THIS BOOK analyzes the status of the Palestinian question in the shadow of globalization. It originated in a position paper delivered at the fourth convention of the Organization for Democratic Action (ODA). The convention took place in Nazareth on November 12-13, 1999. 

We start from the premise that the Oslo agreement, which purports to solve the Palestinian question, ought not to be viewed in isolation from the political and economic context in which it was born. Only when we understand the new global regime, its characteristics and contradictions, will we be able to comprehend the gloomy reality that today envelops the Palestinian people – and seek ways to overcome it.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90's, the US was able to spread its influence throughout the world. The imbalance became patent in the declaration of war on Iraq, when Washington gained support not only from Europe, but even from most of the Arab nations. The Gulf War amounted to a kind of warning: any country that rebels against Washington's economic and strategic interests will suffer a fate like that of Iraq. 

The Madrid Conference of 1991, in which Arab nations and the PLO sat down at the same table with Israel, resulted from the new order established by the Gulf War. It sought to re-organize the balance of forces in the Middle East in the light of the American victory. Israel was to serve as the fulcrum. Normalization between it and the Arab states would be the test of America's success in creating a new constellation of forces to ensure the smooth flow of oil. Out of the contacts established at Madrid came the Oslo agreement, to be followed by Israel's treaty with Jordan and its current talks with Syria.

As the lineaments of the permanent-status arrangement become clearer, it is obvious that Oslo will not give birth to a viable Palestinian state. Israel has stuck to its notorious No's: No to the dismantling of settlements; No to the refugees' right of return; No to the division of Jerusalem. Israel will keep the final control (on the sea, in the air and over the land), surrounding and pervading the Palestinian entity. The latter will be, in effect, a foreign object in the belly of the Jewish State. Palestinians will find themselves living on islands of autonomy, their economy still completely dependent on that of their powerful host.
 

No More Compromises 

In the mid-70's the PLO sought an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. This demand suited the realities of the period following World War II. After the victory over Fascism, the world was divided into two major spheres of influence, American and Soviet. The UN, with its Security Council, arose from this new balance of power. In the 70's, when the Socialist bloc served as a barrier to American ambitions, this period reached its apogee. We may characterize it as a time of "compromise solutions". Neither side, the US or the Soviet Union, received all it wanted, and each had to reckon with the force of the other. The standoff made it possible for the oppressed of the world to move forward. Many liberation movements won major victories: for example, in Cuba, Algeria, and Vietnam. 

The Palestinian liberation movement, too, won recognition and made significant advances in this period. It too might have achieved a "compromise solution", namely, an independent state in the conquered territories, but before it could get that far, the balance of power collapsed. After the fall of the Soviet Union, those peoples that had not yet won self-determination found themselves lacking the necessary international force to advance their cause.

According to the ODA working paper, the oppressed peoples of today's world have two alternatives: either to join the American framework and yield to its dictates – or to remain outside, becoming targets of economic blockade and warfare. Within the American framework, it is clear that the Palestinians will never win self-determination. At best they can hope for terms of surrender like those embodied in the Oslo Accords, which benefit a small elite. 

The Palestinian Left Avoids Confrontation

The Palestinian Left had a key role during the struggle for national liberation. In the present crisis, its program has collapsed. The ODA secretariat devoted a major portion of the working paper to a critique of the Left. We made an intensive study of the programmatic mistake that has marginalized it.

The Palestinian bourgeoisie under Yasser Arafat has led its people into a cul-de-sac. In the face of such a betrayal, it was the task of the parties on the left, especially the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front as well, to free themselves from a narrow nationalistic view and propose a class-oriented alternative. Instead, the Left, in all its shadings, opted for a strategy of dialogue with the Palestinian Authority. This choice was not the consequence of a merely transient weakness. The Palestinian Left is not interested – and never has been – in confronting its bourgeoisie. 

