| Written by IWL-FI |
| Tuesday, 25 October 2011 03:50 |
 This request generated a crisis in the UN as, accompanying a firm negative of the Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu administration to hold such debate, Barack Obama stated that his country would veto the discussion on this request in the General Assembly in case it obtains the necessary votes in the Security Council. This Council has 15 members: 10 are talking it in two-year shifts and 5 are permanent (USA, England, France, Russia and China) with a right to a veto. For an item to be on the Assembly agenda it must have nine votes and no veto. Current Context Why should Abbas, an agent of Israel and imperialism, produce a situation where he appears as challenging even if not more than within the diplomatic scone? Why does the Netanyahu administration be so firmly against this vote being taken? Why should the Obama administration, up to a short time ago flirting with the proposal of the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 frontier has now decided to be against? And lastly, what position should the revolutionaries take respect Abbas’ request? To answer these questions we should see two processes within the context in which the request is posed. Firstly, a deep evolutionary wave that sweeps across the Arab world and has affected the Palestinian people very much. This has been expressed in the mobilisations within the PNA (Gaza and West Bank) and especially those of the exiles who live in the countries neighbouring with Israel and who, last May marched towards the Israeli frontiers and pierced them in defence of their right to return and to recover the historic Palestinian territory. Secondly, the State of Israel (a colonial and military conclave of the imperialists) is now living in the greatest isolation and crisis in its history due to the combination of the overtly racist and genocidal policy against Palestinians, the development of the Arab evolution and the contradictions that are beginning to crop up among the very Jewish Israeli population. It frontiers, so far quite safe due to the explicit or implied agreements with the Arab administrations, are now jeopardised by the evolution. In Egypt, the Mubarak – great ally – fell. Now the military Council must ride the crest of the revolution (a short time ago, thousand of furious Egyptians occupied the Israeli embassy) and they made them open the Rafah Pass with the Gaza strip. Syria is on fire due to the struggle against the Assad regime. To make matters worse, Turkey, traditional ally of Israel in the Moslem world, broke diplomatic relations because of the Israeli attack on the Liberty Flotilla carrying food and medicines to Gaza, in which nine Turks died. The reasons for the positions We have repeatedly exposed that ever since the Oslo Agreements and the creation of PNA, Abbas and the leadership of Al Fatah had turned into agents of Israel and imperialism inside the Palestinian nation and in the expression of a corrupt Palestinian bourgeoisie. We stand firmly by this definition. The loss of political prestige that this has caused for him and has already been expressed in the loss of the Gaza Strip now controlled by Hamas is now further strengthened by the beginning of the Arab revolution and its expression among the Palestinian people. Having nothing to offer, this threatened with leaving him with no margin for any action and in danger of being swept away along the path of the struggle against Israel. That is why Abbas has started trying to find a new position for himself. Last May he signed the “agreement of reconciliation” with Hamas and stood in the face of UN and posed his opinion against that of Israel and imperialism requesting acknowledgement of the Palestinian State. This gamble is beginning to yield fruit, at least in the West Bank: thousands of Palestinians rejoiced in the streets and, on his return, Abbas was received with enthusiasm. This means that, in order to keep on playing the role of an agent of Israel and imperialism with some weight among the people and not to be swept away by the mobilisation, Abbas had to make a tactical move confronting them even if in nothing but the diplomatic milieu. As for the Netanyahu, he knows perfectly well that sooner or later, he will most probably have to accept an opening of negotiations for the creation of a Palestinian state. But he wished to postpone this negotiation as long as possible so as to reach that moment in the best possible conditions after completing his plan of Judaizing Jerusalem, grab hold of as much land as possible in the West Bank and defeating Hamas in Gaza. At the same time, it is not possible to accept this debate and these negotiations would represent the bursting of his coalition in government and the breach of the alliance with the most right-winger sectors of his administration, such as the minister of Foreign Relations, Avigdor Lieberman and his party Yisrael Beytenu, representing the Russian immigrants who are now occupying the West Bank colonies. Also Obama is trying to respond to an unfavourable for imperialism situation of world relation of forces, marked by the defeat in Iraq and a possible one in Afghanistan that has been made more acute by the Arab revolution and the mobilisation of the Palestinian people. He is trying to defend strategic American interests by means of pacts and talks. He is tying to defuse the Palestinian clock bomb, or at least to delay its explosion. That is why during some months he “flirted” with the proposal of opening negotiations for the creation of a Palestinian mini-state and pressed the Netanyahu administration to accept and make some concessions (reduce colonies in the West Bank or end the blockade on Gaza) that would make things “believable”. The stern negative of the Netanyahu administration meant an end to any alternative and forced him to back the position of his “strategic ally” in the region. In this way, the Obama administration suffers further erosion for he now appears