Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 35)
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- Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 35)
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nationally, which was directed at buy-
ing time, and which can be expected to
achieve nothing other than buying
time» (p. 80). While it is Davis’ right to
hold this view if he deems it correct, it is
another thing when he insinuates that
those who vehemently opposed the
Amman accord did so based merely on
a priori suspicion of the prevailing PLO
leadership’s intentions.
Davis’ assessment appears to stem
from the fact that he does not deal with
the existence of differing political lines
and class forces within the PLO. But
even more principally, it is rooted in
failure to connect the prevailing status
of the Palestinian-Zionist conflict at
that time, with the concurrent US
plans. The Reagan plan forwarded in
1982 officially appointed the Jordanian
monarchy as the vehicle for abscrbing
and thus liquidating the PLO and the
Palestinian cause. The danger of the
Amman accord, and the reason it was
opposed by a broad spectrum of
Palestinian revolutionary forces, was
that it provided the Jordanian monarch
with a lever for undermining the
Palestinian struggle from within, total-
ly putting aside the independent state
which was at the heart of the 16th
PNC’s resolutions. Davis overlooks the
fact that the Amman accord was only
endorsed by one Palestinian resistance
organization, Fatah, and that the 17th
PNC held in Amman, which backed
this policy, was boycotted by ll
Palestinian organizations other than
Fatah and the Arab Liberation Front.
In contrast, it was abrogated at the
unifying PNC in Algiers in 1987, at-
tended by the major Palestinian
organizations.
Another unclarity in the book con-
cerns the PLO’s policy of meeting
Israeli forces that recognize the PLO as
the sole, legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people, regardless of
whether they are anti - Zionist or not.
According to the author, «To interpret
this policy as ascribing legitimacy by
the PLO to Zionist philosophy and
practice is, in the view of the author,
from the political perspective com-
pletely irrational... It is not the
meeting, contact or dialogue per se that
can or ought to serve as a criterion for
political assessment, but the content
and the context of such meeting, con-
tact or dialogue» (p. 81). This sounds
reasonable but Davis neither explains
how and under what conditions the
PLO can avoid ascribing legitimacy to
Zionism with such meetings; nor does
he directly explain what the Palestinian
cause stands to gain from such con-
tacts.
Since Davis harbors no _ illusions
about the Israeli peace camp (the
analysis of Peace Now is a strong point
of the book), we can assume that his
evaluation is related to his vision of the
future course of the conflict, counting
on continued struggle to create new
realities. Davis states that current con-
tacts with Zionist Israelis «presage the
possibility, in the long term, for the
Zionist movement and for the Israeli
government to accept surrender in the
face of the attrition of prolonged
popular armed struggle and the in-
evitable victory of the PLO... There is
every reason to expect that Israel will
surrender to Palestine, probably in the
framework of an international con-
ference under the auspices of the United
Nations, where the Israeli Prime
Minister of the racialist regime of
Zionist Israel will negotiate the terms of
the ‘suicide’ of his government with the
Chairman of the PLO Executive
Committee and future Prime Minister
of the democratic Republic of
Palestine» (p. 82).
What remains unclear is how PLO
contacts with Zionist forces now pro-
mote this development. In fact, there is
a great deal of concrete evidence that
such relations harm the PLO and
Palestinian cause. Such contacts give
Arab regimes a pretext for reneging on
their official boycott of ‘Israel’,
meanwhile edging closer to the Camp
David accords which ignore Palestinian
rights. PLO contacts with Zionist
forces, following upon Egypt’s entry
into Camp David, also provided an ex-
cuse for a number of African govern-
ments to restore their relations with the
Zionist state, that were broken after the
1973 war. All this detracted from the
PLO’s role on the regional and inter-
national level, as the vanguard in the
struggle against Zionism.
Similarly we miss the connection
between the prediction about Zionist
surrender and other future perspectives
outlined in the book, such as that the
Zionist leadership inherently resorts to
war and repression to relieve its crises,
that the fascist option has always been
central to Zionism, and that in the last
years, the anti-Zionist forces have been
further marginalized as «Israeli Jewish
society is subject to a process of
escalating Nazification» (p. 85).
The connection we miss may lie in
Davis’ view of the decline of the Zionist
momentum after 1967, not having
achieved a convincing victory since.
Davis gives as one example the Israeli
«loss» of the Sinai and its settlements
there via Camp David. Certainly this
was a loss when compared to historical
Zionist dreams. But this is only a par-
tial analysis. It overlooks the impor-
tant fact that imperialist influence
became stronger in the region in the
seventies, and that Begin’s ‘Israel’ only
embarked on Camp David because it
perceived the tremendous strategic
gains to be made by Egypt withdrawing
from the confrontation, while the
Zionist state institutionalized its
Strategic cooperation with the USA.
Davis compares the future Israeli sur-
render to that of Rhodesia, but the
Palestinians are not fighting ‘Israel’
only. They are fighting a state which has
increasingly taken on the property of a
military base in the area, which the US
will do all to protect. Rhodesia, in con-
trast, had already proved itself
troublesome to its imperialist allies who
supported it only covertly in the final
stages of Zimbabwe’s liberation. It
has yet to be proved that massive US
aid to ‘Israel’ influences the society in
the direction of compromise or sur-
render to the Palestinians, quite the
contrary.
We do not ourselves claim to have a
detailed blueprint of how the liberation
struggle will develop in the future, what
changes this will enforce on the Israeli
society and how the PLO should adjust
its policies accordingly. We do however
think that a more comprehensive and
precise analysis should underlie PLO
policy on critical questions such as
relations with reactionary regimes and
Zionist forces.
We do not make these points in order
to disparage Dr. Davis’ contribution to
the dialogue on how to achieve a truly:
democratic Palestine. Rather we hope
this dialogue continues, becomes richer
and more precise. We think that Dr.
Davis would agree with us that the cur-
rent uprising in occupied Palestine has
given new impetus and possibly new
paraineters for this discussion, and we
welcome further discussion of the topic
in the light of this.
Israel: An Apartheid State, by Dr. Uri
Davis, was published in 1987, by Zed
Books Limited, 57 Caledonian Road,
London N1 9 BU. @
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