- Resistance Continues Despite a Poisoning Rent
- And Terminating Productive Sites!
Note: Most of this article is devoted to reinforcing resistance in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
The current active Palestinian popular resistance calls for a lot of attention in several places of the world. Each follower made his own reading and estimation of that struggle.
First: The Zionist Ashkenazi Entity (ZAE) can’t bear any Palestinian resistance because it is the most effective Palestinian tool which minimizes or stops new settlers to come to occupied Palestine. Accordingly, the ZAE’s response against the Palestinian military resistance operations is expressed in two main decisions:
· The most possible brutality against all Palestinians in the West Bank (WB) using the most sophisticated western imperialisms weapons including drones.
· An exaggeration of the effects of any Palestinian military operation calling it “terror” to seek world emotions on the one hand, and to pull all Palestinians to participate at once in a large Intifada so as to exhaust the peoples’ energy aiming to repeat the same false investment of Intifadas of 1987 and 2000.
Second: Arab media machines of both resistance alliances and even those which normalize with the ZAE exaggerated the resistance and called all the people to participate in Intifada, but without telling them what was after and without agitating Arab masses to support the Palestinians.
Third: Most of the Arab regimes are against the Intifada and any military resistance aiming to hide their failure to fight for the liberation of Palestine.
But, we in occupied Palestine have a right, we have a duty to say to Arab rulers: As long as you are mere observers, but a lot of you are even enemies, Zionists, and negligent people, and you hold and even arrest the Arab revolutionaries as loyal towards Palestine and also towards their countries and homes, then let Palestinian people fight and innovate in their own way, and do not make of them a horse that runs endlessly to stoop.
There is a media exaggeration of the current struggle in the occupied West Bank asking the people to go for a total and continuous Intifada, but people’s response that, we decide how to fight and to what extent because this is urban warfare moveable from place to another, these are localized mobile confrontations that fade and ignite, shrink and extend, especially since the 2000 Intifada.
This form of resistance is a clash with the enemy in terms and areas of what he did not expect, and his security apparatuses and spies never knew the individual fighters, while frontal war is easier for the enemy to expose strike and even terminate.
Frontal war is a hotbed for the army and police of the enemy, including agents, spies, intruders…etc to practice repression against the people. That is why secret resistance in our case is much better and less human costs than exposure.
Exposure is a disease that Meacham Begin planted in the Palestinian resistance movement since 1977, when he publicly allowed declarations of solidarity and condolences for the martyrs, and gradually many militants became involved in public affiliation to the resistance factions…etc which made them well known to the enemy.
The long and successful clandestine Palestinian struggle nearly ignored after the Declaration of Principles/Oslo Agreement 1993, where offices of PLO factions were public in several cities of the West Bank and Gaza. This passive development is the opposite of urban guerrilla warfare, especially since rural guerrilla warfare is not easy in the case of the small Palestinian occupied territories 1967.
The current individual operations are not a comprehensive frontal Intifada, it is a war of positions, as Gramsci wrote, which are positions here in geography, military operations, prisons, writing, steadfastness in the courts, boycott and refusal to normalize, leading to popular adoption of the strategy of Development by Popular protection DbPP as much as we can. This form of people’s struggle is the choice of the people that shouldn’t either stop or reaches its peak, i.e., transformed to comprehensive frontal Intifada as long as most of the current Arab regimes normalize with the enemy and are still in power.
To go for comprehensive front is only when comes the battle of liberation of Palestine jointly with Arab revolutionary regimes.
Therefore, we repeat to the Arab rulers: Your dependence on us alone worries us, among you there are those who excuse themselves, internalize the defeat and discourage others, accordingly, let the underground resistance work its way in its own wisdom.
Our recommendations for young generation are:
Do not wear military clothes on the streets.
And don’t take a picture with rifles.
And don’t have fun talking over the spy’s mobile telephones which is in your pocket.
Do not listen to those who blow from far and puff up with food and drink.
