Political Report to the Central Committee

The Central Committee’s current gathering is being held under special political circumstances. Netanyahu’s fall comes after a 12-year rule. The government that replaces Netanyahu consists of eight parties that range from the deep right, center, the Zionist left as well as the Islamic Party, all of which sit around the same table. What was agreed by all partners was that in order to hold power, they must refrain from engaging with explosive ideological and political questions, such as the Palestinian question, the separation of religion and state, attitudes towards the judiciary and the High Court, the Jewish Nation-State Law, and the contradiction between the Jewish and democratic character of the state. The avoidance of discussion on these fundamental questions, which remained unresolved between Netanyahu’s bloc and the opposing bloc of the center and left, and Lapid’s agreement to relinquish the position of prime minister in favor of Naftali Bennett, indicate a blurring of the fundamental principles that hitherto separated the conservative right from Israel’s liberal wing.

The prevailing excuse among supporters of the new government is that the compromises reached were an outgrowth of the need to overthrow Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc, which threatened to plunge Israel into the abyss, so this new creature should be treated more as a transitional and not a homogeneous government. Let us examine the long-term strategic tasks given up by the leaders of the center-left parties: resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tackling the climate crisis, eliminating the social gaps between the majority of citizens and the thriving minority in the high-tech industry; resolving the transportation crisis (and transportation on Saturday); and repairing the mechanisms of education, health, nursing and social care. While Netanyahu clings to the neo-liberal approach adopted in the United States in the early 1980s and spread around the world for 40 years, an approach that advocates drying up the public sector, this government unites two completely different wings. A conservative wing that identifies the strong and directive state as the source of the problem, and the left wing that sees the state as the source for resolving the gaping social abyss.  

The global health crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic, and the climate crisis that is causing global warming and natural disasters, have exposed the globalism of the world in which we live. Coronavirus does not distinguish between an American from New York and an Indian from Bangalore, an Israeli from Tel Aviv and a Palestinian from Ramallah. Nor does global warming separate continents from each other. All of these have reinforced new paradigms that place at the center of humanity’s attention the promotion of human welfare, elimination of poverty and the transition to renewable energy that heralds the fourth industrial revolution. The profound political change that took place in the United States following the victory of Joe Biden placed the Green New Deal program on the world agenda. However, the Biden administration went further and stated that not only is the planet in existential danger, but the democratic regime itself. If 1% of society enjoys resources equal to those enjoyed by the remaining 99%, the democratic regime that caused this problem loses its credibility.

It appears that the new Bennett-Lapid government has adopted a more balanced policy in many areas. This includes an internal policy that does not accept Netanyahu’s approach to the “deep state” in relation to institutions of the rule of law such as the High Court, the police, the General Security Service and the media; its position toward the American political arena, where it aspires to work with both the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress instead of being biased toward the Trump faction and the racist groups that support it; a more flexible stance toward the nuclear agreement with Iran and a less combative one vis-a-vis the US; a more positive position toward the Palestinian Authority at the expense of Hamas, unlike Netanyahu; a different attitude toward the Arabs in Israel and the Arab parties; and less of an inclination to surrender to the ultra-Orthodox parties, which were an essential backbone of the Likud bloc.

At the same time, when it comes to fundamental problems, such as the Palestinian problem, Netanyahu’s legacy continues to dominate, as maintaining the status quo has become the internal glue binding the new government. All parties and political currents in Israel, right and left, including Arabs and even the Greens, ignore the Palestinian problem that has become a so-called unsolvable question. Bennett declares this publicly, and the rest of the parties adopt this approach unequivocally. Moreover, there is no party in Israel that promotes the basic principles adopted by US President Biden: Not regarding democracy and human rights; dictatorial regimes that threaten the democratic regime; economic change that seeks to weaken huge monopolies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple; taxes on multinational corporations; the construction and re-establishment of the welfare state, strengthening the working class and trade unions; and not in the fight against global warming.

The Unresolved Palestinian problem

The prevailing propaganda in Israel is that there is no solution to the Palestinian problem, when the presupposition that dominates is a zero-sum game – any achievement of the Palestinians is considered a loss for Israelis. Despite the security coordination with the Palestinian Authority and the Oslo Accords, principles of which are implemented to this day, the Palestinian people are still considered Israel’s enemy. From the moment the agreement between Israel and the PLO was signed in 1993, it became clear that Israel never intended to build a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Following the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the split between Hamas and Fatah (2006-2007), and on the other hand the expansion of settlements and an increase in the number of settlers to over half a million Israelis, the establishment of a separate independent Palestinian state alongside Israel became untenable.

Trump’s four year rule that was completely biased toward Israel, and the “Deal of the Century” registered as his trademark, critically harmed the Palestinians. Trump went so far as to say that, unlike all previous American governments, he did not oppose annexation of Area C to Israel. Moreover, the agreements between Israel, the Emirates and Bahrain, followed by Sudan and Morocco, were a direct result of Trump’s policies. These agreements gave impetus to Netanyahu’s claim that the Palestinian problem is not the heart of the struggle with the Arab world, and that the formula of “land for peace” is no longer relevant. In a nutshell, all the Zionist parties, including the left-wing parties, supported these “Abraham Accords,” which weakened the bargaining power of the Palestinians. During the four election campaigns that came one after another, these parties did not raise the Palestinian question as an electoral issue at all.  

Biden’s victory over Trump upended the situation. Now that Netanyahu has been left without a patron in the White House, his opponents were given the go-ahead to overthrow him. On the other hand, the qualitative change in US policy pushed Abu Mazen to initiate a political move to get out of the complete political isolation imposed on him by Trump’s position and the agreements between Israel and the Arab states. The first step required of him to restore the status of a legitimate representative in the equation, and to frustrate the position of Israel refusing to work with him on the grounds that he does not represent the entire Palestinian people, was to come to terms with Hamas, restore territorial unity between the West Bank and Gaza, and to form a new government chosen in clean, transparent elections open to all Palestinian political currents.

Yet Abu Mazen failed to achieve this basic goal, without which the Palestinian Authority has no credibility or place. After Fatah split into three heads, it became clear to Abu Mazen that these elections he called for were threatening his rule, and playing into the hands of Hamas. For its part, Hamas maintained its unity and hoped to take over the PA democratically in order to break the blockade on Gaza, and become the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Among Palestinian public opinion, the cancellation of the election appeared to be met with indifference. This was not so within the Hamas ranks. This move thwarted the organization’s plan to seize power democratically, while allowing Israel to continue its iron fist siege of Gaza. Hamas’ response was direct and simple. If Abu Mazen does not want to transfer power in a democratic way, Hamas will occupy the political arena by beginning a limited confrontation with Israel, in order to expose its weakness and helplessness. For this purpose, the old slogan “Al Aqsa is in danger” was recruited.

However, during the 11 days of conflict, tagged by Israel as Guardian of the Walls, violence also spilled over into Israel in the form of clashes between Jews and Arabs inside Israel.  Hamas’ popularity rose and Abu Mazen lost the remainder of his popular support. Yet Hamas did not emerge victorious from the conflict, as it boasts. Gaza suffered enormous damage: 260 killed, about a third of them children, collapsed residential buildings and towers, 70,000 residents made homeless. On the other hand, Israel, despite its military might, a huge technological advantage and the Iron Dome, did not defeat Hamas. As has become clear since Hamas carried out the coup against the Palestinian Authority and took control of Gaza, Hamas cannot be defeated because there is no alternative to replace it. In addition, there is no international, Arab, or Palestinian body interested in running Gaza. Due to the Israeli closure and Hamas rule, Gaza has become a battered area, undergoing a humanitarian catastrophe that cannot be addressed under current conditions.

It also became clear that the destruction caused by Israel in Gaza does not punish Hamas, but adds to the suffering of the residents and causes an increase in despair, hostility to Israel and the desire to remove the inhuman closure in any way possible. Israel paid a heavy political price after the American leadership demanded an immediately cease fire, and received sharp criticism from the American and world press. Israel’s attitude toward the Palestinians, its continued occupation and apartheid policy, represented in surrender to the settlers, eviction of residents from their homes in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the ongoing closure in Gaza and the human catastrophe it causes, have removed all masks behind which Israel has hidden for too many years. For example, the claim that the Palestinians are unwilling to recognize Israel, or the terrorist nature of Hamas, and other claims that aim to continue the status quo. Global public opinion does not accept Israel’s policy and its attempt to make the Palestinians disappear and turn them into a “shrapnel in the backside” with which life can go on (a phrase dubbed by Bennet back in 2013 minimizing the importance of the Palestinians to no more than a “shrapnel in the backside”).

Gaza, on the other hand, has only two options: either to continue the current situation, that is, to retain Hamas rule, to repeat periodic military attacks, and to deepen the destruction and humanitarian catastrophe, or to end the closure by meeting Israel’s demands and take full responsibility for Gaza and its residents. The current state of affairs does not indicate a desire on the part of Hamas to reach a long-term settlement that will allow it to abandon its weapons and rehabilitate Gaza. Like Hezbollah, which is destroying Lebanon, Hamas is proving to be a failed, corrupt and dictatorial organization, clinging to mukawama (resistance) to justify its absolute control. On the other hand, anyone who demands that Abbas be preferred in order for him to take on Gaza’s fate is deceiving themselves, because of Abbas’ weakness and inability to deal with Hamas. It follows, therefore, that the two existing movements, Fatah and Hamas, are not entities capable of managing the Palestinian people’s crisis.

On the other hand, there is no party in Israel calling for the return of Gaza to Israeli rule. Israel is facing a Gordian knot. In fact, it controls every detail, small or large, in Gaza. Israel issues ID cards to residents, the currency in Gaza is the shekel, imports and exports are under Israeli supervision, it controls all entrances to Gaza, including air and sea, and even the suitcases full of dollars from Qatar pass through it. Gaza is under Israeli sovereignty without Israel taking any responsibility for its residents, who have become a tool in the hands of Hamas and Israel. This arrangement between Israel and Hamas cannot continue for long, but there is no Israeli political force that is prepared or capable of reaching a solution.

Palestinian protest without program and without leadership

Together with the difficult war between Hamas and Israel, we saw mass demonstrations in Arab communities within Israel, in East Jerusalem, in the West Bank, as well as in European and American cities. The picture that emerged was of a renewed Palestinian unity that managed to bring the forgotten Palestinian issue back to global consciousness. The new and alarming phenomenon that preoccupied the Israeli authorities, was the involvement of Arabs in Israel in demonstrations, and especially the acts of violence and assault on Jewish property and homes in mixed cities such as Jaffa, Lod, Haifa and Acre. At the same time, extremist Jewish organizations, such as Lehava (a small movement inspired by the late racist Meir Kahana) , La Familia (right wing football fans of Beitar)  and others, incited and attacked Arab residents, causing harm to innocent people on both sides.

The slogans adopted by Arab demonstrators were usually divided on the basis of their ideological affiliation. The religious adopted the call “Al-Aqsa is in Danger” and the secular “save the residents of Sheikh Jarrah.” But the outburst of the masses on the streets came from a number of reasons, chief among them a sense of despair, frustration and anger at the government and also against the Arab leadership, including Arab Knesset members. The demonstrators’  violence directed against Jewish residents and government symbols is the same violence that is directed daily at the Arab society and against the Arab residents themselves, making life in the Arab localities unbearable.

In the background also stand uninterrupted years of armed criminal violence in Arab villages and cities.  The Arab leadership insists on blaming the police, claiming that the source of violence in Arab society is the failure of police to restrain the mafia families. It is quite clear, however, that this phenomenon is not reduced to organized crime, but is a widespread culture of violence perpetrated within the family, between neighbors, in schools, on the street, at weddings and in conflicts between clans.

