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From International Socialism 2:72, September 1996.
Copyright © International Socialism.
Copied with thanks from the International Socialism Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
When Yasser Arafat shook hands with Israeli president Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in September 1993, he was not beginning a ‘peace process’, he was surrendering the Palestinian struggle. The deal he had just signed – the Oslo accords – abandoned self-determination for Palestinians and therefore abandoned millions of Palestinian refugees. The state of Israel had won international recognition and legitimacy. It was also accepted by most Arab leaders, giving Israel free access to Arab markets, without Israel even conceding sovereignty over the Arab land captured in 1967, let alone 1948. The Israeli authorities had not forfeited much in the scraps of land in the West Bank and Gaza now administered by the Palestine National Authority. The government in Tel Aviv kept control of the key issues: land, water, security, foreign policy – even the air.
This was the sum reward for decades of sacrifice and resistance by Palestinians. No other liberation movement this century has settled for so little. Precisely because the deal offers so little to the overwhelming majority of Palestinians, it cannot put a stop to Palestinian resistance and will certainly not herald a new age of peace in the region. If anything, there will be more violence and repression.
The history of the Palestinians has been covered by a vast amount of literature. Much of it supports Zionist myths, demonises the Arabs and conceals the role of imperialism. A good place to start, therefore, is with three books which give a general history without reproducing these distortions.
Our Roots Are Still Alive has the feel of a school text book, but is in fact a powerful socialist history of the Palestinians from the 19th century to the mid-1970s. [1] Although sometimes simplistic, it is packed with wonderful quotations and crucial facts which expose Zionism and provoke fury on behalf of its victims. The book shows that from the 1920s the Palestinians have been fighting against mighty powers which have sought to dominate their country and undermine their struggles. British and Zionist colonisation culminating in 1948 with the establishment of the state of Israel involved a level of terror horrific enough to drive nearly a million Palestinian Arabs from their homes. Since then, the Palestinians have been hounded by a state armed to the teeth and backed wholeheartedly by American imperialism. Our Roots Are Still Alive also highlights that throughout this century, Arab leaders have used and abused the Palestinian struggle to protect their own interests.
The Gun and the Olive Branch, by The Guardian journalist David Hirst, is an uncompromisingly anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian account of the same period with the added advantage that it is beautifully written. [2] For a more political and polemical attack on the myths, there is no better book than Noam Chomsky’s The Fateful Triangle. [3] This is especially strong on exposing the role of US imperialism and debunking Zionist propaganda. For example, Chomsky discloses that in 1982, ‘The total number of Israelis killed in all acts of terror from 1967 is 282, less than the number killed by Israel’s air terrorists in Beirut on July 17–18 1981 in “retaliation” after a PLO response to Israeli bombing that broke the cease-fire’. [4] John Rose’s excellent pamphlet Israel: The Hijack State is an accessible account of the role of imperialism and zionism and is an excellent starting point for anyone unfamilier with the issues. [5]
Another book worth looking at, mainly because of its amazing photographs, is The Palestinians. [6] A simple and moving text by Jonathan Dimbleby (written in his more radical days) is brought dramatically to life by the brilliant photographer Donald McCullin. In this book the old cliche is true – the pictures do say more than the words, and they leave little doubt about the extent of Israeli repression and Palestinian suffering.
If these books are difficult to find, Edward Said’s books offer well written, accurate accounts of recent Palestinian history. [7] So too does The Palestinians: The Road to Nationhood, by David McDowall, which covers the entire century up to and beyond the Oslo accords. [8]
This Bookwatch focuses on books that offer greater insight into the politics of the Palestinian resistance, especially at the high points of the struggle, as these help us to understand why Arafat accepted so little.
