left - missed opportunities bloody conflict with all the peoples in the region - with all that this involves in
Given the spectacular growth of the antiwar movement following the invasion of Lebanon and the process of radicalization in which this movement was caught up, when early elections were announced it was the duty of the left forces standing outside the national consensus to overcome their divisions and offer a common political answer to the thousands of men and women who had broken in practice with the Zionist parties and with the policy of national union.
As soon as the elections were called, the Revolutionary Communist League (section of the Fourth International in the Israeli state) and some activists independent of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality appealed to all the forces on the left to form an electoral slate around a platform combining the demands of the militant wing of the movement against the war
These included immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon, withdrawal from all the territories occupied in 1967, dismantling of the settlements, recognition of the PLO, and support for the formation of a Palestinian State in the territories occupied by Israel. were the common denominator of the entire Israeli left and the Palestinian national movement and could have served as a together left forces and Palestinian national forces in a coalition that could have attracted the votes of the thousands of activists breaking from the traditional Zionist parties.
The anti-Communism of some of the forces involved and the determination of the CP to maintain its dominance at cost over any slate formed wrecked the attempt to achieve unity and resulted in the loss of an unprecedented opportunity for the left to make a breakthrough into the Jewish electorate. A not inconsiderable part of this potential vote went to the slates of Shulamit Aloni and Luva Eliav.
Once it became clear that a united slate was not in the cards, and that the CP would put forward its own program in the framework of the Democratic Front, the RCL took up the project of forming a slate uniting all the revolutionary forces around a clearly anti-Zionist program. In fact, at that point an independent slate standing simply on a platform of democratic demands could only appear to be a sectarian and divisive
Against the CP's reformist program, which presents withdrawal from the occupied territories as the final solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, the anti-Zionist left had to offer a programmatic alternative. This was a particularly urgent task since thousands of activists in the national movement and the antiwar movement were beginning to understand that without challenging the very bases of the Zionist regime and society peace and security were only a
It was possible to draw up rapidly a common program
Te realestinian nationalist formation of the devil the lage
On the basis of such a program for de-Zionizing Israeli society, the formation of an anti-Zionist revolutionary slate could have been announced.
However, nationalist pressures on the Sons of the Village pushed these forces to join a new Arab organization that was formed in Nazareth around non-Communist Democratic Front leaders there who thought that they saw the opportunity for the first time to form a "pure" Palestinian nationalist organ-
Such a new slate had a chance to make a real
After trying in vain to outlaw this slate, on the basis of the
Zionist state could not accept the legal existence of an Arab nationalist party, the Board of Elections had to allow the Progressive List for Peace to run in the elections, in particular because it included personalities from the Zionist and a-Zionist far left. A not inconsiderable section of the Palestinian revolutionary militants decided to
List, and this put an end to the project of a revolu-
With the emergence of the Progressive List, all of the left and the national movement was to polarize around this formation and the CP's Democratic Front. While the CP held the mass support it managed previously to win among the Palestinian working masses, the Progressive List gained an influence among the Palestinian petty bourgeoisie, including both radical and moderate factions, as well as attracting a number of Jewish militants who had radicalized in the framework of the movement against the war in Lebanon. This was by no means an insignificant development, since the Progressive List was portrayed by the government and the media, justice, as the expression of the PLO in Israel.
With respect to program, the two left slates were absolutely identical, both representing a coalition between the Palestinian national movement and the most radicalized fringe of the Jewish left, and both openly identified themselves with the PLO and its central leader, Yasser Arafat.
In view of their reformist program and the insistence that both slates put on their support for the existence of the state of Israel, the LCR could not join either one of these two groupings. It therefore campaigned for a vote against the national consensus and against the war and occupation, that is for a vote for either of the two formations standing outside
This position got a favorable response from some critical activists close to the CP and various national
As a result, the RCL today has a special responsibility in initiatives aimed at uniting the left forces.
In fact, the election campaign gave rise to very grave conflicts between the two slates, which accused each other of every possible or imaginable betrayal. On the one hand, the CP cannot accept the loss of its monopoly in the national movement (it even refused to sign an agreement for the divison of excess votes (1) with the Progressive List, and this decision cost it hundreds of votes and the loss of a substantial part of the radical Jews who supported it at the start). hand, the Progressive List is a very heterogeneous movement and was not discriminating about its choice of weapons. It did not hesitate to accuse the CP of being a "Jewish" organization, or, to the contrary, of being a current outside the context of
It is essential today to get these mutual attacks stopped and to build a united front of the left. In fact there is no programmatic difference between these two formations (both have just announced that they will support a Labor government "against the Likud"). This is the central task that the RCL members are taking up today.
