.

e Alexander,
. '' '

d John Rose
1 Introduction
And then there is Israel, a stone thrown into the heart of the Arab world, the
ripples (rom which, far from fading awa')! are building into a tidal wave.
-Ahdaf Soueif, one of Egypt's most accomplished female novelists'
I

It wasn't suppose'd to be like this. "A light unto nations", the Zionist pioneers
used to say. How they loved this passage from the Old Testament prophet Isa-
iah. Here was a prediction foretold of a Jewish state in the modern world.
Alas, it was not to be. The 60th anniversary of the fmmdation of the state of
Israel finds it paralysed, shrouded in darkness and gloom, facing a political,
moral, and, yes, even, a spiritual crisis. The shadow of not just one, but two,
humanitarian disasters, hangs over not just the anniversary but Israel's very
future as a Zionist state.
Nakba, "catastrophe" in Arabic, the forced exclusion, in 1948, of the bulk
of the Palestinian population from the heart of the Jewish state at its founda-
tional moment. Then, in 1967, the seizure of Jerusalem, its old city, and the
entirety of historic Palestine, which has led to over 40 years of military occu-
pation and wave after wave of senseless killings.
Karl Marx made a far more incisive prediction: A nation, which oppresses
another, can never itself be free. In this simple statement we see both explana-
tion and solution.

Let's go to one of the moments when there seemed to be prospects for peace-
ful resolution: the Taba negotiations, in 2000, as part of the Camp David
Summit between US President Clinton, Palestinian leader Arafat and Israeli
leader Barak. The notion that a viable Palestinian state could be set up along-
side the Israeli state--4e "two-state" solution-has been central to the whole
process.
The right of return of the Palestinian refugees is under discussion. Arafat is
ready, perhaps too ready, to make concessions.
Arafat aclmowledged that there could not be an tmlimited "massive" return
of Palestinian refugees to Israel. He even went public in the New York Times
calling for "creative solutions to the right of return while respecting Israel's
demographic concerns". Yet the Palestinians did insist on something, which,
in one sense, was really rather timid, and yet in another sense, it literally
touched the raw nerve of the conflict.'
 . T_he Palestinians insisted that Israel publicly recognised that it bore respon-
Sibdi~ for creatmg the problem of the refugees. Barak angrily and."categori-
cally reJected this proposition.
. Mter Taba, Barak complained about Palestinian mendacity in an interview
With the New York Review of Books. The open racism was shocking:
They are froducts of a culture in which to tell a lie ... creates no dissonance ...
They don t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judea-Christian
culture;'
Olme1t,. the present Israeli prime minister, is cut from exactly the same cloth.
A fanatical comnutment to Zionism supersedes everything. Even when truth
stares you m the face, and you can even shout about it publicly yourself, you
~nust Ignore': a~1d canyon regardless. This recldessness is a hallmark of Zion-
ISm. Olmert IS 1ts latest practitioner who, remarkably, has even managed to
mfunate the Bush White House.
Just before Olmert took pa1t in Bush's Annapolis "peace" conference in the
US.": ~ate 2007, he publicly hinted at the "A" word, so detested by Israeli
pohtiCJans. He adnutted, what Israel's critics, including former US President
J11nmy Cartel; have been saying for years. Israel was indeed in danger of
becoming an apartheid state.'
If the two-state solution collapsed, he said, Israel would "face a South
Mncan style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the
stat: of Israel IS f1mshed". Israel's supporters abroad would quickly turn
agamst such a state. Olmert was talking about the Palestinians in the Occu-
p~e~ Territories demanding _one person one vote in a "Greater Israel", recog-
msmg that a one-state solutwn was the only solution.
He continued:
The Jewish organisations, which were our power base in America, will be the
ftrst to come out against us because they will say th!;)' cannot support a state
that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.
We will return to this absolutely accurate assessment of the situation later in
th1s pa~nphlet .. Bm me.anwhile we must expose the wonderful paradox in
Olme~t sand Zmmst thmkmg generally. He doesn't believe in a two-state solu-
tion either!
After Annapolis, George Bush planned a new year visit to Israel and the
Occupied Territories. This highly symbolic presidential visit was certain to be
watched by millions on TV all over the world, but in particular by those Arab
2 The Nakba
leaders, like Egypt's President Mubarak, the Saudi and Jordanian royal fami-
lies, that constitute the essential but very shaky US 'power base in the Arab
world. They are desperate to sell a two-state solution to their highly suspicious
and hostile populations. But it has to have some semblance of "fairness" to
the Palestinians. Ejveryone agreed this at Annapolis as preparation for the Bush
visit, even, it was :thought, Olmert. There had to be an Israeli "moratorium"
on new settlements and on the new expropriation of Palestinian land in the
Occupied Territories:' The Bush visit had to herald a new beginning. But then
Olmert dropped his bombshell. Jerusalem was m1 exception!
Not long after Anna polis the Israeli housing ministry announced tenders
for 300 new horhes in Har Homa, a settlement in East Jerusalem near the
Palestinian city of Bethlehem. The Har Homa announcement was followed by
reports of two more new settlements planned in East Jerusalem.
"Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very
beginning", US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who travelled with Bush
to the Middle East, told the Jerusalem Post newspaper.
Jerusalem tests the sincerity of Israel's conunitment to a two-state solution.
Obviously the. city has to be shared on an equal basis. Israel's current building
programme in Arab East Jerusalem makes that goal impossible (see the excel-
lent online exhibition "Jerusalem dispossessed".')
That the Israelis, and Olmert in particula1; have managed to so infuriate
Condoleezza Rice that she goes "public" is surely astonishing. Rice has been
Bush's principal political adviser. She was a willing spokesperson for the neo-
conservative ascendancy and even more so for the "Big Oil" lobby. Chevron
even named one of its international oil tankers after her! She is signalling the
dangers in Israel's unrestrained provocations.
Just after Annapolis the Israeli paper Ha'aretz reported:
In private conversations-and as she said in Annapolis-Rice tends to com-
pare the Israeli occupation in the territories to the racial segregation that used
to be the norm in the American South. The Israel Defence Forces checkpoints
where Palestinians are detained remind her of the buses she rode as a child in
Alabama, which had separate seats for blacks and whites.'
This is an uncomfortable comparison, of course, for the Isiaelis, who view it
as "over-identification" on her part with Palestinian suffering.
Does this mean that the US is about to break with Israel? No, it does not
(see chapter 3 ). But what is does illustrate is the paralysis of the Israeli leader-
ship and the inability of the US to shift it.
Lenin once described two conditions for mass based revolutionary change,
Introduction 3
 when the rulers can no longer rule in the old way and when the mass of the
popuhtion are ready to intervene and shape their own destiny.
This pamphlet explores how the first proposition has already been reached 2 The ethnic cleansing
and suggests that circumstances are creating real possibilities for the second
proposition which can lead to the liberation of Palestine. of Palestine
And we will argue, against the current trends of political fashion, that it is
the principles of international socialism that provide the best guarantee to
bring about that liberation.
Imagine'that not so long ago, in any given count:ly you are familiar with, half
of the entire population had been forcibly expelled within a year, half of its vil-
lages and towns wiped out, leaving behind only rubble and stones. Imagine
now the possibility that somehow this act will never make it into the history
books and that all diplomatic efforts to solve the conflict that erupted in that
country will totally sideline, if not ignore, this catastrophic event."

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe here captures the essence of the tragedy of the
Nakba. Pappe's 'meticulously detailed reconstruction of this process in his
book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, on which the following account is
based, combines the testimony of Palestinian survivors with contemporary
media reports and, most chillingly, with the voluminous records left by the
perpetrators of the crime: the nascent Israeli army and state.
Pappe's centq!l argument is that the expulsion of the majority of the Pales-
tinian population from their homes by Zionist fighters between December
1947 and the beginning of 1949 was a carefully planned and executed strat-
egy of ethnic cle'ansing, not an accidental consequence of the chaos of war, or
"retaliation" for Arab attacks. As Palestinian researcher Nur Masalha has
shown, although the operational plans evolved in response to unfolding
events, the ideology of "transfer"-a euphemism for the expulsion of the
Palestinians-~as deeply rooted in Zionism.

Zionism before Israel

The origins of the Zionist movement lie in Europe. The movement emerged in
the late 19th century as a response to the growth of racist nationalism. European
Jews were one minority group which bore the brunt of new-style supposedly
"scientific" theories which argued that they were members of an "inferior" race.
Howeve~ such fashionable ideas also mn1gled with old-fashioned anti-Semitism
which condemned the Jewish religion. The problem was particularly acute in the
Russian Empire, where the state whipped up racist mobs to attack and perse-
cute Jewish communities.
The tragedy of Zionism is that, although it was driven by the desire to
found a Jewish state as a safe haven for the oppressed, the movement's leaders

