BY AHMED NIMER
RAMALLAH — January 28 was a typical day in the life of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Nine Palestinians — including a 13-year-old girl — were shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Three others were killed by an Israeli missile. The deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed that week to 33, including eight children. Towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were placed under strict "closure", enforced by Israeli tanks and troops at entrances to all Palestinian cities.
The closure prevented 3 million people from moving between areas in the Occupied Territories, causing schools and workplaces to close. In the northern West Bank, 53 Palestinian shop owners in the village of Nazlat Issa were ordered to leave their shops because they were slated for demolition. Sixty-two shops have already been destroyed in the village by the Israeli army to make way for a Israeli settlement road. The road will be only for the use of Israeli settlers.
What distinguished January 28 was that Israel's citizens were exercising their right to vote in elections for Israel's Knesset (parliament). Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his ruling Likud party were returned to power with 38 seats in the 121-seat Knesset. The so-called "rightist bloc" — Likud, ultra-orthodox religious parties and Israeli settler parties — won a total of 69 seats. Likud trounced its rival Labor Party, which won 19 seats (down from 26 in the 1999 elections). While the results indicate a large swing to the right, Israeli politics are much more complicated than the figures indicate. Definitions of "right" and "left" do not fit traditional patterns elsewhere.
The "right" bloc is united by a virulent hatred of Palestinians and the desire to continue Israel's 35-year occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Some of these parties call for the forcible transfer of Palestinians — including those that hold Israeli citizenship — to other countries in the region.
The "left" in Israel consists of the Labor Party and other smaller parties such as Meretz. While this bloc supports some territorial compromise with the Palestinians, this apparent "dovishness" is cover for dividing the Occupied Territories into several cantons divided by large Israeli settlements.
In this scenario, Palestinians would be given the trappings of a state but in reality occupation would continue as a result of Israel's economic weight and control of movement between the isolated cantons. Palestinian refugees would be denied the right to return to their homes and villages from where they were expelled in 1948. Israel would remain an apartheid state behind the fig leaf of "peace".
This was the political project of the Oslo accords which was decisively rejected by the Palestinian people with the beginning in September 2000 of the second intifada. It was the Labor Party government, led by Ehud Barak, that tried to crush the Palestinian uprising with tanks and helicopters before Likud came to power in 2001.
Two faces
As a whole, Israel's capitalist class — which was nurtured by the Labor Party — supports the vision of the "left" bloc. It sees a political solution based on Oslo, perhaps refined by various US plans offered in the last few years, as key to the expansion of Israeli capital into the Middle East. The initial years following the signing of the Oslo accord in 1993 were a bonanza for Israel's capitalist class, with the opportunity to move factories to Jordan and Egypt to exploit cheaper labour costs, and a massive influx of foreign investment into the region.The intifada, coupled with the world economic crisis of the last few years, put an end to that vision. Instead, Israel's economy entered its worst economic crisis since 1948. Two successive years of negative growth, record unemployment levels, high inflation and declining social services have characterised the Israeli economy since 2000.
While Israel's capitalist class has historically supported the Labor Party, it is faced with a dilemma. Labor is seen by the electorate as being responsible for the economic misery of the last few years. Following Sharon's victory in 1999, Labor formed a national unity government with Likud and largely supported Sharon's policies in the Occupied Territories.
In reality, the Likud and Labor parties represent two faces of the same ideological coin. Their economic positions are almost identical and they both have their roots in the old school of the Zionist movement. Both stand for a neo-liberal capitalist Israeli state, supported by US imperialism, and maintaining a Jewish character at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population.
While Likud and Labor differ in their public attitudes towards imposing a solution to the occupation and how to deal with the Palestinian Authority, even here the differences are in reality small.
Labor's failure in the election is largely a result of its inability to differentiate itself from Likud, coupled with its perceived responsibility for Israel's economic crisis and the intifada.
Over the last few years, Israeli society has fractured into competing social groups to produce a potentially explosive mix. Israel's large working class of Mizrahi Jews have been hard hit by the economic crisis. Mizrahi Jews, brought to the country in the early years of the state from Arab and North African countries, were settled in border towns where Israel's large industries were established. They replaced the indigenous Palestinian population, who were largely expelled by the Zionist movement.