It is impossible to ignore the fact that violence in Arab society has also become a legitimate instrument for imposing religious conventions, and is also used against anyone who violates the strict dictates of tradition. Women who do not abide by the required dress code, artists who demand freedom of expression and exceed the limits permitted by religious tradition, the LGBTQ community, and anyone who wants to hold a show or sports competition featuring women. This violence does not end here. It is fed by a large social stratum, which includes 40% of Arab youth who are not integrated into any framework, do not study and do not work. These young people have lost all hope in the future, and turn to violence to express frustration and anger against the society that has turned its back on them.

Violence is also related to the clan nature of Arab society and its conservatism. This puts obstacles in front of any democratic process in the local authorities. Arab society suffers from a lack of leadership in its institutions. Local authorities cannot deal objectively with society’s deep problems because the key to selecting staff is not their professional suitability but rather their affiliation to the “right” clan. This is what inevitably leads to corruption and a lack of transparency, resulting in a loss of Arab residents’ trust in these authorities.

Moreover, cooperation of the Arab parties with families and clans generates distrust between the citizen and the parties, resulting in a subsequent decrease in trust in the entire democratic process and a drop in turnout in recent elections to below 50%. Government plans, such as Resolution 922, which allocated NIS 15 billion to the Arab society over 5 years, were of no avail because Arab local authorities lack the ability and skills to utilize the sums efficiently and correctly. In fact, as of June 2021, although 90% of the sum has been allocated only 62% was utilized because of the need to be transparent in spending (proper invoices, plans, etc.).

If we add to these phenomena the attitude of the Israeli government, and especially Netanyahu’s attitude towards the Arabs during his 12 years of rule, we have all the elements that concocted a violent explosion. On the one hand, Netanyahu’s administration authorized  NIS 15 billion for the needs of Arab society, on the other hand, he waged a campaign of wild incitement against the Arabs, with the aim of destroying the legitimacy of the Arab voice and the Arab parties as partners in a future parliamentary coalition that could overthrow him.

The purpose of the incitement was political, to prevent the center and left parties from joining with the Arab parties. On the other hand, it served as fuel for Netanyahu’s electoral base by transforming his opponents into traitors to Zionism simply because they cooperated with Arab parties. When Netanyahu decided to change tactics and turn himself to the Islamic Movement to gain a majority in the Knesset, he was apparently too late. His courting after Abbas Mansour, the leader of the Islamic movement  did not alleviate the rage that had accumulated on the Arab street against him, and did not prevent the mass demonstrations that surprised all security forces. The wave of demonstrations ended without any real result while the authorities began a large-scale wave of arrests, which included hundreds and possibly thousands of youths participating in the demonstrations and acts of violence. For now, life is back on track, and what is expected is a return of wild use of arms and, murders and violence within Arab society, leaving tens of thousands of young people idle without a solution and without change, until the next outbreak.

A comparison between the wave of demonstrations by young people in Palestine and comparison to the Black Lives Matter movement, is misleading.  In the United States, this movement has a clear political agenda and a thoughtful leadership operating within the Democratic Party. This leadership mobilized its supporters to secure the victory of Joe Biden in order to remove President Trump from power. In contrast to the Palestinian protest movement, the black movement sets out a clear and determined program that calls for working together with whites to fight for democratic values for all US residents and not just for blacks. On the other hand, the Palestinian movement, which raises the slogan “Free Palestine” without any realistic political agenda to achieve this goal, speaks on behalf of the Palestinians without any attempt or desire to recruit democratic elements from within Israeli society. This is a serious error. It therefore lacks the foundations necessary for the continuity and formation of an alternative leadership to the failed leaders who currently stand both in the Palestinian Authority and at the head of Arab parties and authorities.

DA’AM, Biden and the Israeli-Palestinian Green New Deal

Biden’s victory over Trump in the US presidential elections is a watershed in human history, and becomes the basis for a political course of action that changes accepted conventions and concepts in numerous areas: attitudes to the approaching climate disaster, racism, human rights, LGBTQ rights, social justice, the capitalist economy, international relations, democracy versus autocracy and a critical look at the past, especially slavery.

This kind of mental calculation is warranted by the depth of the crisis that American society has reached, and with it many countries around the world that have chosen leaders with populist tendencies, prone to fascism, such as Trump, Erdogan, Urban, Putin and even Netanyahu. These leaders endanger the democratic regime, bringing us back to Europe’s situation during the years in which Nazism developed. In the face of these, the American people had no choice but to pose the poignant question, “Where did we go wrong?” It turned out that the root of the problem was the neo-liberal capitalist regime, which pushed a very broad stratum of the middle class to the margins, depriving them of the basic conditions for a stable life. Much of that class translated this disappointment into support for Trump.

It is our duty as Da’am to understand the nature of the change and the reasons for it. It can be said we successfully met this task. We watched Biden’s victory over Trump. The October 2020 Central Committee report described the tremendous popular movement that occupied the streets of American cities from east to west, headed by movements of blacks, young people, and women. Biden’s victory by a margin of 7 million votes expressed the power of this movement, which united around Biden’s leadership with one clear goal: to overthrow Trump and save the democratic regime. This goal was set by Biden not only with respect to the United States, but on a global scale. He therefore presented to the world the choice between two inescapable possibilities – democracy or autocracy, with the United States and democracies, or with Russia, China and their allies in the world.

The question before us is what is the significance of this historic transformation in the United States for us in Israel and Palestine? How do we translate these principles into the political reality in which we live? For us, adoption of the slogan “Israeli-Palestinian Green New Deal ”  is a continuation of the position of the left-wing progressive forces in the United States, which have great influence within the Democratic Party.

As for the Israeli left-wing parties, they sacrificed their principles in favor of forming an alliance with the extreme right, claiming that this is the order of the day to replace Netanyahu. We are currently predicting how Meretz may vote in favor of the law to prevent reunification of Palestinian families, the same law against which Meretz filed a petition with the High Court, defining it as a racist law covered by false security pretenses.

The green movements, which raise the banner of environmental protection and call for a “Green New Deal” in Israel, also draw a clear line between their struggle for the environment, the preservation of the climate in Israel and the Palestinian question. They ignore the occupation and the apartheid regime that Israel is imposing on the West Bank and Gaza, arguing that linking the fight against the climate crisis to the fight for human rights, and against the occupation may narrow their ranks . For them, the occupation is a controversial issue in Israeli society, while it is possible to reach broad agreement and even a consensus on the climate issue. As long as this is its position, the Green Movement in Israel cannot be part of the global green movement for saving the planet, which places the idea of environmental justice and the duty to protect and safeguard the interests of oppressed peoples as a central plank in its struggle. The adherence of the Israeli movements to Zionist ideology and their refusal to change their way of thinking and acting only strengthened the extreme right and enabled it to take over the public space. These environmental movements thus become the tail in the current government, while neutralizing themselves from any real influence and action toward solving the Palestinian problem and achieving peace.

Al-Hirak al-Fhalastini, which calls for the “liberation of Palestine” from the Mediterranean Sea  to the Jordan River and has adopted the slogan “Palestinian lives matter,” isolates itself by adopting an outdated nationalist agenda that has no proximity to the Black Lives Matter movement other than the name. Blacks in the United States are also an oppressed ethnic group like the Palestinians, but representatives of the black movement speak on behalf of the entire American people, in all its ethnic, religious and national components.  Al-Hirak al-Fhalastini refrains from any representation or reference to Israeli society, sometimes distinguishes between a Jew and non-Jew, and is willing to cooperate with extremist religious elements such as Hamas, who deny democracy and secularism. This narrow national focus neutralizes al-Hirak from any real political influence, and ultimately plays into the hands of Hamas, as we saw in the last war. Hamas, for its part, cynically uses al-Hirak, most of which is based on secular activists, to slam Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, thus strengthening its cards in the run-up to a total fundamentalist takeover of the Palestinian arena.

The Da’am Party emphasizes that any political solution to the Palestinian issue must include the absolute majority of Palestinians and Israelis. It has recently been proven that there is no peace without the Palestinians, despite the agreements signed with a number of Arab states. On the other hand, there will not be an end to the occupation without an alliance and close cooperation between Palestinians and the democratic forces in Israel.

We present the Israeli-Palestinian Green New Deal as a programmatic basis for unification of the Israeli and Palestinian democratic forces on the basis of equality, climatic and social justice. The struggle against global warming, for human rights, for the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, the struggle for a free democratic society, the campaign to separate religion from the state, for an economic system that puts workers’ interests at the center, and the campaign for a just society – should unite Israelis and Palestinians. We oppose divisions and separation, walls and barriers, and the oppression of culture just because it is different. The fundamental values we are talking about are the guarantee for coexistence in one land, which will put an end to the bloody conflict that leads to a dead end.

Based on this concept, we participated in the last election campaigns and hosted numerous activists who promote struggles in various areas of life, including in the fields of workers rights and unionization, the struggle for climate, human rights, equality for the LGBTQ community, the struggle against clan rule in Arab society and more. Our goal was to develop the discussion and expand it as much as possible, in order to build collaborative relationships and alliances with anyone who acts and takes an interest in these social, cultural and existential areas. The profound change that is taking place in the United States and around the world provides credibility and strength to our positions.

The political bankruptcy of the left-wing Zionist and Arab parties paves the way for a discussion and connection with young activists, women and men, in both Israeli and Palestinian society, who want a Palestinian-Israeli democratic alternative. Our field work in MAAN, in the Sindyanna of Galilee organization, in the empowerment of women, the promotion of alternative energies and urban agriculture and in the adoption of principles of sustainability, all strengthen our presence, confirm our political action and the validity of the program we promote. The call for a “Israeli-Palestinian Green New Deal”, goes in tandem with our goal – one democratic state for Israelis and Palestinians that will end the apartheid regime.

The post Prospects for change with the demise of Netanyahu and criticism of Abu Mazen first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

Since the last Central Committee meeting in February of this year, the political arena has undergone fundamental upheavals that we could not have anticipated. A global event like the coronavirus pandemic that has spread across the planet was surprising, leaving no place on earth without casualties. The pandemic illustrates the nature of globalization, which united the fate and future of humanity and the interrelationships between peoples, crossing national and ethnic boundaries. A health incident that began in the live animal market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 became a global health disaster within two months.

The coronavirus and the way each regime dealt with it revealed the nature of the various regimes and the shortcomings of the global neoliberal capitalist regime (which itself reached a dead end in 2008 following collapse of the American economy, which dragged the world to a historic low). The Chinese and American regimes stood out in the way they handled the crisis: the Chinese communist dictatorship hid the outbreak of the pandemic to protect its name, as the virus probably erupted due to a lack of government oversight over the wet market.  The American president also hid the dangerous nature of the pandemic from the American people, for fear of its impact on the New York Stock Exchange. The Chinese regime imposed severe measures and locked down 40 million citizens in the city of Wuhan for over two months, while Donald Trump has accused his Democratic opponents of inventing the pandemic, a hoax to damage the economy for electoral reasons.

The Chinese example of dealing with the pandemic has proven to be more effective. China managed to eradicate the pandemic with record speed through the draconian steps it took, steps possible for a dictatorial regime. The United States, on the other hand, which has been slow to prepare for the crisis,  and its president even denied and continues to deny the severity of the pandemic, has failed miserably in coping with it, and the coronavirus is spreading non-stop as of this writing. The death toll in the U.S. is approaching a quarter of a million, or a quarter of all COVID-19 related deaths worldwide, while the number of people infected now exceeds 8 million. American society has been deeply traumatized by Trump’s bizarre and reckless behavior on the one hand, and the health disaster on the other. The collapse of the economy as a result of the prolonged closure has affected the lives of millions of citizens. The US and China were the two powers that led the world economy in the last two decades. Yet the coronavirus revealed that humanity could not rely on China, despite its economic efficiency, due to its tyrannical regime, nor on the US. The latter collapsed because of its loose political regime, which on the one hand allowed an unstable and criminal personality like Trump to seize power, and on the other leads an economic system that sanctifies the extreme profit of the few. This method has been shamefully exposed in the face of a privatized health system that cannot cope with a huge-scale health disaster as befell the United States and the world.