4 The Nakba
5
 recognised that in order t? do so they would need the support of a European
government. So they fashwned an ideology which made Zionism into a van-
guard for ~uropean colonialism. Far from escaping European racist national-
ISm, Zwmsm anned to export it by creating a Jewish colonial project. As
Theodor Herzl, one of the Zionist movement's founders put it in his 1896
pamphlet, The Jewish State, the new nation would be "a portion of the ram-
part of Europe against Asia". Zionism, he argued, was "a colonial idea".
After ~onsiderable debate the Zionist movement agreed on Palestine as a
smtable s1te for the J?wish state and small groups of Jewish settlers began to
move there over the f1rst ?ecades of the 20th century. The British government,
attracted b~ the Zwmsts prom1ses that their settlements could help consoli-
date Bntam s control of newly-captured Ottoman lands issued a declaration
in 1917 agreeing to support the creation of a "national' home for the Jewish
people" in Palestine. Only two years before, British officials had also prom-
Ised the same area to form part of an Arab kingdom, while behind the scenes
they carved up Ottoman territory into spheres of influence in a secret deal
with their wartime allies, the French.
At the peace negotiations after World War One, Britain was given control of
Palesoneunder .the League of Nation's mandate system. Over the following two
decades mcreasmg munbers of Jewish innnigrants moved to Palestine. The Jew-
Ish population grew from 50,000-60,000 in 1919 to nearly 450,000 in the mid-
1930s. ~he situation in Europe itself worsened with Hitler's rise to powet; and
the Naz1 persecuoon of the Jews which would culminate in the Holocaust. Most
other European governments continued in their double standards towards the
Nazis' victims, howeve~ as they shut their doors in the face of desperate refugees.
TI1e collapse of the British rule
The Zionist movement in Palestine had grown strong in the shadow of the
British Mandate, at first with the active encouragement of the British author~
ities. Richard Crossman, a member of the Anglo-American Committee of
Inquiry set up in 1946 to study the "Palestine problem", described the Jewish
Agency, the main Zionist body in Palestine, as:
a state within a state, with its own budget, secret cabinet, anny, and above all,
intelligence sewice. It is the most efficient, dynamic, toughest organisation J.
have ever seen, and it is not afraid of us [the B1itishj.'
By this time most of the Zionist leaders had swung behind the idea that Zion-
ism's future lay in setting up an independent Jewish state in as much of. Mandate
Palestine ~s they could conque~ with the backing of a new imperial sponso~ the
6 The Nakba
US. In 1944 the US Congress declared its support for "a Jewish Conunonwealth
in Palestine", and later President Roosevelt followed suit. In the event, the birth
of the new state of Israel was assisted by both superpowers, as the US and USSR
first backed the UN plan for the partition of Palestine and then recognised the
state of lsrae~ hol.jing that the chaotic and inglorious end of Mandate Palestine
would accelerate ~ritish decline elsewhere in the Middle East.
TI1e Zionist land grab begins
The starting gnn for the Zionist seizure of most of Palestine was fired by the
United Nations General Assembly, which voted in November 1947 to divide
Palestine in two, leaving a Jewish state and a Palestinian state side by side. The
Partition Plan was manifestly unjust to the Palestinians. At this date just under
6 percent of Mandate Palestine was owned by Jews, yet the UN plans set aside
56 percent of Palestine as the future Jewish state, leaving 42 percent for the
Palestinians and 2 percent as an, internationalised zone in Jerusalem.
In public the Zionist leaders welcomed partition, while in private they were
already planning a ruthless assault on the civilian Palestinian population which
would leave then1 in control of the majority of Mandate Palestine. David Ben-
Gurion, who became Israel's first prime minister, told leaders of the Mapai
(Labour) Party on 3 December 1947 that "only a state with at least 80 per-
cent Jews is a viable and stable state"." A month earlier-even before the
adoption of partition by the UN-he had already explained to the Executive
of the Jewish Agency the bleak future facing Palestinians: "They can either be
mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them"."
Throughout December 1947 and J anuai:y 1948 Zionist militias carried out
atrocities in Palestinian villages and neighbourhoods: sometimes ostensibly in
"retaliation" for the sporadic attacks by Palestinian and Arab fighters on Jew-
ish settlements;and convoys, but often, as Pappe demonstrates, in completely
unprovoked acts of brutality. One such assault took place in the village of
Khisas in Galilee on 18 December 1947. Jewish troops blew up houses in the
village in the dead of night, while their occupants were sleeping. Fifteen peo-
ple were killed, including five children. From early December, in the port city
of Haifa, Jewish forces began rolling barrels of explosives into Palestinian
neighbourhoods. They also poured burning oil into the streets and machine-
gLinned residents who tried to put out the flames.
"A blueprint for ethnic cleansing"
Although Ben Gurion and the other Zionist leaders claimed that the Jewish com-
munity in Palestine was facing extinction in a "second Holocaust", the death
tolls at the end of January teU a different story: 400 Jewish dead compared to
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine 7
 1,500 Palestinians. Yigael Yadin, commander of the main Zionist militaty force,
the Hagana, told other Z10rust leaders in Januruy 1948 that it was time to drop
the rhetoric of "retaliation". "This is not what we are doing: this is an offensive
and we need to initiate pre-emptive strikes; no need for a village to attack us
[first]"."
While the expulsions and massacres gathered pace, the Zionist leaders dis'
cussed and finally adopted what was known as Plan Dalet (after the Hebrew
letter D). It gave clear orders to Hagana commanders how to deal with the
Palestinian population:
These ~perations can be carried out in the following manner: either by
destroymgvzllag~s (fry settmg fzre to them, by blowing them up and by plant-
mg mmes m thezr rubble), and especially those population centres which are
difficult to c~ntrol pennanently; or by mounting combing and control opera-
tions accordmg to the following guidelines; encirclement of the villages, con-
ducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be
wzped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state."
In ~eality, "combing and control" operations often entailed the summary exe-
cntton of dozens of unarmed men, women and children, regardless of whether
they had attempted to resist. On 10 April1948 in Deir Yassin over 90 villagers
were massacred, one third of them babies. At Ayn ai-Zaytun dozens of vil-
lagers of all ages were summarily shot after being captured by Zionist forces.
~here was a, deadly purpose to these massacres: the perpetrators hoped to ter-
nfy then neighbours mto fhght, thus speeding up the process of expulsion.
Resistance and betrayal
The UN partition resolution prompted Arab governments to allow groups of
~olunteer fighters to enter Palestine in order to defend the Palestinian popula-
tiOn. Between December 1947 and May 1948 these were small bands, isolated
from each other and lacking either adequate anns or a unified command.
Moreover, as Israeli historian Avi Shlaim notes, the tactics of the two sides
were very different. The Zionists quickly secured the main Jewish settlements
and then struck out into areas designated as part of the Palestinian state, delib-
erately driving out the Palestinian population. By contrast, the Arab fighters
were more defensive, attempting to keep control of Palestinian areas, but
rarely counterattacking into Zionist-held territory. One reason for this as
Shlaim has meticulously documented, is that the Jordanian monarch Abdul-
lah had made a secret agreement with the Zionist leaders to seize the West
Bank--designated as the heart of the Palestinian state--for his kingdom."
B The Nakba
By the time the main Arab armies intervened in May 1948, around
250,000 Palestinian refugees had already fled. Avi SWaim's account of the war
of 1948-9 between the Arab states and Israel ptmctures the myth that this was
a battle between a Jewish David and an Arab Goliath. In mid-May 1948 the
combined forces mobilised by the Arab states in Palestine numbered only
25,000 compared to the 35,000 fighters commanded by the nascent israeli
Defence Force (IDF). The IDF rapidly brought more troops into battle, field
ing 65,000 by mid-July and 96,441 by December. Although the Arab states
also brought reinforcements, they could not keep pace. As Shlaim notes, "The
final outcome of the war was therefore not a miracle but a reflection of the
underlying Arab-Israeli military balance"."
The point of no return
Ben Gurion atmotmced the birth of Israel to the world on 15 May 1948. Days
earlier the neighbouring Arab states had finally committed regular troops to
fight in Palestine in a doomed attempt to halt the ethnic cleansing. However,
the expulsions and massacres continued to gather momentum. As many as
230 Palestinians were shot in cold blood at Tantura and buried in a mass
grave on 22 May. Yitzhak Rabin, later prime minister of Israel, was in charge
of military operations in the towns of Ramla and Lydd in July 1948. He esti-
mated that his troops drove around 50,000 Palestinians from the area from
their homes, forcing them to march to the West Bank without food or water.
Over the course of the following months the number of Palestinian refugees
swelled to around 850,000. Penniless and traumatised, they were housed in
overcrowded camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip. The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on
Israel to allow the refugees to return: 60 years later they and their descendants
are still waiting.
The l'vliddle East at the crossroads
The disaster which overtook the Palestinians in 1948 has to be set in the context
of a region in turmoil. One of the reasons why both the old colonial empires and
the US saw in the Zionist movement a potentially valuable ally was the growth
of a powerful anti-imperialist movement across the l'vliddle East. Tragically these
hopes for change from below were dashed by repression-but such events
showed that the old Arab mling classes who colluded with imperialism were liv-
ing on borrowed time.
The end of World War Two signalled the beginning of a new era in the
Middle East. In Syria, Egypt, Iraq and across North Africa, the influence of
the old colonial powers was beginning to weaken. French troops were ejected
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine 9
 from Syria in 1946 following a popular uprising, and huge protest movements
led by students, nationalist intellech1als and workers, emerged in Egypt and
Iraq the same yea,; The alliance between the merchants and landowners who
made up the old nding clas~ and the colonial powers was challenged by a new
generatiOn msp1red by rad1calJdeas such as Arab nationalism Communism
and the Islamism of groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. '
In January 1948 popular protests over the signing of a new military treaty
between Iraq and Bntam, wh1ch would have institutionalised British domina-
liOn for another generation, culminated an uprising known as Al-Wathbah.
As demonstrators seized control of Baghdad's streets, the British-installed
regent sacked the prim~ ministe~ and cancelled the treaty. In Egypt strikes and
protests multiplied durmg the fmt few months of 1948. As well as workers'
den;ands for better wages and conditions, the nationalist movement mobilised
agam to call for the evacuation of British troops while volunteer guerrilla
fighters, the fedayeen, crossed into Palestine to support the Arab resistance and
attacke.d British troops stationed in the Canal Zone. A national stril<e by the
police m Apnl 1948, in protest. at the government's attempts to discipline
policemen for takmg part m natmnalist protests, showed that the movement
was sapping the foundations of the state.
The events of 1948 are crucial to understanding the roots of the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict. The state of Israel was founded out of a monsirous crim~the
expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians from their homes. Despite this, Israel
won the backing of both superpowers, the US and USSR. Meanwhile, the
mcompet~nc~ and t~eachery of the Arab leaders demonstrated the folly of leav-
mg Palestmes fate m the hands of the likes.ofKing Abdullah of Jordan and
King Farouq of Egypt.
HoweveJ; 1948 also showed how the cause of Palestine could set the Mid-
dle East alight by strengthening and tmiting a mass movement against impe-
nahsm and Jts local client rulers. The call for solidarity with Palestine
connected both with the struggles of workers and peasants and with the ris-
ing tide of nationalist protest which would soon bringthe old regimes crash-
mg to the ground. The pop;1lar uprising of January 1948 in Iraq and the
stnkes and protests 111 Egypt 111 March and April of the same year showed the
revolutionary potential in the situation. Tragically, howeve1; the nationalist
regimes which took power in the 1950s-led in many cases by the same young
off1cers who had fought in Palestine in 1948-would also prove incapable of
undoing the injustice of the Nakba.
10 The Nakba
3 Israel: "strategic asset"
for the United States"
Noam Chomsky's book The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and
the Palestinians has dominated discussion among progressive opinion every-
where on this subject. As the late Edward Said, arguably Palestine's greatest
intellechtal, put it in the introduction to the most recent edition:
Fateful Triangle may be the most ambitious book ever attempted on the con-
flict between Zionism and the Palestinians viewed as centrally involving the
United States.,.a dogged exposure of human corruption, greed and intellec-
tual dishonesty."
Chomsky's ariullent hooking Israel to the US can be summed up in that three
letter word OIL. Chomsky noted the coincidence of the foundation of the
Zionist state immediately after World War Two and the supreme importance
of Middle Eas~ oil to the US, "one of the greatest material prizes in world his-
tory", according to a US State Department docm11ent.'"
Israel would play its part in helping to encase the region in a military struc-
hue which would protect Western oil supplies. In time Israel would be in
receipt of more military and civilian aid than any other client state of the
United States, which by the end of the 20th century had totalled nearly one
hundred billion dollars."
Israel had both to,earn and learn this role. The new Israeli state, from its ear-
liest days, understood that success depended upon renewing its Great Power
sponsorship. Within just three years of its foundation its ideologues were ready
to tie Israel's survival to the predatory intentions of the "Western powers". In
1951 the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz gave the ideologues their voice:
Israel is to become the watchdog ... if for any reasons the Western powers
should sometimes wish to close their eyes, Israel could be relied upon to pun-
ish one or several neighbouring states.'"
1951 was also the year that Iran's Dr Mossadeq, the country's new radical
nationalist leader, nationalised British oil interests. Radical nationalism was
poised to sweep across the Middle East. It found its most famous and sue-
11
 cessful champion in Egypt's President Nasser who shocked the Western world,
but delighted the Arab world, when he nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956.
Israel detested Nasser and was determined to destroy him. Israel'scbance
came in the 1967 Israeli-Arab war when it humiliated Nasser's Egypt and the
armed forces of his other Arab allies. This was when Israel seized huge
amounts of new territ01y, including the whole of Jerusalem, the West Bank,
Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights. A US State Department document noted:
Israel has probably done more for the US in the Middle East in relation to
money and effort invested than any of our so-called allies and friends else-
where around the world since the Second World War. In the Far East we can
get almost nobody to help us in Vietnam. Here the Israelis won the war,
[and]single-handedly, have taken us off the hook. 21
In the next four years Israel would receive 1.5 billion dollars in military aid
from the US-ten times the amount sent in the previous 20 years. US Presi-
dent Nixon formulated what became kuow as the Nixon Doctrine.
This was a response to the US debacle in Vietnam. From now on US inter-
ests abroad, where possible, would be protected by "proxies", locally based