The best starting point is Zionism: False Messiah by Nathan Weinstock. [9] Although marred by the author’s attempts to prove an orthodox Trotskyist position at every turn, the book provides an excellent summary of how the Zionist movement was dependent upon and received the backing of British imperialism, and how it sought to settle and colonise Palestine. [10]
The Zionist colonial project was based on excluding rather than directly exploiting the Palestinian Arabs, on buying up their land and establishing a separate economy. This policy affected both the Jewish left and the Arab nationalist movement. Simha Flapan, a left wing Zionist, gives us a good account of how the Zionist movement interacted with the Arabs up to 1948. In Zionism and the Palestinians he spells out how the settlers were increasingly driven by the extreme right wing Zionists, in particular by the founder of the Revisionist movement, Wladimir (Zev) Jabotinsky, himself influenced by Mussolini’s blackshirts. [11] Weinstock shows that even socialist ideology among the Jewish pioneers was heavily tinged with colonialism and that Zionism blunted class consciousness and prevented unity between Arabs and Jews. [12]
The Zionist agenda crystallised Arab nationalism in Palestine, a movement that was already growing in the region in response to Western imperialism. Weinstock shows how the movement in Palestine was led by reactionary, backward, semi-feudal landlords. The influx of Jewish capital and the exclusion of Arabs from the developing part of the economy resulted in an underdeveloped Arab bourgeoisie and working class. More detail about the class nature of the Palestinian movement is provided in the excellent Palestine and the Palestinians by Pamela Ann Smith (see below). [13]
Arab strikes and protests against Jewish settlements and British colonial rule intensified as waves of Jewish immigrants, fleeing horrific persecution in Europe, poured into Palestine in 1934 and 1935. The resentment exploded in 1936 with a six month general strike. This began the ‘Palestinian Revolt’ which lasted for three years.
The best book on the revolt, by the wonderful Palestinian novelist and painter Ghassan Kanafani, is sadly out of print. [14] In a thrilling account, he brings to life the mobilisation of virtually all Palestinians. He also describes graphically the brutality of British troops, who used techniques such as collective punishments and the destruction of whole villages that the Israeli state would later copy. The scale of the repression eventually crushed the revolt in 1939, paving the way for the Zionist victory in 1948.
Letters from Palestine by Thomas Hodgkin, a British bureaucrat in the Palestine administration, is also a fascinating account of the revolt at its height, as well as its decay as the leadership misdirected it. [15] He explains how the strike was undermined by the Arab High Committee, the co-ordinating body of the movement that was dominated by landlords who gradually drifted towards fascism.
The activities of the Jewish and Arab left in this period are covered in detail by Weinstock. The sole organisation that had a formally internationalist position, the Palestine Communist Party (PCP), is also analysed by Musa Budeiri in The Palestine Communist Party. [16] He shows how the party line zig-zagged according to the whims of Moscow. [17] Again and again the party took up a disastrous stance towards the nationalist movement, and eventually split along Jewish/Arab lines. Attempts at unity between the Arab and Jewish left in the 1940s and 1950s are also covered by Joel Beinin in Was the Red Flag Flying There? [18] Despite glamorising some of these attempts, Beinin does reveal how the Jewish left was unable to distance itself from Zionism. He also shows that the failures of the PCP meant that after 1948 there was no genuinely international socialist alternative to either Zionism or Arab nationalism.
Several books demonstrate Britain’s role in supporting the formation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A fascinating inside view is provided in Orientations by Sir Ronald Storrs, the British governor general of mandate Palestine. [19] He provides a detailed account of British/Zionist/Palestinian relations in the 1920s and the dealings of the Foreign Office with the Jewish Agency and their favoured Arab leader, Haj Amin el-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem. He explains how and why the British ruling class chose Zionism, rather than Arab nationalism, to maintain their influence in Palestine. From his pen comes the famous quote that a Jewish state in Palestine would provide ‘for England “a little loyal Jewish Ulster” in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism’. [20]
’s
It took a generation for Palestinians to recover from the catastrophe of 1948. One reason for this was the sheer scale of the defeat. The other was the reliance on the new breed of Arab nationalist leaders, spearheaded by the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser. The story of the Palestinians’ recovery is told by Rosemary Sayigh in Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries. [21] Written in the late 1970s, it is a classic history from below, although tinted – and tainted – by her emotional attachment to guerrilla warfare. She describes through the mouths of Palestinians their dislocation after 1948, and the discrimination and marginalisation they experienced in the refugee camps. Focusing on Lebanon, she dramatically recounts the transformation of peasants into a movement of mass resistance. Utterly readable, Sayigh’s book reveals the tenacity of spirit among Palestinians that has survived seemingly endless disasters.
