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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 181 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 181, December 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The killing of Islamic fundamentalist activists outside a mosque in Gaza by Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian police brought home how much Arafat is being used to control his own people.
A year of peace in the Middle East has brought Nobel Peace Prizes for Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. It has produced a spectacular economic boom in Israel. Israeli politicians and business leaders are now looking forward to a massive expansion of trade into previously closed Arab and African markets.
Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, was also awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, but few ordinary Palestinians have seen any benefit from the autonomy treaty signed a year ago. Arafat’s declaration that the agreements were the first step to the creation of a Palestinian state looks increasingly like a pipe dream.
The deal which Arafat signed created the grandly titled Palestine National Authority but more Palestinians live in territories policed by Israel than in the areas of Palestinian autonomy. Israel has been slow to implement the limited transfer of power agreed with Arafat – effectively giving the PLO the powers of a local councll in the Gaza strip and West Bank town of Jericho.
Meanwhile the US, European Union, Japan and the oil rich Gulf states have been even slower in handing over aid. The Palestinian National Authority was promised £1,500 million aid over the next five years. In the first ‘year of peace’ just £140 million has been delivered. That is enough to pay the new PLO police and civil service but not to make any improvements to the appalling conditions.
Unemployment in Gaza, one of the most overcrowded and impoverished areas of the world, is running at 50 percent. Life is made worse because the Israeli authorities repeatedly seal off the strip, stopping thousands of Palestinian labourers earning their living in Israel.
Autonomy has failed to deliver material gains to the Palestinians and it has delivered little else either. Israel still holds 5,000 Palestinian prisoners, jailed during the Intifada uprising. The Israeli cabinet recently agreed to formally sanction the use of ‘physical force’ – torture during the interrogation of suspects.
Rabin and Peres have not disarmed Israeli settlers in Gaza and the West Bank despite the horrific massacre in a Hebron mosque by settler Baruch Goldstein. There has been no move to dismantle settlements. Indeed, the two year old ban on building new homes for settlers on the West Bank has been quietly lifted.
Inevitably Palestinian doubts about the accord have turned into deep disillusion. This has found expression in growing support for the fundamentalist groups Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad.
During the 1980s the Israeli authorities actively promoted Hamas as an alternative to the terrorist’ PLO. Now, stung by spectacular Hamas attacks, the Israelis are demanding that Yasser Arafat’s PLO police destroy the organisation.
Contrary to the image portrayed by Israeli leaders and repeated by the world’s media, Hamas members are not a bunch of mindless killers, nor are they or their supporters homogenous. The organisation is split. Its more pragmatic leaders want influence within the Palestine National Authority. In effect, this means recognising Israel. They have been prepared to order military action to force the Israeli authorities and the PLO to give it a slice of power. However, each success by the military wing strengthens those within Hamas calling for total rejection of Arafat’s deal with Israel.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz summed up the process:
‘Hamas terrorist activities contain two main political messages. The first – to Arafat and the PLO – is do not dare ignore us. The second – to the state of Israel – is that negotiations with the PLO do not constitute the final word and that Hamas must also be taken into account.’
In the last year Hamas has killed the chief of Israel’s undercover operations in Gaza and a military chief of the West Bank. It organised a series of bombings after the Hebron mosque massacre, forcing Arafat and the PLO to offer Hamas places on the Palestine National Authority. When the Israeli authorities banned Hamas from running in elections the response was October’s massive bus bomb which killed 23 in the capital Tel Aviv.
Each military success brings Hamas more support, but that support has little to do with a massive upsurge in religious sentiment. It is simply a comment on the fact that Arafat has conceded too much and delivered too little.
Arafat’s response has been to bow to Israeli pressure and turn his police on Hamas supporters. It has hardly been a year of peace in Palestine and peace is unlikely to break out in the future.
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