regional powers." Israel would become the US's principal "strategic asset" in
the Middle East.21 Radical Arab nationalism had suffered a defeat at its hands
from which it would not recover. However a new "enemy" of the West, polit-
ical Islam, would fill the vacuum.
According to General Shlomo Gazit, formerly head of Israeli Military Intel-
ligence, a senior official of the military administration of the Occupied Terri-
tories, this reinforced Israel's 'guardian' role:
Israel~ main task has not changed at all... Its location at the centre of the Arab
Muslim East predestines Israel to be a devoted guardian of stability in all the
countries surrounding it... to protect the existing regimes ... halt the processes of
radicalisation and block the expansion of fundamentalist religious bigotry."
The "Israel lobby" and George Bnsh's "war on terror"
At the start of this century President George Bush's government developed
even closer links with Israel. One view even claimed that, far from the United
States directing Israeli policy, the relationship was reversed and Israel began
to direct US policy in the Middle East. It was alleged that a hugely influential
"Israel lobby" had a vice-like grip on US politics.
When Bush became president in January 2001, the Oslo peace process that
had begun in the early 1990s had broken down (see chapter 5) and the second
12 The Nakba
intifada-uprising-was raging. Within just a few weeks Ariel Sharon's
extreme right wing Likud party came to power determined to use maximum
force to crush the intifada. Later that same year Bush launched his "war on
terror", following the conflagration that has become known as 9/11. ..
Sharon mo.,ed quickly to cast Israel's military assault on the Palestm1an
intifada as part of the wider US-led war on terror. He found a receptive audi-
ence in Washington. In fact, the groundwork to coordinate both the ideolog-
ical offe~sive and the political and military activities of a right wing Israeli
Likud goverm;nent and a right wing Republican US administration had
already been laid several years. beforehand. . .
In 1996 an Israeli Likud influenced think-tank published a notonous docu-
ment, A Clean Break.2' It hoped for a breakdown of Oslo and a return. to the
tmabashed land grab of raw Zionism: "Our claim to the land-to which we
have clung for hope for 2,000 years-is legitimate and noble." The paper set ~ut
a plan by which Israel would "shape its strategic environment': begmmng With
the removal of Saddarn Hussein. What was so unusual about this document was
that its authors were not Israelis but senio~ mainly Jewish, US Republican offi-
cials who became known as the neoconservatives. Several of them would be
app~inted to key positions in Bush's administration. They were so influential
that Bush's Middle East policies were often labelled "neocon" pohc1es.
Neve1theless their influence has been misunderstood. There is an assump-
tion that the~ have imposed policies, against its interests, on an unwilling US
government. This is the assumption of Mearsheimer and Walt who. h1ghhght
the role of other very well organised Jewish pro-Israel lobby grot~ps mthe US,
especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AI!'AC) m their much
publicised book." But this is not the case. . . . . .
First the Bush administration has been ready to Ignore theu Ideological
offensi;e, Hence the government's principal anti-terror policy paper, the
National Security Strategy, called for a "viable" Palestinian state and a "freeze
on Israeli settlement activity"." This was not at all the language the Clean
Break supporters wanted to hea1; And many complained about it, believing
that Bush was compromised.'" .
Second there has been an assumption that neocons cannot be true US patri-
ots (and i:Operialists) because they operate an 'Israel first' policy. But if Israel
is seen as an extension of US interests in the Middle East wher~ poh~Ies are
developed that expand the influence of both, but where Israelis ultimately
dependent upon the global power of the US, then this argument collapses ..
This is dear if we examine the role of the now discredited but once l.eadmg
Jewish neocon Paul Wolfowitz, formerly a senior US government official and
one of the authors of the National Security Strategy.
Israel: "strategic asset11 for the United States 13
 Before the Bush administration took office, Wolfowitz had written a paper
comparmg the start of the 21st century with the beginning of the last one. He
argued that Chma had the potential to pose the kind of threat to global sta-
bdJty (for which read US hegemony) that Germany posed to Britain's hege-
mony a hundred years ago. The conclusion? Reinforce US super-power status.
And what bettei~ place to start than in the Middle East and the stmggle to con-
trol Its ml supphes? In other words, Wolfowitz starts with global US interests
and then fits m a role for Israel. Israel and any "Israel lobbies" have to oper-
ate W1thm global US policy interests." Radical US scholar Steven Zunes, apply-
mg th~ devastatmg fore~l~Ic technique of Chomsky (with the latter's
enthusiaStic backmg), by piimg precise and devastating fact upon precise and
devastatmg fact, makes this case unassailable:
Since the Sept. 2001 terrorist attacks ... the Pentagon (has) pre-positioned equip-
ment tn Israel to enhance military readiness for intervention ... in the Middle East.
In Ir~q, Israelhelped train US Special Forces in aggressive counterinsurgency
techmques ... [It sent] urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg to instruct assassi-
natiOn squads targeting suspected Iraqi guerrilla leaders. The US civil adminis-
tratio? b1 Iraq, established ,following the 2003 invasion, was modelled after
Israels. c1vtl.admm1stratmn m the occupied Arab territories following the 1967
Israelt mvasmn ... Israelts have helped ann and train pro-American Kurdish mili-
tias and have. assisted US officials in interrogation centres for suspected insurgents
under detention near Baghdad. Israeli advisers have shared helpful tips on erect-
mg a~zd operatmg roadblocks and checkpoints, have provided training in mine-
cleartng and wall-breachmg methods, and have suggested techniques for tracking
suspectedmsurgents usmg drone mrcraft. Israel bas also provided aerial surveil-
lance eqmpment, decoy drones, and armoured co1tstruction equipment;"
Israel remains a US strategic asset, according to Zunes:
An Israel in a constant state of war-technologically sophisticated and mili-
tanly advanced, yet lacking an independent economy and dependent on the
Umted States-is far more willing to perfonn tasks unacceptable to other allies
th~n an Israel at peac: with its neighbours. As fanner secretary of state Henry
K1ssmger once put It, m reference to Israel's reluctance to make peace, "Israel's
obstmacy ... serves the purposes of both our countries best."
This obstinacy is a version of the Olmert recklessness referred to earliet; But for
how much longer this is sustainable is the focus of the rest of this pamphlet.
14 The Nakba
4 The rise of
Palestinian resistance
The Nakba tore Palestinian society apart. Only a small minority of Palestini-
ans clung to their homes inside the new Israeli state-around 150,000 out of
a population of nearly 1 million. Leaderless and dismientated, they tried as
best they could 'to adapt to the brutal military regime of their new rulers. But
the refugees terrorised and expelled from their lands during 1948-49 faced an
even more precarious future. Crammed into vast tented cities in Jordan,
Lebanon and Syria, their survival depended on handouts from the United
Nations. Despite nearly unanimous condemnation by the "international com-
munity" of Israel's policies of ethnic cleansing, neither the old colonial pow-
ers of France or Britain, nor the two Cold War rivals of the US and USSR
showed any inclination to force Israel to allow the refugees to return.
The scale of the defeat of 1948 destroyed the generation of Palestinian
leaders who had emerged during the development of the first Palestinian
national movement in the 1930s in the struggles against the Zionist settlers
under British rule. Over the next 25 years a new leadership for the Palestin-
ian movement would emerge, one which was shaped by the bitter experience
of exile.
Nasser's regime in Egypt, with its rhetoric of Arab nationalism, anti-
colonialism and promise of state-led "socialist" development, raised the
hopes of many that Arab unity would liberate Palestine. The Arab states, at
Nasser's prompting, founded the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1964
to coordinate an international campaign to restore Palestinian rights. At this
stage the PLO's leadership was handpicked by Nasser, and there was little
space for independent Palestinian voices to be heard. However, a new gen-
eration of Palestinian activists was starting to emerge in exile, who would
soon challenge the Arab states for leadership of the Palestinian cause.
The hopes raised by Nasserism in the 1950s were shattered by Israel's
rapid-fire victory over Egypt in the six-day war of 1967. This defeat created a
space for the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership. A guerrilla movement
began to carry out daring raids into Israeli-occupied Palestine. In i968 a
pitched battle between 300 fighters from the Fatah movement and thousands
of Israeli forces near the village of Karamah in the West Bank restored a sense
of Palestinian pride after the terrible defeat of the conventional Arab armies
15
 the previous yea1: Under the leadership of Yasser Arafat Fatah soon came to
dominate th~ PLO, sidelining the pro-Nasser officials of the early years.
Fatah qmckly attrac:ed young Palestinian activists who wanted to shape the
struggle to hberate their ~ount1y. But the organisation's leadership trod a nar-
row path between assertmg the need for an independent Palestinian voice in
the deliberations of the Arab states, and accommodation with those same
Arab st~tes on whom it depended financially and militarily. Unlike some of its
Palestiman nvals, Fatah reJected the idea that the existing Arab states were
themselve~ o~~tad~ to P~l~~tinian liberation. Instead Fatah sought to create
a Palestinian. state m exile , usmg the PLO as an umbrella to bring the dif-
feient Palestmiau guernlla factiOns together under its leadership in order to
direct the armed stmggle.
Events over the following decades showed the resilience of Palestinian
resistance, bu~ also the limitations of Fatah's strategy. Israel's leaders hoped
that the PalestmJans would simply vanish when they were uprooted from their
homes. "There _is:10 such thing as a Palestinian people" said Israeli prime Inin-
I~t~r Golda Meir m 1969. The courageous armed struggle waged by the Pales-
timan gu?mllas showed this to be hollow rhetoric. The PLO set up offices in
Arab capitals, took over orgarusmg life in many of the refugee camps and was
granted obser':'er statl!s at the United Nations. The black, red, white and green
of the Palestmian flag became a familiar symbol of resistance to Westem dom-
ination of the Middle East.
Yet there remained the dilemma which Fatah was never able to overcome:
how to build itself up as a "state in exile" when its leaders had already commit-
ted themselves to not upsetting the balance of power within its host countries.
The Arab _regi~~ allowed the PLO to organise the Palestinian refugees and
to direct their political energy towards the armed struggle with IsraeL This
me~nt the Arab states could avoid dealing with the question of the refugees in
their midst. But the PLO was also a threat to the existing regimes. It com-
manded its own troops and its leaders were supported by the majority of
Palestmians. When the mterests of the Arab governments and the tactics of the
Palestinian guerrillas dashed, the PLO faced pressure from its base to put the
needs of the Palestinian_struggle first. And there was little reason for the Pales-
tinia~ refugees to listen to the Arab govemments, who had impoverished and
margmahsed t~em, often denying the refugees civil or political rights, leaving
them trapped m the camps. Yet time and time again the PLO's leaders drew
back from challenging the Arab governments, holding steadfast to their prin-
ciple of "non-interference".
Events in Jordan in 1970-71 demonstrated the difficulties involved in this
balancing act. Fatah's Palestinian forces were drawn into a bitter conflict with
16 The Nakba
the Jordanian army as King Hussein determined to crush the Palestinian resist-
ance, believing it threatened his rule.
Secondly, the military imbalance between the Palestinian and Israeli sides
would not be easily overtumed. By the 1970s US militaty aid was flowing into
Israel faster th~n ever before. And in 1977 Egypt's President Sadat flew \0
Jerusalem to address the Israeli parliament, calling for a peace deaL The Egypt-
ian-Israeli peace accords dealt another blow to Palestinian hopes, by releasing
Israeli forces from the drawn-out war of attrition over the Suez Canal and
allowing them to attack the PLO in Lebanon. In 1982 Israeli troops poured
over the Lebandse border, seizing control of most of the south and a large part
of Beimt. Althdugh a deal was strudt to allow the PLO's fighters to withdraw,
thousands of Palestinian civilians-largely women, children and old people-
were massacred by the Israelis' Lebanese allies from the far-right Phalange
Party in the camps of Sabra and Shatila while Israeli troops looked on.
Over time the combination of the PLO's dependence on the Arab states-
a logical outcome of the policy of non-interference--and Israeli military suc-
cess propelled the leaders of the Palestinian movement towards accepting the
existence of Israel and to begin working for a "two-state" solution. The sup-
porters of this project argued that it was a step towards the liberation of all of
Palestine. Its critics pointed out that it would simply create a weak Palestinian
entity under the shadow of a much stronger IsraeL Although Fatah's leaders
officially rejected the idea of a "two-state" solution during the 1980s, they
would eventually accept just such a strategy in the Oslo peace process from
1993 onwards.
Military success against the Palestinian resistance in exile emboldened
Israeli politicians in their dealings with the Palestinians of the Occupied Terri-
tories. After 1977 the right wing Likud pariy took power in Israel and
embarked on 'a programme of expansion of Jewish settlements in the Occu-
pied Territories. Since 1967 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had
lived under Israeli military rule and Palestinian workers were absorbed into
the Israeli economy as a pool of cheap labom: The Israeli Labour governments
of these years;cracked down on Palestinian political activities, but allowed
"non-political" organisations to grow, including the Islamic charitable and
religious organisations which would later underpin the rise of Hamas in Gaza.
Under Likud, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories faced a more aggressive
militaty regime, which wove a net of humiliating restrictions into every aspect
of their daily lives. Through the "Village Leagues", the Israeli authorities also
attempted to give the occupation a Palestinian face: trusted collaborators with
the Israeli authorities were given money for development projects in exchange
for spying on and controlling their neighbours.
The rise of Palestinian resistance 17
 Yet it was in the Occupied Territories that Palestinian resistance was rekin-
"force, might, and beatings", as Yiizhak Rabin put it. Faced with a popula-
dled with the intifada of 1987. The uprising was triggered by the deaths of
tion united in defiance, the Israeli army's tactics badly damaged Israel's image
four Palestinian workers in Gaza, crushed by an Israeli army tank transporter
and kindled an international movement in solidarity with the Palestinians. Yet
which smashed into a line of cars on 8 Decembe1: Over the following days tens
for all its heroism, the intifada was not able to defeat Israel, or even to end the
of thousands flooded into the streets, carrying the banned Palestinian flag and
occupation. Israel's overwhelming military superiority could not be overturned
shouting defiance. School children built barricades and hurled rocks at heav-
by street battles in Gaza and Ram allah, while the withdrawal of Palestinian
ily armed Israeli troops. Within weeks the Palestinian population inside Israel
labour could not fatally undermine an Israeli economy propped up by mas-
had joined the battle, organising a general strike on 21 December in solidar-
sive US aid.
ity with the uprising now gripping the Occupied Territories.
The intifada was a pivotal moment in the long history of the Palestinian
struggle. It shattered Israelis' complacent assmnptions that the Palestinians
under direct Israeli rule, including the Palestinian citizens of Israel, would sim-
ply'tolerate poverty, hnmiliation and the denial of their political rights. As an
article in the]erusalem Post put it:

The Palestinimzs we are fighting now are not the same as the Palestinians we
met 20 years ago. They have not been cowed by decades as refugees under
Egyptian and Jordanian rule, or humiliated by the defeat inf/iaed on the com-
bined Arab annies by Israel in 1967... They are a generation who have grown
up under Israeli occupation;"

The uprising altered the balance of power inside the Palestinian resistance
movement. Until1987 its leaders had been exiles, but with the intifada the ini-
tiative passed for the first time to a new generation of activists inside the Occu-
pied Territories. Some were loyal to the historic parties of the PLO: Fatah and
the Popular and Democratic Fronts. But others would emerge as challengers to
the PLO, such as the Islamic Resistance Movement-better known by its
acronym Hamas-which was founded in the first few days of the uprising.
The iconic image of the intifada is that of the young stone throwers con-
fronting Israeli tanks. Yet the uprising was not only about clashes in the
streets. From strikes, to marches, to coordinated acts of civil disobedience, to
the organisation of underground education and health projects as Palestinians
boycotted the Israeli-run administration of the Occupied Territories, the
intifada mobilised Palestinians to resist the occupation in greater numbers than
ever before. The exiled guerrilla leaders had been able to build the apparatus
of a state-with its diplomats, armed forces, and even press and radio-but
the intifada built on and strengthened the networks of a vibrant Palestinian
civil society which sustained resistance in the face of repression.
Crucially, the intifada revealed to millions outside Palestine the brutal logic
of occupation. The Israeli government attempted to crush the protests with

18 The Nakba The rise of Palestinian resistance 19

 5 Why the "peace
process". failed
The signing of the Declaration of Principles by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser
Arafat on the White Honse lawn in September 1993 appeared to mark a dra-
matic change in the fommes of the PLO. Palestinian flags and pictnres of Arafat
festooned the streets of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as Palestinians cele-
brated Israel's recognition of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people. The agreement which had been negotiated in secret meet-
ings in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, over the previous six months also con-
tained historic compromises by the Palestinian leader: the formal abrogation of
the clauses in the PLO's founding document, the Palestinian Covenant, which
denied Israel's right to exist and the renunciation by the PLOof "terrorism and
other acts of violence";" But in the euphoria which followed the signing cere-
mony in Washington, Palestinian supporters of the peace process argued that
despite such cm1cessions the Declaration of Principles had set in motion an irre-
versible dynamic towards the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Yet the chances that the Oslo peace process would deliver even a truncated
and weak Palestinian state on a small part of historic Palestine--let alone
secure justice for the millions of Palestinian refugees after their long decades
in exile-were always extremely slim. Oslo was a bargain between two
unequal sides. The Israelis' military capabilities, financial resources and inter-
national support far outweighed those of the PLO, which was badly weakened
in the early 1990s by the after-effects of the 1991 Gulf War. As a result of
Yasser Arafat's backing for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the Gulf states
expelled around 400,000 Palestinians and cut off financial support for the
PLO, bringing the organisation to the verge of bankruptcy. The strength on
the Palestinian side by contrast, lay in the uprising against Israeli occupation
in the Occupied Territories. Yet it was this strategy of popular resistance which
Arafat agreed to lay aside in order to participate in an official negotiating
process overseen by Israel's backer, the United States.
The "mutual recognition" oflsrael and the PLO reflected the disparity
between the two sides. The PLO's recognition oflsrael marked an acceptance
that Israeli control of the majority of historic Palestine was legitimate and sov-
ereign. Israeli recognition of the PLO by contrast did not mean a corresponding
acceptance of Palestinian sovereignty over the Occupied Territories. Israel
20 The Nakba
would continue to control both the external borders of the Occupied Territo-
ries, and most of the land inside through an evel'expanding network of settle-
ments and militmy highways. Crucial issues, such as the long-term future of the
Israeli settlements, the status of East Jerusalem-occupied by Israel in 1967-
and, most importantly, the question of the right of the Palestinian refugees to
return to the hdmes they left in 1948 and 1967, were deferred for future "final
status" negotiafions.
The Oslo peace process was not, howeve1; only a reflection of Palestinian
weakness and Israeli stt:ength. The Israelis wanted a "partner" to manage
those parts of the Occupied Territories they could not subdue by force. The
intifada demonstrated that, far from accepting their stan1s as a pool of cheap
labour, living ih poverty and denied their basic human and political rights,
'! Palestinian resistance in the Occupied Territories was growing year by year.
Thus any organisation recognised by the Israelis as a negotiating "partner"
had to command the respect of the majority of Palestinians, unlike the sham
instin1tions oflsraeli collaborators set up in the early 1980s. But it also had to
be led by Palestinians who were prepared to make enough compromises to
guarantee Israeli domination of the peace process.
By the early 1990s leading Israeli politicians were desperate to "get Gaza
out of Tel Aviv", as Yitzhak Rabin argued in the 1992 election campaign.
They wanted to reconfigure the economic and social relationships between
Israelis and Palestinians in order to preserve the benefits of occupation with-
out bearing the costs of suppressing Palestinian resistance.
Whose security?
At the core of the deal agreed by Israel arid the PLO in 1993 was the idea that
Israeli forces would withdraw first from Gaza and from Jericho in the West
Bank, leaving these in the control of a "strong Palestinian police force" _.1.1 A
Palestinian Legislative Cmmcil, to be elected by Palestinians in the West Bank
l
' and Gaza Strip would assume responsibility for these areas, but not for
defence or foreign affairs, which would remain in Israeli hands. While the
policing of the Palestinians would be increasingly handed over to the new
Palestinian Authority, the security of the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occu-
pied Territories would continue to be safegnarded by the Israeli army.
The Palestinian police force was, of course, unable to protect Palestinians
from attacks by the Israeli army, which continued to kill Palestinians with
impunity. Events on 26 September 1993, the clay after Arafat announced a
tmilateral ceasefire, proved a grim warning of things to come: the Israelis
destroyed 17 houses in Gaza, arrested 16 people and summarily executed two
Hamas activists.
Why the "peace process" failed 21
Settlements: the matrix of control The closure policy proved so destructive because the 30 year process of inte-
Throughout the 1990s Jewish settlements inside the Occupied Territories con- grating Gaza's economy into Israel's had made the local economy deeply
tinued to grow, despite promises by various Israeli governments to halt their
dependent."
expansion.
Ranging from tiny enclaves in the heart of Palestinian cities to sprawling The effects were soon widely felt among Palestinians. Between 1993 and 1999
suburbs of more than 32,000 inhabitants such as Ma'ale Adumim, the settle- Palestinians per capita incomes shrank by 20 percent. Even the World Bank
ments form part of what Jeff Halper calls Israel's "matrix of control"." Roads warned that such developments could fatally undermine the Oslo negotiations,
commenting in 1997 that "the central story of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
connecting the settlements with each other and to Israel beyond the 1967 bor-
economy in the past few years is one of deterioration" ;1s
der slice through the West Bank, rendering Palestinian "sovereignty" a fiction,
while settlers terrorise Palestinian farmers, shooting at them as they tl)' to hat'
"Demographic war"
vest their crops.
The imbalance of power between Israelis and Palestinians permeates every
Between1992 and 2000-the period of the Oslo peace process-the settler
clause of the agreements signed in the 1990s. Having been forced into con-
population of the Occupied Territories doubled in size.
cession after concession, Arafat and the PLO leaders then faced talks on the
crucial "final stallls" issues, including the fate of the Palestinian refngees and
nle economics of the peace process
the status of Jerusalem. Confident that they could browbeat Arafat into sub-
The Oslo peace process had remarkably different effects on th~ I~raeli ~nd Pales-
mission, Israeli negotiators at the Camp David summit in 2000 refused to
tinian economies. While the Israeli economy boomed, Palest1mans shd deeper
recognise that Israel bore any responsibility for the expulsion of the refugees.
into poverty. Between 1995 and 1999 Israel's gross domestic product rose by 50
Nor, as we have seen, did the Oslo process do anything to hold back what
percent while its population increased by only 10 percent: InternatiOnalmvest-
Mmwan Bishara calls a "demographic war" against the remaining Palestin-
ment in Israeli high tech industries boomed and, as Palestmmn researcher Mar-
ian residents of Jerusalem, seizing Palestinian land and property to build hous-
wan Bishara notes "Israel added a new twist to the term 'peace dividend' when
ing for Israeli J~ws and confiscating Palestinia~s' identity docum~nts proving
it profited from ~1ilitary investments instead of gaining from savings in tht;
their residence in Jerusalem. In 1995 the Israeli government unveiled Its plans
defence sector";" Ironically, the peace process opened new markets to Israeh
for the "Greater Jerusalem" metropolitan area, which would completely encir-
anns manufacturers, such as China which lifted its boycott oflsrael in1995.
cle the Palestinian Old City. Confiscations of Palestinian ID cards also con-
By contrast the 1990s were lean years for the Palestinia.ns, despite promises
tinued with the Israeli authorities seizing the documents of 2,200 Palestinians
that peace would bring prosperity. The central reason for this was the Israeh pol-
icy of continuing to simply close the Occupied Territories-and therefore pre-
betwe~n 1998 and 2001. During the Camp David summit Israeli negotiators
demanded. Israeli sovereignty over the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-
venting Palestinians from reaching their jobs in Israel. Although the pohcy ~.
Sharif Muslim sanctuary which surrounds it, on the grounds that the area lies
closure was adopted as a "secmity" measure in the aftermath of the Gulf~a~; Jt
over the site of the ancient Jewish Temple Mount.
continued into the Oslo period. In the early 1990s around 180,000 Palestmmn
Seven years of negotiations had resulted in expanded settlements, declining
workers crossed into Israel each day, and 25 percent of the Occupied Territories'
Palestinian living standards, and no progress towards justice for the refugees.
GNP was derived from wages earned in Israel. By 1994 only 65,000 Palestinian
workers were crossing into Israel to work. Some Israeli firms continued to use
A damning verdict on the "peace process"
Palestinian labour by employing subcontractors inside the Occupied Territories
Sara Roy's judgement on the Oslo process sums up succinctly the real issues
to assemble and process Israeli raw materials. Howeve~ others nuned to migrant
at stake. The crisis between Palestinians and Israelis, she writes:
workers from elsewhere in the world. Around 300,000 foreign workers had
arrived in Israel from Romania, Thailand and other places by the mid-1990s.J<;
is not primarily the result of a failed summit, poor implementation or ...
As Sara Roy comments, Israel's previous economic strategy for the Occu-
intransigence: it is instead the result of a "peace process" that by design altered
pied Territories intensified the effects of closure on an already impoverished
the political, economic and physical landscape of the Palestinian territories in
Palestinian population:

