No Peace in Palestine
Josh Noiseux
The recent surge of violence in Israel and the Occupied territories raises some monumental questions. Although the mainstream Western press is confined to expressing a more or less pro-Israel sentiment, Arab and non- mainstream circles are discussing, once again, the validity of the Israeli state itself. There seems to be a diversion, encouraged by the authorities, towards appraising the Israel situation in very limiting, state capitalistic terms. Some people on the Left, and across the Arab spectrum, are calling for a violent anti-Israel "jihad." Such an action, aimed not at the military occupation (the State of Israel) but at the Jews in general, is a disastrous idea. It is not all the Jews in Israel who are repressing the Arabs. It is the state military apparatus which has as a primary interest, the protection and furtherment of capitalist control in the Middle East.
The Jewish people certainly deserve a homeland. However, the institutional authority of Israel has no right to arbitrarily occupy Arab land and brutally slaughter Palestinian children en masse. Something drastic and far reaching must occur if real change towards lasting peace is to occur. Rather than proclaim a war on Jews, which can only result in the perpetuation of bloodshed, we should be looking into the history of Israel and of Zionism. In this way, positive trends can be identified and resurrected and negative trends can be eliminated.
Currently, it appears that the majority of Israeli policy makers have little concern for Palestinian autonomy and sovereignty, but this was not always so. At the center of many early Zionists desire for a Jewish homeland was cooperation with the Arabs already living in Palestine. This was part of a larger vision of a Jewish cooperative Socialism, a society not divided by class inequality or racial/national discrimination.
One who studies the roots of Zionism learns that the hope of a cooperative agreement lies in a non-sectarian, anti-oppression movement, organized not on the basis of ethnicity, but on common interest against exploitation, similar to that strived for by many early Zionists.
Socialism was a major tenet of Zionism and, to a large degree, what made Israel possible. One of the earliest exponents of Zionism was Moses Hess. His extremely influential book, Rome and Jerusalem (1862) outlined a plan of a socialist nationalism for the Jewish people 1. Hess proposed a system of libertarian workers' groups to settle in Zion and if possible, cooperate with the Arabs there. His idealism and dream of an anarchistic socialism in Palestine was so strong as to be denounced by Marx as "utopian."2 Other authors presented similar aspirations. These included Ber Borochov, a Marxist Zionist, who argued that perhaps the main reason for Jewish settlement in Palestine, socialist settlement, was the reorganization of Jewish society 3. The Jewish people, especially European Jews, had for centuries been forced into professions that alienated them from the land. An important goal in Zionist settlement was the reversion of the "inverted class" pyramid of the diaspora which lacked a peasant/working class. A widely accepted ideal within the Zionist movement, up until the 50's or 60's, was an egalitarian society based on socialist principles and methods. Within this trend lay the only hope for a successful Jewish settlement of Palestine, further, the only hope for cooperation with the Arabs.
The practical application of the socialist ideal of the Zionist project were the kibbutzim. Kibbutzim, plural for kibbutz, which is Hebrew for "collective gathering," were cooperative communes, usually agricultural, that followed closely to Hess' idea of workers' settlements. The first kibbutz was founded in Deganya in 1909 4. The others that followed formed the backbone of Jewish settlement. Their efficiency and productivity was and still is, extraordinary. In recent years, even after a stark decline in the importance of the Kibbutzim, their contribution to the national economy still amounts to 40% in agriculture, 7% in industrial output and 9% in industrial export 5. The Kibbutzim constitute only 2.5% of Israel's population and their disproportionate contributions are an excellent measure of the enduring effectiveness of socialist organization.
The kibbutz were organized on a collective equalitarian basis, practicing joint production and consumption, and lived up to the maxim 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' All the wealth was held in common and strong efforts were made to organize in as libertarian a way as possible. Some kibbutz were militantly anti-religious, believing religion to be divisive and irrelevant to the social goal of a Jewish homeland. Many kibbutz supported cooperation with the Arab working class, in unity against big landlords of any kind 6. However, there were others that were strictly religious and many that rejected all cooperation with Arabs and were infused with racism. In any case, the kibbutzim were extremely successful and were, effectively, the basis of the practical Zionism in Palestine.
Many kibbutz were situated in the middle of hostile Arab territory and often played a role as frontier strongholds.
An image characteristic of early Zionism, despite efforts at Jewish-Arab cooperation, was the kibbutz farmer with a rifle over his or her shoulder 6. On the other hand, the unitive spirit of socialism within these self sufficient communes did wonders for holding Jews in Palestine together. Their democratic and egalitarian character had strong influence on Jewish society in years to come 7.
Not all Zionism, though, was socialist or libertarian. When Zionism was becoming prevalent in Jewish communities in the late 19th century it took on two distinct aspirations. One, often more closely affiliated to socialism, was a Jewish homeland in Palestine and a Jewish cultural center there, not a centralized State. This was the view of Asher Ginzberg who wrote that because of the smallness of Palestine, and the people already there, a state should not be formed 8. His idea that any centralized Jewish state in Palestine would have to rest, essentially, on the oppression of the Arabs there was quite on the mark. The other main trend within Zionism was precipitated by Theodor Herzl, the first prominent Statist Zionist. He founded the Zionist Congress in 1897, which had as its goal the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine 9. Because of the centralized nature of a State, the Statist Zionists generally opposed the libertarian's aspiration to decentralized cooperative communities. So, when Statism decisively defeated libertarianism in 1948, with the creation of the Jewish State, a powerful blow was dealt to any chance of Jews and Arabs coexisting in a peaceful political agreement.
As the power of the Israeli State was centralized, it became not only an organ for the enforcement of Jewish occupation of Palestine but also the dominance of capitalism in the area. After the State was declared, the kibbutzim and socialist organization gradually lost all social significance and peaceful cooperation between Jews and Arabs officially was abandoned.
The anti-cooperation and anti-Arab sentiment within mainstream Israeli politics was completely crystalized after the first two wars and is summed up by former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan whose advice for the Arabs was that, "we have no solution, that you shall continue to live like dogs. 10" The Israeli State, with its interests of maintaining it's own power, as well as foreign and domestic capitalist interests, is diametrically opposed to any lasting peaceful solution. This is clearly demonstrated by its brutal repression of the current uprising. A true peace cannot be attained by repression of dissent and so, a true peace cannot be attained by the Israeli state. Any likelihood for cooperation that exists is in an anti-sectarian, anti-Statist movement of both Jews and Arabs, working towards a free society and against exploitation of any form. This movement currently does not exist, subsequently, neither does any hope for progress towards peace.