The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza has two dimensions. On the one hand, it represents the next chapter in the category of suffering and exploitation which the Palestinian workers are suffering, while, on the other, it represents another move in the greater strategy of US imperialism for the Middle East. We publish below two texts which consider the events from each of these angles.

The Israel/Palestine conflict remains a festering sore on the body of imperialism that the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza has done nothing to heal. It is symptomatic of the impossibility of peace within capitalism where local wars are carried out under the aegis of rival imperialist interests. The creation of a Palestinian state will not end the poverty and exploitation of Palestinian workers in the same way as workers have never benefited in any significant way from so-called national liberation anywhere in the world. One only has to look at the current situation of workers in most of Africa to see that. Workers' energies would be far better spent in struggle against their bosses rather than in struggle against other workers. This is the essential internationalist message that we seek to foster within the working class.

Israelis Pull Out but the Occupation Continues

Back in the summer, we saw the weeping and wailing of religious lunatics and ultra-Zionist fanatics, choreographed in conjunction with the Israeli army for the benefit of the world media. Its aim was to show that Israel's "withdrawal" from Gaza was a traumatic act of self-sacrifice for the Zionist state and a major concession to the Palestinians. The reality is that this was a calculated propaganda exercise by the US-backed regime of Ariel Sharon to gain favour with the so called "international community" whilst ridding itself of the economic burden of military occupation.

For the Israelis the occupation of the Gaza strip was more of a liability than an asset. The Israeli settler population numbered around 8000, a drop in the ocean compared to a Palestinian population of around 1.3 million. With little economic and relatively low strategic value to the Israeli state, maintaining the security of a handful of settlers created more problems that it was worth. As a 2004 resolution of the Israeli government stated, "The completion of the [disengagement plan] will serve to dispel claims regarding Israel's responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip".

In fact, the so-called withdrawal, rather than being a liberation, has been used by the Israeli state to turn Gaza into a massive prison camp. This is because Israel literally has a stranglehold over Gaza exercised though the control over the border crossings between Gaza and Israel and Egypt. The Israelis also control Gazan airspace although this is somewhat academic as they previously destroyed the airport and, although Gaza has a coastline, it is effectively landlocked as the Israelis have imposed a three-mile limit on its territorial waters. The Gaza economy is in total ruin and has declined by 39% in per capita terms since 1999. Official unemployment is 35%, although the real figure is probably more like 70%. According to the World Bank, the poverty rate, i.e., those living on less than $2 per day, is 65% which is twice as high as the West Bank. As Gaza's wealth has in the main part been derived from the income of workers earned in Israel, the decline has been largely a consequence of the strict controls on the number of Palestinian workers allowed to cross into Israel for work since the start of the second Intifada. There is no indication that these controls are to be relaxed; on the contrary, Israel is planning to ban all Palestinian labour coming from the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority by 2008.

Neither has the withdrawal of Israeli troops brought about the end of Zionist state terror against the Palestinian population nor the murderous activities of Islamic groups against Israeli civilians. In the recent weeks the dismal spectacle of tit for tat atrocities has re-remerged, with at least as many Palestinians killed as Israelis who themselves have little more concern for civilian casualties than the suicide bombers when it comes to retaliation against specific militants. The removal of the Jewish settlers has also enabled the Israelis to employ a new weapon of terror against Palestinian civilians. This entails the deployment of low flying military aircraft over the Strip at high speeds so that sonic booms are created. These flights often occur at night and the effect of the sonic booms is a terrifying sound like a large bomb explosion. As well as creating widespread fear, Palestinian health officials have reported that these booms have induced miscarriages, heart problems and traumatised children. The Israeli military have stated openly that the aim is to terrorise and demoralise civilians to deter their support for the militants. Israel has also banned foreign journalists from entering Gaza in an apparent effort to limit the reporting of these events.

The expelled Jewish settlers have perhaps, not surprisingly, fared rather better. The government provided generous resettlement grants for those leaving Gaza with settler families receiving on average $450 000 with a total cost to the Israeli state of around $2bn. Those who made a show of resisting the dismantling of the settlements were not doing so out of fear of future destitution.

Many of the Gaza settlers have gone on to new settlements in the West Bank around East Jerusalem. This reflects the main strategic basis for the withdrawal from Gaza which is the consolidation of the settlements in the West Bank, already populated by some two hundred thousand Jewish settlers. Having established the principle of unilateral withdrawal entirely on its own terms, it appears that Sharon's plan is to gradually do the same in the West Bank, but only once Israel has secured the most economically and strategically significant areas for itself. If there is to be any future Palestinian state it will probably be contained within the area behind the Israeli constructed security fence, an area considerably smaller than the proposals rejected by Arafat at Camp David and with no access at all to Jerusalem.

The Sharon and Bush Masterstroke
Out of Gaza...
... In Order to Remain on the West Bank

US crisis

Those who think that the withdrawal from Gaza is an act of good will on the part of the Sharon Government towards the Palestinians are making a big mistake. So too are those who think that it is only a "demographic adjustment" where 1 300 000 Palestinians cannot be controlled by only 8000 Israeli settlers and Israel can no longer justify the enormous deployment of troops to defend them.