The lesson we learn from the coronavirus is that restricting basic freedoms and human rights in exchange for economic well-being, as in China, is a fundamental problem, but also that when capital and monopolies take over the democratic regime, democracy is emptied of content, and political parties cease to serve the citizens and serve capital instead. Although before the pandemic China boasted of its impressive increase in gross national product, which reached 10% annually, and flooded markets with cheap goods that resulted in an increase in consumption and standard of living, its capitalist, non-transparent dictatorship extracted from humanity an extremely high health and economic cost. American capitalism, on the other hand, and the intensification of monopolies impoverished the American people, created abysmal social gaps and led to a loss of confidence in the democratic regime. This gave rise to populist and pro-fascist currents like Trump’s, which rose on a wave of partially justified criticism of the Democratic party, promising to “dry up the swamp” in Washington and clear it of corruption. In light of this, the American people need radical political and economic change simultaneously.

In recent years, the Da’am Party has championed the slogan “One State – Green economy,” which is gaining momentum in light of the current crisis. The slogan “one state” does not stem solely from the failure of the “two states” solution against the backdrop of the failed Oslo Accords. It comes from retrospection of the new global situation which pushed aside the national idea, abolished the national market, and deepened its unification. This process was made possible because of the information revolution, the Internet and the global transport network, which render it easier to move goods and people with tremendous speed. Hence symbols such as the flag, the national anthem and even the homeland itself lose their role in a world that not only copes with the coronavirus as a single health unit, but is united in the manner of production, consumption, and abolition of customs. If we add to this the joint effort to prevent global warming and save the planet, a universal task that will not be achieved without world-wide unity.

It is clear that the capitalist economic regime has failed to respond to the health crisis. Privatization on the one hand, and the complete neglect of health, education, housing, welfare and means of employment on the other, have deepened the crisis and proved that the poor are the first to pay the price. Let’s face it, governments were forced to “shut down the economy” because the health care system was unprepared to take in a large number of patients, lacking the requisite numbers of beds, inhalators  and medical staff; In Italy, thousands died not because of the coronavirus, but because of the health system’s collapse. We have discovered that despite the technological age in which we have been living for several decades already, the education system stood by helplessly and failed to prepare for remote learning. The welfare system lacks the resources necessary to absorb the millions of unemployed or self-employed who have lost their source of livelihood. Meanwhile, the private sector that was prioritized over the public sector (for example Google, Amazon and Facebook continues to use its massive capital to profit from the crisis itself, without providing any help to alleviate the citizens’ suffering.

When we move to discussion of a green economy, the paradigm changes. It is a cooperative economy built on true principles of democracy. An economy that directs the political regime and parties to serve the general public good instead of the capital controlled by the few. The role of the state is to manage the economy and take steps that strengthen the basic infrastructure for the benefit of society, whether it is health, education, public housing, transportation, internet communication, vocational training, strengthening bargaining power with employers, and monetary compensation or division of labor among employees to provide a dignified source of livelihood for all. The prevailing opinion is that many professions that have disappeared due to the coronavirus will not return. That the world economy is turning to a new mode of production controlled by robots, artificial intelligence, commerce via the Internet, the “Internet of things (IoT); and is moving to renewable energy, electric and autonomous vehicles. While these ideas began to be heard several years before the coronavirus, the epidemic has become an accelerator for this global development. Yet this reality requires a new way of thinking about politics and society – it does not fit into the framework of capitalism, and requires new priorities. Given the terrible failure of the confrontation with the coronavirus in China and the US, there is no escaping the question of what society we want to live in in the future: will we continue to support forms like the communist capitalist and democratic capitalist regimes, or will we pave the way for a new paradigm.

The coronavirus as a catalyst for political change

The epidemic has affected politics in both the United States and Israel. There is a good chance that the US presidential elections will lead to Trump’s defeat in early November. In Israel, too, Netanyahu’s failed handling of the crisis, his preference for his personal legal interests, and the proliferation of political considerations in dealing with the pandemic resulted in a major setback in his popularity. But the more substantial change is undoubtedly taking place in the United States, which has witnessed the largest protest movement in decades, led by a broad coalition headed by the Black Lives Matter movement. This movement is united behind Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris, the first black woman from a major party to run for this office. When Hillary Clinton ran for president with a white man as her vice president, deep reservations arose from the left wing of the party that supported Bernie Sanders. Many felt reticence toward Clinton, who seemed the representative of a failed administration, and situated too close to capital. The rise of Donald Trump was a huge surprise and shock to the entire world. On the one hand, dictators like Putin, Erdogan, Kim Jong-un, al-Sisi, Assad, bin Salman, or populist right-wing leaders like Netanyahu and the leaders of isolationist parties in Europe, led by Johnson, celebrated, each for his own reasons. In contrast, more “sane” countries, led by EU leaders, went into shock, and not in vain. Trump attacked the NATO alliance, withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, and rescinded the nuclear deal with Iran. The Democratic Party, influenced by its left-wing’s messages learned its lesson – not to repeat the mistakes of Obama who, contrary to his promises, preferred capital, large monopolies and Wall Street financers, all of which deepened poverty and social disparities, and created the fertile soil in which Trump grew. The selection of Clinton as the presidential candidate was a slap in the face to a public that wanted change. It is possible that Trump’s statement “Obama is the reason I came to power” is the only truth he has uttered to date.

The shock of Trump’s election has increased the influence of the voices demanding a fundamental change in the Democratic Party. The first change was the selection of candidates with a new profile: more blacks and more women. Leading them is New York congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has gained immense popularity and adopted a socialist approach and the Green New Deal; Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is waging a campaign against the monopolies, and especially against the giant Internet companies – Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google – and is demanding their dissolution under the Antitrust Act. The popular struggle and mass demonstrations across the US, which were influenced by the assassination of black citizen George Floyd, gave the election campaign further enthusiasm and stamina, so much so that Biden is ahead of Trump by significant margins in all opinion polls.

Trump failed to address the coronavirus crisis and attacked anyone who warned of its dangers, including scientists, experts, governors, and politicians. He accused the Democratic Party of inventing the pandemic only to advance itself in the elections. Trump also adopted racist positions and praised supporters of white supremacy; adopted a position against Obamacare; supports the prevention of abortion; adopts various conspiracy theories; harms the legal system; doubts the credibility of the elections; and refuses to commit to an orderly transfer of power in case of lose. He savagely attacks and mocks Biden, a representative of the Democratic Party, and even members of the Republican Party, so much so that his stay in power poses a danger to the democratic regime and creates the threat of instigating a civil war within American society.

Because of the dangerous situation, and the depth of the current crisis on all levels, the Democratic Party is faced with only one choice – to make a radical change at the political level: removing the influence of capital; implementing deep economic reforms; improving the health system; improving the state of the labor market and protecting the right of association; changing the tax policy that favors the rich at the expense of the poor; repairing the education system to improve its level and train the new generation for the future; annulling the overly high tuition of universities and the debts of graduates that harm their future; adopting renewable energy; dismantling monopolies; repairing the legal system; dealing with racism in the police ranks; abolishing private prisons; changing laws like the prohibition of using soft drugs, which put millions of blacks in prisons; correcting psychological treatment systems; safeguarding the right of women to abortion, and other steps that could prevent an eccentric person like Trump from coming to power again.

The coronavirus does not forgive Netanyahu

The pandemic reached Israel in February 2020, at the height of the 23rd Knesset election campaign, which was held on March 2. The election results were not much different from those of the previous two rounds, and Netanyahu failed to establish a supportive bloc of 61 MKs composed of ultra-Orthodox and right-wingers. He dragged the country to three rounds of elections for one and only reason – to attempt to evade prosecution on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Netanyahu hoped that through a majority bloc he would succeed in passing laws that would overturn the trial. His second term as prime minister, with serious pending charges that could result in imprisonment, created a deep constitutional crisis in Israel, dividing society between the captive base of his supporters and those who see him as a corrupt person who does not deserve to serve as prime minister.

Even when Netanyahu’s opposition won 62 seats, and Blue and White won 33 seats as opposed to 36 for the Likud, the opposition was not sufficiently politically homogeneous, and had no common denominator other than opposition to Netanyahu. Although the Joint Arab List went as far as recommending Gantz to the president to form a government, it was impossible to create a Center-Left parliamentary block big enough to win the majority because of opposition from members such as Moshe Ya’alon’s faction (Telem).  After the legal period, that allowed Gantz and then Netanyahu to form a government ended, and in view of the increasing severity of the coronavirus crisis, Gantz decided, at the cost of splitting from Lapid and Ya’alon, and disappointing thousands of his followers, to reach a rotation agreement with Netanyahu. Even when a parity government was formed that gave Blue and White half of all government ministries, with the other half divided between the components of the right-wing bloc: Likud, Agudat Israel, Shas, Derech Eretz, Gesher, and the Jewish Home, the number of Gantz MKs dropped to 14 after the split with Lapid,  thus weakening his influence within the coalition. Netanyahu took advantage of the situation to launch a poisonous campaign of incitement against the Attorney General and the State Attorney’s Office. He withdrew from the agreement with Gantz; and especially from approval of the state budget, without which the government would disband automatically. Netanyahu is trying to escape the rotation agreement with Gantz that is due to take effect in September 2021, and force a fourth election, hoping to reach a majority that will allow him to pass a High Court override clause and other changes that will allow him to postpone/annul  his trial. In May, it seemed that the pandemic was contained and Netanyahu declared victory over the pandemic, praised himself as a wise leader, and called on Israelis to return to their normal lives. His popularity rose, and polls predicted 40 seats. This was the opportunity to hold the fourth round of elections.

But the situation was quickly reversed; the pandemic returned to spread at record speed, Netanyahu did not want to impose a second lockdown because he feared anger and public frustration. The crisis reached its peak after Israel became world leader in the number of per capita diagnosed infections daily, and the death toll rose to more than 2,000. Just as Netanyahu’s popularity soared after the ending of the first lockdown, it plummeted just as quickly as he was forced to re-impose a total lockdown, which deepened the economic crisis and exacerbated the difficult situation of millions of citizens.

Compared to the success of the first lockdown, for which Netanyahu gained confidence in his policies, the increase in morbidity over the summer was undoubtedly influenced by a lack of trust in the government and Netanyahu’s discretion. Netanyahu rejected the plan of Coronavirus Project Coordinator Roni Gamzu to lock down the red cities (mainly ultra-Orthodox) due to his need for support of the ultra-Orthodox factions in government; and launched a savage campaign of incitement against his opponents protesting in front of his Jerusalem home. The anger and doubt of Netanyahu’s motives only intensified.

The slogan “Just Not Bibi” (Go!) plays into the hands of the Right

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the political, social and economic weaknesses of Israeli society. Politically, it is clear that Israel is at a dead end as the political system has failed to produce a stable government to run the country. Prosecuting Netanyahu has plunged the political arena into a crisis, with many of his supporters seeing nothing wrong with Netanyahu serving as prime minister with three pending indictments against him. This approach includes the base of the Likud, which benefits from the bonuses that come with proximity to power and Netanyahu’s policies that have created economic stability and welfare for broad sections of the middle class and public sector workers. The right-wing religious public also aligns itself with Netanyahu, who guarantees it generous budgets for what is increasingly seen as a type of “autonomy” exercised independently from the general state systems.

On the other side is the other half of the public, including the marginalized Arab population, which suffers from Netanyahu’s racist incitement. The reason for Netanyahu’s obsession with the issue is simple – he is constantly striving to prevent the possibility that the Joint List could be a partner in a liberal and left-wing opposition that sees Netanyahu as a threat to the democratic and justice systems. Netanyahu’s plan (which has so far failed) to annex parts of the West Bank to Israel is interpreted by the same opposition as a step toward eliminating Israel’s Jewish majority and turning the country into an apartheid state. In addition, it sees the strengthening of religious and conservative elements as a threat to the secular character of society and its liberal way of life.

