Palestine Think Tank

And why the Secular Democratic State will serve the Zionist and Arab Comprador Solution! (Also published today on Knaa’an Online) www.kanaanonline.org

More than ever before, the One-State Solution (OSS) [i] for the Arab-Israeli conflict jumps to the forefront of the debate by some Israeli and Palestinian activists.

While some returned to this solution after they realized that the Two-State Solution, which they believed in, is vague, others did so because they are accustomed to shift from one position to another.

But most of those who argue for OSS, i.e. those who argue for the so-called Secular Democratic State in Palestine (SDS) have fallen in the trap of ignoring the current situation.

Any argument regarding OSS should consider the following facts:

1) The argument for OSS follows PLO Internalization of Defeat (IOD) [ii] in the struggle against the Zionist settler colonial regime.

2) The reality in Palestine didn’t reveal any hint of change or moderation from the side of Zionist Ashkenazi regime (ZAR) in both, popular and formal circles.

3) Arab and Palestinian ruling comprador is showing more and more compromise of the Palestinian Right of Return (ROR) and all Palestinian rights.

4) The vast majority of Jews in Palestine are still moving substantially towards war and more land confiscation.

5) The ruling classes in the capitalist core countries are preparing more wars in the region, a development that does leave any room for any democratic or humanitarian results.

While these facts on the ground work obviously against OSS, they breed two main points:

First: People who believe in OSS shouldn’t cheat themselves with the possibility of its realization in the near future, and devote their entire struggle for this too far possibility. In other words, it is the most beautiful gift to the ZAR if people re-direct their struggle from the necessity of defeating and dismantling the ZAR to preach for OSS.

Second: At the same time, however, we must educate ourselves and others of the righteousness of a socialist OSS for both Arab majority and their partners of the various nations, ethnicities, national minorities in the Arab Homeland.

Accordingly, to place the OSS in its real context, we must look at it and deal with it as a vision for the future, not as a solution that is possible or likely to be implemented under the current conditions or in the near future.

Briefly, the One-State Socialist Solution in Palestine (OSSS) needs work on two levels simultaneously, but without falling in the false belief that this solution will be at hand soon:

1) To fight against the Israeli occupation by all means, to be part of the people’s struggle, to fight against Arab and Palestinian ruling comprador and to be active with solidarity and anti-war movement for boycotting the ZAR and to keep this movement informed of the reality of the occupation in Palestine and that the Palestinian Right of Return (ROR) remains rejected by the same Zionist regime.

2) To re-educate all of those in Palestine that a socialist solution in Palestine as part of the Arab Homeland is the only real solution [iii]..[iii]

Why NO to the Secular Democratic State in Palestine?

The SDS is a solution that is subjected to the limits and rules of the Zionist regime. It doesn’t start with or at least include the dismantling of the ZAR. It is, de facto, a call for Palestinians who are already under the occupation and apartheid of the ZAR, the Palestinians in the 1967-Occupied Palestinian Territories (1967-OPT), to give up and accept the current Zionist state as it is. Even when this solution, the SDS, necessitates the implementation of the ROR, this doesn’t mean that the contradictions and the roots of conflict are resolved. The challenge will always remain: How will this form of regime accept the ROR voluntary? What is the rational behind that?

But, for the sake of discussion, let’s suppose that the ZAR and the vast majority of Jews in the 1948-occupied areas will somehow ‘tolerate’ the return of the Palestinian refugees, will this be the end of the Palestinian demands, and or rights? Or in other words, are the Palestinian rights limited to the mere ROR as if it a visa to enter Palestine?

The core of the conflict is still the land. The land means Homeland, not just a place to live in [iv]. Homeland means real and practical rights for each citizen at all levels. But, real rights as human rights are never guaranteed in any society without socialism, meaning capitalism is a system of human beings “eating” each other, albeit in what looks as a “civilized manner”, such as competition, exploitation, ownership…etc.

Some might argue that, if the entire world lives and might be satisfied with capitalism, why should it be any different in Palestine, especially when socialism is at a stage of deterioration and labor is being defeated by capital?

However, this article is not about socialism, especially in this era. On the other, however, who can tell if the peoples of the world are really and consciously satisfied with capitalism?

My argument is beyond all this. I think that the Palestinian people who were tortured for a whole century, and have been evicted from their Homeland for sixty years, and the rest of them live under a military terrorist regime, this people deserves a better solution than just to exchange a compulsory eviction for a subjugation to their enemy inside their own land.

If most of the peoples in the world presently fall under the exploitation and repression of capitalism, to this or that degree, why should Palestinians choose voluntarily that dark fate? Why they shouldn’t they choose a human choice as long as it is possible?

The minimum just and human solution for the Palestinian people is to return to Palestine without Zionism. This implies the following uncompromising conditions:

1) The land should be nationalized for all those who will live on it, Arabs and Jews. There is no justification for a ROR while the land is still colonized by settlers. In such a case, Palestinians will leave the status of refugees to a status of “helots” in their own country! Anyone who ignores the land nationalization is in fact supporting a racist ideology and Jewish supremacy imposed over “inferior” Palestinians. This justification adds a dimension of class discrimination besides the aspect of national discrimination and oppression. If there is no just solution, except socialism, then why not?