The primary deciding factor in this historic event is the attempt by several US administrations to establish a pax americana in the Middle East. From Bush the father, through the two Clinton administrations, to that of Bush the son, solving the Palestinian question means eliminating the principal source of opposition to US penetration in the area. It is no accident that, only after the Gulf War of 1991 established a series of oil-producing alliances the idea of two peoples and two states on Palestinian land began to be discussed. Soon after the invasion of Afghanistan and immediately before that of Iraq, the Washington government began to look at the question again in order to control the Arab governments, and especially the Arab peoples, which in the eyes of a predatory American imperialism, and the arrogant Israelis, did not count. Plans for a future Palestinian state disappear and reappear according to the immediate needs of US foreign policy. Since 2001 things have changed. The double failure to achieve its oil-producing aims in Afghanistan and Iraq, the revival of Islamic opposition, terrorist or not ⁽¹⁾, in the Islamic countries, the growing isolation of the USA in the area, the economic crisis of the US and its worrying energy dependence has forced Bush to speed things up. This time he acted decisively, threatening the Sharon Government by cutting its purse strings if it did not begin to show some understanding, not of the Palestinian cause, but of increasingly insistent US demands. Though not questioning the cast-iron alliance with Israel, Bush has made Sharon the hawk see that the limits of resistance to US demands are narrow and that some concession to the Palestinians had to be made. The Likud leader, despite his normal instincts, realised the peculiar nature of the situation and has preferred to encounter opposition within his own party rather than battle with his traditional ally. And he has obtained the greatest possible advantage.

In the first place, he has confirmed that he would in no way return to the borders of 1967 as the UN Resolutions 242 and 338, the Camp David Agreement, the Oslo Accords and the political trajectory of the Road Map all require. Next, in unilateral fashion he has drawn new borders for the state of Israel by building a wall around the West Bank. Thirdly, he has created the geographic conditions for the most important settlements on the West Bank which control the irrigation waters and the most fertile land there to remain in the hands of the colonists. Finally, by abandoning the settlements in the Gaza Strip, he has confirmed that the colonisation of the West Bank is irreversible and that it will carry on in the future according to the needs of the state and its citizens.

Sharon's masterpiece

It's a work of art. At a stroke, the Sharon Government has got out of a rather insignificant bit of land with only 25 settlements. He has satisfied the wishes of his American allies, refurbished its image on the international stage by making a minor concession to the Palestinian bourgeoisie of Abu Masen and is guaranteed the possibility of taking as much of the West Bank as the economic and strategic needs of the Israeli state demand. Furthermore, having responded to the US demands, the Israeli state can put forward its own more significant requests. The first is to have conspicuously greater financial support which goes beyond what it has already received in order to renew its state-of-the-art military apparatus virtually for nothing. The second is to obtain [assuming things in Iraq go according to plan] the reopening of the oil pipeline from Kurdish territory to the Palestinian Mediterranean coast which was closed at the birth of the state of Israel in 1948.

For the ever more compliant Palestinian bourgeoisie represented by Abu Masen, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza represents a sort of Pyrrhic victory. In reality, having received nothing in response to its previous requests, this can almost be portrayed as a success, especially if compared with the failings of the Arafat administration. For the more radical bourgeois fractions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad all this is a betrayal, the umpteenth defeat, but only because they won't control the Gaza Strip after the Israelis pull out. Very recently, Palestine's Islamic fundamentalists have lowered their sights. From demanding the destruction of the state of Israel, a necessary condition for the reconquest of all Palestine, it has now accepted the boundaries established by UN Resolution 181 in 1947 which established the Israeli state. They would have also accepted the recovery of Gaza, and given up part of the West Bank, in return for being recognised as the true representatives of the Palestinian people rather than the PLO of Abu Masen.

For dispossessed Palestinians little has changed. Apart from the mistaken idea that that they are getting their hands on the first sliver of a future Palestinian state, their economic conditions will certainly not change under a corrupt and inefficient bourgeoisie. In order to have a temporary and underpaid job they will still have to cross the border and enter an Israeli factory. It's the same for those who work on the land. Control of water and the verdant monoculture of the West Bank, Sharon's real objective, will remain in the hands of the Israelis. For the Palestinian peasantry there is no future. Their fields lack water and without it their aridity does not even produce enough to survive on. And though it is true that the EU has decided to put up 60 million euros to the Palestinian National Authority as part of its key anti-American policy in the Mediterranean, this will end up in the hands of the Palestinian financial bourgeoisie, which has already announced that it wants to make Gaza the Las Vegas of the Middle East instead of being employed in agricultural or industrial development. Beyond the schemes and good intentions the fact remains that the Sharon strategy, the withdrawal from Gaza, means a permanent Israeli presence on the West Bank. It means the possibility of expanding existing settlements and the further expansion of new settlements as economic needs demand them. Nice work... and all with the blessing of Bush.

FD (Translated from Battaglia Comunista 9 - September 2005)

(1) For a an elaboration of this comment see "Terrorism and Democracy: Imperialism's Final Frontier" already published in Italian in Prometeo 11 (June 2005) and soon to be published in Internationalist Communist 23.