastern version of Bantustans, which will not meet the aspirations of Palestinians.
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Most alarming now for the Israeli ruling class is the movement of the Israeli working class. In the past, the Zionist state secured the support of the Jewish working class by playing on the threat posed to the Jewish ’safe haven‘ by neighbouring Arab nationalist regimes. But neither Labour or Likud governments have been able to guarantee either security or peace. The Zionist state preserved its social and political basis through providing a relatively privileged position for large sections of the workers. These were based on massive state intervention in the economy and substantial welfare spending. But the material underpinning of Zionist ideology is now being rapidly eroded away by Netanyahu’s neo-liberal privatisation programme and by his assault on welfare spending. This ‚Thatcherite revolution‘, together with Netanyahu’s about-turn on Hebron, is causing the disintegration of Likud and the alienation of its former working-class base. Workers are increasingly concerned about what Israeli society actually offers them rather than the perpetual conflict about the exact location of its borders.
At the end of last year, the country was hit by a series of public-sector strikes, which hit the ports and air transport, electricity production, and other major industries. The Histadrut, which has recently sold off most of its previously extensive industrial and commercial interests, has now begun to function more like a genuine trade union organisation. On 29 December the authorities arrested and jailed Slomo Shani, one of the Histadrut leaders. The Histadrut chairman, Amir Peretz, immediately called a general strike. ‚His call was heeded at Ben Gurion airport, where it caused chaos, at banks, the train system, radio and TV, several private plants and, for 20 minutes at the close of the business day, even in the Tel Aviv stock exchange‘. (Jerusalem Post, 30 December, 1996).
The finance minister, Meridor, accused the Histadrut of sponsoring a political campaign against the government. Yet according to other reports, ‚Likud supporters in the workers‘ councils were among the strike leaders last week, and some of them rejected personal appeals coming from their party’s leadership to call off what Netanyahu was labelling a ‚political‘ strike. In some sectors, Likud unionists were more militant than their Labour Party counterparts‘.
The head of the Chamber of Commerce, Gillerman, denounced the strikes as ‚a Bolshevik move of a burnt-out trade union federation‘. Yet after only five hours, with a mass demonstration and the burning of tyres in the centre of Tel Aviv, the Labour court agreed to release Shani.
The most significant thing to emerge from this strike movement is the call by workers‘ leaders for the formation of an independent workers‘ party. Workers‘ leaders are completely alienated from the Israeli Labour Party, which is a completely bourgeois party. During the strike, a number of industrialists closely identified with the Labour Party openly denounced the workers‘ action and sided with Netanyahu.
David Raviv, secretary of the Haifa Chemical’s Work’s Committee said: ‚Over the last years the workers have been pushed against the wall. Many earn less than they need to survive, and plug the gaps by borrowing and mortgaging. We own virtually nothing, even our homes are mortgaged into the next generation. But you can only push people down so far. Like in South Africa, there comes a time when the workers fight back. The established parties all represent the capitalists and privatisers. We are discussing the need for the Histadrut to set up a workers‘ party. In the next election, we may run Histadrut general secretary, Amir Peretz, at the head of a workers‘ list in the election, possibly under the name ‚The Workers‘ Party‘.‘
The call for an independent workers‘ party was also supported by Louis Roth, chairman of the workers‘ council at Bank Leumi, and Chain Katz, chairman of the workers‘ council at Israeli Military Industries.
These events mark a sea-change in Israeli politics. Both major parties are breaking up along class lines. Through the general strike and forcing the judiciary to do a U-turn, the Israeli working class is beginning to become aware of its own power as a class – and is taking the first steps towards independent political representation.
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