18.11.2004
Limits of national liberation
Predictably, Yasser Arafat's demise drew a mixture of responses, ranging from the damning to the sycophantic: eg, Yasser Abed Rabbo, a Palestinian cabinet minister, described Arafat as the "greatest person in human history".
For Israeli government ministers, on the other hand, Arafat remained to the end a “monster” and a “murderer”, and they could barely contain their delight at his death. Then again, any other response would have been hypocritical in the extreme, given that the Israeli authorities had spent years trying to undermine and emasculate Arafat and his Palestinian Authority quasi-government, even if it meant boosting the prestige of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Indeed, historically, for the Israelis, groups like this were far preferable to the PLO or the more leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. By squeezing out the secularist-nationalist Palestinians, the Israelis hoped or imagined that the subsequent civil war amongst Palestinians would work in their favour. However, they may live to rue this strategy, seeing how Hamas has gone from strength to strength, like Frankenstein’s monster. It is beyond argument that ‘Mr Palestine’ was a personal witness to the plight and tragedy of Palestinian people - indeed, that he was emblematic of Palestinian resistance and suffering. However, what is also clear is that Arafat’s politics and leadership represented a dead-end for the oppressed Palestinian masses, regardless of his - at times - personal bravery, which on many occasions almost saw him killed by agents of the Israeli, Syrian, Jordanian, etc, state. When Arafat was four he and his father moved to Jerusalem from Cairo, his birthplace. He experienced the 1936-39 ‘great rebellion’ against colonialism. One of his earliest memories - just like another victim of British imperialism, Gerry Adams - was of British soldiers breaking into his uncle’s house after midnight, beating up members of the family and smashing furniture into the bargain. This revolt mobilised virtually all Palestinians, who were subject to the brutal techniques of British imperialism, such as collective punishments and the destruction of whole villages that the Israeli state would later copy. The sheer scale of the repression eventually crushed the revolt by the middle of 1939, in many respects paving the way for the Zionist colonial-settlers in the immediate post-World War II years. As a teenager, Arafat became inextricably bound up in the struggle for a free Palestine and it is fair to say that he never wavered from that commitment - no matter what form, distorted or otherwise, it took. And at the risk of straying too far into the realms of speculative psychology, it appears that from an early age Arafat felt himself destined to leadership, and attracted to authoritarianism - a distinctive feature of his later political tendencies. His elder sister recounts that he was “not like other children in playing or in his feelings. He gathered the Arab kids of the district, formed them into groups and made them march and drill. He carried a stick and he used to beat those who did not obey his commands.” Arafat attended Cairo University and by all accounts genuinely sought to better his understand of Judaism by engaging in discussions with Jews and reading publications by Theodor Herzl and other Zionists. He was never a narrow chauvinist, whatever the slanders to this effect. But by 1946, under the weight of British oppression and Zionist encroachment, he had become a fervent Palestinian nationalist and was soon attempting to procure weapons in Egypt to be smuggled into Palestine. Then, momentously, Arafat, like all Palestinians, was faced with ‘the catastrophe’ of 1948, in which the Zionist settlers established the ‘Jewish state’ upon some 80% of what had been Palestine. Self-evidently, under these concrete historical conditions this was a monstrous crime against the Palestinian people - and there were many who conspired in this crime. Following the Nazi holocaust against the Jews of Europe, which had turned millions into refugees, the Soviet Union joined with the US in supporting the establishment of the state of Israel. As a result, the Zionists were successful in persuading the United Nations general assembly to vote for the partition of Palestine into two states: one Palestinian and one Jewish. The British quickly quit and the state of Israel was declared in May 1948 … and the Palestinian state disappeared from the map. The Palestinians - Arafat included, of course - looked to the various Arab regimes to come to their aid. But the armies of the Arab League were not only hopelessly divided and outnumbered by the Israelis; the imperialist powers were able to rely on appeals to the class interests of the competing Arab bourgeois cliques - their desire for territory, the chance to exploit their own workers and peasants, and the establishment of a viable ‘working’ relationship with one or other of the major imperialist powers, or the Soviet Union. While some Palestinians fled their homes to avoid the war between Israel and the Arab regimes, many were driven into exile by the Israeli armed forces in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The impact of the terror, epitomised by the massacre at Deir Yassin, was described by Arafat. He said of the Zionists: “They occupied 81% of the total area of Palestine, uprooting a million Arabs. Thus, they occupied 524 Arab towns and villages, of which they destroyed 385, completely obliterating them in the process. Having done so, they built their own settlements and colonies on the ruins of our farms and our groves.” Only some 200,000 of the 1,200,000 Palestinians remained in the parts of Palestine that became Israel, where they were treated as second-class citizens. Many were forced to settle in refugee camps in the neighbouring countries, particularly the newly expanded Jordan, which included the West Bank. Their very existence as a people was denied, not just by Israel (whose bellicose leader, Golda Meir, famously proclaimed, “There are no such people as Palestinians”), but also by the Arab leaders themselves, who had no desire to either assimilate the Palestinians or genuinely fight for a reasonable mutual settlement. But when have autocrats ever stood up and fought for democratic rights? In 1957, Arafat and his political companion, Abu Jihad, moved from Cairo to Kuwait and joined with Abu Iyad in founding the Palestine National Liberation Movement, or Al Fatah. The organisation advanced a struggle based on one issue alone - the reclamation of the land seized by Israel and the creation of a democratic and secular Palestine. In 1964, when Israel threatened to divert the waters of the upper Jordan, Egypt was instrumental in setting up the Palestine Liberation Organisation under the auspices of the Arab League. Nasser sought to dominate the PLO via its leader, Ahmed Shukairy, and the PLO’s armed forces were part of the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Clearly, Nasser’s intention was for the PLO to be a tame wing of Egyptian foreign policy. Fatah joined the PLO, but Arafat was intent on defeating the attempt to neutralise the Palestinian militants and continued to urge armed struggle against Israel. In response, Al Fatah members were subjected to further repression. In Jordan, King Hussein ordered all Fatah militants to be hunted down and captured. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war - like ‘the catastrophe’ of 1948 before it - was a turning point for Arabs and Israeli Jews alike. Israel’s destruction of the Arab armies in the space of six days seriously discredited the secular nationalist regimes of Egypt and Syria and their Soviet backers. Israel extended its territories, creating another 350,000 refugees and annexing East Jerusalem. Inevitably, the Arab defeat led to the growth of various guerrilla organisations that advocated an independent military campaign for the liberation of Palestine. Henceforth, the struggle against Israel was to be carried out under the banner of Palestinian nationalism, its model being the guerrilla tactics espoused by the Algerians and Vietnamese. Fatah emerged as the most important of these organisations, particularly after its stand against the Israelis in March 1968 at Karameh in the West Bank. It ousted the old leadership of the PLO at a congress in Cairo in February 1969 and Arafat became the new PLO chairman. Fatah’s ranks rose in number from a few hundred to 30,000, and it mounted constant raids against Israel. As a result of its political and military successes, the PLO under the leadership of Fatah was - to a certain degree, and for a certain period of time - turned into a genuine reflection of the democratic aspirations of the downtrodden Palestinian masses. But there was a price to be paid for its success. For the next 20 years, the PLO was to suffer repeated attacks at the hands of the Arab regimes: the 1970 ‘black September’ massacre of Palestinians by Jordan; the complicity of Syria in the Lebanese Phalangist-fascist slaughter of Palestinians at the Karantina and Tel al Zaatar camps five years later; the similar massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla camps in 1982; and so on. The Arab states - whether bureaucratic or monarchichal - have proved themselves time and time again to be no friend of the Palestinian masses. Nor should it be forgotten in this context that it was the Israeli working class that called a halt to the 1982 pogrom at Sabra and Shatilla. Over 400,000 people, one tenth of the population, took to the streets of Tel Aviv in opposition to the Likud government of Menachem Begin and defence minister Ariel Sharon, who had allowed the massacre to take place. This was a powerful expression of democratic and progressive sentiment and revealed the potential for forging a united struggle