In the past, it was possible to reach understandings between the right and the left, and there were also joint governments (Netanyahu, Barak, Lapid). But after Netanyahu adopted the “bloc” strategy (right-wing plus ultra-Orthodox), he established an exclusive rule for himself, not only vis-a-vis the liberal wing but also within the Likud itself. The possibility of reaching a compromise between the two blocs became impossible, and the hostility to Netanyahu and the call for his removal became the slogan of the opposition camp.

The split between the various social groups stood out following the first lockdown, with each stratum or sector making decisions independently and blatantly violating central government directives. The alarming rise in morbidity in Arab society reflected a refusal to obey the government. People held numerous weddings and continued to pray in mosques, disregarding the pandemic. Only when the number of victims soared did the heads of the Arab local authorities act together with the clergy to prevent spread of the pandemic.

In the Jewish religious sector, the crisis continues in full force, with religious leaders refusing to obey government directives while using their political influence to blackmail Netanyahu. The third party – the upper middle class, a stratum of educated intellectuals and young people, retired generals, former members of the security forces, and the press – are all united in their hatred of Netanyahu and see him as caring only about cancelling his trial, and all this at the cost of pleasing the ultra-Orthodox and suppressing their democratic right to demonstrate.

On the economic side, a network of failures and neglect of infrastructure has been exposed. The medical system is starved and there is a shortage of beds and medical staff. The education system suffers from overcrowding classrooms, the status and salaries of teachers are poor, there are not enough computers for pupils, and there is no fast internet network. There is no functioning system for vocational training in the professions of the future and there is still reliance on a weakened and temporary workforce. Reliance on polluting energy such as gas and oil continues, and the creation of alternative energy sources is not promoted. There is no well-developed welfare system and assistance to the unemployed. Old-age benefits are meagre to a level that prevents economic and health security for the elderly. There exists no practical plan to protect all the unemployed and self-employed who have suddenly collapsed, and to deal with the danger that an entire generation will be lost. When you combine the crisis in politics, social divisions and economic failure, the result is a deep crisis from which there is no prospect of exiting.

In Israel, as in the rest of the world, a new approach is needed to change the political-economic system. It is clear that the slogan “Just Nor Bibi” is insufficient to create the profound change required to solve these deep problems. How can we fight the right without addressing the question of occupation and providing a solution to the Palestinian problem? How can we continue to demand democracy for Jews and manage and finance apartheid for Palestinians? How can right-wing neoliberalism be fought without setting up an alternative economic plan based on a green new deal? Required are investments in the public sector (health, education, vocational training, transportation, renewable energy) and the end of privatization, which transfers public projects to China or the United Arab Emirates or to private investment funds, whose aim is to increase profits regardless of the public and the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.

How do we deal with the current crisis?

The first question that must be asked is what faces us in the immediate future. What are the developments that have the potential to open up new political opportunities for us? How will the crisis affect political developments and awareness of the Palestinian and Israeli publics? Can our slogan “One State – Green Economy” be a call to mobilize the public, or will it remain a future idea that cannot be implemented at the moment?

The Da’am  Party program became most relevant to the new global and Arab situation after 2008 and the collapse of neoliberalism. We were attentive to developments in Egypt and Mahalla El Kubra in 2008 as the first spark of what was defined in early 2011 as the Arab Spring. A massive protest movement that overthrew dictatorial regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen, and expanded to Syria and Bahrain. In Europe and the United States, too, a widespread protest movement has arisen against the capitalist regime. We supported the Arab Spring because it placed the call for democracy at the center of the pursuit of a new political order, as well as the demand for social justice. We had hoped that the Arab Spring would sweep the Palestinians and Arab society in Israel, but the response of the Palestinian organizations, the Palestinian Authority and the Joint List was disappointing, as most of them sided with the counter-revolution.

After suppression of the Arab Spring and its imprinting in blood; massacre and expulsion of the Syrians from their homeland; beginning of an unending civil war in Yemen; and the military coup in Egypt against the revolution; there was a sense that the Arab Spring had failed. That it was confronted with strong and powerful forces that fought against change with all their might. Suffice it to mention Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Turkey, Hezbollah and Russia. And yet our position remains clear: Things will not be the same again. For a short time we saw a return of the demonstrations in Iran, then in Iraq, Lebanon, and together with them returned the Arab Spring slogans “bread, freedom, social justice.” Today we see them directed against Iran, even though it allegedly won in Syria. In Sudan, a large-scale civil revolution broke out that led to the removal of the eternal dictator General Omar al-Bashir, who relied on the support of the Muslim Brotherhood. The revolution in Sudan succeeded in forcing a partnership arrangement between the military and civilian forces, which continues today. In Algeria, demonstrations began against the Bouteflika regime, which called for democratic elections free of corruption and forgery. Even these popular revolutions have not yet affected the Palestinians, neither in the territories nor in Israel.

The question to be asked is how the Palestinians can ignore such important historical events that could change the balance of power in the region and put Israel in front of a new political situation. How can it be that the Palestinians, who in addition to the occupation also suffer from the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, and from the internal division between Fatah and Hamas, are not acting against the PA and Israel.  How can the absolute distrust of the Palestinian public in the PA be reconciled with the absence of significant political direction that seeks to change the situation, despite the revolutions being ignited in every corner of the Arab world. And how can we explain that on the one hand many of the Palestinian people have given up on the idea of an independent Palestinian state and prefer one state, and yet there is no significant political movement that waves this banner. Part of the answer lies in the failure of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon to build a new modern and democratic regime.

These developments in the Arab world do not occur in a vacuum. Many of these revolutions were suppressed through external intervention and funding by the Gulf states. The election of Donald Trump was a gift to the corrupt autocratic regimes of the Gulf, for whom democracy is the ultimate enemy. Trump allows for Russian involvement in Syria, the continuation of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and the involvement of both the Emirates and of Turkey in the Libyan civil war. In addition, Trump began implementing the Deal of the Century, moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, stopping aid to the Palestinian Authority, and also encouraging the annexation of settlements to Israel (and later objecting to it). In addition, Trump encouraged Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Bahrain to establish open normalization with Israel, thus completely isolating the Palestinian Authority.

The irony is that while Trump encourages all of the reactionary forces in the Arab world to suppress the Arab Spring, the spread of the coronavirus in the US has been a catalyst for the entry of spring into the U.S. itself. The huge mass movement that blacks are leading against racism and for social justice stems from the same reasons that pushed young Arabs into the streets and squares – a corrupt regime that leaves no future and horizon for the masses. This is why young blacks and whites in the United States take to the streets. But unlike what has happened in the Arab world, they have a political answer – overthrowing Trump and gaining a majority in the US Congress.

When we founded the Da’am Party 25 years ago, we determined that political change would come from Western countries, as the Third World does not have the necessary resources to change the regime. What is happening today in the US confirms this prediction. If we want to answer the question of what we expect after the coronavirus pandemic, the answer lies in Biden’s success or failure to move Trump out of the White House. The world after the pandemic and Trump’s removal will be a different world. Numerous issues left without a solution, including in Egypt, Syria, Iran and other Arab countries, will have to get a solution fulfilling the promise of the Arab Spring’s first chapter.

If Trump wanted to save the Saudi regime and its Gulf allies through an unholy alliance with Israel, the change in US rule heralds the end of these regimes, which have become outcasts and despised in the world due to their criminal involvement in other countries, their support for Trump, and oppression of internal opposition. The change in the United States also heralds the end of Netanyahu, who has lost the Israeli public trust is facing prosecution. He, too, will have to face a new US administration that remembers how he stood up for Trump, thus supporting the tragedy the US went through, losing its world status, paying a price of over 200,000 dead and 7.5 million infected, and a severe economic crisis. This change will not come automatically. It is necessary to internalize that the continuation of the current situation leads us to fascism, and that anyone who wants to prevent this dangerous deterioration must adopt an agenda of radical change.

The post-coronavirus world will not be able to tolerate the effects of populism, fascism or Trump. There is no room for dictatorships like that of General Sisi in Egypt, or of the corrupt regimes in the Gulf, or of Israeli apartheid. Anyone who demonstrates against Netanyahu while raising the Israeli flag is driving factionalism. He takes himself out of the direction of the progress of history. In the United States, blacks refuse to salute the American flag because of the racism directed at them. In Israel, the flag does not in any way symbolize the profound change that demonstrators are fighting for in the United States, or those fighting for democracy in the Arab world. Democratic change in Israel must be based on a Palestinian-Israeli partnership in struggle. If the struggle limits itself to overthrowing Bibi, the result will be the rise of Bennett and the far right. The role of Da’am is first and foremost to create a broad discussion about the future, and to contribute to it with articles, analysis, meetings, and lectures; at every opportunity to build a broad Palestinian-Israeli democratic coalition, which will integrate with the messages and struggles of the Arab Spring, with the democratic movement in the United States, and work with every democratic movement against the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in calling for freedom and democracy for Palestinians as well as all people of the world. History refuses to end. The information and Internet revolution, as well as revolutionary attempts in the world, open up the possibility of change here in Palestine and Israel as well. The current crisis within Israel and the Palestinian Authority can and should pave the way for change and the presentation of new ideas. The initiative to open a broad and genuine dialogue on all these questions, starting with the flag, the Naqba, the partnership between Israelis and Palestinians, the climate crisis and the economic situation, is essential if we want to create a society that can present solutions to the challenges we all face as human beings.

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A document by the Central Committee of Da’am, January 2018

The decision taken by US President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was the last nail in the coffin of the two-state solution, a Palestinian state alongside Israel. By this recognition, Trump removed the illusion that the American administration is a trustworthy mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For years, especially since Oslo, the American policy was twofaced: On the one hand, the US reprimanded the Israeli construction activities in the settlements, and on the other hand it thwarted any anti-Israeli decision that stems from Israel’s violations of the international conventions following its fervent construction work in the settlements. The 25-year-long expectation for progress in the negotiations, as well as the two-state solution mantra, have been contributing decisively to strengthen the Israeli right and in fact were eliminating any chance to build a Palestinian state. Under this smokescreen, the Separation Wall was constructed, settlements were expanded, and the West Bank has changed totally. Today, the Israeli settlements contain more than half a million settlers. Trump’s victory in US elections expressed the end of the lie that the American administration is interested in a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Therefore, the Da’am party – which had decisively objected to the Oslo Accords – announced that following Oslo’s death, the conflict enters its last phase and hereby Da’am endorses the solution of one democratic state.

The election of Trump as the US President reflects a deep change in the American and international policies. In fact, the very first steps taken by Trump – including the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, as well as his decision to cancel the American participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership – expressed his desire to renounce the leading international role of the US and to adopt a policy of nationalist separatism instead of openness and integration in the world. Trump’s America First slogan expresses a racist and conservative outlook in face of the economic crisis that victimized millions of American and became widespread in the entire world. In 2008, the world was exposed to the lie that the neoliberal, borderless market economy can benefit the entire society. The crisis’ outcome was the opposite: the rich became gigantically richer while the poor were impoverished and reached the bottom. Today the situation is that 42 of the richest people in the world hold a fortune equaling that held by half the people living upon earth (according to data published lately by Oxfam).

Among these things, the Trump administration relates to Israel’s right-wing government as ideological partner in terms of its electoral base where evangelic Christians play a central role and adopt the Zionist ideology out of religious motivations. In the US itself Trump renounces the internal commitments taken by Obama, e.g. the healthcare law, immigration, women’s rights, taxation, etc. In addition, he seeks to change the US foreign policy, first and foremost the nuclear agreement with Iran and the American approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Against this background we should understand the way in which three religious Jews, known for being close to the settlers, were nominated to be the President’s advisors to the Middle East: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was nominated as special envoy to the Middle East; his private advocate, Jason Greenblatt, was chosen to be special Ambassador to the negotiations’ affairs; and David Freedman, an outspoken and vocal supporter of the settlers, became the US ambassador in Israel. Therefore, it was clear that Trump’s victory means a deathblow to the two-state solution following the stands taken by Israel’s right-wing parties and government that wish to maintain the status quo for a long time.