Two other books offer good general introductions to the development and politics of the PLO and Fatah, the main organisation within the PLO. The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism, written in the early 1970s, was one of the first Western accounts to tackle the subject in an unbiased way. [22] It shows, among other things, how Palestinian nationalism developed in the wake of the humiliation of Arab nationalism and Nasser in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation by Helena Cobban is a committed and comprehensive academic work, though the political analysis is somewhat superficial. [23] She demonstrates that, whatever the faults of the armed struggle, the Palestinian resistance in the 1960s and 1970s re-established the Palestinian identity, both among Palestinians and internationally. She reminds us that their struggle took place against the background of an attitude summed up by Israeli premier Golda Meir’s famous words of 1969: ‘It was not as though there was a Palestinian people … and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.’ [24]
These authors and others [25] show that although the new Israeli state had expelled Palestinians indiscriminately, regardless of their class, the fate of the refugees varied considerably according to their wealth and education. Many of the former Palestinian bourgeoisie ended up in the Gulf states, and it was from their ranks that the PLO was organised, leading eventually to the ousting of the old ‘aristocratic’ leadership.
Pamela Ann Smith offers one of the best class analyses of this period. [26] She describes how the Palestinian diaspora was influenced by the oil economy in the Gulf and how Fatah was a product of this. Yasser Arafat, for example, who became the leader of Fatah, was well on his way to becoming a millionaire in Kuwait. Smith provides a fascinating account of how the Palestinian bourgeoisie made their money and were fully integrated with Arab capitalism. They lacked a state, so they created the basis of a Palestinian state in exile.
Fatah stressed that all Palestinians should unite, regardless of class, in ‘mass revolutionary violence’ against their common and sole enemy, Israel. No other battle should or would be fought. Such politics are brought to life in the many biographies of Yasser Arafat. The best of these, despite the sycophancy, is Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? by Alan Hart, written in collaboration with the PLO leadership, including Arafat himself. [27] In the early days, as students in Cairo in the 1950s, Arafat and his colleagues believed the armed struggle would provoke a crisis where Egypt and other Arab countries would be forced to engage Israel in war. When the 1967 war came and went in defeat, guerrilla tactics were sustained in order to cement the Palestinian identity and to maintain pressure on Israel and Arab rulers. Fatah’s leaders always recognised that a military victory over Israel was impossible.
Hart’s book reveals the extraordinary courage of Fatah activists, including its leaders, and the tremendous sacrifices they all made. It also reveals the heart of the PLO’s political weakness – the continuing reliance on Arab rulers and the policy of ‘non-interference’ in countries hosting Palestinian refugees. He writes about an event in 1969:
Against all expectations, he [Khalad Hassan, a PLO leader] had persuaded King Feisal of Saudi Arabia to support Fatah ... As time proved, with Saudi Arabia on its side Fatah was indestructible – as long as it was pursuing policies the Saudis would endorse.
Similar insights can be gained from the autobiography of Salah Khalaf, better known as Abu Iyad, one of the founding members of Fatah. [28] It shows how the lifestyles of the PLO leaders increasingly distanced them from most Palestinians, often leaving them unaware of the real aspirations of the millions of refugees they purported to represent. [29]
The story of the Palestinian left, which grew in the early 1960s in opposition to the leadership of Fatah, is covered in several of these books, particularly those by Cobban and Sayigh. The PLO: The Struggle Within by Alain Gresh [30], and Revolutionary Transformation in the Arab World by Walid Kazziha [31] chart the development of groups such as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP). They show where the groups came from and their politics, and unwittingly expose why both ended up relying on ‘progressive’ Arab rulers rather than workers in the region. An absorbing although romanticised account of the training and politics of the guerrilla movement is also provided by Gerard Chaliand in The Palestinian Resistance. [32]
The fact that little help was offered to the Palestinian national movement by the region’s Communist Parties, even when those parties were extremely influential, is explained by M.S. Agwani in Communism in the Arab East. [33] Dominated by Stalinism, the CPs, particularly those in Egypt and Iraq, were too wrapped up in their national struggle for power, often in alliance with sections of the ruling class, to remember international solidarity with other workers or the Palestinians.
