This week marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, named for the announcement by the then British Foreign Secretary that his Government would support “a national home the Jewish people in Palestine”. It was the first time, in the words of the Jewish writer/philosopher Arthur Koestler, that “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third”.
In fact, that 1917 declaration was deliberately ambiguous, nodding simultaneously in the direction of Palestinian and Jewish rights, in keeping with British Imperialism’s tried and tested policy of ‘divide and rule’. But the net effect of the Declaration and consequent British policy in its Palestinian ‘protectorate’ was to facilitate the immigration of Jews at the expense of Palestinians.
After the end of the Second World War, Britain was politically and militarily incapable of hanging on to Palestine, particularly in the face of a well-organised and armed Jewish opposition. The full horrors of the Holocaust had become public knowledge and Britain was unable to stem the flow of tens of thousands of desperate European Jewish refugees to Palestine.
It is an irony that right-wing Israeli politicians today – those who shout loudest about Palestinian ‘terrorism’ – openly celebrate the terrorist organisations of the Jewish underground up to 1948. In July 1946, for example, the Jewish organisation Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the British administrative headquarters, killing 91 people, mostly Arab workers. The leader of Irgun later became Israel’s Prime Minister and the activities of that group are celebrated by the Israeli right-wing today.
Modern Israel is a minor state only when judged by its population. In military terms, it is a Middle East super-power. Its economic strength and military might have been guaranteed for decades by the West in general and by the USA in particular. In return for providing a bulwark against the Arab revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, Israel became, in effect, an ‘unsinkable US aircraft-carrier’ in the Middle East.
Socialists opposed the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, because it meant the imposition of what was a European problem – the plight of Jewish refugees from Eastern and Central Europe – onto the shoulders of the indigenous Palestinian population. But, on the other hand, socialists cannot now oppose the existence of an Israeli state, because the overwhelming majority of its population were born there after 1948.
However, supporting the right for an Israeli state to exist and supporting the present set-up are two completely different things. Israel denies the most fundamental democratic and national rights to Palestinians. Comparisons have been made between modern-day Israel and apartheid South Africa. The two may have significant differences in terms of social and political conditions, but the parallel is not an unreasonable one to make and even Israeli politicians, in speeches opposing Netanyahu’s policies, have used the ‘A-word’ from time to time.
Including the occupied West Bank – what Israeli politicians disingenuously refer to as Judea and Samaria – the Israeli state effectively governs a population more than half of which,on account of not being Jewish,either has no rights at all, or has only second-class rights. There are even a few Israeli politicians, perhaps more far-sighted than most, who understand that this is simply not sustainable in the long run.
More than one and a half million Arabs are Israeli citizens, but the relentless drive of the right-wing establishment towards declaring Israeli a “Jewish”, ie theocratic, state means that their long-term future is, at best, as second-class Israelis, with their rights and daily lives severely curtailed by their non-Jewish heritage.
The position of the five million Palestinians in the occupied territories is even worse. The so-called Palestinian Authority has ‘autonomy’ in little more than municipal functions. While the PA can empty bins and do minor road repairs, the Israeli Defence Force has the run of the whole area. Meanwhile, more and more Palestinian land is sequestered and confiscated, and the indigenous economy is suffocated by Israeli regulation, while huge amounts of money is put into new settlements on Arab land, exclusively for Jewish people.
Socialists can in no way support a state of Israel based upon the current arrangements. It is not the left of the Labour Party who confuse “anti-Zionism” with “anti-Semitism”, but the leaders of the political right in Israel. Their insistence on the specific primacy of Jewish rights – based on three-thousand-year old religious myths – over and above the rights of indigenous Palestinians, cannot be supported.
The tragedy of the Palestinian people, denied national and democratic rights for a hundred years, has been compounded by the tragedy of its so-called leadership. In the 1930s, local Arab landowners sold land, sometimes whole villages, to the Jewish Agency, over the heads of their Arab tenants. The same calibre of leadership is still there today. The Palestine Liberation Organisation and its military arm Fatah, have always been the creatures of the most reactionary Arab oil-sheiks and political leaders – politicians, in other words, who do not have the slightest interest in the well-being or the rights of ordinary Palestinians.
Today the PLO, in charge of the Palestinian Authority, actively cooperates with Israeli military authorities on the quiet, while for public consumption, it ‘protests’ against Israeli policy and occupation. Their management of West Bank municipalities is practically a by-word for corruption, graft and nepotism. It is no wonder that the Palestinian Authority have not held elections in eleven years: in the last elections they held, they lost their majority to Hamas running on an anti-corruption ticket. Palestine is a nation that has been betrayed and abused by its “leaders” for generations.
That does not stop right-wing Israeli politicians like Netanyahu using the PLO and other groups like Hamas as bogey men to ‘justify’ their policies in Palestine and Gaza. “How can we live side by side with these people?” Netanyahu asks, “When they have no respect for democracy”, and many Israelis will reluctantly nod their heads. Every time an Arab or Muslim leader demands that the Israel be “driven into the sea” (and they still do), is a political bonanza for people like Netanyahu.
This week’s visit to Downing Street has no economic or political significance, other than as a propaganda gesture to reinforce Netanyahu’s position and his policies in Israel and the occupied areas. The Israeli Government deploys a massive international lobbying apparatus – one of the most pervasive and successful of any national government. Not only does Israel buy massive support through the pro-Israeli groups in the US Congress, but it actively supports pressure groups and organisations in the British political parties, including the Labour Party. Israeli-financed sources promoted the spurious allegations of “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party, as part of an effort to deflect criticism away from Israel itself. Tel Aviv deliberately conflates anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism for its own purposes.
Despite the Balfour Declaration, Israel is anything but a “safe homeland” for Jews. Israel and the occupied territories together constitute a ticking time-bomb. What is lacking in Israeli politics is a movement that can have an appeal to both Israeli and Palestinian workers, offering national rights and emancipation to the one, without threatening the existence of the other. What is needed is a renewed ‘declaration’ by the labour movement in support of a free and socialist Palestine as well as for a socialist Israel. Because a resolution of the historic national conflict in the area will not be found on the basis of capitalism and the current political leaders of Israel or the Palestinian Authority. What is needed is a new movement, one that offers a bold programme, based on the fundamental ideas of workers’ internationalism, public ownership and democratic management of the main levers of the economy.
While Theresa May and Benjamin Netanyahu celebrate the centenary of Balfour, therefore, the labour movement should mark it with a renewed commitment to Palestinian rights, to workers’ unity and to socialism in the Middle East.
November 4 2017
