Back to
Opinions Page
Our globe is
increasingly dominated by the capitalist system. Some call it the New
World Order (NOW), especially following the disintegration of the Soviet
Union, while capitalism remains, in essence, unchanged even in the
absence of the "socialist" competitor or any emerging capitalist
competitor.
According to the
theorists of the "World System" school, the world is still divided,
generally speaking, into counties of the core, semi-core and periphery,
especially in the sphere of economic relations. This division, in terms
of politics and sovereignty, demonstrates that the world is divided into
three categories: one independent state (the United States), autonomous
states (the EU and Japan), and the remaining countries are colonies.
The US politics
towards the Arab Homeland support this stratification and prove that
they deal with Arab countries as colonies. The EU and Japan have always
followed the United States.
More striking is the
position of the core capitalist countries towards the Arab-Israeli
conflict which goes back to 1930s. There is no need to repeat the well
known facts of how this center injected Jewish settlers in Palestine,
but to serve as a reminder, the position the core capitalist countries
can be summarized as follows:
Israel
will be created to stay forever and the evicted Palestinian Arabs must
be re- settled as far as possible from the borders of their Homeland.
If one were to follow
carefully the politics of the core countries towards this conflict, it
becomes evident that it has adhered to this position and did not go
beyond it or deviate from it. It is those very same countries which
provided Israel, and continue to, with traditional weapons as well as
those of mass destruction so it can realize the strategic goal of its
creation: the permanent aggression against the Arab Homeland and the
defeat of Arabs in every battle. It is needless to numerate the enormous
economic and financial support and all forms of guarantees offered to
Israel.
In spite of this,
some decision-makers in the United States are not satisfied with Israeli
West-made victories against Arabs. Daniel Pipes, a prominent US Neo-con,
went as far to write that: "Israel can and must defeat the Palestinian
Arabs" (New York Sun, 4 April 2006). The question then becomes:
-
if the theft of the 90 percent of Palestine;
-
the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands
Palestinians since1967;
-
the assassinations and indiscriminative killing
and starving of thousands of Palestinians;
-
constant closure of Palestinian towns and
villages;
-
and building the infamous colonial wall;
if all this does not
satisfy Mr. Pipes, what would satisfy him?
Probably short of
killing every single Palestinian. This is the type of defeat he is
looking for which is, in fact, a repetition of the mass killing of the
Native Indians in the Americas. In the age of globalization and Neo-cons
in the US, the reader shouldn't be surprised that this can really
happen. Their history, culture and ideology encourage that.
Money Instead of
Arms
For the time being,
however, the core capitalist countries are trying or testing their
second weapon: the structural dependency which has devastated the
Palestinian Autonomy, i.e. to use the PA financial dependency as a
weapon to bring the Palestinians down to their knees and to give up the
Palestinian Right of Return (ROR).
The near future will
show if Hamas will really understand and master the transformation of
the world capitalist system from its imperialist to the globalist
[1] one.
The story of
dependency in the occupied West Bank and Gaza WBG started after the
1967-occupation by imposing an arbitrary dependency. The continuity of
the prolonged Israeli occupation turned this into structural dependency.
From the first months of the 1967-occupation, a series of military
orders were issued by the Israeli military governor of the West ban and
Gaza Strip (WBG). The economic orders constituted fifty percent of a
total of two thousand orders initiated then. Most destructive among
those were the orders that cut off the WBG entirely from economic
relations with the world (export, import, banking, people movement…etc).
Any entrepreneur who wanted to start a business had to seek a permit
from the Israeli military rule, which rarely granted any. This pushed
more than 40% of the WBG work force to seek employment inside Israel as
cheep labor. The remittances of those workers were the source of
bridging the gap in the WBG budget.
It is important to
note that, while WBG dependency on the Israeli economy became advanced
and even structural, people's resistance continued albeit it was at the
level of elite and failed to develop into a mass resistance.
From the perspective
of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the first Palestinian Intifada (1987) was
a turning point at several levels and particularly, the daily life of
WBG Palestinians. The Intifada was a mass resistance.
The former Israeli
Prime Minister, Yitzhaq Rabin, failed to understand the mechanisms and
motives of people's resistance. He was wondering how Palestinians could
work within the Israeli economy, earn an income from that it and still
fight Israeli occupation and hate it, all at the same time! It is either
that Rabin was, a racist Zionist, a firm believer of the myth that God
“donated” the land of Arabs to the Jews
[2] to the extent that it
cluttered his ability to understand that this Israel did indeed steal
the Palestinians their Homeland, or he thought that, so long as
Palestinians find their daily food and since they are sub-humans, they
will not seek independence and free homeland. He considered Arab
national consciousness inferior to that of the "civilized whites". In
addition, Rabin's capitalist mentality and education obliterated his
ability to realize the premises of class struggle and the human innate
refusal for all forms of exploitation. In fact, it was for all of the
mentioned reasons and even more. Rabin himself was an Eastern European
Jewish settler who came to Palestine with the early generations of
settlers.