The inherent contradiction between Fatah’s policies of ‘mass revolutionary violence’ and ‘non-interference’ exploded in 1970 with tragic consequences. The battle of Karameh in Jordan late in 1968, during which Palestinian guerrillas fought off the might of the Israeli army, inspired thousands more Palestinians to join the PLO and the armed struggle. The region was radicalised by their agitation and example. This was particularly true in Jordan, where Palestinians comprised over two thirds of the population and were supported by most Jordanians, including many in the armed forces. Green March Black September by John Cooley describes how the PLO had King Hussein and the Jordanian state in its grasp. [34] It seemed that every family was mobilised and ready to rise up. The left inside the PLO, even many within Fatah, were urging the movement to seize power. Yet the PLO leadership managed to hold them back, declaring that the war was against Israel, not Arab rulers. Abu Daoud, commander of the Palestinian militias in Jordan at the time, said:
I was of the opinion that we not only could but should knock off Hussein ... Arafat always said ‘No’. He told us that making war against Hussein or any Arab regime was not the way to liberation. [35]
Cooley demonstrates that the inevitable crackdown by King Hussein’s loyal troops in September 1970 (Black September) not only led to 3,000 deaths and the unnecessary defeat of a revolution. It also rescued Arafat – by returning the movement to his control. The same tactics, with the same result, were to be repeated time and again. These tactics were best explained by Phil Marshall in this journal:
To have confronted the regimes would have meant embracing the idea of change from below, of completely re-orienting the struggle of the mass of Palestinians by linking it directly to the struggles of Arab workers and peasants. This, of course, was never an option – Fatah was never prepared to challenge Arab capitalism, it was committed to acting through the regimes, not toppling them. [36]
Despite Black September, Fatah remained dominant amongst Palestinians, bolstered by massive funding from Arab rulers. As Tabitha Petran writes: ‘Oil states, in particular Saudi Arabia, saw in aid to al-Fatah a means of preserving social peace at home’. [37] The ‘responsible’ Arafat was courted by governments around the world. A different face was presented to Palestinians. Hart writes, ‘If in 1974 Arafat and his senior colleagues had openly admitted the true extent of the compromise they were prepared to make, it and they would have been repudiated and rejected by an easy majority of the Palestinians who were actually engaged in the liberation struggle.’
The focus of that struggle had become Lebanon. In the mid-1970s a left versus right class conflict turned into a long and bloody civil war. Fatah did not disappoint its Arab benefactors in the crucial early period – it refused to intervene. This grim chapter in Palestinian history is covered by several excellent books, the best of which are Pity the Nation by The Independent journalist Robert Fisk and The Struggle Over Lebanon by Tabitha Petran. [38] After years of being bogged down in the civil war, the PLO was finally expelled from Lebanon in 1982 after a prolonged bombardment of Beirut by Israel. [39] Not a single Arab ruler lifted a finger to help it. In the end, Tunis became the distant and almost irrelevant home for a once mighty movement.
Just when the Palestinian nationalist movement seemed dead, the Intifada exploded in the Occupied Territories in December 1987. For the first time since their expulsion, Palestinians took on the Israeli state directly. Within days protests had spread throughout Gaza and the West Bank. Everyone was involved. Youths threw stones. Roads were barricaded. Strikes and boycotts were scrupulously observed. Taxes weren’t paid and Palestinian administrators and police resigned. Local committees sprang up and quickly formed the United Command of the Uprising. Each day they produced leaflets and directives, pushing the Intifada forward.