Read Mao Zedong, Che Guevara and the Algerian newspaper El Mujahid, the Aden experience, Guevara Gaza, the Gilboa prison infiltration, and in particular the brochure of Carlos Marighela: Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla. In the urban guerrilla war, which in the case of Brazil is a mixture of urban guerrilla warfare and rural guerrilla warfare.
We must tell the guerrillas that those who flirt with your sacrifices are the ones who wrote the preambles of settlement and false negotiations, who gained money and positions, and with clear opportunism, lately, they made a compromise through the Oslo Accords, which turned them into fat cats! And after the failure of Oslo Accords, they became very critical to it, as if they were rejecting it since its mere beginning! They are liberals, renegade communists, post modernists…etc.
Lately, they underestimated the PLO’s resistance factions to reach a new form of representing the Palestinians, consisting of liberals, academics, negotiators, westernized…etc. on the one hand, and living safe in the western capitals on the other. Those groups underestimate all PLO factions, i.e. those who fight and others who normalize with the enemy, they are intellectuals living in the West, they call for the formation of a new PLO but without military struggle, detached from the resistance alliance, i.e. against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, they deny the Arab national dimension, Arab nation and try to limit the conflict between Palestinian people and the ZAE while the conflict is between Arab nation and the Counter-Revolution (CR) which is the ZAR, the triad (US, Europe and Japan) as Samir Amin noted, and Arab dependent regimes who are now play the role of and on behalf of imperialism over their own countries, they avoid the fact that our people and our nation have only one of two options: Liberation or begging for a tiny unviable state which the enemy even did not offer!. And because they are against liberation: They evade the fact that liberation is by actually joining the axis of resistance, while inside WB struggle must be completely underground non-frontal form of resistance.
Also we must explain to the youths that, be careful, it seems, that the ZAE no longer has what it can devise of methods of aggression, there is nothing new after premeditated enjoy killing, assassination and the use of the latest technology of Western enemies for assassination, demolishing homes, arresting the people of the Fedayeen and uprooting trees, and all this to loot the rest of the land, but our people continue renew, innovate and contrive new forms of resistance, here, people are superior to technology.
Be careful, the comprehensive Intifada in 1987 was a great one that was betrayed, cast out, in the Oslo Accords because the Arab political situation was contradictory to struggle and the world was also at that time the socialist bloc disintegrated.
The same bad timing was at the time of Intifada 2000 which did not find a backing for it either, and its blood was generated by the insignificant Arab initiative of 2002, “Peace is a strategic choice.” What an absurdity!
It is not true that all the current clashes, operations by individual youths are far from the factions, and if they are, then what is the meaning of the arrests of many of the youth of the factions!
Underestimating the factions is not a patriotic act, but critique is must even in sulfuric acid, ironing to heal.
Even if the current active resistance is far from the faction’s underestimation is the product of a mind without history, because today’s boy is the son of yesterday’s man.
Be aware of other groups which argue in the current time for One State Solution under different names: democratic, secular, state for all its citizens, and the worst, a state with the Zionist settlers! In fact, one state in the current time is a mere vision for the future, i.e., after liberation of Palestine there must be one Arab state with rights for all those inside it, but land in Palestine must be restored to the Palestinians.
Be ware of those who tried to usurp these untitled and non-collective operations, i.e., individual ones, to claim that they blew up a third Intifada, as Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper published in 2015 after the brave operation by Muhannad al-Halabi. Those opportunists pretend that they composed a new faction called “The United National Front in Historic Palestine” while in fact it was just three male liars and one female lire.
And they issued statement No. (1) With the flag of Palestine and a picture of a masked boy!
The ZAE never changes its Goal
Throughout an entire century, the Zionists never changed or hide their goal of occupying/stealing all of Palestine and even more. Tens of peaceful solutions had been suggested by United Nations, several states, positions, writers, parties…etc, but the ZAE maintains what his leadership wants.
It is worthy to explain to the reader how the ZAE is planning to control the occupied WBG since the first days of occupation 1967. The ZAE imposed several policies, each one in a specific period according to its circumstances and interests. On the eve of the 1967 occupation around 400,000 Palestinians emigrated immediately. But ZAE also issued more than 2,000 military orders, half of which were economic, starting with controlling borders, controlling exports and imports, establishing and licensing projects, counting souls, and counting even the dead…etc.