of Arab and Jewish workers. To contend, as some do, that the Israeli-Jewish working class is somehow pre-programmed to be Zionist is despicable and thoroughly non-Marxist - even more so when it entertains chilling notions of ‘driving the Jews’ - or Israel - ‘into the sea’. Israeli-Jewish workers can fight for the democratic rights of Palestinians and Palestinians can fight for the democratic rights of Israeli Jews. As a prelude, or stage, towards rapprochement, it is vital to raise the call for two secular states existing side by side. As we have seen, Yasser Arafat was always fully aware of the perfidy of the Arab rulers, but from the very beginning, and right to the very end, he felt he had no alternative but to manoeuvre and negotiate between the various leaders and regimes. But this manoeuvring - while to a very large extent unavoidable - easily became an excuse for deviousness and compulsive secrecy, which in turn degenerated into corruption. Arafat knew best and would not suffer any opposition or dissent. It envisioned a PLO-led interim authority taking charge of security in the occupied territories, freeing Israel from the burden of military occupation, while it left the Zionist regime in control of borders, foreign policy and the protection of existing illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. As one Israeli commentator put it, “When one looks through all the lofty phraseology, all the deliberate disinformation, the hundreds of pettifogging sections, sub-sections, appendices and protocols, one clearly recognises that the Israeli victory was absolute and Palestinian defeat abject” (quoted in The Guardian November 12). In effect, Arafat was to be placed in charge of policing the popular opposition of the Palestinian masses to Israeli occupation and repression. No wonder Arafat was loudly denounced for his role at Oslo, both on the Arab streets and by such figures as the internationally respected, US-based Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said. The follow-on discussions chaired by Bill Clinton at Camp David in July 2000 did, at one stage, look like producing further betrayals. Initially, Arafat seemed willing to make even more concessions than he had made at Oslo, including allowing Israel to annex the most densely populated Jewish settlements and even limitations on the Palestinian right to return, in favour of compensation from an international fund. In other words, Israel would acquiesce in the emergence of a Palestinian ‘state’, covering even less than the 22% of the original ‘homeland’ to which Arafat had already agreed to confine it. But he could not stomach the proposal that the whole of Jerusalem remain under Israeli sovereignty. The talks broke down and thousands marched in Gaza demanding a resumption of the intifada against Israel. Arafat, somewhat ironically, was given a hero’s welcome by cheering crowds in Alexandria and Ramallah because of his refusal to cede to Israeli demands on Jerusalem. Arafat’s legacy is the ramshackle, corrupt and nepotistic edifice of the PA. Naked extortion, jobbery, censorship, police intimidation, fear, poverty and squalor can all be found in abundance in areas controlled by Arafat’s epigones and placemen. Of course, we understand that the main responsibility for this state of affairs lies with the Israelis, backed by the US. A flourishing and open democracy was hardly likely in an unviable Bantustan. Nevertheless, Arafat was allowed to lord it over the PA like a monarch, the result being the ‘state’ coffers and his own personal wealth become virtually indistinguishable. Arafat became the state and the state became ‘Arafatised’. It is claimed that the Palestinian leader’s wealth was held in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion, while his wife, Suha, allegedly receives a stipend of $100,000 each month from the PA budget.
Israel’s sentiments on Arafat were echoed, albeit in a far more guarded and coded way, by the Bush administration, which ventured the opinion that Arafat’s death meant “a new opportunity towards a lasting peace” and how it was looking “forward to working with a Palestinian leadership that is committed to fighting terror and committed to the cause of democratic reform”. No doubt, with elections to the Palestinian Authority due in January, Bush wants a Palestinian ‘leader’ who is more compliant to the ever shifting and arrogant demands of US imperialism.
The shenanigans around the Oslo accords in 1993 revealed the extent to which Arafat was unaccountable to the Palestinian masses. The terms which Arafat accepted at Oslo - which eventually led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) - were far removed from Fatah’s openly stated aim of a democratic, secular Palestine. Instead, Oslo provided for a series of ‘interim’ agreements leading to ‘final status’ talks, which saw Arafat agreeing to a renunciation of the Palestinian people’s claim to all but 22% of the land of Palestine.