Mizrahim form the bedrock of support for the ultra-orthodox Shas party as well as Likud. Likud has built its Mizrahi support on chauvinist attitudes towards the Palestinians. Likud first came to power in 1977, after 29 years of Labor rule, largely with Mizrahi support. In the late 1970s, Likud portrayed itself as a party of the underdog, accusing Labor of being the party of the "Ashkenazi elite" (Ashkenazi Jews, from Europe and the US, dominated the early Zionist movement).
Over recent years, much of Likud's Mizrahi support has moved to the Shas party, which built a large network of social services such as kindergartens, schools and health clinics for its followers. The Shas party's position as a coalition maker and breaker over the last decade has given it enormous access to state funds. In the January 28 election, however, the Shas party's support dropped significantly from 17 to 11 seats as many Mizrahi voters shifted back to Likud.
The biggest gains in the election were registered by the Shinui party, which over the last four years has emerged as an anti-religious opposition to Shas. Shinui's representation in the Knesset has risen from six seats to 15, making it the third largest party in the parliament. Shinui is an extreme right-wing populist party that promotes free market policies and scapegoats the poor. It has displaced Shas as the party that will make or break a ruling coalition. Shinui's growth portends a violent clash between it and the ultra-orthodox community in the coming years.
'State for all'
Palestinian citizens of Israel, descendants of those who remained after Israel's establishment in 1948, make up around 20% of Israel's population. Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not considered citizens and do not have the right to vote.
Parties representing Palestinians in Israel won five seats. In addition, the joint Palestinian-Israeli party Hadash won three seats. Hadash is an offshoot of the old Israeli Communist Party and remains a Zionist party. Parties representing Palestinian citizens have always faced a contradiction in running for the Knesset, with one of the requirements for contesting the election being "upholding the Jewish character of the Israeli state".
Of particular interest is the increased representation of Azmi Bishara's Balad party, which gained three seats. Balad is a powerful grassroots movement based among Palestinian citizens and calls for a "state for all its citizens". Likud and Labor both fared miserably among Palestinian voters, gaining less than 9% of the vote combined.
Historically, Labor could count on significant support from this group because of networks of patronage it established between the Israeli state and Palestinian leaders. One of the most important repercussions of the Palestinian intifada in the Occupied Territories is the increasing self-mobilisation and awareness of Palestinian citizens of Israel, which is reflected in the growth of movements such as Balad.
Sharon requires at least 61 Knesset seats to establish a government; to do this he must form a coalition with other parties. Labor seems to be standing firm on its pledge not join a national unity government with Likud. Sharon's alternative is to seek an alliance with Shinui, but this appears impossible given Shinui's refusal to join a coalition that includes the ultra-orthodox parties. The only other option is a narrow coalition based on the rabidly anti-Palestinian religious parties and the settler parties. However, Sharon has ruled out such a narrow coalition, saying he would prefer another election.
This is because Israel's capitalist class, supported by US and European capital, recognise the need to find a political solution to the Palestinian uprising that is compatible with its interests in the region. Mass expulsion of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories would likely prove too destabilising for US allies in the region, such as Jordan and Egypt. A coalition of Likud, ultra-orthodox and settlers parties would likely fly apart in a very short time because of differences over a political solution.
A government crisis is inevitable in the coming period. Israeli society is fracturing under the twin pressures of an economic crisis premised on neo-liberal policies and the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
There is widespread distrust of all Israeli politicians and established parties. The voter turnout on January 28 was 68.5%, the lowest in Israel's history and 10% less than 1999.
However this apathy has not been translated into support for a progressive alternative. The progressive voice in Israel is tiny, a result of the enormous hold that Zionist ideology has over the population. The fact that the terrible events described at the beginning of this article could pass without comment while Israelis went to the polls is proof of the moral bankruptcy of Zionism. The hold of this ideology must be broken if real peace is to be achieved.
From Green Left Weekly, February 5, 2003.
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