With the immediate closure of the borders and the cessation of export and import, the WBG local market was emptied during the first six months of it, so the merchant was forced to buy from the ZAE and the factory owner to buy spare parts from the ZAE and fight for an operator license from the ZAE specifically from the military government, the worker were obliged to work in the ZAE’s economy in black work. The various social classes were involuntarily linked to the economy of the ZAE. This was the beginning of mass captivity. (See details: Adel samara, the political Economy of the West Bank: From Peripheralization to Development 1967-1987, which led to high unemployment despite the bleeding immigration?
And because this period witnessed the beginning of the resistance, the ZAE turned to employing the largest possible number of the workforce in its workplaces, not only because it needed it, but also:
• To link the labor force to its economy so that it does not get involved in the national struggle.
• This lead to an additional paralysis of Palestinian production sites that are unable to compete either in terms of their level of technological development or their ability to pay competitive wages, bearing in mind that the linking of the West Bank and Gaza economies to the ZAE’s economy and the economic blockade created two serious obstacles:
1- A relationship with the ZAE’s economy in the form of an unequal exchange imposed by arms, i.e. with force under arms;
2- An increase in the cost of living due to economic subjugation where prices are the same in both the ZAE and WBG, while incomes are nearly 1 in the WBG to 10 in the ZAE, so that the wages of the local worker inside the WBG cannot suffice him and his family, forcing him to work in the ZAEs economy.
The WBG idle young labor force has no choice but to work in the economy of occupation, or emigrate to Arab countries and Diaspora. (See Adel Samara’s writings beginning with: The Economy of the Occupied Territories: Underdevelopment Deepens Dependency, 1975) and many books after it.
However, it is worthy to note, that despite all these devastating and undermining obstacles economically and politically, the struggle did not stop, but began immediately following the occupation at 5th of June 1967 and did not end as it took the form of armed struggle, popular uprisings, boycotts, especially during Intifada 1987…etc. We also note that the same scene in more than one aspect is renewed especially this period, despite the great difference in circumstances between 1967 and today 2022.
It is useful to clarify the following, in order to facilitate the understanding of the context, i.e. the policy of the occupation directly following the occupation of the WBG. With the beginning of the occupation, the ZAE government was divided between two opinions:
Minister of war Moshe Dayan was of the opinion that the relationship with the occupied WBG in 1967 should be fully opened and bridges opened with Jordan (and this we referred to in a previous article when the uproar was made over the opening of Ramon Airport in the occupied Palestine 1948 and the competition with Jordan). Dayan was in favor of providing facility exit for Palestinians through bridges to Arab countries and to immigrants and the Diaspora.
The other opinion of Pinhas Sapir, Minister of Finance, was that between the two occupied parts of Palestine there should be borders, non-openness and, of course, no withdrawal. Dayan’s point of view won as noted above.
The policies of the ZAE were and did not stop undermining the production sites in the occupied territories to achieve two goals:
• Continuing to usurp the land by various means, whether direct expropriation or strangling production sites, or designating military areas under the pretend that it is necessary for its’ army training…etc. The main goal is to swallow the land.
• Displacing the young generation through harassment and arrests, and in many cases employing it in the economy of the occupation and in other times prohibiting the same workers from entering the ZAEs areas, and indirectly preventing the working people from working in the Palestinian strangled economy, i.e. creates a floating situation for the life of the individual daily life, uncertainty and instability, which leads to self-displacement to leave.
This was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Russian defense war in Ukraine against NATO aggression, as production sites declined in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which we call economic/productive termination within the country.
This floating situation is ironic as very contradictory form inside. To elaborate, this situation might be described as follows:
· This year 2022, too many Palestinian workers were employed in the ZAE economy.
· Termination of productive sectors of WBG economy continued.
· But, at the same time an availability of financial liquidity from the so-called donors.