The excitement of the uprising is captured in two books called Intifada, one by an American, Don Peretz, the other by two Israeli journalists. [40] However, neither offers much political analysis. This lack is made good by Phil Marshall. [41] Alone among all those covering the uprising, he explains the Intifada in terms of the role played by Zionism and imperialism in the region’s history, as well as the failures of Arab nationalism and Stalinism. His descriptions of life in Gaza and the West Bank explain why the Intifada began – and also expose the miserable settlement at Oslo. Over half a million Palestinians live in desperate and cramped poverty in the tiny Gaza Strip. In 1987 Jewish settlers comprised 0.4 percent of the population and had on average 2.6 acres of land. Their Palestinian neighbours had 0.0006 of an acre. The average income in Israel was ten times higher than in Gaza, where the average income is now even lower. [42]
The pain of poverty was compounded by relentless political repression. Independent Palestinian organisations were banned. Every day there were mass arrests, torture and harassment. With no hope of any decisive action from the PLO’s Tunis leadership, ordinary Palestinians once more proved that they could not be eliminated, marginalised or forgotten. Marshall shows how the Intifada, although never seriously threatening the Israeli state, rescued the PLO and pushed the Palestinian question back onto the international agenda. The uprising sent shock waves throughout the Middle East. In almost every Arab country, crowds took to the streets in solidarity. Egyptian workers went on strike. Algerians launched their own Intifada. As a result, Arab rulers began panicking. So too did the US, as it watched the stability that guaranteed its cheap oil supplies being undermined.
It was against this background that in 1988 the Palestine National Council, the Palestinian governing body, declared a Palestinian mini-state in the Occupied Territories (thereby recognising Israel and accepting a ‘two state’ solution to the problem). At the same time the US began putting pressure on Israel to come to some agreement that would take the fire out of the Palestinian movement. The long process of negotiations, a product of the Intifada but also a cause of its demise, eventually ended up with the Oslo accords.
Marshall’s book offers a complete analysis of the Palestinian nationalist movement, including its left wing, from the 1930s. He shows how none of the organisations were ever free of Arab capital and how none ever made common cause with Arab workers or had the patience to build a revolutionary socialist alternative. His analysis also explains how the failings of the PLO contributed to the rise of Islamic groups during the Intifada, in particular Hamas. This is explored in more detail in Islamic fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza by Ziad Abu Amr, who shows how the Israeli state originally promoted Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO. [43]
When Arafat announced the Oslo peace deal, almost everyone was surprised, especially the Palestinians who had been negotiating in a parallel process in Washington. One man who was not surprised was Mohamed Heikal, a former adviser to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and a journalist always in the thick of Arab politics. His book Secret Channels includes a fascinating account of the diplomacy involved. [44] It is almost embarrassing to read how Rabin and other Israeli leaders treated Arafat, humiliating and tricking him at every turn.
The best book on the peace process, however, is Palestine in Crisis by Graham Usher, a socialist journalist who has worked in Gaza for many years. [45] It explains the backdrop, in particular the unstinting US support for Israel, Israel’s increasing use of repression after the Intifada, and the bankruptcy of the PLO. By supporting Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, the PLO lost around $10 billion from the Gulf states in the two years up to the 1993 signing of the Oslo agreement and was in the process of shutting down most of its offices around the world.
Usher highlights the class divisions within the Palestinian nationalist movement and shows the hunger of the PLO leadership to rule, even if only over a token piece of land. In 1993, for example, when violence erupted in Gaza, Arafat responded to what was seen as a challenge to his authority by appointing two of his mates as Fatah’s ‘sole’ leaders in the West Bank and Gaza.
Both were from Palestine’s landowning elite. The shake-up was widely interpreted to mean that, come the autonomy, it would be the older generation of Palestinian notables who would garner the lion’s share of the political spoils, not the younger constituencies of ex-prisoners, workers and students who had come to the fore prior to and during the uprising. [46]
A few days after signing the Oslo accords, Arafat called on all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories ‘to reject violence and terrorism and to return to ordinary life’. From that moment on, Arafat ordered the Fatah Hawks, the organisation’s military wing, to manoeuvre for power, using any means necessary against other Palestinians, in preparation for the arrival of ‘his’ police. Usher reports that since the Palestine National Authority took over, Arafat has spent almost all his ‘government’s’ income on strengthening a police force and intelligence network so that they can do Israel’s dirty work. Today they are doing this work with relish, imprisoning and brutalising Palestinians with impunity. Usher also exposes the disastrous tactics of the PFLP and DFLP, who formed an alliance with Hamas, rejected the Oslo deal but then offered nothing as an alternative.