The weakness was already evident in the second convention of the DFLP, held in 1981. By that time the popular regimes that had taken over much of the Arab world in the 50's and 60's – Nasser's in Egypt, the Ba'ath in Iraq and Syria – had sunk into stagnation. The rhetoric of their leaders was still radical and anti-imperialist, but in practice they had come to depend on the West, stifling all opposition. At its meeting of 1981, the DFLP took issue with other leftist parties that remained in the shadow of these regimes. It accused them of betraying the demands of the masses for development, industrialization and freedom. In the position paper that formed the basis for the convention, the DFLP wrote that the working-class parties should lead the national struggles against the residues of colonialism, taking over from the bourgeoisie. Yet when the DFLP turned its attention to the (bourgeois) Palestinian leadership, it came up with a surprisingly original notion. In the case of Arab movements that had already won liberation in the official sense (and whose dependence on the West was purely economic), the Left should struggle, indeed, against the bourgeoisie. In the Palestinian case, however, the bourgeoisie (represented by Fatah) would not betray its leftist partners, because it still needed them for achieving territorial independence. In struggling toward this goal, the DFLP should take the leading role, and the bourgeoisie would have to submit to its control. 

This expectation never had, of course, the slightest chance. In the most important test – at the start of the intifada – the concept fell apart. At a time when, according to the DFLP's scenario, the entire Palestinian people, in all its classes, was supposed to stand together against the Occupation, Yasser Arafat drove a wedge into the Front itself. He brought its number-two man, Yasser Abed Rabo, into his organization, with many other leaders besides. The DFLP has never recovered from this schism. And yet it has failed to learn a simple lesson: the bourgeoisie will never permit the Left to lead; on the contrary, it will seek every means to smash it, even when the times seem ripest for revolution.

The DFLP's chronic inability to free itself from the concept of "national unity" has led it to issue calls for action that sound, at best, anachronistic – for example, to rebuild the PLO from scratch. This comes at a time when most Palestinians are fed up with the PLO, which forfeited all their rights, which nullified itself by nullifying its charter at Israel's command. The Front also likes to go about waving UN and Arab League resolutions – failing to see that these bodies are no longer relevant, having been replaced by NATO, the World Bank and the White House.

Both Fronts, the Democratic and the Popular, propose alternatives within the framework of a capitalist world order. They remain prisoners of the notion that national aspirations can be fulfilled beneath the American umbrella. This basic error has led them into dialogue with Yasser Arafat, as if pulling the Palestinian people out of the mud were merely a question of debating points. 

The Palestinian Left has failed to see the latest developments in their dialectical context. The collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the Oslo agreement, misled it, at first, into taking extreme, unrealistic positions  (e.g., the boycott of the Palestinian elections). When such tactics isolated it from the masses, the Left swung back to the other extreme, accepting the status quo. Both ways are mistaken. A realistic alternative is possible, but it requires, on the one hand, an in-depth analysis of the global situation, and, on the other, a refusal to accept that situation as the be all and end all.

The Oslo Accords – a local form of globalization

The ODA convention held a lengthy discussion on the characteristics of globalization, the regime the Americans are presently attempting to impose on the world. It focused on the strains and contradictions within that regime. The global village is far from being a place of equal opportunity or a paradise of human rights, as its champions like to present it. Nor is globalization merely an "information revolution". Rather, it amounts to a counter-revolution in the relations between the state and the owners of capital. 

The concept that prevailed after the Second World War was that the state – the governmental apparatus – was the main moving force for social and economic development. In the 80's, however, the rise of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher betokened a rebirth of laissez-faire capitalism: the government was to become small and development left to the laws of the market. This conservative trend went together with the enormous growth of international corporations, which sometimes have greater resources at their command than nation-states. (Bill Gates, for example, has assets in excess of $500 billion, more than ten times the annual budget of Israel.) These corporations want to increase their revenues without governmental constraints. The information revolution provides the tools for turning such capitalist dreams into realities. But the same tools can be turned the other way.