While Israel was praising and glorifying Trump’s recognition in Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) decided to boycott the American mediation and refused to meet with Vice President Mike Pence when the latter visited the region in January 2018. The details of the “deal of the century” promised by Trump in his meetings with Netanyahu and Abu Mazen indicate that the White House decided to adopt the Israeli stand in full. Trump’s plan, which was published in the media, was greeted by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two regimes that exert incessant pressures on the Palestinian Authority to accept the American plan, including the announcement on the town of Abu Dis as the Palestinian capital. Regarding borders and settlements, the plan provides recognition to the settlement blocs and at the end of the day recommends annexing 10 percent of the West Bank territories to Israel. Thus, the Palestinian state will be subjected to Israeli patronage and control as the Israeli military will continue to rule the Jordanian border and control all the passageways. Saeb Erekat, the senior Palestinian negotiator, argued that the plan forces the Palestinians to be satisfied with the status quo as final. In his opinion, the plan determines that one state with two regimes will be forged, namely that the US will eventually recognize and legally legitimize Apartheid.

The Palestinian people in the vise of pressures

The two-state solution was buried following the Oslo Accords. Israel’s recognition of the PLO and the fact that Israel recognized it as an organization instead of recognizing a Palestinian state reflected a concession that eliminated the possibility to build the very Palestinian state. The new Palestinian authority (PA), created as an entity which replaces the PLO, was made dependent on Israel due to the financial Paris agreement. This situation together with the military coordination brought about a new political reality of “coexistence” between Israeli occupier and the PA which is tied financially and militarily to the occupation. The PA was transformed from a temporary entity, meant to pave the way towards a Palestinian state, into a permanent and privileged body which is not in line with the struggle for independence from the Israeli occupation. Thus, using the two-states slogan was and continues to be a camouflage to the symbiotic relations between the occupying state and the subordinated PA that pretends to represent the Palestinian struggle for liberation from Israel’s occupation.

In addition to the fact that the Oslo Accords have perpetuated the occupation and the settlements, enabling Israel to enlarge the latter, they have brought about a devastating outcome: the Palestinian split between Fatah and Hamas, between the West Bank and Gaza. Instead of becoming a unified entity, albeit temporary, in its quest to become a sovereign state, the PA became a matter of internal struggle between Fatah and Hamas. Although Hamas objected to the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the PA, it decided to use the democratic elections held in 2006 in order to exploit Palestinian frustration with Fatah’s corruption. Hamas participated in the elections and its gamble was correct as it won the majority within the legislative council. Since 2006, no elections have been held. As a result, Hamas transformed its government into a “resistance government.” The two parties blame each other for the new situation; Hamas’ claims that Fatah refuses to accept its authority and undermines its rule brought about a coup against the PA in which Hamas gained control over Gaza strip. Thus, the PA became subjected to controversy which deepened the internal Palestinian split and yielded a sheer destruction from which the Palestinian people suffers until now.

There were times where it seemed that the bloody struggle between the two Palestinian factions and their mutual hatred are stronger than their hostility to the Israeli occupation. Each side has been adhering to its rule, coordinating its interests with the occupation, insisting to maintain its authority and refusing to renounce its privileges at the expense of the suffering faced by the people living in the West Bank and Gaza. The speech delivered by Abu Mazen in front of the members of the Palestinian Central Committee in January 2018 (which was convened after Trump’s recognition in Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and due to the leaks on the “deal of the century”) demonstrates that Abbas sticks to his rule and leaves the door open to the return of the US mediation. He doesn’t change anything in the economic agreement, and the military coordination keeps the split with Hamas alive, with the excuse that the PA must be “empowered”, namely that Hamas should renounce its rule in Gaza and be disarmed.

In the struggle between both sides we must determine that the Fatah’s PA and the Hamas rule in Gaza constitute two dictatorial regimes just like the corrupted Arab ones which were swept by the Arab Spring (although the task was not fully accomplished). Both Fatah and Hamas, which are fighting each other over political power, are besieged: Hamas suffers a siege exerted by the Egyptian military rule, the PA in Ramallah and Israel, while the PA lost the support of the Egyptian and Saudi regimes after they decided to line up with Trump and Israel. This situation illustrates the absurdity of the Fatah-Hamas split since this struggle turns on the question who will rule the autonomous Palestinian zone that is bound to Israel while the latter besieges them from every side. These two regimes are far from the one-democratic- state paradigm and continue to spread the lie that the road towards an independent Palestinian state is open, as if the struggle is centered around the nature of this state – a Fatah-style dictatorship or an Islamic one, a state next to Israel (Fatah) or a resistance state (Hamas).

Three conditions for establishing one democratic state

With no Israeli will or international mechanism to build two states, we must assert that the very existence of the PA constitutes an obstruction to the one-state solution, which will be the sole alternative to the Apartheid regime that is currently being forged. By cooperating with the occupation, the PA provides it a cover, hereby strengthening the Israeli right and giving it a monopoly over the Israeli political arena. In fact, the PA’s existence serves the Israeli right twice: Abu Mazen, who insists upon rejecting the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, is presented as a no-partner for peace. The Labor party as well as the centrist parties endorse this claim. On the other hand, the PA’s mere existence, which continues to be committed to the military cooperation with Israel, produces a sense of security among the Israelis. In addition, there is a widespread illusion in Israel that the Palestinian people prefers the PA and rejects the scenario of anarchy which might exist following its collapse. Therefore, we can see a consensus that argues this this strange coexistence – a Palestinian Authority that lacks any authority and depends upon the benevolence of the omnipotent Israeli rule – will last forever as long as the Israeli government guards the PA’s existence and prevents the annexation of populated territories near Israel.

The PA’s existence provides a pretext to the Israeli Left, represented by the Communist Party/Hadash and Meretz, to go on supporting the two-state illusion by claiming that the PA is a genuine partner for peace. Hadash leans on the fact that the Communist Party has been endorsing the idea of two states since 1948. In 1992, Hadash forged the parliamentary block that enabled Yitzhak Rabin to form a government, even though he lacked a majority in the Knesset. A year later, it zealously supported the Oslo Accords by claiming that they would bring about an independent state of Palestine; Hadash considered Yasser Arafat a leader whose positions must be endorsed unequivocally. Today, the positions of Hadash stand in great contradiction with the moods in the Arab world: it expressed reservations regarding the revolutions of the Arab Spring, positively supports the regime of General el-Sisi in Egypt, and consistently defends the murderous regime of Assad in Syria. In addition, it delivers unconditional support to Abu Mazen. On the other hand, Meretz believes that Israel must have a Jewish majority (with democratic rights for the minorities within it), hence introducing the two-state solution as a proposal for national separation: a Jewish state for the Jews and an Arabic state for the Arabs. In their eyes, the idea that the two nations would live together upon equal basis is not in line with the “threat” where the Jews might lose their numeric supremacy.

Another party, Balad, which stands in severe confrontation with its partners in the Joint List over their missing seat in the Knesset, started an internal discussion on the solution to the Palestinian problem after a substantial group of party members realized that the Trump declaration and the steps taken by the Likud government signify the end of the two-state solution. Balad, a coalition between different political groups unified in their nationalist views, finds it hard to reach a clear position which would finally determine its support in the one-state solution. The controversies within the party on the one-state solution resemble the internal debate held among its members regarding the Arab Spring, especially with regard to Iran and Syria. The fact that Balad is heavily reliant on Qatar makes restricts its ability to adopt an independent position. In most cases, Balad is characterized with more than two positions regarding critical questions while its members are unified only in their opposition to the Israeli government and their criticism of the PA.

Because of this complex situation, and since there are no Jewish or Arab forces that adopt the idea of one-state despite the total failure of the two-state solution, we are faced with the question: upon what is the Da’am party based once it raises the one-state banner? The simple answer is as follows: With no two-state solution, there is no other way but to introduce an alternative, rooted idea which will serve the interests of the societies, the Israeli and the Palestinian alike. The more complicated answer involves the dialectic reasoning that sees the struggle for one democratic state as ideological, political and economic. The conditions enabling us to build a broad popular movement – Palestinian and Israeli – from the two sides of the ‘Green Line’, which will call for one democratic state, depend on defeat of the evangelical right in the US and in Israel alike. This question is not reduced to the way lives would be conducted between Israelis and Palestinians, but to the way they would be conducted on the international level. It is an existential struggle between conservative, self-isolated and racist forces and revolutionary forces that are open to the world and are internationalist in their essence.

Though some liberal circles are revolted by the occupation and by the mischief it causes to the Israeli society, we see that 50 years of ongoing occupation along with the legitimacy given to the settlers and the political right demonstrate that Israeli society alone is incapable of providing the required political forces that can end the occupation and build a joint society in one state. Therefore, there are three preconditions which can secure the feasibility of changing the political paradigm: First, a deep change in the industrial countries and the defeat of the racist forces that wish to revive the past with slogans like “America First.” Second, the defeat of the dictatorial Arab regimes based on the victory of the Arab Spring that demands democracy and freedom. Third, a deep political change in Palestinian society itself, expressed in the founding of alternatives to Fatah and Hamas. This change requires an economic factor, namely the transition to a modern economy based on renewable energy and internet, and a social one, i.e., a transition from traditional society to a modern one where women are fully equal. It seems, prima facie, that this one-state solution is not realistic, since the three conditions are impossible right now, but we must bear in mind that the historic period wherein we live is saturated with revolutionary changes, and the material condition of this period, the third industrial revolution, heralds deep historic changes.

Democracy in a state of emergency

The well-covered visit of Vice President Pence in Israel during January, his firm promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the warm official hospitality with which he was welcomed, point out the close strategic relations between the Israeli right and its American counterpart. The sheer Israeli refusal to advance towards any arrangement with the Palestinians, the Israelis’ objection to any withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, are based on the unequivocal support Israel enjoys from the US evangelical right, the electoral core of the Republicans. The victory of Trump was enabled due to a deep split within the Republican party between different sections; it was so deep that the party found it hard to elect an agreed Presidential nominee. Trump exploited this split, and though he was never a party member and was even considered to be a Clinton supporter, he managed amazingly to beat all other candidates. This internal split in the Republican rank-and-file, together with the parallel split in the Democratic party between those who support Hillary Clinton and those who endorse her rival, the leftist Bernie Sanders, indicates how severe is the crisis America has been undergoing since the collapse of the banks and the investment firms in 2008.

The 2008 crisis exposed the devastating meaning of the bank managers’ greed, as well as the corruption of the big firms; it revealed that the bipartisan political regime has been serving in fact the capitalists at the expense of the ordinary man and woman. The Americans lost their faith in the Washington-based democracy. The political polarization brought about a situation where many people endorsed two candidates who promised “to drain the swamp” and fight the banks. On the one hand, Trump and his close advisor, Steve Bannon, represented the far-right, and on the other hand Bernie Sanders spoke for the radical left. Both promised to fight Wall Street, and after Trump was elected the polarization worsened and all the bridges between the American right and left were burnt. Thus, on the one hand, the middle states in America are characterized by conservative views and endorse Trump, while America of the Eastern and Western coasts – rich New York and California – reject Trump’s agenda.

However, the struggle is not just about geography but also about seeing the future. New York and California represent the economic future: they constitute areas that operate and concentrate technological innovations, hereby creating the new economy expressed in the internet and startup firms vis-à-vis the old firms that are based on the traditional industries that lose their economic weight in favor of robotics and artificial intelligence. The capitalist, neoliberal system has arrived at a dead end by creating mass unemployment, erasing hundreds of billions of public capital and pension savings, expanding environmental pollution and risking the very planet. Thus, the poverty became widespread and the politics as well as the politicians were corrupted. Today, there is no politician whose conduct is not dictated by the capitalists. It is true for Israel as much as it is true for the US. We must conclude, therefore, that many supporters of the right wing in the US, Britain, France and Israel originated from the working class, e.g. the workers of Teva (an Israeli firm bought by international capital, which is no longer national based) who lose their jobs because of the competition over cheap labor coming from China, or due to the transition to robotic work. Today, there is an international audience that sees the democratic regime as one that does not serve the citizen, by claiming that the economy (neo-liberalism) works for the benefit of the capitalists and impoverishes the worker. It is a situation which forces the society to look for alternative, revolutionary solutions.

