[Part TWO, part ONE can be read here]
The ceasefire that took effect in Gaza last Sunday, as much as it is a welcome respite for the traumatised population, does not offer a permanent end to the problems facing the Palestinian people as a whole, either for those in Gaza or for those in the occupied West Bank. Worse, it is not ruled out that the bombing of Gaza could resume, once the first phase of the ceasefire expires after 42 days.
There are a number of very important but complex and inter-related factors that will determine how future events unfold, and it is impossible to predict in advance what will happen, but we can look at these to try to understand the political processes at work.
There are four main elements, that we need to consider: the policy of the USA towards Israel and the Arabs, the growing instability of politics within Israel, the absence of a worthwhile leadership in the Palestinian movement, and, not least, the danger – for Arab leaders – of an upsurge in the Arab revolution.
It is a given that any US administration will want, above anything else, to protect its economic, political and diplomatic influence in the Middle East. For decades, Israel has been for the USA and ‘unsinkable’ aircraft carrier, a bulwark against the Arab revolution. We can add to that, that it is a bulwark also against the growing military and economic clout of post-1978 Iran.
The previous president, Biden, despite weasel words about excessive civilian casualties in Gaza, supported Israel to the hilt. In so doing he has followed the policy of previous administrations, backing Israel economically and militarily on a scale unmatched by any other foreign aid.
The support of the USA for Israel is virtually non-negotiable. However, the matter is more complex than that. Holding back the tide of the Arab revolution depends on keeping Israel armed as a regional superpower, but it also means propping up corrupt and undemocratic Arab regimes from Egypt (the second-biggest recipient of US foreign aid) to the Gulf.
Egyptian working class the most important in the Arab world
Egypt is important for its size and weight alone. It has a huge population – one in four Arabs live there, and twice in recent memory, in 2011 and 2013, workers and youth rose in revolution in their millions. The Gulf, where almost every state has at least one US military base, and in some cases several, is vital for western oil. The USA itself might be self-sufficient in oil, but any threat to oil exports from the area – via the Houthis in Yemen, or from Iran – would potentially upend the whole world economy.
America, therefore, whilst supporting Israel, balances this with political and military support for reactionary governments. The probem for these governments, however, is that most of them are sitting on a volcano. The only reason there have not been massive and continuous pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the Arab world – Yemen being the exception – is that they are actively suppressed by Arab governments.
In the west, workers and youth can see the brutal destruction and killing in Gaza on their own TVs thanks to networks like Al Jazeera. But this is even more true of the Arab world, where many stations and networks have followed events.
Whereas the US government is trying to establish an historic accord between Israel and the Gulf states (the so-called Abraham Accords), this strategy has had to be put on ice. If the Saudi leadership and other Arab leaders are demanding that Palestinian rights should be met, which means for them a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state alongside Israel, it is only because they would face mass revolt if they said anything else.
Israeli government policy in conflict with US interests
What is happening in relation to Gaza, therefore, is that the policy of the Israeli government is in conflict with the preferred strategy of the US imperialism. If the ceasefire collapses and bombing of Gaza resumes, and if the public perception is that this is due Israel’s intransigence, then the policy divide between the USA and Israel will widen to a chasm.
Despite all his bluster about ‘Hell to Pay’ (by whom?) if there is no ceasefire, Donald Trump knows that a resumption of the one-sided war will not reflect well on him, a narcissist ‘deal make’ par excellence. It would heighten the risk of an upsurge in anger in the Arab world. It could not be ruled out, therefore, that Trump could put more pressure on Netanyahu and Israel, to come to some ‘arrangement’ than Joe Biden ever did.
This is a completely unpredictable administration, without principles or a guiding compass. Trump has packed his cabinet with die-hard zionists who would enthusiastically endorse an Israeli annexation of the West Bank. But on the other hand, Trump will not want the opprobrium of letting a ceasefire, which he claims credit for, slip away.
The second factor at play is the internal politics of Israel. One of Netanyahu’s most right supporters, Ben-Gvir, resigned from the government over the ceasefire and his party withdrew from the ruling coalition. But another, Bezalel Smotrich, stayed in the Cabinet, not because he expects the ceasefire to last, but precisely the opposite – because he hopes it will not.
