[Marxism] Electronic Intifada sees opening for forging new, fighting PLO

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A sounder perspective, in my opinion, than the currently much talked about
(though not much among the Palestinian people, as far as I can tell from
here) "one-state solution" (basically Israel having all the territory of
Palestine, plus one-person, one vote for Palestine). Aptly termed the can't-
beat-'em-so-join-'em solution) on one posting to this list.
Fred Feldman

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10281.shtml

Opinion/Editorial 
The resistance option 
Robin Yassin-Kassab, The Electronic Intifada, 8 February 2009 




Hamas isn't Hizballah and Gaza isn't Lebanon. The resistance in Gaza --
which includes leftist and nationalist as well as Islamist forces -- doesn't
have mountains to fight in. It has no strategic depth. It doesn't have Syria
behind it to keep supply lines open; instead it has Israel's wall and
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's goons. Lebanese civilians can flee north
and east, while Gaza's repeat-refugees have no escape. The Lebanese have
their farms, and supplies from outside; Gaza has been under total siege for
years. Hizballah has remarkable discipline and is surely the best-trained,
most disciplined force in the region. Although it has made great strides,
Hamas is still undisciplined. Crucially, Hizballah has air-tight
intelligence control in Lebanon, while Gaza contains collaborators like
maggots in a corpse.

But Hamas is still standing. On the rare occasions when Israel actually
fought -- rather than just called in air strikes -- its soldiers reported
"ferocious" resistance. Hamas withstood 22 days of the most barbaric bombing
Zionism has yet stooped to, and did not surrender. Rocket fire continued
from Gaza after Israel declared its unilateral ceasefire.

Let's put this in context. In 1947-48 Zionist militias drove out more than
700,000 Palestinians without too much trouble. In 1967 it took Israel six
days to destroy the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies, and to capture
the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.
Zionism's last "victory" was the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation
Organization from Beirut in 1982 -- if it was a victory.

The long and bloody occupation of Lebanon gave birth to new forms of
resistance. Where Arab states and armies had failed, popular resistance
removed American and French forces from Beirut, and then steadily rolled
back the Israelis. The first suicide bomber of the conflict was a Marxist
woman of Christian background. The human bomb was a tactic to which Israeli
troops had no answer. Hizballah formed, and developed into the power that
would drive Israel from almost all of Lebanon by 2000. In 2006 Israel
returned, in an effort to finish the resistance once and for all. What
happened was a historic turnaround: for five weeks Israeli troops bled in
the border villages, and failed to move beyond them. For the first time, the
hi-tech, first-world savagery of the Zionist army, supposedly the fourth
strongest army in the world, was kept at bay. Israel of course killed far
more civilians than Hizballah did, and performed its usual rampage against
civilian infrastructure, but in terms of the soldiers in battle, casualties
were roughly equal.

There has been a lot of talk, particularly by Arab collaborators, about
Hizballah being an Iranian proxy. While Iran does assist the resistance with
weapons and funds, the Lebanese resistance is Lebanese, the creation of the
villagers of the south and the Bekaa, and the families of the southern
suburbs of Beirut. It was the people themselves who turned Zionism back.
Even more improbably, the same collaborators now accuse Hamas, a
democratically-elected Palestinian Sunni movement, of taking orders from
Tehran.

One reason given for this latest massacre in Gaza was Israel's desire to
restore its deterrence after the 2006 debacle. Certainly the Arabs now know
(as if they didn't know before) that any whisper of resistance will be met
by the most fanatical violence. Certainly Hamas and others will have to
factor this into their tactical decisions. But in strategic terms the
Israeli deterrent looks even shoddier than it did a month ago. The Arab
peoples are no longer scared of Israel, whatever Israel throws at them. A
psychological tipping point has been passed, and this, in the long term,
counts for more than nuclear bombs.

Even as Western and Zionist officials grin and hug, the siege of Gaza
continues and the people are now facing starvation. However, their suffering
seems to have strengthened the resistance. The communities of south Lebanon
and south Beirut, those which suffered most in 2006, have redoubled their
loyalty to Hizballah.

In spite of Israel's onslaught in Gaza, in Palestine and throughout the Arab
and Muslim worlds, Hamas and the resistance option it represents is
immeasurably stronger. The ridiculous no-longer-president-of-anything
Mahmoud Abbas, and the gangs loyal to Fatah warlord Muhammad Dahlan, are
much weaker. It wasn't Abbas but Hamas political chief in exile, Khaled
Meshal who represented Palestine at the Doha emergency summit last month.
While the Abbas-Dahlan traitors arrested Hamas activists, and tried (and
largely failed) to suppress solidarity demonstrations on the West Bank, the
resistance was standing firm against Zionist terror.

In solidarity with the resistance, Palestinians in Israel organized the
biggest demonstrations in their history. There is no doubt to which nation
these Palestinians belong, especially in the eyes of the main Israeli
political parties, which sought to ban Arab parties from standing in the
approaching elections on the grounds of "disloyalty" to the apartheid state.

What now? Enough nonsensical talk of peace processes. Peace might be nice,
but it isn't, and never has been, on the agenda. It is time to build a new
Palestine Liberation Organization, as elected as possible, to represent all
Palestinians, both Islamist and secular, those living in the lands stolen in
1948, the lands stolen in 1967, and those in exile. The Palestinian
Authority should be abolished, and the Oslo/Road Map farce officially
abandoned. Then Palestinians have to decide what their aims and strategies
will be. The two-state solution is no solution. There is a huge amount of
work to do. All Palestinians should agitate for the new organization.

Robin Yassin-Kassab has been a journalist in Pakistan and an English teacher
around the Arab world. His first novel, The Road from Damascus, is published
by Hamish Hamilton and Penguin. He blogs on politics, culture, religion and
books at www.qunfuz.blogspot.com.






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