When this Intifada
took place, PLO leadership was already evicted from Beirut to Tunisia
and found itself in a miserable situation. Under the pressures of its
bankruptcy in Tunisia, and the slow but profound development of a local
grassroots leadership of the Intifada, the PLO leadership found in the
Israeli offer to sign an agreement (the Oslo Accords) that will bring to
the WBG, a ‘gift from heaven’.
In fact, Oslo Accords
(Oslo thereafter) were a ‘gift from God’ for those who pretended that
they are God’s "chosen people", because, as a result of these Accords,
the PLO leadership betrayed the Intifada, recognized 1948-Israeli
occupation of Palestine, and accepted a limited rule in the WBG.
Following Oslo, the
main development that interests us here is when the Israeli occupation
minimized the number of WBG workers in Israeli economy bringing their
number down to almost zero. It is at this particular juncture that the
Western capitalist regimes, strangely enough, volunteered to subsidize
the deficit that resulted from this Israeli policy.
Generosity (and
donations) is not ‘customary’ for capitalist behavior, especially
towards the enemy. There was, however, a hidden agenda behind these
regimes’ donations to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which I repeatedly
discussed in my writings throughout the past decade since the signing of
Oslo Accords. Part of that agenda (and the reason behind the generous
western donations to the PA) was paying them a political rent for their
readiness to compromise the ROR. According to Oslo, “Palestinians” are
defined as only those who reside in the WBG, a definition that excludes
5.5 million Palestinian refugees who were evicted from Palestine as a
result of 1948-occupation, and deprives then from their ROR.
As for the economic
function of the PA regime, it was a corrupt regime that created a huge
government apparatus that turned a great percentage of the people to
become dependent in their income on the regime which is, in turn,
dependent on foreign donations of western capitalist enemy.
[3]
Hamas facing its
Options
As PA dependency
became deeper and structural, it is no surprise that no PA government
will be able to say no to the donors' old strategy which is,
essentially, the recognition of Israel, and the abandonment of the ROR.
That is why these donors approached Hamas with the following options:
surrendering the national rights of the Palestinian Arabs in the
1948-occupied Palestine or turning the PA areas into a new Arab Somalia.
[4] This is the
price of dependency.
There is, however,
another option to marginalize the Hamas regime: the US rulers declared
that they will channel their assistance through the Palestinian
president Abbas and special Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) offices
and called it "human assistance". If this, indeed, takes place, it will
mean that will witness a situation where we will have three governments
operating WBG:
- The Hamas
government which is legal but lacks funds.
- Abbas’ government
which is partially legal, but receives the donations (funds).
- And the NGO's,
though illegal but have donated funds as well.
[5]
One wonders whether
Hamas expected such a contradiction and such an extent of enmity from
the capitalist West! If it did not, this will go to prove that only
socialists are able to understand how destructive, inhumane and bloody
capitalism is.
If Hamas, on the
other hand, continues its declared program and adheres to its political
position, then the financial siege will intensify to such an extent that
many people will flood to streets asking for their salaries. The
government, in this case, will be marginalized and chairman Abbas'
position will gain more strength at the cost of that of the marginalized
Hamas. As time goes by, tension will intensify as well as popular
unrest. This might take the form of demonstrations and riots, whether
spontaneously or deliberately. The chairman, then, might declare that
the government is paralyzed and ask for its resignation. If some of
Hamas militia resist, Abbas might, then, ‘allow’ some officers to form a
military regime or call for a coup d’etat. This will ultimately lead t
the establishment of a fascist regime similar to that of Pinochet in
Chile. [6]
[1]
The politics of the capitalist world system, it gas
been through three stages: colonial, imperialist and lately the global
capitalism.
[2]
If this is the
case, it means that the God of Jews is different from that of the Arabs
and certainly different from that of Africans, Chinese…etc.
[3]
The number of
these employees is still vague. While it was mentioned that it is
140,000, Omar Abdulraziq, the current minister of Finance said that it
is 165,000. I guess that it is more than 200,000. The donors encourage
such an orientation. According to Al-Quds Newspaper (18 April 2006) the
people who were appointed for the PA Elections Department were 19,000,
all financed by the donors.
[4]
Most of the
pre- Oslo PLO economic and political literature claimed that the
"future" Palestinian state will be like Singapore or Taiwan. I was one
of few people who disagreed and negated that false pretends before the
catastrophe of Oslo.
[5]
Local Palestinians newspapers wrote that the US conatcted the former
finance minister Salam Fayyad to chair a fund for the donated monies.
After I mentioned that in my article in al-Qude newspaper (6-April
2006), Mr. Fayyad telephoned me and confirmed that as a matter of
principal he will never accept such an offer.
[6]
This scenario is likely to happen as long as the sponser is the same as
in Chile, the US ruling class.