According to the Financial Times, a representative of Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionist Party told a radio show that the mission of his party was “to ‘change the DNA of Israel’, not just make up numbers in the coalition”. The day after the ceasefire was announced, a party spokesperson said it was “a condition for the party to remain in the government and the coalition… that Israel should resume fighting immediately upon the conclusion of the first phase of the deal”. (Financial Times, January 16).
In his TV address to the nation, announcing the ceasefire, Netanyahu himself put most of the emphasis, not on the negotiations supposed to follow, but on its “temporary” nature and Israel’s right to “resume” the war – ie the bombing – if certain conditions are not met.
Israeli right wing openly boast about their aim of ethnic cleansing
For the Israeli right wing, the brutal assault on Gaza has always been seen the first stage in a strategy of ethnic cleansing, in the hope that Israel can literally drive out the more than two million Palestinians there, and to begin to build Jewish settlements on the ashes of Arab homes. These policies are not ‘secret’ – they are openly proclaimed by Israel’s political right. Their policy towards the occupied West Bank – what they call Judea and Samaria – are identical.
But unfortunately for them, their strategy is blocked by the continued presence of a population which is reluctant to go anywhere, despite the dire position in which they find themselves. One can only stand back and admire the strength and resolve of Gazans making their way back to their homes, even though they’re mostly reduced to rubble. Besides which, the Egyptian government are refusing to have these refugees expelled into their territory.
But on the other hand, the strategy of Zionism, to displace the local population and colonise their land, has been given some impetus by the invasion of Gaza. The Israeli army shows every sign of remaining permanently, building military roads and facilities that would be necessary for a permanent occupation. The ceasefire agreement does not allow for the IDF to withdraw from the Gaza Strip as a whole, but it will retreat, instead, from populated areas. This means, like in the West Bank, Palestinians will be herded into the towns and cities while the greater part of the territory remains under IDF control.
The strategy of Israel’s right wing is to establish Eretz Israel – ‘from the River to the Sea’ – and that means the consolidation and permanence of an apartheid arrangement. However, that is not a viable option in the long run, any more than it was in South Africa. Would Israel resort to the forcible expulsion of all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza? And would this expulsion include ‘Israeli’ Arabs living in the pre-1967 borders, currently with Israeli citizenship?
It is always risky to say ‘never’ in modern politics, but this scenario is highly unlikely and for Israel and the west one fraught with huge dangers. The opposition around the world today to the Israeli carnage in Gaza would be nothing compared to what we would see if Palestinians were rounded up en masse, herded into camps and put on buses to Jordan and Egypt – even leaving aside the opposition of those governments. It would not only supercharge demonstrations, it would mean Israeli embassies could burn in some parts of the world. It could trigger an Arab revolution.
The “disintegration” of Israel gathers pace
This scenario may describe what Israel’s right wing want, if they think it through at all (which is doubtful), but not a single government in the west would support such a programme of action. The political processes unfolding in Israel, therefore, are driving that state to what the anti-Zionist academic, Ilan Pappé, calls the “disintegration” of Israel.
There is a strong possibility that if Smotrich leaves the government and pulls his party out of the coalition, then there will be new elections. If that happens, Netanyahu will, at last face the wrath of a population driven into a corner by his policy of never-ending war.
Since October 7, 2023, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have simply left the country. But that is not an option for most of the Jewish population. An Israeli soldier on leave recently took a holiday in Brazil and, having been threatened with arrest for war crimes, had to abandon his holiday and flee. This is a ‘straw in the wind’ and an indication of the enormous unpopularity of Israel and Israelis in the global south and increasingly elsewhere.
For two decades elections have shown a majority vote for parties of the right, for Zionism and ultra-Zionism. But in the present circumstances, the Israeli Jewish population have no alternative in front of them, except more wars, more social upheaval and greater discredit abroad. There has never been a time in the history of the Israeli state, when ‘established’ political ideas will face so much challenge.
