Palestine a capitalist society with an especially great
divide between rich and poor, but the rich are intimately tied to Israeli and
international capital. As Ali Abunimah documents in The Battle for Justice in
Palestine, “a small Palestinian elite has continued to enrich itself by
deepening its political, economic and military ties with Israel, the U.S.,
often explicitly undermining efforts by Palestinian civil society to resist”
(p78). PADICO, the Palestinian Development and investment Company, founded by
rich Palestinians such as the Masri family and dominated by Gulf state capital,
owns 78% of the Palestinian Stock Exchange. Bashar Masri, with Qatari and US
support, has funded construction of the new city of Rawabi, priced for the
well-to-do. Much of the construction material was bought from Israel, and
nearly 500 acres of village land were involuntarily seized. Other Masri family
members also have many deals with Israeli tycoons. Industrial zones run by
Turkey, Japan and France, in which workers will have few rights, are in the
works. In the last 30 years, credit (mostly to buy Israeli goods) has been so
massively increased that half of all Palestinians are in significant debt,
while unemployment is over 20%, wages are low, and one third suffer food insecurity.
The West Bank is policed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA security
sector today employs almost half of the 145,000 people on the PA payroll and consumes
$1 billion of the PA’s $3.9 billion budget — roughly the same amount as health
and education combined.
Israel, too, is a capitalist and highly unequal society.
Eighteen ruling families have incomes equal to 77% of the national budget in
2006 and take in 32% of the profits from the 500 largest companies. The three
largest banks preside over 80% of the market and take 70% of the profits. The
income gaps between the 90th and the 50th percentiles, and between the 50th and
the 10th are the highest in the world. Since most job growth is in the high
tech sector, inequality in education and lack of social mobility, especially
for the Arab minority, insure the growth of these differences. Since 2001, tax
cuts have benefited the wealthy, industry has privatized and unions have lost
their clout. So dire is the situation that 80% of the population supported the
massive 2011 protests against unemployment and unaffordable housing. In Israel,
inequality is the 4th highest in the world and growing
Do Palestinian and Israeli workers have more in common with
these exploiters and enforcers than they do with other workers in the rest of
the world? An examination of liberation movements of the last century reveals
that this nationalist thinking has dominated struggle in many countries and has
yet to lead to significant betterment of the lives of ordinary citizens. Instead,
it has merely led to changing the ethnicity of the local exploiters, whose
strings often continue to be pulled by former colonial powers. We can examine
the stories of Sierra Leone, Algeria, El Salvador, Haiti, South Africa and many
others to see that despite long and bloody liberation struggles, the
maintenance of a capitalist system and ties to international monetary
institutions has not led to significant economic betterment of the vast
majority of the population. Overt apartheid-like regulations may have
disappeared, but class distinctions have not. In fact, the movement for
equality and better living conditions is usually dissipated, at least
temporarily, by nationalist victory. The workers of the oppressor nations are
likewise suffering. In the U.S., as in the nations of Europe, in Russia and in
China, millions live with poverty, racism, food insecurity, and poor health care,
although the particularities may vary widely. The American capitalist system
could not survive without the $600 billion it saves by paying lower wages to
black workers. Europeans berate but depend on the cheap labor of their
immigrant populations. China steals land from its farmers, condemns thousands
to slave in internationally owned economic zones, and kills workers with pollution
and shoddy construction.
Despite their calls for national unity, the members of
various ruling classes are always able to unite when workers’ movements
threaten them. As far back as the Paris Commune, when workers seized the city
for ten weeks in 1871, the French army united with its former Prussian enemy to
crush them. Terrified by the Bolshevik victory in the former Soviet Union, ten
governments, from the US to Italy to Japan, launched an invasion in 1918. Today,
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund unite and protect the
world’s moneyed interests around the globe.
What is the alternative to waving the nationalist flag, the
banner of the ruling class of whatever nation? Let us raise flags and banners
of worker and student solidarity across borders, for the demands for which we
fight. Let us not falsely depend on or unite with our so-called state leaders
who, universally in the world today, have more in common with each other than
they do with us. Let us not be bamboozled by patriotic or nationalist rhetoric;
let Arab and Jewish and American workers fight together for what we need. The
One State Movement for historic Palestine could be a huge step in this
direction, but it must do more to consider the political and economic nature of
the society it seeks to create. Let us be part of an international movement for
an anti-racist, non-capitalist world.
No comments:
Post a Comment