[Marxism] Spain-ETA: By the dog in the manger and with its hands tied

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

JUVENTUD REBELDE
June 13, 2007

Spain-ETA:
By the dog in the manger and with its hands tied

Luis LuqueBy: Luis Luque Álvarez
E-mail: luque@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1314.html
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

Detected by the cat, as it crept stealthily around the shelves, the
mouse rushed to hide in a crevice where its enemy could not reach
him. Suddenly, the rodent slipped out and made a dash for its cave.
Its efforts to cover the distance to the sack of grains had failed
again. But then, so had its enemy's endeavors to catch it. Until the
next attempt, they will be watching each other. Neither wins. Nor
loses.

Things have been no different for almost 50 years between the Basque
separatist organization Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) and successive
Spanish governments: the former has managed to gain independence "gun
in hand" for what they call Euskal Herria (Navarra, the Spanish
Basque country and the French Basque country) no more than the latter
has been able to reduce the ETA to inactivity, despite more or less
successful police operations.

Now, after a truce which began on March 24, 2006, the mouse is trying
to sneak away one more time, and the cat will set off in pursuit.
It's been a week since the armed group called the cease-fire off, on
the grounds that "there are no basic democratic conditions to start a
negotiation process". Which means, unfortunately, that the death
toll, "over 800 so far", is likely to increase... without a practical
purpose.

It's worth mentioning, by the way, that the communiqué announcing the
end of the truce arrived late, after two citizens were killed by a
bomb that ETA placed in Madrid's Barajas airport on December 30,
2006. If whoever calls for a cease-fire blows a bomb in the middle of
the truce, it goes without saying that peace will also be smashed to
pieces.

Just a few days before the explosion, the socialist head of state
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, cheerfully assured that by 2007 "things
will be even better", in a clear reference to the progress attained
in talks held with the separatists, reported by several sources. No
one should be surprised that both Felipe González and the
right-winger José María Aznar were willing to grab at that chance.

Yet, the Barajas attack left the socialist executive in a quandary,
torn as he had been until then between the awkward task of talking
ETA into laying down arms, without yielding an inch in matters of
Spain's sovereignty, and coping with the never-ending
"you-don't-make-deals-with-terrorists" chiding that the PP was
hurling at him, voiced by those who had held power from 1996 to 2004
and whose methods had been as useless to stamp out the Basque
organization. Faced with the PSOE's efforts, however, they chose to
be dogs in the manger.

As expected, Zapatero construed the December 30 events as the end of
the road to a settlement, for any intention to keep the dialogue
going would have meant political suicide. The process was thus
brought back to the same standstill it had known for years, and this
time around with the ETA in the losing end, since its future calls
for a truce will be nowhere near as trustworthy as the one granted
them on March 24, 2006. How could they, when bombs blow up right in
the middle of peacetime?

That's how much the scene has changed. On Monday, June 11, a meeting
between Zapatero and PP leader Mariano Rajoy "who cares about real
peace as much as he does about sardines from the moon" ended in a
commitment to join their political forces in the fight against the
ETA. In fact, and even if no report has ever mentioned it, the
socialist government's hands are tied a little stronger now to find a
feasible solution, given the right wing's insistence on welcoming any
chance of negotiating with an impervious "no way, José".

So what's left? All the violence and force we know only too well, and
the old cat-and-mouse game.

Which leads nowhere...

---ooOoo---





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