Why the "peace process" failed 23

22 The Nakba
a manner that intensified rather than mitigated Palestinian dispossession, dep-
rivation and oppression, and so precluded a fair and workable settlement of
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
The Palestinians' verdict was a new intifada. In September 2000 Israel's
remorseless pressure finally led to a renewed explosion of anger and frustra-
tion. The trigger was a visit by Ariel Sharon to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharon
bore a central responsibility for the slaughter at Sabra and Shatila 18 years
earlier and his visit was a deliberate provocation. Once again thousands of
Palestinians took to the streets to demonstrate their refusal to passively acqui-
esce in their oppression. Israel responded with bloody violence. By September
2003 Israel had killed at least 2,168 Palestinians during the new intifada.
. explained the result:
6 Hamas, political Islam and
the liberation of Palestine
"Hamas Electio!z Victory 2006: A Vote for Clarity"
This is how Ali Abunimah in the Electronic Intifada (26 January 2006)
described the sensational election victmy of Barnas in Palestine at the start of
2006. I . .
Anyone who follows the Israel-Palestine crisis, either professionally or polit-
ically or both, knows that the online English language magazine Electronic
Intifada is a model of independent, thoughtful analysis. It is sympathetic to
the liberation of Palestine, of course, but not partisan, and in no sense
"Islarnist"; and it regularly carries aLtides and comment that have often found
a place in the mainstream Western media. The view, then, of Electronic
Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah is particularly authoritative."
The West might have been "shocked" by the Barnas victory but for
Abunimah and most Palestinians it came as no surprise at all. Abunimah
stressed it was.the politics of resistance, not "fundamentalist" religion that

Several factors explain the dramatic rise of Hamas, including disillusionment

and disgust with the corruption, cynicism and lack of strategy of the Fatah fac-
tion which has dominated the Palestinian movement for decades and had
arrogantly come to view itself as the natural and indisputable leader.
The election result ...had been foreshadowed by recent events. Take, for
example, the city of Qalqilya in the north of the West Bank. Hemmed in by
Israeli settlements and 12ow completely surrou12ded by a concrete wall, the
city's fifty thousand residents are prisoners in an Israeli-controlled giant
ghetto. For years Qalqilya's city council was co12trolled by Fatah but after the
completion of the wall, voters in last year's municipal electioizs awarded every
single city council seat to Hamas. The Qalqilya effect has now spread across
the Occupied Territories, with Hamas reportedly winni12g virtually all of the
seats elected on a geographic basis. Thus Hamas's success is as much an
expression of the detennination of Palestinians to resist Israel's efforts to force
their surrender as it is a rejection of Fatah. It reduces the conflict to its most
fundamental elements: there is occupation, and there is resistance.

25
24 The Nakba
 game is not to bring about a just and lasting peace but merely to inoculate the
Abtmimah then warned of problems immediately piling up for Hamas. It might players from the charge that they are doing nothing.
have decisively won the election but it was not going to form a government-
because Palestine had never had a government. There is no doubt that Fatah was entirely complicit in the game, in which it
had become both a prisoner and an indispensable partner. Why else would the
Since its inception, the Palestinian Authority has not been able to protect
United States have desperately tried to shore Fatah up by spending millions of
Palestinians fmmlethal daily attacks by the Israeli anny in the heart of their dollars on proje~ts in recent months designed to buy votes, and why else
towns and refugee camps, or to prevent a single dunum of land being seized would the EU have threatened to cut off aid if Palestinians voted for Hamas?
for settlements, nor to save a single sapling of the m_ore than, one milli~n trees What happened next was the demonisation of Hamas. Backed by a sick-
uprooted by Israel in the past ten years. Rather, m Israel s _conceptwn the ening and thorm\ghly racist Islamophobic media onslaught, the US, EU and
Palestinian Authority was supposed to crush Palesttman reststance to make Israel refused to accept the democratic decision of the Palestinian people. This
the Occupied Territories safe for continued Israeli colonisation. Hamas will proved conclusiv~ly that the so-called "war on terror" had absolutely nothing
certainly not allow that to continue. to do with a "war for democracy" as the Western politicians like Bush Blair
had repeatedly claimed. US-Israel then attempted an armed "coup" against
He then predicted the sabotage: the Hamas victory.
Elements of the Palestinian Authority security services run by Fatah figures ART-PREDICTSlLIFE
may be unwilling to put themselves under the control of a Hamas-;ed author- The people i
ity, which could lead to the collapse of what is left of the authortty s structu;e, Had forfeited the confidence of the government
or even its break-up into personal militias. Israel and the Umted States whtch : And could win it biwk only by redou~led efforts. .
refuses to accept the outcome of the election may see an interest in encourag- ,- '' '; ' ,c, _, ., ,: ' .. )' -' .- .. ;.- ,.
Would it not be:easier In that case for the government
ing such an internal conflict. . To dissolve th~ 1people andeiect anotfuir? ' . . . .......
' .:-"Tho Solutllin, BertaIt Brae
~
hi:, 19&3; German socialist poet. ,.
Special attention should be paid to what Abunimah then wrote. He identified , I , _! , ' _ " j ' I { ., ; ' ; i, - , , ' , '-; , : , \ r -, I ' - ,l , ' - r '

the ultimate fraud at the core of the "peace process"-the lack of any senous
COITI111itment to a ~e-state solution-as a central factor in the Hamas victory:
. The Israeli publ~brecognis~d ~ dem~cratic decision eve~ ifth~ US~EU~I~ra~l!
. leadership fail~clto do so. The Jewish Ctlron/ale; the malnweeklyri.ewspaper
. ' '-' . .- -: .. I - - .. . . ; . . - ' .. .-. , ' . ,,., -" , _.,._.
ofthe Jewish community in Britain, reported that the Israeli daily newspaper
For the "international community"-principally the "Quartet" made up of the YediotAahrondtfound a 48"43 percent majority In favour oftalking to Ham as... :
United States, the European Union, Russia and UN ... the election resultis a ' ' ,. , ' 1' ' ' - -' ' ' ' - '- ' -' ' . ' i . ' ' ' ....- ".- ~ ' ' ' i ' -' ' ' ! ,. - .
-'-Jewish. Chronlols, :-3rd..February . 2008 - . ',_. ...... -.. . '. ...... .
11iajor embarrassment. They, and the coterie of well-funded NGO~ and tlnnk-
' - " ""' -

tanks that generate so much of their intellectual guff have butlt thetr approach
on the notion that Palestinian "refonn", rather than an end to the Israelt occu-
pation, is the way to resolve the conflict. While nominally committing them-
selves to a two-state solution, these powers dragged the Fatah-led Palestmtan
Authority into an endless game where Palestinians have to jump through hoops
to prove their worthiness of basic rights, while at the same time no pressure has
been applied to Israel to end the confiscation of land and expanst_on of settle-
ments. This peace process industry chose to hail Israel's tactical wtthdrawal of
eight thousand settlers from Gaza last summer, while ignoring the far larger
number of settlers Israel has continued to plant all over the West Bank effe~
tively rendering a two-state solution unachievable. The principal ptnpose of tins
Barnas's long-term peace offer-a different face of political Islam
Before looking at this, though, we need to pause and briefly consider the sin-
gle most important proposal in the political programme outlined by Hamas
after its sweeping victory, as well as just why Islamic mass movements have.
swept across the Middle East.
Azzam Tamirrii the British-based Palestinian Islamist intellecnJal, has given
' .
one of the clearest accounts of the Hamas position.'' He points to the Hamas
offer of hudnah, a long-term truce with Israel. He explains that Hamas will
not recognise an Israel built on land stolen from the Palestinians. While he
recognises, unequivocally and vety publicly, the enormity of the crime that was