Thus, Trump has promised to his base of support, the industrial workers who became unemployed, to return to the previous century by withdrawing from the globalization, building tariff walls, fighting imports from China, erecting a steel wall to prevent immigration from Mexico, and reducing the corporate tax from 35 to 21 percent, a move that would create a budget deficit for the US. These steps could create international chaos, trade wars between Europe, Asia and America, and a new economic crisis. A recent report by the Bank of Israel has warned against economic collapse due to the chaos forged by Trump in the international economy. It will be created by the zero-interest rate, which encourages taking unlimited loans from the banks, which in turn brings about an artificial rise in the value of stocks and real estate. In short, a financial bubble.

At the regional level, we see that the recent demos in Iran, which have been demanding to overthrow the regime, as well as the demos in Sudan, Tunisia and Morocco, prove that the very causes which produced the Arab Spring continue to exist. Even the regimes in the industrial countries have entered into crisis: In Germany, as of this writing a government has not been built yet; Spain suffers from Catalonia’s separatist aspirations; in France the two major parties have collapsed; Belgium has sunk into governmental crisis, and Britain is torn due to the Brexit controversy. However, the situation in the Arab world is much worse. In spite of the failure of the Egyptian youth movement to build democracy, the military regime has lost its credibility following the fact that it is ideologically terrorizing the people and because of the poor economic conditions; in Syria, the Assad regime is incapable of regaining its control over the country; in Yemen the war continues and this is also the situation in Libya; and in Iraq the people cannot enjoy even one single day of peace. This situation demonstrates that the process that was launched by the 2011 Arab Spring is still underway.

In the Gulf states, we see a severe political crisis that erupted in Saudi Arabia after an internal coup d’état was launched by the contender Mohammad bin Salman. It is evident, therefore, that an historic age came to its end there. The internal changes, the distancing from the radical Wahabi current, the arrests of the royal family members and the decision to indict them for corruption, the decisions to open the cinemas to women and to let them drive, their presence at football games – all these developments did not arise out of nowhere. They constitute the Saudi acknowledgement that the “allowances’ state” based on oil revenues and the Sharia regime cannot exist any further because of the decline in oil prices and the huge budget deficit. Nonetheless, the Saudi monarchy, like Iran, is unready to cope with the third industrial revolution that aspires to realize economic and political democracy, to provide civil liberties, to let people express their thoughts and obtain uncensored information.

The political coup in Saudi Arabia along with the socioeconomic reform in the country, as well as the demonstrations held in Iran, prove again that the Arab regimes are about to collapse. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Middle-Eastern political arena has been nothing but a hostage in the struggles between the Saudis and the Iranians. Iranian and Saudi money managed to corrupt the Arab regimes and the popular movements, from the PLO to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Syrian regime. In this context, the fact that this money has vanished, together with the collapse of the corrupt regimes, means that political Islam too is about to collapse, for it is fed by this same money, with which it managed to brainwash people, mainly the poor. The third industrial revolution, based on renewable energies, will enable the intellectuals who led the Arab Spring – the generation of the internet and the social media that took an active part in the info revolution – to reoccupy the public arena and become a political force, leading their countries towards a democratic change based on a new cooperative economy.

Netanyahu and Trump will fall

The energy revolution as well as the info one abolishes national borders and racial conflicts; they unify people on a new basis with governmental intervention. Netanyahu represents the old, neoliberal line that brought about social gaps within Israeli society; that line caused the housing crisis as well as price increases, because state-owned firms were privatized in favor of gigantic monopolies. Like other citizens in the industrial countries, the Israeli feels how the big capitalists, who took over all the financial resources by bank loans, became bankrupted but did not have to pay debts amounting to billions. Moreover, the political establishment became entangled with corruption stemming from the close relations between politics and capital.

These affairs cannot be removed from the political agenda and have already put senior ministers and officials behind bars. Netanyahu himself is being subjected to probes because of his relations with one of the major capitalists. Even his close associates, including family members, are subjected to police probes on corruption allegations following the German submarines affair. Trump is being investigated too for plotting with the Russians and other corruption allegations. There is no wonder that we see the two being investigated as both represent the interests of the rich and use demagogy against the ruling elites; they turn their criticisms toward the US Democratic party and the Israeli Labor Party, which leans on the Ashkenazi elite.

The corruption itself stems from the dead end to which the Israeli Right has sunk. Netanyahu and the Right do not present new ideas, neither on the conflict with the Palestinians nor on economics. For Netanyahu, his surrounding reality is nothing but “fake news” á la Trump; he finds in the Arab Spring a chance to anchor Israel’s strategic relations with dictatorial Arab regimes like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. He thinks that democracy does not suit Arab society. Although these regimes are hanging by a thread due to their incapacity to cope with years-long economic and social problems, Netanyahu wishes to form a strategic axis with them. He believes that the demonstrations in Iran express the desire to return to the Shah period and renew strategic relations with Israel against the Arabs; he rejects the idea that the Iranian workers and youth, like their Egyptian fellows, struggle for the same cause, namely to overthrow the dictatorial regimes and build an alternative democratic society quite unlike the Shah’s dictatorship. For the Israeli Right, the true threat is not Iranian missiles but democratic change in Iran and Arab world, which will isolate Israel as a religiously fundamentalist occupying state.

At the economic level, for 30 years the government has been using the same methods, despite the fact that Israeli startup firms have been contributing decisively to the development of new technologies, e.g. internet, robotics, autonomic car, block chain and biotechnology, water purification and renewable energy. This situation is evident as we see the two-year state budget that takes care of the right wing coalition’s parties’ needs, and taking no responsibility for preparing society to future developments. It is a government that is busy with racist legislation, with limiting the power of the Supreme Court, with censoring artworks, with introducing religious contents into the educational system. It is favoring the capitalists and discouraging professional training, it is encouraging the use of gas and private cars instead of solar energy and public transportation. This government does not understand that the world is moving toward a new generation of energy and production, where industrial workers will lose their jobs in favor of artificial intelligence and robots. This situation will create serious social problems with which we should cope by acknowledging the truth that by 2025, 2 out of 4 billion jobs will be eliminated.

Since the collapse of the neoliberal regime in 2008, the world has been entering a new economic stage characterized by decentralization. The proof is the rise of Bitcoin as a digital coin which is not under central supervision like the banks. The mistrust in the collapsing banks, which have caused millions of people to lose their savings, has brought about the invention of new monetary regime based on transparency and social supervision through the internet. The interesting thing here is not Bitcoin but its block chain technology which democratizes the internet and hence society.  The new regime, together with renewable energy produced on citizens’ roofs, heralds the economy’s democratization, the elimination of monopolies and the death of the central state as the body that determines the fate of its citizens.

The future actions of Da’am

Da’am’s vision of the future is based on the economic and political changes in the world that are enforcing themselves upon the Middle East, Israel and the Palestinians. Da’am’s one-state vision introduces new content which is not just forged out of our conviction of the failure of the two-state solution, which became impractical after the Oslo Accords. We act out of a deep conviction that the third industrial revolution is changing conventions, enabling us to build a cooperative society based on internet, democratization and renewable energy. The new innovations are based on the contribution of individuals and groups to building an information base which is open to all users like Wikipedia, Google and Facebook.

The Arab intellectual understands that Arab society’s entry into the third industrial revolution is a precondition for saving it from the abyss. The collapse of the old and corrupt Arab regimes and their oil economy, as well as the fall of the two-state solution, does not necessarily mean that a better regime will be built. However, it opens the door to a modern alternative based not on nationalism but on cooperative principles that can unify the Arab world on the basis of renewable energy and the internet-based modern economy. The internet played a vital role in the hands of the youth who wanted to overthrow the regimes; thus, the internet took the monopoly on information out of the hands of these regimes and occupied the public arena. However, it is just the first step, because we need alternative political, social and economic work which will shove aside the influence of the religious currents and traditions that bind the society and rule it, especially its women.

Progress toward the one-state solution depends on political and economic development at the international as well as the Arab levels. Therefore, we support the spirit of the Arab Spring and its potential to influence the Palestinian and Israeli arenas. Palestinians as a people did not join the Arab Spring. They remained indifferent toward the huge revolutionary wave, because of their disappointment and despair. They are besieged by the PA, Hamas and the Israeli occupation. However, the policies undertaken by Netanyahu are bringing about the collapse of the PA, either because of its political isolation and financial condition, or because a new youth movement will rise, whose members, like their sisters and brothers in the Arab world, want a future that corresponds to their ambitions, their culture, and their connections with the world through the internet.

Regarding Israeli society, we must propose a social and economic program based on encouraging the use of renewable energy and all the cooperative initiatives that seek to liberate people from state control as well as from exploitation by monopolies in the fields of consumption and production. Israeli society itself has been undergoing a deep identity crisis. The Right proposes to Israeli citizens they  choose between being “Jews” or “democrats”; every definition harbors an entirely different world of concepts regarding education, the approach to asylum seekers, women’s equality, religion and the Sabbath, and Arab society.

The insistence by leftist and liberal circles on maintaining Israel as a Jewish state places them in a situation of weakness vis-à-vis the Right, which is steadily eroding democracy in favor of “Judaism.” The Israeli Left relies on the police to indict Netanyahu; they wish to overthrow him through courts of law and not by ballots. In addition, the Left is far from creating a revolutionary economic program which can suit recent technological developments like the programs partially applied today in China, Germany and Scandinavia.

We should develop any initiative that suits our goals and broadens our alliances with all who agree to the principle of one democratic state in Israel and the occupied territories. We must spread our ideas and articles, strengthen the workers’ organization WAC-MAAN, which unites Israeli and Arab workers, initiate cooperatives for renewable energy and carry out other initiatives proposed by Israeli and Palestinians activists, people who wish like us to build a modern society based on full equality between the two peoples with democratization of the society and the economy.

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The central committee of the Daam Workers Party convened in the run-up to the general elections, following the unraveling of Benjamin Netanyahu’s third government. This document discusses the backdrop to this, the local and regional political forces which led to the crisis in which Israeli society and the Arab countries of the region find themselves, and the circumstances which led to Daam’s decision not to run in these elections.

The following is an abridged version of the Hebrew document.

Though the political parties competing this year appear to focus on social issues such as the cost of living and the housing problem, there can be no doubt that in practice Netanyahu’s government fell because of the political vacuum which followed the collapse of the talks with the Palestinians, and the attempt to change the status quo within Israel between Arabs and Jews – most notably with the “Nation-State Law” which undermines the rights of some 20 percent of the state’s citizens.

As usual, the political parties avoid the most burning issues facing Israeli society: the relationship between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The policy of Israel’s Right conflates these two issues: it declares that it intends to solve the Palestinian problem by annulling the Oslo Accords and unilaterally creating a Palestinian autonomous region; and it aims to give an official and legal seal of approval to the long-standing but unofficial policy of racist discrimination and exclusion against Israel’s Arab citizens.