2) Any solution that maintains the military apparatus of the Zionist regime shouldn’t be acceptable for Palestinians. This is why this apparatus should be dismantled as a structure of aggression.

3) Termination of the capitalist base of the Zionist regime, the minimum requirement for that should be the nationalization of developed industries, especially those of hi-tech.

4) Termination of all nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

5) As long as socialism is the sole practical solution, and as long as the ZAR has been imposed over Palestine to fulfill a specific capitalist-imperialist function serving the interests of the core capitalist countries in Arab Homeland, the practical solution must be in the context of a socialist Arab Homeland.

Any solution that doesn’t meet all the conditions above will not deserve to be taken seriously.

For the Palestinian people, there is no meaning or taste of democracy and secularism as long as the above conditions are not met. Political democracy is meaningless without an economic one. Moreover, as for secularism no one will be able to transcend it as long as there are several religions in Palestine. That is why a democratic secular state is not such a “big deal”.

A Palestinian acceptance of a SDS without socialist content and without Arab depth and dimension is a mere surrender to the diktat of the Zionist project. It is a Palestinian “donation” to the ZAR bourgeois providing it with cheap Arab labor, something the Zionists never dreamt of.

When militants renegade, they become justifiers for God on earth, i.e., capital. Those who accept the SDS in Palestine without the termination of the ZAR, without socialism and without integration of Palestine in a socialist Arab Homeland, are, in fact, “panders” for capital. Who knows, some of them might ‘advice’ the poor Palestinian and Jewish workers to work hard and ask for low wages, as was the case of the Tigers states, so as to support the ‘bi-national’ economy, the bi-national capital if there still is any pure national capital. In the Palestinian Occupied Territories (OPT), something similar is taking place; the old left considers the PA a “Homeland”, and fights against any form of social progress on behalf of the corrupt comprador.

Such limited solution for Palestinians and Israelis is a typical by-product of capitalism in the era of globalization, i.e., the fragmentation of countries of the periphery, on one hand, and the concentration and further coherence of those of center, on the other. It is a new version of Sykes-Picot Agreement [v] which put the foundation of fragmentation of Arab countries. The timing of this agreement is by no means an accident, when a littler over a year later, the Balfour Declaration (1917) was issued by the British Government promising a “national homeland” for the Jew in Palestine.

The point here is that those two historical events, (Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and Balfour Declaration of 1917) made it clear that both, the ZAR and Arab fragmented countries, which are products of that agreement and are commonly called in Arabic Qutriyeh [vi], had been designed by the same enemy and maintained one another other until today. In other words, Arab unity is the most dangerous enemy for ZAR and Arab Qutriyeh which is ruled now by comprador. Accordingly, a SDS is a creation of a new Qutriyeh, but for Palestinians and Israeli Jews! This is indeed a “rescue” for Zionism as the last alternative, because it defines the conflict and “maintains” it (and its solution) limited to the ZAR and Palestinians, thus eliminating the Arab depth and dimension of that conflict as an Arab-Zionist conflict as demonstrated by the history of the region for the last 130 years [vii] and by the Zionist aggression and imperialist function that is directed against Arab Homeland and its people as well. It is in this context that the nature of the conflict, and of course its name, has been continuously modified from (and reduced) an Arab-Zionist or Arab-Israeli conflict to a Palestinian-Israeli one or as many have been calling it the conflict in “Palestine-Israel”.

A Palestinian-Israeli solution isolated and uprooted from Arabs, from its Arabic depth, is a dangerous weapon in the hands of Arab Iqlimioun (see endnote # 6), i.e., proponents of the fragmentation of Arab countries and who, by the same token, oppose Arab unity in one nation, and those who tirelessly push suspicious slogans such as “Egypt First”, or “Jordan First” or “Lebanon for Lebanese”…etc. Those will tell Arab people: “So long as Palestinians are unifying themselves with their occupier, why do you still consider Palestine an Arab issue!” essentially saying: “Why be more catholic than the Pope and insisting on the Arab character of Palestine when the Palestinians (i.e., their Palestinian Authority) themselves are striking a deal with their own occupier”.

When the PLO bourgeois leadership realized that its militancy is inadequate for liberating Palestine, it raised the slogan: “Palestinian Independent Patriotic Decision”, and ended up in the trap of the Oslo Accords which is in reality “One-State Solution” i.e., a self-rule for Palestinians under the Zionist regime. The SDS is the same, but with leftist flavor. Both Palestinian choices are two sides of the same coin…of the same coming imperialist project, the Greater Middle East, which is nothing really great, except more danger and more dependency for the region.