There is a section of Israeli Jewish society, albeit a very small minority, that supports Palestinian rights. It is possible that their voices will become more widely listened to in the coming months. There is also a section on the right – out-and-out racists and fascists, many of them armed settlers – who will literally fight to maintain their ‘right’ to treat Arabs as less than human.
It is an inevitable feature of Israeli politics in the coming months, therefore, that there will be a greater polarisation than ever before in Israel. Jews will be fighting Jews, while the world, and Palestinians look on. The outcome of that fight is a key determinant in the future for the Palestinian people.
Who will run the Gaza Strip and by what means?
The third key factor we have to consider is the leadership of the Palestinian movement itself. The key questions are these: assuming a ‘successful’ permanent agreement, who will run the Gaza Strip, by what means, and with what relationship with the West Bank?
As we have seen, the strategy of ethnic cleansing in Gaza is already partly carried through, in the sense that the IDF have deliberately destroyed the civil infrastructure of Gaza: schools, colleges, roads, water treatment and storage, power plants, health facilities and so on. As we have said, the IDF is the only army in the world with a huge ‘bulldozer corps’, because so much of its work involves, not fighting other armies, but ethnic cleansing.
But in the event, much to the dismay of the Israeli ruling class, it looks unlikely that the Gaza population will go away, so the question arises, who will govern them? What the US, Israel, Egypt and Qatar (the main negotiators) will never consider, is asking the Palestinians themselves. They will want to impose some form of government on Gaza: not government by ‘consent’ but by diktat.
Meanwhile, what has happened in Gaza is parallel to what is happening in West Bank. Here, Israeli apartheid has been in full swing for years. Much of the land has been confiscated for Jewish settlements and IDF use. The October 7 Hamas attack was taken as a green light for armed Jewish settlers to conduct pogroms against Arab villagers and farmers, driving hundreds to seek refuge in larger Arab cities. In doing this, the settlers have had the active support of the Israeli army, who have taken their own hostages, in the form of thousands of Arabs arrested, mostly without due judicial process, to be incarcerated, abused, and in some cases killed in prisons.
Once the ceasefire in Gaza was announced, Israel shifted part of its military resources to the West Bank and they immediately commenced large-scale operations there, particularly around the refugee camp in Jenin. There has clearly been an acceleration of military deployments in the West Bank, where bombing from the air the destruction of infrastructure using bulldozers are now common.
What is true of Gaza is true of the West Bank – that the situation is not sustainable. As pogroms increasingly drive Arabs from villages and the countryside into the bigger cities – they are becoming like the ‘bantustans’ in the South African version of apartheid – youth are becoming increasingly radicalised.
Some of the strategists of western imperialism, therefore, have come to the conclusion that there can be no solution to the issue of Gaza without including the West Bank. What Palestinians need – what they have been fighting for off and on for over seventy years – are their national, political and social rights. The Arab regimes pay lip-service to the idea of a ‘two-state’ solution – as do the Labour Friends of Israel, for example – but the big questions are how, when and where?
Palestinian Authority widely despised by Palestinians
Having the flag of Palestine flying over a territory – even assuming the Israeli ruling class would agree to it, which itself is a monumental assumption – is not the end of the matter. There are already Palestinian flags flying over the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah on the West Bank, but this corrupt organisation is universally despised by Palestinians.
It is clear that in the context of the current ceasefire that the United States is in favour of some kind of new ‘Palestinian Authority’ in Gaza, more or less extending that organisation’s remit from Ramallah to the south. This would be accompanied, perhaps, by the Arab states’ finance and military support.
Whether or not that would be acceptable to Palestinians, however, is another matter entirely. In the only election that the Palestinian territories have ever enjoyed, in 2006, Hamas won a decisive victory precisely because Fatah, the main organisation making up the Palestine Liberation Organisation and therefore the PA, was seen as corrupt and self-serving. Neither Fatah nor the Israeli government allowed Hamas to assume control of the PA, although their greater support in Gaza allowed Hamas to eliminate Fatah and take control there.
Since those elections, the Palestinian Authority has been increasingly seen by those it ‘governs’ on the West Bank as an agent of Israel. Its ‘security’ forces are trained and armed by the USA. It met the Arab Spring in 2011 and any demonstrations in support of Gaza with rifle butts and police clubs.