Class/national exploitation of Palestinian labor, of course is an attempt to curb its involvement in the national struggle and to avoid they fall into starvation, preventing them from working in the reclamation of the land in the WB, whose reclamation becomes more difficult due to the long-term neglect in order for the ZAE entity to usurp it and so that the labor force does not work in the local industry so that the experience of Development by Popular Protection of 1987 Intifada is not repeated.
So, we are faced with:
• Unusually expanded employment of workers, as this employment fluctuates for political and not a purely economic purpose.
•Production baldness affecting local production sites.
• In parallel to abundance of financial liquidity!
These are contradictory matters, which indicate an unhealthy situation where a country lives largely without its own production. There are financial rents that flow from abroad, whether to the West Bank from the so-called donor governments or to Gaza from Qatar, and workers’ remittances from working in the ZAE’s economy, and therefore the scene in the occupied land can be seen as follows:
First:
• A class/segment financed with rents from the outside, and this is usually within the Palestinian authority.
• A layer filled with invisible revenues, such as NGOs managers and employees of foreign embassies and the comprador segment that promotes foreign products.
Second:
Productive baldness due to the undermining of production sites and even the abandonment of many of them due to their inability to compete with the Entity’s products and foreign products from hostile countries including Turkey and the West in general.
Third:
Employment of Palestinian work force is increasing in the ZAE, to castrate it as a struggle on the one hand, and not to be exposed to hunger on the other hand as noted above, so that it does not engage in the resistance.
According to a UNESCO report: “The number of Palestinian workers crossing from the West Bank into Israel has increased to 153,000 and nearly 20,000 transit permits have been issued to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to enter Israel for work.”
Fourth:
The majority of the people are completely outside these contexts, and they are among many residents of refugee camps since their eviction from Palestine in the 1948 war, independent agricultural producers in the countryside and industrially in cities, unemployed people who cannot work in the ZAE and have no sources of livelihood, unemployed by age, residents of remote and neglected areas…etc. This is if we do not sum up the female labor force, whose number of women in working age rarely estimated and their domestic work is not valued.
Therefore, different economic reports speak of their estimates of unemployment, but they unanimously agree that unemployment in the West Bank exceeds 10 percent and, in the Gaza, Strip exceeds 20 percent.
What does this disjointed picture of the population structure mean, especially in terms of the living situation?
It means the main problem in the economy, that is, the decisive determinant factor in the economic process and thus in economic growth and draining the surplus, of course, development is a distant dream, is the occupation authorities that manage the economic process according to their interests, the essence of which is the usurpation of the land and its emptying.
It is not uncommon for any society, whose socio-economic formation is capitalist to enjoy a form of social harmony in which the workplaces are able to absorb the labor force, thus creating a lively local market. If any country does not achieve this balance, it cannot reach any political consensus, and this is the case exactly what the ZAE is working on politically, militarily, economically and psychologically against the occupied territories of Palestine 1967.
There is no doubt that what helps this Palestinian fragmentation is the absence of consensus on a national project, which was the liberation of occupied Palestine and converted by many PLO factions to a tiny state in the WBG and even for other Palestinian factions to the one state solution even with the settlers…etc!
But the paradox is that there is a qualitative and increasing resistance especially the military resistance operations inside the cities and to some extent in some rural areas, as we described earlier a positional Intifada. As if this description of the situation in the WBG is similar to the description of the situation in the WBG after the beginning of the occupation in 1967, but with an important difference.
In the early years of the occupation, the occupier did not deploy its forces into the entire territory of the WBG, meaning that the feet of his soldiers did not reach every inch, and at that time, opportunities for guerrilla work in the countryside were possible. At the present time, the ZAE has reached every inch of the land, and this is what makes urban warfare more conducive to the national struggle.
Time does not repeat the same event, but some events come together with others. More importantly, the steadfastness and struggle of the people is repeated with other symbols and innovations, and this is what is happening today despite the entire dark picture above. It is repeated that people stay on the covenant.
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The opinions and views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Kana’an’s Editorial Board.