What is important to mention here is that while Islamic fighters continue their struggle against the ZAR, PLO factions are sinking deeper in their compromises, and part of its ex-leftists are jumping into the lap of leftist Zionists who argue for a SDS while attack Arab nationalism, Islam, and avoid mentioning any socialist solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those Zionist leftists are “extremely socialists” in their positions towards any revolutionary movement anywhere in the world, but when it comes to Palestine, they keep silent! Large number of these Israeli leftists belongs to factions of Fourth International. They are internationalists in every place, except in Palestine. This critique is for them to respond to. What is really interesting and “funny” is that the Palestinian leftists are enjoying being “tails” for leftist Jews. It seems as if it is an honor for an “inferior” Arab leftist to be accepted and placed beside an Israeli, even if the price is his Marxism, not to say his Homeland!

Let me elaborate, as long as those Palestinians in the1967 and 1948-Occupied Palestine and other Arabs - who are involved and make themselves busy with the issue of SDS - did not deal with it as vision for the future, they are in fact “donating” a truce to the ZAR, while the latter would never do the same.

Until the Vision becomes Possible: What is to be done?

I have never changed my analysis regarding the OSS. In a 1998 Conference of Abna’a el-Balad Movement (1948-Occupied Palestine), I suggested that what should be done at this stage of the Palestinian struggle is the dismantling of the Zionist Entity (ZE) as a step towards reunification of Palestine in a socialist Arab Homeland.

I have no doubt that Palestinians inside 1948 occupation deeply understand that they will never be accepted as citizens with full rights by the racist Zionist regime. This is clear since the ZAR continues its policy of ethnic cleansing to make ‘Israel’ a pure and exclusive Jewish state. Most of the ZAR politicians as well the Israeli general population believe that a democratic “Israel’ could be achieved if and when its population are only Jews!

There is a big possibility that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the ZAR supported by the US will exchange both, population and some land. Palestinians of 1948 area might be cleansed to the PA controlled areas. It is in their interest and national identity and ideology to reject this solution and to fight for self-determination inside the ZAR itself. Palestinians of 1948 must fight for separation from the ZAR and for the establishment of an independent state for themselves. Palestinians of 1948 must use the third wave of nationalism which is encouraged by the US/EU imperialism, a wave I call the nationalism wave in the era of globalization. If imperialist countries support and even initiate separatist movements, like Kurds, Kosovars…etc in countries of the periphery whose regimes are not accepted by the center, the Palestinians of 1948 have the right to ask for the same recognition.

So to dismantle the ZAR from inside,

- Palestinians of 1948 must demand their right of self-determination; and

- Palestinians of 1967 must fight for the withdrawal of Israeli occupation;

- and, additionally, Palestinian refugees must fight for the implementation of their ROR. This is the practical approach for a dismantling the ZAR so as to reunify Palestine in the final analysis.

Questions

For those who are busy marketing the SDS today:

- What are they going to do after holding a few conferences here and there?

- What is their practical program?

- On what basis are they going to mobilize the masses?

- What are they going to tell the Arab people about the position of Palestine in the memory and even daily life of Arab masses?

Let’s take a recent and obvious example.

While Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Self-Rule (SR) (who represents the idea of Two-State Solution (TSS), is in fact on one side of the coin ‘kidnapping’ Palestine from its Arab context, the propagandists for the SDS, on the other side of the same coin, are also ‘kidnapping’ Palestine from its Arab context, motivated by a SDS for a future to come.

When the SR president, introduced the so-called Iraqi president, the agent who was appointed and protected by the occupier of his own country, the US, to the Zionist defense minister and murderer Barak, a strong wave of protest spread into Arab Homeland.

The question is what different and practical steps or actions would the SDS project introduce to the masses? Sure they will preach for a co-existence of Arabs and Jews. Good.

But what about today and now and how about our daily struggle when the ZAR continues its terror?

In their daily struggle, on which side will the masses stand: with those who call for the SDS, or with the resistance movement?

During the first Intifada, an old revolutionary friend, (now a big comprador and a real fat-cat), told me that he goes to Tel Aviv every day. I was astonished because boycotting Israel at that time was at its peak! For what reason? I asked. He replied that he and his colleagues go to visit Jewish families in their homes to explain the Palestinian viewpoint. My friend/comrade ended a comprador, but the Jewish families whom he visited are still Zionists. The ZAR is still in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), confiscating land, arresting Palestinians, imposing harsh siege and ultimately creating and on a daily basis, conditions for the uprooting and departure of Palestinians.

And at the end of the day, the same leftists who are marketing the SDS join the Western leftists in their attacks against Islam and the resistance led by Political Islamists!

The recent marketing of SDS reminds me of an “old equation”. When the Palestinian left was active in the resistance movement, the Jewish left was following the Palestinian one to the extent that once I wrote that the Jewish left is breathing through our lungs in a society that can’t bear any leftist air. However, after the Palestinian left abandoned military struggle, ‘capital-ized’ its Marxism, became NGO-ized, and became accepted and even welcomed by Arab comprador regimes, and when it accepted the Oslo Accords and supported the PA regime against Hamas, after all this and perhaps as a result, the left “leadership” was restored by the Jewish ‘white left’.

At last, and this might summarize everything: for the masses to follow you, you must fight for their needs and pick up their priorities. That is why Zionism is too popular among Jewish masses!