Hamas, political Islam and the liberation. of Palestine 27

26 The Nakba

the Holocaust; he asks why should Palestinians pay the price?
At the same time, though, he accepts that Israel is a reality and explains that
hudnah allows for a negotiated ceasefire which could last for a generation.
He cites the 1990s "terrorist" IRA ceasefire with the British government as
a potential model. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, now shares power
with its traditional and detested enemy, the Protestant believers in the sanctity
of Union with the British crown. Yet these former IRA leaders not only still
support a united Ireland, but also believe they negotiated a political frame-
work allowing for a democratic and peaceful transition to it. That is when the
majority of people on the island of Ireland approve of a united Ireland.
. Is it not a disgrace that this argument was so contemptuously dismissed by
Israel and its Western backers in the US and EU governments? That a chance
for long-term peace was just gratuitously snuffed out? They used the fig leaf
of the Hamas refusal to recognise Israel. But Hamas had several very power-
ful reasons adopt this position:
The Palestinian people had just given them a huge elecioral mandate for
this very platform.
Israel had trampled all over the earlier recognition agreement that Arafat
and the PLO had signed at Oslo, by more than doubling the number of set-
tlers on the West Bank, making a genuine two-state solution impossible.
And, finally, the whiff of hypocrisy in the air was palpable. The US, EU and
Israel have been absolutely desperate to keep the Saudi royals on board for
. any fmal Middle East settlement. Bush begged them to go to Annapolis. Yet
the Saudis have not recognised Israel! (And, incidentally, Sinn Fein have
not, and will not, recognise British sovereignty over Northern Ireland).
Instead Israel and its Western backers preferred to destroy the democratically
elected Hamas government. Using the Western media they intensified obses-
sive Islamophobic propaganda. This has sometimes been so successful that
even the pro-Palestinian left has occasionally succumbed to it. A favourite ploy
has been to make claims about the inevitable anti-Semitism of the Islamists.
,.
. THE MUSLIM JEWISH SYMBIOSIS . '! ;
. TI1e medieval sy~blosis oUewsand Arabs is far cilci~e~fri tiie patierri dr
modern western Europe ~nd liinerlca and verYdifferent from the situatlmi in
'the Romim, Otthmiui and Russian empires~ As PrOfessor Griiteln h~s pointed ..
! ouft~is symbiosis'p~oduciui something that was hot mer~ly a' Jewish ' . ..
culfure In Ara:t1ic. u: was aJudaeci~Aiabic, or cine might'1eveh say Juctluici~
lsla.miC, Culture.42 , .,. . ' . -' ,: ' . '] \ -:': ...
a .
28 The Nakba
Another ploy "proves" the "medieval" and unchanging nature of Islam by
makmg emotionally charged allegations about the oppression of women at the
root of the religion. What ignorance! Why don't these siren voices ever hear
the women of political Islam?
Listen to Huda Naeem, and there are thousands of Hudas in Palestine
new!y elected H~mas MP in2006. Her priorities for change in the Palestiniai~
parliament.: an ~nd to forced marriage, honour killings, low pay and girls
bemg kept out of school.
~hat is when she is not preparing her 13 year old son to die in the. fight
agamst Israel. THus she had a particular commim1ent to the hudnah. "Women
m Gaza and the iWest Bank should be given complete rights" Huda insists."
Ye~, Islamic feminism is alive and well and is a struggling'voice inside the
IslamiC mass movements across the Middle East. These are highly dynamic
and mdeed volatile movements, which, if they are not receptive to the
demands of the millions of poor oppressed peoples who are now looking to
them, will disintegrate.
That also means that the leadership have to initiate, and take seriously, peace
proposals that begm to roll back rather than intensify the oppression of the
Palestinian people.
But the West a\'d Israel were determined to deny Hamas that opportunity
Even James Wolfensohn, the prominent Jewish American World Bank chief
appointed by the US government to help Gaza's economy before the Hamas
VIctory, was appalled, and resigned when he realised the "game" US-Israel was
playing."
Alvaro de Soto, UN envoy to the Middle East, exposed it: "The US pushed
for a confrontatiOn between Fatah and Hamas", he wrote in a confidential
paper leaked to the press.'' DeSoto reported a top US official, at a Washing-
ton meetmg, gloatmg about "near civil war" violence on the streets of Gaza.
The Guardian's veteran correspondent Jonathan Steele under the headline
"Hamas Acted on a Very Real Fear of a US-Sponsored Coup'\ reported o~
documeuts describing the US "hard coup" strategy planned against Hamas
on the $1.27 billion dollars that the US were ready to use to transform th;
Palestinian security forces and to allow the president to dismiss the cabinet and
form an emergency cabinet:~'
For months, Egyptian anns had been flowing across the border to the Fatah-
controlled Palestinian Authority security services. One shipment in December
: ,
2006 included 2,000 AK-47 rifles, 20,000 magazines and two million rounds
Ham as, political Islam and the liberation of Palestine 29
of ammunition. Fatah activists also received training in Egypt. In June 2007,
Hmnas routed Fatah's forces and seized military control of Gaza, pre-empting l The struggle for the
a US-backed military coup organised by Muhammad Dahlan, the fanner head
of the Palestinian Authority's Preventative Security Service there. One factor liberation of Palestine
which prompted Hamas's aaion was the revelation on 7 Jwie, by Israeli news-
paper Ha'aretz, that Mahmud Abbas [Fatah's head of the Palestine Author-
ity] had asked Israel to allow passage for a huge arms shipment from Egypt,
HIZBOLiAH'S VICTORY OVER ISRAEL IN 2006
including "dozens of annoured cars, hundreds of annour-piercing RPG rock-
. "A small band of,irregulars kept at bey one of the world's most powerful
ets, thousands of hmzd gre11ades and millions of rounds of mmnwzitio11 ".
armies for over~ morith, and Inflicted remarkable losses on it." So wrote
veteran Middle ~ast correspondent David Hirst after Israel's 33-deywar in
Alastair Crooke, former Middle East adviser to the EU foreign policy chief
the summer of 2006 against Hizbollah in lebanon. He noted:
Javier Solana, concluded that "Hamas felt that they had little option but to
"Arabs dubbed this the sixth Arab Israeli war.c.it already ranks In Its'
take control of security away from [Abbas's] security forces". The most com-
strategic; psyc~ologlcal and political consequences, as perhaps the most
prehensive account of the attempted coup is in the April2008 edition of Van-
' significant sinck Israel's "war of independence" in 1948".48
ity Fair magazine. 47
B)l contrast,/demoralised conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer,
The US, EU and Israel then imposed the now infamous siege on the people
"echoing the views of many in Washington and particularly in the. Pentagon'',
of Gaza. f , _ , .! ' 1 -' " I. 1

wrote In the Washington Post, "The US has gone far out on a limb to allow
Israel to win".1't has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been
disappointed".;, ., ,. , ,
The US had expected defeat of Hlzbollah as a major blow for its main
regional backeh Iran. But the strategy literally blew up In its face; Instead we
1
witnessed a sp ectacular victory for the poor' Arab workers and small
farmers who liye in South lebanon and form the backbone of support forthe
Hlzbollah militia. and their ames. And if morality in .war can be measured by
. making soldiers rather than civilians the target, then Hizbollah scored a
decisive victory here as well.. After the conflict the BBG reported over 100
' Israeli soldierii killed and Jess than 50.Jsraell civilians, whereas the Israelis
killed over 1,000lebanese clvJIIans/0 Hizbollah and fellow militia Amal
: reported the Joss of'250 fighters. Not only did Israel have the di.Jbious;and
grotesquelY unfair, advantage of fighter bombers,b4t theyfired,1.2 miUJon
cluster bomblets as wen as phosp~orou~ shells, forbidden by international
Jaw. To its 'credit; the' Israeli neWspaper fla'ared, reporting this, pr~iilct~d
. ': ,. ; - '
' ' ' '' -' ' -' ' ' .: ' ' . . . '' ,- ' '. " '~ . .. ,. .
' ' ,_' ' .
that the' south lebaneiuf"Jandscape
':, ' . :. i ' ' ' - -
littered with
' ' ' - - ' -' '
thousands of land ,
- ,. -' '~ :l : t j, - ' ' ., ., ,.

mines..:will claim victims long after the'war.has ended::" . . . . ' ' ' ..
. ,(, ,.; : ___ ,- ' '- . ,._ ' --.-- ..~"- _, ,_:' ' :,. -.~ . .. .. - .
, Western propaganda claims that Iran created H1zboUa~ b~?.ause they ....
share the same Islamic Shla religlou~ roots. Of co4rse,,the 19791riinlan .
' ', : _ I- ' . '' . . ',_ . , ' ' -.- ., ', . ' - - .,_ : ' :
Revolution served as an inspiration but, actually, Israel created HizboUah.lt
dldn'.t exist before 19B2 when Israel invacieii.Lebanon, fro,;; the south, in
order to evict the Palestine Uberatlin; Org~nisatlon . :.-.. - --"
which -
h~d:its
.
base In
, ___ . -.
""''

31
30 The Nakba
 In early 2008 Socialist Worker's Simon Assaf reported the sensational devel-
opment when Hamas blew a huge hole in the Gaza/Egypt border security
wall. His analysis provided a unique insight into how the struggle for Pales-
SYRIA tinian liberation momentarily, and quite unexpectedly, took a leap into a very
different future.
Golan US-ED-Israel had been 'starving the one and a half million people in Gaza
Heights
of food and supplies, including fuel, for daring to elect a Hamas govemment.
Then suddenly for a few days, as Simon wrote:

The Middle East witnessed the dizzying potential of mass movements from
below. Walls tumbled, a dictator was humiliated and US strategy to isolate the
Palestinian resistance was smashed into ruins.
It began on the morning of Tuesday 22 january when thousands of Pales-
tinian women and children laid siege to the border crossing at Rafah separat-
ing Egypt from the Palestinian territory.
The dernonstrators were demanding e11try into Egypt following Israel's
tightening of its grip over the Gaza Strip.
Since the outbreak of the second intifada ...in 2000, the Gaza Strip has been
economically isolated. In200S the resistance forced Israel to abandon its ille-
gal settlements established when it seized the territory in the 1967 war...
Egyptian riot police lined up to block them. Some demonstrators chanted
insults against. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak as children indignantly
slapped the riot shields.
To the cries of "Cowards, cowards", the riot police began to buckle.
Around SO women broke through the border post before they were driven
back by gunfire, water emmons and batons.
As news spread that Mubarak's hated police were beating desperate Pales-
tinians, Egypt's opposition Muslim Brotherhood and the Socialist Alliance-
a coalition of left wing organisations and individuals-issued a call for a
demonstration...
A terrified ivrubarak mobilised his security forces and declared that the
Lebanon's capltai,Beiru{ During that inv~sion. israel kill~d nearly2~,0~0 . demonstration would not go ahead. Hundreds of activists belonging to the
Lebanese civilians, and wounded oyer 3D,QOO, mainly in theso~t~.,'' ls~ael .. Muslim Brotherhood and left wing organisations were seized from their beds,
then \lricupieq south Leliaiwn for at~other 1B years. Hizbollah grew a.S the .. or as they prepared to travel to the capital for the protest.
." , :. r. , , ;, - .... , ,., ,., : -, ,. '. ' . -- , .. ... , .r,"
main guerrilla resistance rnoli~mentto that pc.cupatiOn.lt forc~d Israel s As Mubarak's security forces were mobilising to snuff out the Cairo protest,
' withqrawalih 2000 and coosolidatei:t its SUpj:lort among the miJjcirity of . Hamas engineers destroyed the border fence that separates the Gaza Strip
Lebanese in the south~ . ' . . . . . , . . from Egypt. It has since been revealed that the engineers had been secretly cut-
US-I~rael are right to be wqrried about Hi~bollah .. lthas unite.d Shi>l and. ting through the six metre high steel barrier for months. On Wednesday night
sunni Muslims Within and beyoiidtlie Arab world, Muslim and Ghristian they brought the whole fence tumbling down.
' Arabs, as Vien as believer~ arid non believers, communist and other secular As word went round that the border fence had fallen, tens of thousands of
socialists, within and heyond lebanon. ,

The struggle for the liberation of Palestine 33

32 The Nakba

Palestinians began crossing into Egypt. The security forces were powerless in
the face of this human wave...
In Cairo news began to filter through that the border had fallen. Although
over 450 key activists had been arrested, 2,000 people began to assemble in
Tahrir Square, in the centre of the capital.
Fearful that the attempts to stifle open protests had failed, the state security
police shut Cairo~ underground stations and swept through working class areas
randomly arresting people. For the Egyptian state the enemy was everywhere.
The chants of "Cowards, cowards" were taken up by the demonstrators in
Cairo. As news reached the demonstrations that hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were now flooding into Egypt the riot police attacked protesters
chasing them into side streets. Over 1,500 were arrested.
But the crackdown could not stop what was rapidly becoming a major
humiliation for Mubarak. With his border police in disarray and his riot police
retreating in the face of a mass of people, he announced on national TV that
he had in fact "invited the Palestinians in" ...
Events along the border with Gaza have further weakened Mubarak's rule
after over 26 years in power. Since December 2006 a wave of strikes, factory
occupations and protests have broken his regime of fear.
Meanwhile Washington demanded that the "border be sealed" as the US Con-
gress threatened to withhold $100 million in aid if the Egyptians did notre-
impose the siege:
The Egypt/Gaza border was transformed into a festival. According to the
United Nations by Thursday morning, "roughly 350,000 Palestinians-or
more than 20 percent of Gaza's population of about 1.5 million-walked,
drove or rode on donkey carts into Egypt".
By Sunday this reached 750,000. Many families were visiting loved ones,
stocking up on supplies or enjoying the atmosphere of freedom:"
Eventually the Egyptian militaty did reassert control. But the Egyptian gov-
ernment had been forced to invite representatives of the Hamas government
to talks, breaking the boycott imposed by the US and Israel.
More important, though, was the prospect of a new kind of politics from
below. Ordinary people on both sides of the Palestinian divide momentarily
shaped events. What panicked the political elites in Washington, Jerusalem
and Cairo was the possibility of the strnggle for Palestinian liberation fusing
with the unprecedented upsurge of the workers' strike movement in Egypt.
The first two intifadas had, in any case, proved that mass Palestinian resist-
34 The Nal<ba
ance cannot be defeated and will persist in thwarting US-Israel plans to make
their domination of the region permanent. But far more terrifying is the
prospect of intifada ill, the borderless intifada, the i.ntifada that spreads west
from Palestine Gaza to Egypt and East from Palestme West Bank to Jordan.
!
This is the intifada that challenges the entire rotten structure of Arab regimes
that have literally 1nortgaged their peoples' future to the purse strings of US
imperialism. ' ..
But for this movement to be successful it has to trigger a far more pohttcally
powerful resistan~e movement from be~ ow. Here the role of the workers of
Egypt is decisive. It is when the economic struggles of these workers become
political-that is when they see their struggle moving beyond a ch~llenge to
the oppression of their immediate employers-that new and very senous poht-
ical alternatives are posed. .. . .
This in u 1rn triggers, and requires, a new kind of pohttcal thi.nkmg, o:
rather rekindles an older socialist politics, but an international soc1ahst poh-
tics liberated from the stranglehold that Soviet-style "Conununism" inflicted
on progressive Arab forces in an earlier generation. . ,
How rllight this happen? Let us look more closely at the Egyptian workers
struggle today. .. . .
The Egyptian regime is facing a deep structural criSIS. Smce late 2006 stnkes
have swept Egypt as workers' anger at being mad~ to bear the costs of eco-
nomic reform intersects with a rising mood of confidence that ordmary peo-
ple can challeng~ the state. In 2007 there _were around 700 strikes and protests
involving mOre th~n a quarter of a n1tlhon workers, m sectors as diverse as
textiles, transport, education, milita1y industries and eve~ the Suez Canal. The
heart of the movement lies in the huge state-owned textile factones, hke Misr
Spimoing in Mahalia ai-Kubra, where a strike by 24,000 workers triggered off
the strike wave in December 2006. In the space of JUSt ~vera year the Mahalla
workers moved from demanding better bonuses for their facto1y, to callmg for
a rise in the national minimum wage-unchanged since the 1980s. On 6 April
2008 thousands joined protests across Egypt in support of the Mahalia work-
ers' demands. .- . .
The workers' movement follows a wave of protests which started With
demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian intifada in 2000~ but devel-
oped into a huge anti-war movement in 2003 during the US mvas10n of h-aq,
and fed into the emergence of Kefaya, a campaign opposmg Mubarak and
challenging his plans to hand power to his son. .
The Mubarak regime's weakness lies in the fact that-as Lenm argued long
ago-imperialism is an economic as well as political system. In 1915 he
described how war was built into the logic of the capitalist system, as eco-
The struggle for the liberation of Palestine 35

nomic rivalry spilled over into military competition. The intense competition
between the rival great powers over the resources of the Middle East, partic-
ularly the region's oil and gas, has guaranteed a century of conflict. At times
the great powers have been content to control the area from a distance,
through their local client states. Israel has consciously played a role as the
guarantor of European and American interests in the Middle East for more
than 50 years.
More than this, the US has relentlessly promoted free market economic
"reform" across the region. For more than 30 years Middle Easte1:n govern-
ments have been "advised"-in reality bribed or threatened_:_to dismantle or
neglect welfare programmes and privatise state industries with the loss of hun-
dreds of thousands of jobs. The results for ordinary people have been little
short of catastrophic. In Egypt, which pioneered these policies, the government
boasts of annual growth rates of 7 percent, and multinationals are reaping vast
profits. But millions of Egyptians struggle to find bread for their children as
food prices spiral out of control.
The development of the Egyptian strike movement provides a glimpse of
workers' power. It reminds us that it is workers who keep the oil flowing
through the pipelines of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, workers who take ships along
the Suez Canal, workers who bake bread, drive. trains, serve fries at McDon-
ald's and sweep the floors of tourists' hotel rooms. Their labour supports the
economy of every Middle Eastern state, and therefore the stability of every
Middle Eastern government.
The working class is the only force in society that can escape the limits of
national liberation, because it also challenges the rule of imperialism's internal
allies-the powerful local elites in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Under workers' control the resources of the Middle East could be chan-
nelled into healthcare and education, instead of weapons systems, intenm-
tional debt repayments and the luxury lifestyles of the elite. When workers
lead stmggles for democracy or against imperialism, those struggles raise the
possibility of socialist revolution.
Examples from Egypt show how the most advanced sections of the new
workers' movement are starting to make the connections between their strug-
gle for social justice, and the Palestinians' fight for national liberation. When
those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians broke out of Gaza into Egypt, the
Mahalia textile workers, steel workers and the tax collectors' strike commit-
tee raised tens of thousands of pounds in solidarity collections for them.
Of course, it is not inevitable that workers will win leadership of any fnnue
movement from below which challenges the US's client rulers. They may play a
crucial role in bringing down the old regime, as the workers' movement did in
36 The Nakba
Iran in 1978-79, only to see other social and political forces seize state powet:
Islamist movements are the largest opposition !lfOUps in most Arab countries
and could find themselves propelled into power on the back of a popular protest
movement. It is highly likely that the Muslim Brotherhood could take power in
Egypt following :the collapse of the Mubarak regime. But the lesson of the
Islamic Revolutidn in Iran is that the stmggle continues after such a revolution.
In Iran the regime is deeply divided. The Islamic movement has splintered
into conservative and reform wings. The reform wing, despite the repression,
sponsors mass-based women's, students' and workers' struggles. It welcomes
a dialogue with ~he secular left.
In Egypt, the annual anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist Cairo Conference, spon-
sored jointly by 1the Muslim Brotherhood, nationalists and the secular left
demonstrates that this democratic dialogue is already a vital component of the
unfolding battle'against US-ED-Israeli domination of the region.
What is certain is that only by connecting the stmggle for social justice and
the fight for national liberation; only by harnessing the unique power of the
working class to change the world, can the Palestinians ever find lasting peace,
justice or freedom.
ONE PALESTINE, A FREE, AND SINGLE DEMOORATIIJ STATE. .
This pamphlet has tried to show that a "two-statt3 solution" is not going to
happen. In any: case, such a solution would not dojustlce,to the. Palestinians.
It Is impossible to predict how the struggles in the Middle East are going to
develop. All kin~s of short term "compromises" are possible; including Israel
being forced t~ negotiate with Hamas. But, whatever happens, we must not
lose sight ofth'e three essential conditions for the liberation of Palestine.
!
e Israel's mill~ary occupation of the West Bank must end. The Israeli
"apartheid \vall" must be dismantled. . . .
e Jerusalem must be shared on an equal basis regardless of religion and
ethnicity. i
e The Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return home. The
catastrophih consequences of the Nakba, which lie at the heart of the
conflict, must be addressed and reversed.
The fulfilmento~these three conditions, and especially the last one, means
that a two-stat~ solution is not possible. The introductory chapter of this
pamphlet recall~d the effort Vasser Arafat, internationally recognised leader :
of the Palestine Liberation organisation, made to reach an accommodation
with the Israelis. Historically, this was the closest the two sides have e\ler
The struggle for the liberation of Palestine 37
~---~-