According to the Israeli system of proportional representation, ization in Israel.
breakthrough among the Palestinian voters. their homeland shocked local public around which the Likud and Labor are opinion, the problem goes far beyond fundamentally united and whose most
That is, there is growing sup- flagrant expression has been the Lebanon port for a tough colonialist policy. This war. Despite the serious political and is based both in the power military setbacks it has suffered, the structures, in the army and the military Palestinian movement remains a factor in and civilian administration of the oc- Middle Eastern politics that cannot be cupied territories, and in semilegal, semi- gotten around. Facing it, there is less and clandestine paramilitary formations. less room between going for double or
The growing polarization of Israeli nothing, toward a general, more and more political life is no more than a reflection of the impasse of the policy of consensus 12 parties can give what votes they receive over the quota required to elect other parties as second preference votes. - IV.
terms of human lives, lower standards of militarization of the society, or a radical turn toward the Palestinian people and their struggle for national liberation, means putting in question the Zionist project as a whole. The 700,000 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship do not count for much in the four years between elections. the approach of elections, the general staffs of the parties remember that they International Viewpoint 17 September 1984
represent a far from negligible reservoir of votes, one that can provide 12 seats.
Up until 1977, about two thirds of the Palestinian population voted directly for Zionist formations, or for Arab parties set up by the Labor Party administration. Repression and patronage practices considerably narrowed the possibilities for independent expression of Palestinian people. The banning of all nationalist political formations made the Israeli Communist Party the only means through which the Palestinians in Israel could express their rejection of their national oppression. The weight of the PLO
The impact of the Palestinian national liberation struggle and of the resistance organizations on the Palestinian minority was revealed in a spectacular way by the general strike and the mobilizations for the Day of the Land in March 1976. 2) A year later, the Israeli Communist Party set up the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. In this front around its reformist program and under its total control, the CP managed to bring together a broad section of the Palestinian national movement, including both notables formerly linked to the Zionist parties and nationalist currents strongly influenced by the PLO, along with some Jewish democratic elements. In the 1977 elections, the Front got more than 50%
However, this electoral success, which was simply the reflection of the radicalization of the Palestinian population of
Israel (the "Palestinianization of the Is- Most of the Peace Now movement supported Progressive List (DR) raeli Arabs," as the Israeli press put it) was very quickly worn out by the CP bureaucracy. Its hesitations, on the one hand, and its authoritarian and bureaucratic maneuvers, on the other, provoked desertions to the right and to the left. In the 1981 elections, the Front lost more than 20% of its vote and one deputy. Some of its former supporters went back to the Labor Party's patronage machine. Others preferred to abstain.
most recent elections showed further erosion in the electoral support for the Democratic Front. It managed to hold on to its four seats, but it dropped below 35% of the vote of the Palestinian population. However, this time the votes it lost were not lost to the national movement. A new slate, made up in large part of moderate and radical nationalist activists who had left the Democratic Front over the last five years, won two seats. The some 37,000 votes for the Palestinian population cast for the Progressive Slate reflected a not inconsiderable current in the Palestinian national movement in Israel that rejects the domination of the Communist Party.
This current includes some who are looking for genuine representation of the Palestinian nation, others who regard the CP as too extremist, and still others who, to the contrary, think that the Communist Party is not nationalist enough and International Viewpoint 17 September 1984 that it insists too much on its Israeli
But over and above all such distinctions, 110,000 Palestinian votes (52.1% of the total) were cast for the two non-Zionist slates. This shows that the drop in the previous elections reflected more of a rejection of the CP's policy than a lowering of the national consciousness of
The standoff between the Likud and Labor points to a deepening of the crisis of leadership in the Zionist state. There are two broad possibilities. One of the two major formations may manage to buy the support of several of the smaller ones by paying an exhorbitant price and thereby gain a majority of two to six seats. In that case, we can expect to see a government paralyzed by trying to accomodate formations with contradictory interests. Or the two big parties may decide to combine in a government of na-
In that case, they would have to decide explicitly not to take any steps that might offer a solution to the political and economic crisis.
In either case, in the long run new elections seem to be the only way out of the constitutional impasse in which the state of Israel finds itself. But first the electoral law will have to be changed so as to reduce the dependency of the big parties on the small formations.
The relative paralysis of government and the political polarization indicate that a new flareup of political and social struggles is ahead in Israel, but this is on that the Palestinian tional movement and the PLO can overcome the crisis that they also are going through and give a new impetus to the consensus in which fundamentally Labor, the Likud and the activist far right are united behind the same strategy of war and colonization, only an alliance of the Israeli left with a determined and fighting Palestinian movement can offer a credible perspective for victory.
The Israeli left can bring little weight to bear against the activist right, which is supported to varying degrees ruling parties unless it can base itself on a mobilization of the Palestinian masses in Israel itself and in the occupied territories. It, on the other hand, an alliance develops between progressive Jews and the Palestinian movement, it will be posto counter the fascist gangs of Kahane and the T'hiya but also to give new impetus to the fight against the occupation and thereby further deepen the structural crisis that is corroding the Zionist state.
of the Palestinian people to their ancestral lands. - IV.
13
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
JAnh PEACE IS BETTER (h Olde Dil