Given the corruption of the PA, its status as a stooge for Israel and its unwillingness to oppose Israel over Gaza, there has been an inevitable shift of Palestinian youth on the West Bank towards support for Hamas. That is why PA security personnel have participated in attacks on suspected Hamas ‘militants’ in Jenin refugee camp and why the PA, like their Israeli masters, have banned Al Jazeera.
The USA may want the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza (and no doubt the PA would oblige) but the population of Gaza will have other ideas. Gazans must know that the PA is not allowed by its Israeli masters to govern most of the West Bank, and if the PA were to govern Gaza after an Israeli withdrawal, it would be as a military-police dictatorship, suppressing all democratic freedoms.
Even that would likely be on the basis that Palestinians in Gaza, as on the West Bank, are herded into enclaves, on a fraction of the land they (or Hamas) previously held – with Israel keeping the rest. Such an arrangement would only create a recipe for more upheavals in the future.
Supine acceptance of Israeli occupation
Hamas, too, is incapable of providing a democratic form of government in Gaza. There may have been an upswing in support for Hamas on the West Bank because of the bombing of Gaza and the supine acceptance by the PA of Israeli control. But in Gaza itself, there must be a doubt about how much support Hamas now has, other than what is demanded at gunpoint.
The Hamas leadership are an utterly odious, undemocratic and reactionary organisation: they are contemptuous of the needs of the Palestinian population of Gaza. What their aim was, in launching the incursion into Israel on October 7, was anyone’s guess, but the leadership must have known that it would bring down a torrent of high explosives onto the population. Theirs is a ‘strategy’ – if it can be called such – that sacrifices the lives of tens of thousands, for unachievable aims.
At some stage, no matter when it happens, the Palestinian struggle will need to be based on a workers’ movement and socialist ideas. National rights and ‘freedom’ are meaningless without the politcal and social freedoms that must come with it and these are things for which only a workers’ movement can struggle. It would of necessity mean a struggle that reached out to Jewish workers in Israel on the ideas of workers’ unity, common struggle and socialism.
Leaving aside the ultra-right wing, most Jewish and Arab workers want the same things – not only ‘peace’, but economic security, decent living standards, decent homes, education, health systems and a future for their families. None of these things are possible on the basis of capitalism propped up by Zionism or anti-Jewish nationalism.
The loudest potential voice is yet to be heard
The fourth and perhaps most important factor that might determine the future of Gaza and Palestine is the Arab working class. The Arab world as a whole has a population approaching 500 million, and the largest Arab working class is right next door, in Egypt.
This is the sleeping giant that has the potential not only to shake up Egypt, but completely eclipse and transform the situation in Palestine and Israel. It is the only voice that has not yet spoken in the present crisis, yet it is potentially the loudest. Much of the diplomacy and economic policy of the western powers is aimed precisely at holding back the Arab working class: to bribe it, confuse it, use the Arab leadership to repress it, and in extreme necessity, to go to war with it. But the best laid plans do not always prevail.
Historically, there has always been a sense of an ‘Arab nationality’, or ‘pan-Arab nationalism’ because of a shared language and culture, and that mutual affinity is strongest between neighbouring states. It may not be evident on the streets of Cairo or Amman because of the presence of police, but there will be a boiling anger among Egyptian and Jordanian workers, as they see the slaughter of fellow Arabs by Israel, and the inactivity of their own governments. That anger will be multiplied tenfold if the ceasefire collapses and bombing of Gaza resumes.
Indeed, it is not impossible that the ceasefire will fail, or, rather, that the ongoing talks, which are supposed to begin before the sixteenth day of the ceasefire, will reach an impasse. If that happens, and if Israel resumes its murderous bombing, then all of these factors that we have outlined will affect the situation.
The Middle East is already overflowing with contradictions and crises, but the coming months and years will find them hugely intensified and sharpened and that will have no end, until the working class puts its mark on events.
[Except for the quotation from the article, all inserted pictures are from Al Jazeera newsfeed]