Any lingering doubts anyone may have about the future of the areas under the Palestinian authority are crushed by Usher. They are, he demonstrates, worse than South African bantustans. The economy, including most workers’ wages, is almost entirely dependent on Israel – and therefore is devastated when Israel closes its borders, which frequently happens. Ninety percent of citrus fruit grown in Gaza, for instance, ends up in Israeli juice factories. Moreover, the rapid expansion of sub-contracting by Israeli capital to Palestinian entrepreneurs means that ordinary Palestinians are treated like guest workers in their own territory.
The lone Palestinian who has voiced internationally the general despair felt by the masses in Gaza and elsewhere about the ‘peace process’ is the eloquent writer and academic Edward Said, a long-time resident in the US. His powerful pieces of journalism since the Oslo accords are brought together in Peace & Its Discontents. [47] He describes the accords as an ‘instrument of capitulation’. He asks what kind of agreement is it that, at the expense of nearly every proclaimed principle of Arab and Palestinian nationalism and struggle, ‘has maintained hundreds of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, continues to deploy a major army of occupation, intransigently confiscates and builds on Arab land in East Jerusalem and resolutely denies Palestinians true freedom or self-determination.’ Said is right to be angry. But he is not entirely blameless for the deal. For many years he was a loyal supporter of Arafat and from 1977 to 1991 was a member of the Palestine National Council. From the 1980s he himself ‘surrendered’ much of Palestine by advocating a two state solution.
The idea that a Palestinian mini-state constructed by imperialism and overshadowed by Israel would satisfy most Palestinians’ needs was always a dangerous dream. The idea concedes that the interests of the masses are bound up with their state (and thereby their own ruling classes), and that two peoples, the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs, can never live together in the same country in peace. The two state solution, by definition, denies that there could ever be a democratic, secular state in Palestine where everyone could live together in harmony. Such a solution therefore undermines the struggle of socialists who want to fight for a united Palestine on the basis of class, not nationalist, politics.
The tragedy today is that Palestinians are more isolated than ever from the rest of the Arab working class – the force that could help them realise their aspirations. This isolation is reflected in almost all literature on the Palestinians, which assume that only Palestinians can solve the ‘Palestinian problem’. Marshall’s book shows how the links with Arab workers could have been, and still should be made, and it is worth looking at books such as Workers on the Nile to get a taste of the potential strength of the region’s working class. [48] It is time the Palestinians left behind the old politics of nationalism and Stalinism that have failed them so miserably, and began to unite with others in the region who are fighting back against exploitation, oppression and brutal dictators.
1. People’s Press, Our Roots Are Sill Alive: The Story of the Palestinian People (Institute for Independent Social Journalism 1981).
2. D. Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch (Futura 1977).
3. N. Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Pluto Press 1983).
4. Ibid., p74.
5. J. Rose, Israel, The Hijack State: America’s Watchdog in the Middle East (Bookmarks 1986).
6. J. Dimbleby and D. McCullin, The Palestinians (Quartet Books 1979).
7. E.W. Said, The Question of Palestine (Vintage 1980); and The Politics of Dispossession (Vintage 1995).
8. D. McDowall, The Palestinians: The Road to Nationhood (Minority Rights Publications 1994).
9. N. Weinstock, Zionism: False Messiah (Ink Links 1979, revised edition).
10. Two books by Maxime Rodinson also show that the plan for setting up an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine got nowhere until it was taken up by British imperialism – Israel and the Arabs (Penguin 1982) and Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? (Pathfinder Press 1973). Several other excellent books deal with the politics of Zionism. They include Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner (Croom & Helm 1983), which also deals with Zionist collaboration with Nazis; The Other Israel: the Radical Case Against Zionism, edited by Arie Bober (Anchor Books 1972), which summarises the policies and politics of Matzpen, the Israeli Socialist Organisation, part of the Fourth International (it eventually collapsed into left wing Zionism); and Israel: An Apartheid State by Uri Davis (Zed Books 1987).