Speculation in currencies, for example, has become worldwide. Moguls can bring down nations. Yet such speculation can also start a snowball effect that may threaten Wall Street itself, as almost happened a year and a half ago. Economists report that the speculative capital passing from hand to hand in a single day amounts to $1500 billion. This sum is not connected in any way to the actual production of goods. Cybernauts can strike it rich at the start of the day and wind up, at sundown, shirtless. In sheer volatility, this new situation brings to mind the late 1920's – and the prelude to World War II.

During the last decade, while globalization has flourished, the US has engaged in two substantial wars, one in the Gulf and the other in the heart of Europe – the first armed conflict there since World War II. America initiated these wars (in disregard of its own legal process) though it was not itself attacked. Nor will they be the last. (The oil-rich region of the Caspian Sea may be next.) Wherever it is defied, the US will have to initiate warfare – not only to keep order, but to maintain its stance as world financial policeman. On the other hand, the unjust distribution of resources will ever breed resentment. The recalcitrance of local powers (like Saddam Hussein and Slovodan Milosovic) will provide such resentment with an outlet, destabilizing the global system. The American regime is not a truth engraved in stone. As long as it attempts to impose itself, it will encounter resistance.

The recent demonstrations in Seattle – mobilized with the tools of the "information revolution" – provide a taste of what is to come. The events in that west-coast city may go down in history as the Boston Tea Party of globalization. 

A revolutionary movement must build its power by studying such strains and learning how to exploit them. This holds, too, for national movements that have not yet gained independence, such as the Palestinian and the Kurdish examples. Between the owners of capital and the downtrodden peoples there can never be co-existence. It makes no sense (and here the ODA again takes issue with the Palestinian Left) to call on the Palestinian people and the Arab world as a whole to cooperate in building a "New Middle East" – a code term for globalization! We must not go on thinking about the Palestinian question as if it were something apart, insulated from a new totalitarianism that keeps down the poor and oppressed of the world.

In contrast with their leaders, the masses of the Arab world show uncompromising hatred toward America. The most recent attacks on Iraq have led to strong, spontaneous outbursts against America. Even in Damascus, defying the official position of Hafez Assad's regime, protesters launched a violent assault on the American embassy toward the end of 1998. Similar demonstrations flared up in the Palestinian Territories. In Egypt and Jordan, the Arab masses remain unwilling to normalize their relations with Israel, despite the fact that their regimes have long been American puppets. In the light of all this, it boggles the mind to see the Palestinian Left "dialoguing" with Arafat, a man who, throughout the Arab world, is viewed as a symbol of surrender to Zionism.

Among Arab leaders in Israel, the situation is even worse. Except for the ODA (called Da'am in Arabic), the Arab parties function, in their cities and villages, as so many local branches of the Zionist Labor Party. In the last elections, they mobilized support for Ehud Barak. They continue to support the Oslo agreement, although they know very well that it fails to answer the needs of the Palestinians. On economic issues, the tone is set by a small elite, which fosters delusions of Arab integration into Israel's economy. To the Arab workers, including the jobless victims of globalization, these parties offer no voice.

The way out

In the want of a political program that can serve as an alternative to capitalism, the bourgeoisie appears at the moment to lord it over the world. Through warfare, however, and the reckless quest for new markets, it will provoke resistance in the form of new social and political movements. These will learn to challenge capitalism, building a different system along socialist lines. It is socialism that wipes out private wealth and returns it to its proper owners. It remains the necessary alternative to capitalism – if the goal is to be something better than misery for most of the human species.

The ODA is one of many political parties around the world that is attempting to build an ideological and practical alternative to globalization. Here and now, the endeavor takes political form: opposition to the Oslo agreement and to normalization with Israel. At the grass-roots level, we are building an active social movement, based in the working class, to oppose the powers that be. n