, , _., , ; ,, , _ ~ , _, ; , 1 : :., : _ , -, : , _ ,; , .: \ , ' , , ' ;, :if,. .'I' ' NOTES

come to a "two-state
-.",.,;.:.,._. '---"'"
solution". But it meant that Arafat
: ,:,'--' 1];'-,',l'Ji
had to;j_,,..;-
) :-,
compromise '.
.
the prmclple .of the rrghtofreturn of the refugees, ln.order to protect.the . . . Guardia11, Sarurday Review, 12 April, 2008. 20 Ha'aretz, 30 September 1951, quoted in Arie
.-!''' ~--- -, '_l., ' .... ~, -~' 1 ; ',;. :__: -. -~-:
;,,:.: ,,; ) .- -. ::'; ',,,,, _,;- '-,., 2 New Yorh Review of Bonks, 13 June 2002. Bober, Tbe Other Israel: The Radical Case
..,, ''Zronrsm";th,e.Jewrsh exclusrvenes~, of tile. Jewrsh state.Jhisflew,in the face
,---,- .- ,., -.,. ,,.,.,_., :.-:.t __ ,., ., ,,_. ')_,, . 1 ,, t . .- .. " . ' ' ' , n -.-
.-~;, "''' 3 New York Rel'iew of Bnnl~s, 13 June 2002. Against Zionism (Anchor Books, New York,
. pf~hatfar \"P~~ ~o~ourable Jewish traditio,nofinter,.~atiomilis.m >y,h,ich ~.as,, 4 Guardia11, 30 November 2007. 1972), pp16*17. .
alwirys.welcomed, imd inileed dema'rii:ted as liasili right, that'. Jews andnon- 5 Gttardiall, 10 January 2008. 21 J Bonds and others, Our Roots Are Still Alit'e
JeWs iive'side l:iysi.le'ori'tlie'basis1o(equau'i.v. , 6 It can be found at fmp:/Jwww.activestills.org/
jerusalemljerusalem.html. It was produced by
{San Francisco, Peoples Press, 1977), p116.
22 Shlaim, p309.
''.'"-'<.\ '-! '. ,.t ' ' , .,.. .; " ' '-. :': ' ' .. -'
---~. .
. . In ariycase,A'rafat's concession did no good at all. The Israelis not only
''ji---"' - 0 - .,:

ActiveStills and the' Israeli Committee Against 23 Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, p20.
' t~eii.tea ~.is iliplbiilacy wit~ ccint~mpt; tfuiy contiriu~d to. doubl~ tlie nuni6er, ' House Demolitions {ICAHD). For the 24 Noam Chomsky, World Orders Old and
exhibition catalogue go to http:/Jwww.icahd. New (New York, Columbia University,
' ofsettlem'ents iln tli'e West liank, making even awest.Eiank Palestinian "mini:' org!englimages/uplhaded_admin_contenti 1996), p235.
statelet"untenable. . . . , . , ' , . , ' . , , hooks!Jerusalenl_Dispossessed_Booklet.pdf. 25 B Whitaker, "Playing Skittles with Saddam",
-. '. , ,. :; , - ": , --.f:; \. _ ,- . ' ,- r 1,, .....- l , ; , .. -.-, ' , ', ,
See also Yigal Brorjner and Neve Gordon, 2 September 2002, Guardian Online.
I , M~anwhilethe uscEU"Isr:1eli
-, :": _..-r .- ... , '" "l-1 , . 1,, _._,_.
lliadersliip plunges the region
.., ,.. ~ ,.--
int~,de~per
,_,,. '.) . . . . . "Silwan: The Politics of Archaeology in East 26 John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt,
'
and deeper crisis. Let us poilblude by returning to Israeli prime
' -_ ' -' ' ' ; - ' , ' ' ' \ ' ' ' ' " - ' ' : ' ~' '
minister , .
i '' '''
: " ' ,.. '' ' ( ' _, ' ' ,; ' t ' ', ' l -- J ' ' t' -;
Jerusalem", available at hrrp:/AV\'1\-v.apjp.org/ The Israel Lnb!Jy and US Foreign Policy
OlmeH:'s'"fears" about the arg~mehtgahilng
,,,,," '''!' : ;, ' .! ,,
g~Qun,d that l~ra~Jis beco!Jling .
',., ' , - ' .... -; -..
7 1-Ia'aretz, 27 December 2007. {Allen Lane, London, 2007).
-.dl ,_. --
8 Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing ol Palestine 27 See www.whirehouse.gov/nsc/nsall.html
an apartheid
, --'' <,, -"
state. .. . ,
.. ,- ,,. ',.~,-,:-. _.. -
, . . .. . -.,:,.-,-~:\r_.-t,,:-" (Oxford, Oneworld, 2006), p9. 28 Rose, pp171-172.
i .,.Halo\/ revealing
" ' ,
it is that
i " -, ,
afterwayes,ofrnass -.'I H,
based struggle
i ,, I , "
in ,
apartheid
-, ,. (- -"', , .,. , , t 1 ' , ,_
9 Quoted in Phil Marshall, Intifada: Zionism, 29 Alex Callinicos, The New Mandarins of
South Afriria,'one person one vote. finally forced th'e apartheid regime to ,_.. ,_. Imperialism mrd R1lestiniau Resistance American Power (Cambridge, Polity, 2003)
-, ' - ! [ '. ,, '.\> __-. ;
. ,; ' '- ' ' ! ' . . . . . - . , '. -\ ,.,,'
. 1-'
(London, Bookmarks, 1989), p49. p67. See especiaUy the chapter "The
crumble. It Is a simple truth that orie person one vote for all Palestinians and tO Quoted in Pappe, p48. Geopolitics of Oil".
Israelis would similarly end the Zionist regime In Israel,. opening the wa.\t fora 11 Quoted in Pappe, p49. 30 See http:llwww:fpif.org.lfpiftxr!3270. See also
genuinely democratic fut~re for all the peoples ofthe land, 12 Quoted in Pappe, p65. his comments on the role of the fanatically pro-
, , ... --. _ ..... ,.... .. ,~----------~ --~-~.,L,.-.o
......... ": ........ ""C._',, .. .. ----~"''"' 13 Pappe, p82. Zionist Christian Right and detailed analysis of
14 Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel aud the the US arms industry. He argues that both had
Arah World (London, Penguin, 2001). far more influence on the Bush White House
15 Shlaim, p35. than the "Ismellobby". He argues this despice
16 Part of this sectiOn is based on chaprer 9 of the "lohhy"s' persistent and well documented
John Rose, Myth's of Zionism (London, attempts to destroy his-academic caieer:
Pluto, 2004). 31 Quoted in Mashall, p19.
17 Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle {London, 32 Quoted in Graham Ushelj Palestine b1 Crisis
Pluto,1999), pvii. (London, Pluto, 1997), p11.
18 Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, p17. 33 Usher, pp8-9.
19 For a comprehensive analysis of US military 34 Jeff Halper, "The key ro peace: dismantling
aid to Israel, see the Washington Report on the matrix of control", available at http://
Middle East Affairs: "U.S Financial Aid To www.icahd.org/eng/artides.asp?menu=6&
Israel: Figures, Facts, and Impact" available suhmenu=3
at bttp:/Jwww.wrmea.com/hrml!us_aid_to_ 35 Marwan Bishara, Palestine/Israel: Peace or
israel.htm Apartheid {London, Zed, 2001 ), p102.
US presidents rarely admit the real 36 Bishara, p102.
reasons for so much US aid. But US president 37 Sara Roy, [<ailing Peace: Gaza and the
Ronald Reagan broke diplomatic cover [71/estinian-lsraeli Conflict (London, Pluto,
when, in 1981, he blurted out, "With a 2007), p313.
combat experienced military, Israel is a force 38 Quoted in Bisham, p104.
in the.Middle East- thar actually is a benefit to 39 Roy, p215.
us. If there were not Israel with that force, 40 Ali Ahunimah is the Palestinian-American
we'd have to supply that with our own, so author of Oue Country: A Bold Proposal to
this isn't just altruism on our part." See Eud the Isrpeli-Palestinimr Impasse (New
Naseer Hasan Aruri, Dishonest Brnher. The York, Metropolitan Books, 2006). He
US Role in Israel and Palestine {Cambridge, describes himself as a moderate and an
Mass, South End Press, 2003), p39. advocate of non-violence who supports "a

39
38 The Nakba
 ---------------
permanent, protected, and vibrant national
Jewish presence in all of Israel-Palestine as
parmers and equals".
41 Guardian, 30 January 2006. See also his
recent book Hamas: Umvritteu Chapters
(Hurst, 2006).
42 Bernard Lewis, The jews of Islam
(Routledge, London, 1984) p77. For
Professor Goitein's analysis of the fabulous
1,000 year old Geniza documents, discovered
in a Cairo symigogue, see Rose, Myths of
Zionism, chapter 4.
43 Guardian, 18 February 2006.
44 Guardian, 22 june 2007.
45 Guardiau, 18 June 2007.
46 Guardian, 22 June 2007.
FURTHER READING
-In addition to the hooks, pamphlets, articles
and websites already identified we recommend
the following:
General
Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleausiug of Palestine
-{Oxford, Oneworld, 2006).
Phil Marshall, Intifada: Zionism, Imperialism
and Palestinian Resistance (London,
Bookmarks, 1989).
Avi Shlaim, The Iron \Vall: Israel and the Arab
\Vorld (London, Penguin, 2001).
Graham Usher, Palestiue in Crisis (London,
Pluto, 1997).
Sara Roy, Failing Peace:Gaza and the Palestinian-
Israeli Conflict (Pluto, London 2007).
Nomn Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: the
U11ited States, Israel aud the Palestinians
(Pluto, London, 1999).
Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession: the
Struggle for Palestinian Selfdetermiuation
I969-94 (Chatto and Windus, London, 1994).
Maye Kassem, Egypt: the Dynamics of
Authoritarian Rule {Lynne Rienner, Boulder,
2004).
Eyal Weizmann, Hollow Laud: Ismel's ArdJitecture
of Occupatimr (London, Verso 2007).
40 The Nakba
----------
47 hnp://W'.vw.vanityfair.com/politics/features/
2008/04/gaz-1200804 ?curremPage= 1
48 Quoted in Chris Hannan, "Hizhollah and
the War Israel Lost", International Socialism
112, available at http://www.isj.otg.uk/. This
is important reading for the background to
this conflict as well as an analysis of the
strengths and weaknesses of Hizbollah.
49 jewish Chmnicle,18 August 2006.
50 BBC News, www.news.hbc.eo.uk/ on 31
August 2006.
51 Ha'aretz, 12 September 2006.
52 Chomsky, Fatefitl Triangle, p221.
53 Simon Assaf, "Gaza: 'The Week we Broke
their Prison State'," Socialist \'(lorker, 2
Fehfu;uy 2008.
John Rose, The Myths of Zionism {London,
Pluto, 2004).
Anne Alexander, Nasser (London, Haus
Publishing, 2005}.
Ghada Karmi, Married to Another Mau
(London, Pluto, 2007).
Women, Islam and Political Islam
Maryam Poya, Womm, Worh and Islamism:
Ideology and Resistance iu Iran (London and
New York, Zed Books, 1999).
Elaheh Rosrami-Povey, Afghau Women: IdentilJ'
and bwasiOil (London and New York, Zed
Books, 2007).
Lila Ahu-Lughod, Remaking Womeu: Feminism
and Modernity ill the Middle East (Princeton
.University Press, 1998).
Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam:
Historical Roots of Modem Debate {Yale
University Press, 1992).
Articles
Chris Harman, "The Prophet and the
Proletariat", International Socialism 64
(London 1994).
Aijaz Ahmed, "Islam, Islam ism and the West",
Socialist Register (London 2008).