11. S. Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians (Croom Helm 1979).
12. See also H. Hanegbi, M. Machover, A. Orr, The Class Nature of Israeli Society (Pluto Press 1971).
13. P.A. Smith, Palestine and Palestinians:1876–1983 (Croom & Helm 1984).
14. G. Kanafani, Palestine: The 1936–39 Revolt (unknown).
15. T. Hodgkin, Letters from Palestine 1932–1936 (Quartet Books 1986).
16. M. Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919–1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism (Ithaca Press 1979). See also M.S. Agwami, Communism in the Arab East (Asia Publishing House 1969).
17. See also P. Marshall, Intifada: Zionism, imperialism and Palestinian resistance (Bookmarks 1989).
18. J. Beinin, Was the Red Flag Flying There? (I.B. Taurus 1990).
19. R. Storrs, Orientations (Readers Union 1939).
20. Ibid., p. 358.
21. R. Sayigh, Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (Zed Press 1979).
22. W. Quandt, F Jabber, A Lesch, The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism (University of California Press 1973).
23. H. Cobban, The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics (Cambridge University Press 1984).
24. Ibid., p. 246.
25. See P. Marshall, op. cit.
26. P. Smith, op. cit.
27. A. Hart, Arafat: Terrorist of Peacemaker? (Sidgwick & Jackson 1984).
28. A. Iyad with E. Rouleau, My Home, My Land: A narrative of the Palestinian struggle (Times Books 1978).
29. See also Abdallah Franji, The PLO and Palestine (Zed Books 1982).
30. A. Gresh, The PLO: The Struggle Within (Zed Books 1983).
31. W. Kazziha, Revolutionary Transformation in the Arab World (Charles Knight & Co 1975).
32. G. Chaliand, The Palestinian Resistance (Penguin Books 1972).
33. M.S. Agwani, Communism in the Arab East (Asia Publishing House 1969).
34. J.K. Cooley, Green March Black September: the Story of the Palestinian Arabs (Frank Cass 1973).
35. A. Hart, op. cit., p. 304.
36. P. Marshall, Palestinian nationalism and the Arab revolution, International Socialism 2:33, 1986.
37. T. Petran, The Struggle Over Lebanon (Monthly Review Press 1987).
38. R. Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (Oxford University Press 1991); Petran, op. cit.; J. Randall, The Tragedy of Lebanon (Chattus & Windus 1983). Also useful are H. Cobban, The Making of Modern Lebanon (Hutchinson 1985); D. Gilmour, Lebanon: The Fractured Country (Sphere Books 1987, Revised editon) and B.J. Oden, Lebanon: Dynamics of Conflict (Zed Books 1985).
39. See M. Jansen, The Battle of Beirut: why Israel invaded Lebanon (Zed Books 1982).
40. D. Peretz, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising (Westview Press 1990); and Z. Schiff and E. Ya’ari, Intifada (Touchstone 1991).
41. P. Marshall, Intifada: Zionism, imperialism and Palestinian resistance (Bookmarks 1989).
42. Even more detail about living conditions and politics in the Occupied Territories is provided in Occupation: Israel Over Palestine (Zed Books 1984), a compilation of essays by a range of knowledgeable authors; and R Locke and A Stewart, Bantustan Gaza (Zed Books 1985).
43. Z. Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza (Indiana Press University 1994).
44. M. Heikal, Secret Channels (Harper Collins 1996).
45. G. Usher, Palestine in Crisis: The Struggle for Peace and Political Independence After Oslo (Pluto Press 1995).
46. Ibid., pp. 16-17.
47. E.W. Said, Peace & Its Discontents: Gaza-Jericho 1993–1995 (Vintage, 1995).
48. J. Beinin & Z. Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1852–1954 (Princeton 1987). See also E. Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt, 1930–1952 (Berkeley 1986) and H. Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton 1978).
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