Lack of Palestinian unity: the Right’s most precious asset

The increasing power of the Israeli Right, particularly the settlers’ party Habayit Hayehudi, is to a large extent the direct result of Palestinian disunity and weakness: the mixed messages coming from the organizations struggling against each other for power in the Palestinian political arena are a decisive reason for the turn of Israel public’s rightward. The Palestinian Authority, which recognizes Israel, demands an end to the occupation but at the same time maintains consistent and close “security cooperation” with the Israeli security forces, despite internal opposition from Hamas. In contrast, Hamas, which does not recognize Israel and offers no political solution to the conflict, has chosen to fight the siege Israel has closed around Gaza through armed resistance, including firing rockets at Israel’s civilian population. The PA’s weakness vis-à-vis Hamas’ extremism grant credibility to the Right’s claim that occupation and settlement must continue in order to protect the West Bank from a takeover by Hamas, which aims to destroy Israel. Thus the Right benefits from both the schism between Jews and Arabs within Israel, and the disconnection between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, the internal Palestinian division reflects the battle raging in the Middle East between the main power blocs. These blocs are taking advantage of the chaos created by the Arab Spring in order to increase their circles of influence. Hamas in the Gaza Strip is supported by Qatar and Turkey, and faces a tight axis of common interests between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the PA and Israel. The rise of fundamentalism must also be noted, such as ISIS and Al Qaeda which directly affect political reality in Palestine, as well as the rightward trend among Israeli Jews.

Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip last July, illustrates how this vicious circle works. The backdrop to the war was the collapse of negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in April as well as the events in Egypt following the renewed military takeover of the state and the end of the democratization process: Egypt’s General Sisi cut off Egyptian aid to Hamas and closed the tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, thus stopping the supply of basic goods to the Strip. This policy stifled the population. In light of the failure of negotiations, Hamas decided that the time was ripe to form a coalition with the PA in order to ensure at least minimal economic survival in the Strip. But Israel’s response to the Palestinian unity government was fast and violent, and the result was the opposite of what Hamas had intended. While relying on Qatar and Turkey as its main allies, Hamas was compelled to enter a prolonged war to stop the siege, but despite the enormous destruction and loss of life, it failed to achieve its basic objectives.

Even though it entered a unity government with Hamas before the war, behind the scenes the PA supported Israel and Sisi’s military regime in Egypt which aims to destroy Hamas. At the end of the war, the PA reneged on its commitments according to the unity government agreement, claiming that though Hamas indeed gave up its hold on the Gaza government, it did not give up its military control. Thus the PA refused to take responsibility for Gaza’s economy, for funding its political institutions and public services, or for paying the salaries of its civil servants.

A human catastrophe of the first order is unfolding in the Gaza Strip. In addition to the killing of some 2,000 Gazans, mainly civilians, the war laid ruin to the infrastructure. Some 20,000 homes were irreparably destroyed and some 100,000 people were left homeless. Donor countries agreed to budget five billion dollars for rebuilding Gaza, but only the PA is authorized to use those funds, and the PA refuses to do so because of its conflict with Hamas.

In the face of the internal Palestinian division and Israel’s adamant refusal to move towards any solution to the conflict, Abbas’ entire strategy is based on diplomatic moves in international forums. Most notable among these was his appeal to the UN Security Council with the aim of compelling Israel to commit to ending negotiations within two years and establishing a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders.

But while he turns to the International Court at The Hague and threatens to sue Israel for war crimes committed during Operation Protective Edge, during the war itself Abbas stood with the Egypt-Saudi-Israel coalition. A reality of Palestinian division and social collapse on one hand, and PA cooperation with the occupation on the other, gives the Israeli Right space to maneuver and validates its claim that “there is no partner” (for peace talks) on the Palestinian side which will fall to Hamas if Israel relinquishes control.

“The Zionist Camp” versus “the Jewish camp”

The stormy return of the slogan “Anyone but Bibi” (Netanyahu) as the central message of the opposition parties cannot hide the fact that almost all of these parties were partners in Netanyahu’s governments and acted as political fig-leaves for Israel’s rejectionist policy. Regarding the main political barriers to a political Israeli-Palestinian solution and the status of Israel’s Arab citizens, the Zionist Camp led by Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni has nothing new to offer. The Labor Party (one half of the Zionist Camp) sticks to its old policy based on negotiations without determining the content of any future agreement or setting a timeframe for ending the occupation. As for its approach to Israel’s Arabs, the kind of equality it advocates is symbolic and empty of any tangible content.

The Oslo Accords came to an end, in practice, with the intifada of the year 2000, when the Palestinians grasped the fraud they had been sold: though the Accords were a temporary general agreement whose purpose was to lead to a sovereign Palestinian state, from Yitzhak Rabin’s murder onwards, this temporary reality became permanent while the settlement project continued apace under all Israeli governments. The creation of the PA was merely part of this arrangement in which Israel recognizes a temporary Palestinian entity devoid of any tangible sovereignty, while the Palestinians remain dependent on Israel from an economic and military point of view. Thus the PA in the West Bank has become a governance mechanism operated by some 150,000 bureaucrats and security men whose wages are paid by donations from the West, while the settlements continue to dissect the West Bank and prevent the establishment of a sustainable, contiguous Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Today the Right, and Netanyahu in particular, no longer even pays lip service to the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution. The Israeli Right openly declares its opposition to a Palestinian state as a solution to the conflict, and proposes perpetuating the existing situation through “Palestinian autonomy” under Israeli sovereignty. Unilaterally, the “settlement blocks” have become part of Israel in any future agreement.

The crisis over the “nation-state law” (which would anchor the idea of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people in Israel’s Basic Laws) which led to the early elections is merely formal. In practice, it was the Labor Party which established the discriminatory regime against the Arab population, and the Labor Party is responsible in the main for the situation Israel’s Arab citizens are in: high poverty rates, towns lacking basic infrastructure, youth with no future. There is a pressing need for an effective response to the discriminatory regime, which relies on the formulation “Jewish and democratic state” – a formulation which concisely expresses the essence of Israel’s Zionist Left. It is this pressing need that led the educated classes in Arab society to formulate an alternative political perspective based on the model of a “state for all its citizens.”

The “nation-state law” is the Right’s way of solving the internal contradiction of the “Jewish and democratic” state by legally prioritizing the Jewish component above the democratic component. In practice, the law would mean that when an Arab citizen faces discriminatory practices (such as unequal distribution of land), “Jewish interest” would take precedence over the principle of equality. The law thus grants legal authority for this kind of discrimination which stems from the definition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

The Zionist Left’s protestations against the law stem from the very real fear that anchoring discriminatory practices in law will undermine Israel’s aspirations to belong to the club of democratic states. The law, if accepted, would cause an increase in international protest against Israel’s policies and even to expose Israel to sanctions. The Labor Party rejects the definition of Israel as a “state for all its citizens” – in other words, the Labor Party sticks to discriminatory policies wrapped in the doubtful cloak of “democracy.” And indeed, in this tragic and ongoing vicious circle which began with the catastrophic Oslo Accords, the structural discrimination in the existing regime has deepened the tension between Jews and Arabs, and thus only strengthens the extreme Right, increasing its power and credibility among Israel’s Jewish population.

The Arab Joint List

After the Oslo Accords were signed, and especially after Rabin’s murder, the Labor Party began sliding rightwards in an attempt to appease the settlers. One of the main claims against Rabin and his government concerned his alliance with the Arab parties to get the Knesset to vote in favor of the Accords. The Labor Party internalized the message and kept away from the Arab population, which unsurprisingly increased the polarization between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

The vacuum left by the Labor Party and the left-leaning Zionist parties was filled by new Arab parties which left the Arab political arena divided between three main currents: the Islamic current, the nationalist current represented by Tagamuh (Balad), and the communist current in Hadash. These parties have one thing in common – their adamant refusal to accept the “Jewish character” of the state and their adoption of the idea of a state of all its citizens. They are also united in their call for an end to the occupation in the territories and to the discrimination within Israel against its Arab citizens. And indeed, the Arab parties stand in opposition to the Israeli Right and are critical of the Labor Party and the Jewish Left which continues to team up with the Right, whether through government coalitions or support – active and passive – for war against the Palestinians.

But despite concord over political issues, there is significant disagreement among the Arab currents on an ideological level. For example, in Knesset discussions over the separation of church and state, or regarding civil marriage, the Islamic current frequently stands alongside the Jewish religious parties. As a rule, the Islamic Movement defines itself as part of the Muslim Brotherhood, supports Hamas, and aims for an Islamic state. In contrast, Tagamuh is a nationalist secular party which envisions “One Palestine,” and allies itself with regional players according to opportunistic considerations. In the past, Tagamuh supported Hezbollah as part of the “resistance”, and today (due to Hezbollah’s support for Syria’s Assad) the party is close to Qatar, where Tagamuh’s ideological leader Azmi Bishara has found sanctuary in return for his services as propagandist for Qatari interests in the region.

The ideological heart of Hadash is the Israeli Communist Party. It remains loyal to the two-state solution, but the party’s ideological orientation remains rooted in the Cold War. Anachronistic and intransigent readings of the regional political reality led Hadash to adopt absurd positions, such as its support of a dictator who massacres his own people, the “anti-imperialist” Assad, or of the Egyptian despot Sisi, who strives to crush the Muslim Brotherhood which was elected in a transparent democratic process to head the government.

The accord among Arab Knesset factions on basic points and in their opposition to the Jewish Right is not solid enough to create real unity between the parties. Their common hostility to Zionism, important though it is, cannot provide the answer to the most basic political question: what kind of society are we striving to create? Upon what political and ideological foundations will this society be based, and what will be its character?

More than anything, the aspiration to build a social-political force able to confront the occupation and the racist regime in Israel is dependent on the answers to these questions. These are the same questions that stood and still stand at the center of the political struggle over the essence of the Arab Spring: can democracy be applied to Arab societies? Can progress and modernity provide an answer to the poverty and backwardness in the Arab world, or must we turn to Sharia for an effective response to the disease of corrupt regimes? Does the democratic regime taking its first hesitant steps in Tunisia signal a way out of the cycle of violence of civil war in which most Arab states are mired, or is the Iranian theocratic model the answer? What is the role of the Gulf states in the conflict being waged between the different currents, and what should it be? Do Fatah and the PA offer a realistic option for Palestinians to free themselves from the occupation, or is Hamas the better option? How can we contend with the racism of Israeli society and politics when Arab society is so divided, crumbling and weak, and devoid of any economic or social resources for coping with the challenges it faces?

The answer to such questions differ from party to party, each with its own ideology, but on one thing they are almost identical: in neglecting their voters. Lacking party, social or cultural activities, Arab towns are facing a social crisis whose main characteristic is violence. This violence is sometimes expressed as “family honor” killings, sometimes as criminal violence, sometimes as violence between clans. This reality is an expression of the profound disintegration of Arab society.

The unification of the Arab parties holds very little hope for the real problems facing Arab citizens – problems which find no solution through parliamentary channels. An increase in the number of Arab Knesset members will not stop their exclusion from decision-making forums or from shaping policy. Moreover, the “Arab list” signals an ethnic – as opposed to ideological – identity as the central relevant characteristic of their political essence. It makes the logic of division between Jews and Arabs the decisive element in the democratic game, and thus reinforces efforts to prevent equality between Arabs and Jews – equality which requires that Jews and Arabs cooperate together against the Right.

Why we are not taking part in the elections

Since it was established in 1996, Daam took part in all the general elections. At that time, all the Arab parties were united in supporting the Zionist left in their support of the Oslo Accords and of Shimon Peres, the Labor Party’s candidate contending against Netanyahu. We believed it was extremely important to expose the dangers of the Oslo Accords and their principal architect. Thus Daam was established, after a decade of activity within the party framework of Hadash, to offer an alternative based on opposition to the mad concept of Oslo.

At the time, some people accused us of aiding Netanyahu. They said we had failed to understand, that the Oslo Accords must be seen as the first stage on the road to Palestinian statehood and the end of the occupation. But the language of the agreement already showed otherwise: the agreement was formulated to “domesticate” and “contain” the occupation, not to bring it to an end. The Accords were meant to determine the conditions for giving up on revolutionary change in Israeli society and for the defeat of the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

In the last elections, Daam failed to translate public interest in the party and the social protest movement into enough votes. In the current elections, this failure compelled us to try to join a broad coalition which would ensure we would get over the electoral threshold. Previous attempts to build such a coalition, such as during the municipal elections of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, did not lead to the hoped-for results. With the fading of the social protest movement and lacking a broad political framework – Jewish and Arab, democratic – we were compelled to admit that we have no partners for this road at the moment. In light of the raised electoral threshold, we reached the conclusion that we do not have the resources or the manpower required to run an effective election campaign.