clearly as “the same old stuff” as Israel having no chance to act as “mediator” or “warrant” in a negotiation. The “two states” The proposal posed by Abbas aroused much sympathy and expectations in the Arab world and among Palestinian people and all those who sympathize with their cause. It is logical to consider that after so many years of suffering and having no country to call their own, the creation of a Palestinian mini-state – no matter how restricted – would be regarded not as “an ideal and just solution” but at least as a step forwards, a foothold from which to go on. However we must emphasize that this proposal (expression of the solution of the “two states”: one Palestinian and one Jewish) spells abandoning the historic demand of the Palestinian people of building a Sole Palestine, Secular, Democratic and Non-Racist in its entire historic territory. The proposal poses that the state should have frontiers previous to the 1967 war: a territory engulfing Gaza, West Bank and the eastern part of Jerusalem. This means barely one-third of the historic territory. From this point of view, the proposal stands for: A. Legitimising the existence of Israel as an imperialist enclave, usurpation of two-thirds of the Palestinian territory and the expulsion of great part of these people from their country and their land, sanctioned by the UN, with the creation of Israel in 1948. B. Creating a state with no economic viability and no military sovereignty: according to Al-Jazzera, Abbas is said to have accepted that the new state should have no armed forces of its own and even that its frontiers are to be guarded by NATO armed forces C. Dividing definitely the Palestinian people into three: those who now live inside of the frontiers of Israel, those who live on the territory of the future state, and the 5 million exiles who will see their right to return home vanquished as they would have no chance to recover the land from which they will have been robbed and the new state would not grant them any economic possibility o land to settle there. The creation of this state would not solve the situation of the Palestinian people. That is why the IWL-FI insists on vindicating the foundational motto of the PLO and asserts that it is necessary to destroy the State of Israel as an unavoidable condition for peace to exist in the region, because it is a genocidal state and an enclave-gendarme of imperialist interests. We assert that Abbas. Al Fatah and ANP are an absolutely faithless leadership that betrays the historic banners of their people. We also declare that the UN is a “cave of bandits” that defends imperialism and Israel. A democratic right  And yet, for all the limitations of the demand posed by Abbas, neither American imperialism nor Israel would now be in a condition to grant it so they oppose it emphatically. If this vote were taken at the UN, it would be a political defeat for them. That is why – and without changing our position regarding the two states in the least bit, we defend the democratic right of the Palestinian people of demanding that this vote should be taken at the UN and we shall support every mobilisation of these people in support of this demand. What does defending this democratic right stand for? Let us see an example: Most of the Bask people wish to split away from the Spanish State and form an independent Bask country. We do not agree with this demand and propose that the Bask toiling masses to fight together with other peoples and workers of Spain for a Federation of Iberian Socialist Republics inside which the Basks would have their autonomy. And yet we do defend the right of the Basks to split away from Spain if they wish to. This is what we do now in the presence of Madrid imperialist centralism and we shall do so tomorrow if there is a workers’ state in the peninsula, just the way the Bolsheviks respected the right of the Finnish people after the USSR was formed. The Palestinian case is different. We are not dealing with a case of an oppressed nationality within the framework of a multinational oppressive state but with a people whose territory has been usurped from them. That is why we defend their right to recover their entire territory. But the analogy is valid because even if we do not agree to the solution of the two states, we do defend their right to recover even if it is only a part of their territory. And fundamentally we defend the right to acknowledgement of the Palestinian nation to occupy a permanent place even in this “cave of bandits” that the UN is. An yet we do wish to debate with this sector of Palestinian vanguard that keeps on fighting against Abbass and the NPA and poses strong criticism to Hamas while vindicating the construction of a sole Palestinian state in the whole historic territory and proposes the destruction of Israel and who now opposes the vote in the UN and consider that – if it happens – it would be a defeat for the Palestinian people and victory for Israel and imperialism. With this vanguard we have deep coincidence what surfaced in the whole recent Palestinian struggle. But we believe that this position is mistaken. In the current situation, having this vote passed would not be the triumph of Israel and imperialism: it would be their political and diplomatic defeat and would weaken them. That is why we are for the defeat of the position of the USA and Israel posing that there should be no vote taken in the UN Assembly because this defeat would strengthen the fighting spirit of the Palestinian people and the Arab people and will relatively weaken their enemies. However, let us insist: it will not be as from the UN and its resolutions that Palestinian victory will be ensued. This triumph will stem out of the continuity and deepening of their struggles and those of the Arab toiling masses for the original banner of the PLO: the struggle for the destruction of the state of Israel and the construction of a secular, democratic and non-racist state in the historic Palestinian territory. |