Though we are not contending ourselves, and not recommending any other party, we are not calling for boycotting the elections. This document clarifies our position regarding the existing parties, whether those on the Zionist Left or the Arab parties, and notes the discrepancy between their position and ours, a discrepancy which means we are unable to join any of them.

The opposition parties competing amongst each other are not willing or courageous enough to face the settlers – and the settlers are the “storming brigades” of the occupation. Their task is to “clean” the occupied territory of Palestinians or to subdue them until they agree to live under a regime without civil rights and under insufferable conditions. But unless all the settlements are evacuated there can be no end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, regardless of whether the solution is one state or two. Ignoring this enormous barrier to a sustainable agreement with the Palestinians reflects futile efforts to escape from reality.

The Knesset is a central and important forum for facing the Right, however, dedicated as it may be, parliamentary work will achieve nothing unless it has public backing in the form of a movement that can sway the population and face the fascist Right. For this reason, we at Daam were always, and still are, dedicated firstly to work on the ground. So our decision not to take part in the elections is not purist, nor does it mean we are giving up on political activity. On the contrary: a wide Jewish-Arab front is a crucial political aim of the first order, and we will welcome any initiative, Jewish or Arab, which presents an alternative to the Right, as long as it is based on the demand for a truly democratic society, free of racism and occupation. Whatever the results of the coming elections, we have no doubt that Israel is galloping towards a social and political catastrophe. We hope that sooner or later, in light of the resounding failure of the Arab and Zionist parties to face the fascist Right, we new partners will emerge that will be ready to create a new democratic political framework.

And finally, we must address the retreat of democratic and liberating forces which appeared in the Arab Spring, and undoubtedly influenced the Israeli and Palestinian political arenas. The entrenchment of the regimes of Assad, Sisi and the corrupt Gulf emirates on one hand, and the rise of Jihadist fundamentalism on the other, give the impression that democracy cannot be applied in the Arab world. But as long as the despotic regimes continue to ground their rule in poverty, corruption and repression, Arab society will have no alternative except democracy. The rise of radical Islam merely replaces poverty with poverty, corruption with corruption, barbaric repression with even more barbaric repression.

Daam is the party of the Arab Spring, the party of worker solidarity, a revolutionary party whose success is not measured by whether it passes the electoral threshold, but by the creation of revolutionary change in Israeli society. Such change has become even more urgent, and necessitates a genuine change, a new political discourse. Despite the difficulties and setbacks, the future is in the hands of those who march with history. Those willing to march against the current at times of retreat will be able to build their strength and achieve their aims when the balance of forces changes.

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Politische Bewertung für das Zentralkomitee, 7. September 2014

Der Krieg gegen den Gaza-Streifen dauerte 52 Tage. Er endete da, wo er begonnen hatte: Die Belagerung des Gaza-Streifens dauert an. Beide Seiten, Israel wie die Hamas erklärten gleichermaßen, sie hätten gewonnen. In Wahrheit hat hier niemand einen Sieg errungen. Wie in den bisherigen Runden dieses zerstörerischen Krieges ist es die Bevölkerung, die den Preis zahlt. Dabei sind die Verluste für das palästinensische Volk besonders hoch: mehr als 2.000 verloren ihr Leben, die Hälfte davon Zivilisten, zehntausende wurden verwundet, hunderttausende obdachlos.

Es ist unmöglich zu bestimmen, wer hier gewonnen und wer verloren hat, denn die beiden Seiten können gar nicht miteinander verglichen werden. Einerseits eine Industrienation mit einem Pro-Kopf-Einkommen von 30.000 US-Dollar,andererseits 3.000 US-Dollar pro Kopf in Gaza. Eine Armee, ausgerüstet mit den neuesten Technologien und einem Etat von 17 Milliarden US-Dollar – gegen eine Organisation, mit einfachen Waffen und wenigen Millionen US-Dollar. Das ist kein Kampf zwischen Gleichen, das Ergebnis ist vorher klar.

Es stellt sich also die Frage, warum Israel die Hamas nicht besiegt hat. Die Antwort ist einfach: Israel hatte gar nicht vor, die Hamas zu besiegen. Israel hat keine Alternative zur Herrschaft der Hamas und will den Gaza-Streifen nicht wieder okkupieren.

Vom Beginn des Krieges an war die Herrschaft der Hamas nicht bedroht. Damit stellt sich eine andere Frage: Warum hat die Hamas den Raketenbeschuss Israels so lange fortgesetzt, trotz des schrecklichen Preises, den die Bevölkerung von Gaza an Leben, Eigentum und Infrastruktur zu zahlen hatte? Nach Aussage des Israelischen Verteidigungsministers hat Israel 2 Milliarden US-Dollar in den Kriegseinsatz investiert – und einen Schaden von etwa 5 Milliarden US-Dollar verursacht.

Des Rätsels Lösung liegt in den gegensätzlichen Zielen der beiden Seiten. Ziel der Hamas war, wie in den beiden Kriegen zuvor, das Ende der Gaza-Blockade. Israel dagegen wollte den Gaza-Streifen so einschnüren, dass die Hamas gezwungen ist, die Waffen niederzulegen. Beide Seiten hatten keine andere Wahl, als einen Zermürbungskrieg zu führen – bis eine Seite die andere erfolgreich nieder gerungen hat.

Gaza: zwischen Katar und Saudi Arabien

Ohne einen Blick auf die Ereignisse in der arabischen Welt kann man den Gaza-Krieg nicht verstehen. Erstmals haben sich zwei deutliche Lager gebildet: eins um Ägypten und Saudi Arabien, ein anderes um Katar und die Türkei. In der Vergangenheit hatte die Hamas sich auf einen Block von Abweichlern – den Iran, Syrien und die Hisbollah im Libanon – verlassen können. Aber mit dem Arabischen Frühling sind die Karten neu gemischt, die Wirklichkeit ist eine andere. Die alte Ordnung kollabierte. Staaten wurden zu Schauplätzen von Bürgerkriegen und zerfielen. Es entstanden neue Lager, in denen die Golfstaaten eine zentrale Rolle spielen. Der Arabische Frühling hat im Golfkooperationsrat zu einer Spaltung zwischen Saudi-Arabien und Katar geführt. Dabei geht es um eine grundlegende Meinungsverschiedenheit, wie mit dem Arabischen Frühling umzugehen ist. Alle Versuche, die Differenzen zu überbrücken, sind fehlgeschlagen. Saudi Arabien hat den Aufstand des 25. Januar 2011, der zum Sturz des Mubarak-Regimes in Ägypten führte, klar abgelehnt. Katar unterstützte dagegen die Muslimbruderschaft, die dann in demokratischen Wahlen die Macht übernahm. Es besteht keine Einigkeit in der Frage, wie die Brandherde der Revolution unter den arabischen Völkern zu löschen sind, die nach Demokratie, Brot und Freiheit verlangen.

Katar ist überzeugt, dass die Zeiten der alten Herrschaftsformen, wie sie der Diktator Mubarak verkörperte, vorüber sind. Aber nicht nach einer Demokratie im westlichen Stil sucht das Emirat. Vielmehr sollte der demokratische Aufstand junger Revolutionäre, die eine moderne Form von Staatlichkeit anstreben, durch die Muslim-Bürder gestoppt werden, die bei der “demokratischen” Übernahme der Revolution von Katar entsprechende Unterstützung erfuhren. Saudi-Arabien dagegen sieht den politischen Islam, besonders in der Version der Muslim-Bruderschaft, als direkte Bedrohung für die monarchistische Diktatur. Deshalb hat die Ägyptische Salafistische Partei Al-Nour (die mit Saudi-Arabien in direkten Zusammenhang gebracht wird) den Militärputsch unterstützt, der den islamischen Präsidenten Mohamed Mursi zu Fall brachte.

Das ist der Hintergrund zum neuesten Gaza-Krieg,in dem die Hamas von Katar und der Türkei unterstützt wurde, während Saudi Arabien und Ägypten auf der Seite Israels standen. In dieser Situation war keine

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Political report submitted to the Central Committee of the Da’am Workers Party

23 March 2014 

The global political arena is undergoing dangerous and dramatic changes. The conflict in the Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to annex the Crimea further inflames tensions between the US and Russia, and is undoubtedly a surprising development in the relations between the two superpowers following a long period of cooperation in solving crises around the world, especially concerning the Iranian nuclear issue and chemical weapons in Syria. The former cooperation between the Obama administration and the Kremlin appeared to reflect a new framework for a new pattern of international relations. This followed the temporary agreement with Iran, which also isolated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But it seems Putin has decided to exchange international cooperation for the assertion of new facts regarding the status and influence of Russia in certain parts of the world, similar to the situation during the USSR period. Putin is attempting to fill the void left by Obama using his military might and energy resources. One of the arenas about which there is no agreement is Syria, where Putin maintains unreserved support for Assad, who is murdering his people, while the US refuses to accept Assad as partner in any future arrangement and calls for his removal.

But the events in the Ukraine are not happening by chance. They are the result of profound processes linked to Russia’s history following the collapse of the USSR, and the West’s role in the weakening and dismantling of the socialist bloc. The West’s behavior regarding Russia during Yeltsin’s leadership caused an enormous economic and human catastrophe due to the economic policies dictated by the US: the privatization of the public sector, the elimination of the USSR and the domination of US influence in the former soviet republics, and the inclusion of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to the NATO alliance contrary to American promises to Gorbachev that NATO would not be extended eastwards. All this is in addition to the Balkan war which dismantled Yugoslavia and stirred up animosity in Russia towards the West, and the fundamental change when Putin took over in 2000. Putin came to power after Russia had declared bankruptcy in 1998. The Yeltsin “family” and a very small number of capitalists took control in various ways of the State’s resources and the Russian economy, particularly in energy, metals and banking. For Putin, the dismembering of the USSR was an historic error which must be reversed.

Syria: the last straw

Obama’s entry to the White House marked a fundamental change in US foreign policy. Instead of exploiting its military strength to impose American hegemony around the world, and seeing Russia as an enemy, Washington began seeking cooperation with Russia for solving international conflicts, seeing Russia as a partner in the framework of the G8.

Obama decided to withdraw his plan to deploy 10 interceptor missiles and a radar on Polish soil, and worked to build trust with Putin. But Putin did not play along, and interpreted the new Washington policy as US weakness which could be exploited. Bush tried to reap the fruits of US Cold War victory by humiliating Russia and using military force to impose US dominance by occupying Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein. In contrast, following US defeat in Iraq, Obama seeks to reduce military spending and redirect resources to economic development and welfare. Putin meanwhile acts according to Bush’s logic, and hopes to take advantage of US defeat to restore the influence Russia enjoyed during the Cold War. While Europe worked to include Russia in the European market, Putin worked to build an alternative market with states in the East which were once part of the USSR known as the Eurasian Economic Community customs union. Just as Germany has become a central axis in the European Union, Russia hopes to become the central axis in a new “Eurasian Union.” Putin does all he can to provoke Obama, and his decision to offer asylum to Edward Snowden, who revealed the NSA’s global surveillance programs, was a slap in the face for the White House. However, the Americans were compelled to restrain themselves on this issue.

The Syrian revolution was a test for US-Russia relations, as there was direct conflict between the superpowers over Assad’s regime. While Russia supports Assad, supplies military aid and provides diplomatic patronage at the Security Council, Obama has called for Assad’s removal since the start of the conflict. Here too Putin sees Obama’s position as a sign of weakness. While US policy was marked by hesitancy, Russia and Iran provided strong support for Assad. Despite the West’s efforts

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