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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Since Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon’s last visit to Washington, tension between Israel and the White House has only increased. The State Department and the White House refused to have anything to do with Yaalon, who once accused Secretary of State John Kerry of having a “messianic fervor,” and he was left talking shop with his US counterpart, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. For the others, he has become a persona non grata. This boycott of the Israeli defense minister caught most of the headlines, but the important interview Yaalon gave to the Washington Post, appearing on the paper’s website on October 24, was mostly ignored. This interview reveals that the Israeli government has buried Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to the two-state idea.

In the interview, Yaalon was explicitly asked if he believed in the two-state solution. His reply was military in its brevity: “You can call it the new Palestinian empire. We don’t want to govern them, but it is not going to be a regular state for many reasons.” When the interviewer asked what he meant by a Palestinian empire, Yaalon replied: “Autonomy. It is going to be demilitarized.” There are two reasons for this, according to Yaalon. Firstly, any territory vacated by Israel will be taken over by Hamas. Secondly, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is no partner for peace because he refuses to recognize the Jewish character of the State of Israel. Thus Yaalon takes us back 30 years to when Israel, under Menachem Begin’s leadership, held negotiations with Anwar Sadat’s Egypt over the establishment of Palestinian autonomy – without Palestinian participation.

Netanyahu’s vision

In his recent Knesset speech, Netanyahu substantiated Yaalon’s words. It turns out he is not in despair at all about the political dead-end; on the contrary, he is grasping the changes in the Arab world hungrily, and is greatly encouraged by the new regime in Egypt, which resembles Sadat’s regime: “Because there is hope, change is taking place, slowly but clearly, important change in the central states of the Arab world, who see eye to eye with Israel on many of the challenges we face. They understand that the greatest dangers for them and for us come from radical Islam. Together with them, we will continue to explore possibilities for advancing regional solutions, which can help solve our conflict with the Palestinians. It has always been said that an arrangement with the Palestinians would improve our relations with the Arab world, and there is something in that. But there is also another truth – an arrangement with the Arab world can help us settle our relations with the Palestinians. A regional settlement would benefit everyone.”

According to Netanyahu’s understanding of reality following the Arab Spring, Israel has enemies in common with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan: the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. The Brotherhood is the main enemy of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, while Shiite Iran aspires to regional hegemony at the expense of the Sunni states. In Netanyahu’s view, these are positive developments which may enable him to reach a regional settlement while skirting the Palestinian issue. Later, he will impose autonomy on them, as Sadat did.

Netanyahu’s understanding of reality is in direct opposition to that of Europe and the US, who see recent developments in the region as no less than a disaster. From their point of view, Saudi Arabia is trying to prevent democratic change in the region, as expressed in the Arab Spring, and was behind the military coup in Egypt and the murderous suppression of the Egyptian opposition. Media in the US publish information almost daily about serious human rights violations in Egypt and continuously condemn Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime, which has become Israel’s “strategic” ally. In the opinion of the West, the situation in Egypt suggests that Sisi’s fate will be no different from Sadat’s, and that he is leading the country to national and economic disaster.

From the Oslo Accords to autonomy

Netanyahu’s path has no international support because it relies on regimes which are waging a rearguard battle against the democratic forces of change. For this reason it is untenable. There is not a single state in the region or in the world willing to support the Netanyahu-Yaalon vision, because it means the death of the Oslo Accords and all that this entails. Oslo was a response to the Begin-Sadat autonomy plan, and it gave a partial but insufficient answer to the demands of the Palestinians during the first Intifada. Oslo was an interim solution which was to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state, but Israel had no intention of fulfilling its side of the deal by reaching a permanent settlement: it has never indicated what the permanent borders of the future state would be, because the government was not prepared to confront the settlers, and it left other critical issues unsolved such as the fate of Jerusalem.

The Oslo Accords also determined the economic mechanisms that enabled the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which relies almost entirely on foreign aid. The US and Europe funded the wages of the police and civil service as well as economic development projects and infrastructure. But they did this only as long as they believed the aim was to pave the way towards a Palestinian state, and not to shore up autonomy under Israeli occupation. This arrangement was very convenient for Israel: the US trained Palestinian police officers who acted in “security coordination” with Israel, while the Israeli governments strengthened their hold on the West Bank undisturbed, through massive construction in the settlements. However, Netanyahu decided that his political survival was more important than anything else, and he’s killing the goose that laid the golden egg. By casting Abu Mazen in the mold of enemy of the Jewish people and supporter of terror, he has also cast doubt on the continued existence of the PA and of security coordination with Israel.

Now Netanyahu and Yaalon are aiming to go even further. Making the PA an “empire which means autonomy” – the mountain that gave birth to a mouse – puts an end to the idea of a Palestinian state and to the PA itself. So far, there has been no Palestinian leader willing to head an autonomous entity in the shadow of occupation. The separation barrier, separate buses for Jews and Palestinians, land expropriation, magnetic cards, limitations on freedom of movement and arbitrary arrests create a reality which no Palestinian leader can accept. Yaalon is fooling himself and all Israelis, since there is no way of compelling Palestinians to accept autonomy while not continuing to rule over them. Israel has been controlling the Palestinians for almost 50 years, from determining their ID numbers to controlling the water they drink and the electricity they use. The false reality it created through the PA is coming to an end.

In despair, Abu Mazen does all he can to escape Israel’s grasp by what are generally called “unilateral steps,” crawling towards the UN where he will meet the US administration, which will send him away empty-handed as usual. It will refuse to recognize a Palestinian state and refuse to compel Israel to leave the West Bank. The frustrated Americans have no option but to grit their teeth, curse Netanyahu, call him a spineless coward, and… veto Palestinian demands. The strategic alliance between Israel and the US has so far only perpetuated the conflict, and it is now bringing Abu Mazen’s political demise ever closer, together with that of the PA itself. Bankrolling states are warning that if this should happen, they will cease funding the PA. The bill for the occupation will have to be paid by Israeli citizens, who even now find it hard to make ends meet. It is true that Netanyahu benefits from the fact that he has no opposition within Israel, but he faces increasing international criticism as well as millions of Palestinians who are not willing to dance to his tune.

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

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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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Over 60 activists, supporters and members of Daam—Jews, Arabs, and representatives from the occupied territories—participated in the 3rd annual Daam ideological seminar, which took place at St. Gabriel Hotel in Nazareth on the 5th and 6th of July. The military coup that took place at the same time in Egypt demonstrated the relevance of the seminar topic, as well as the gravity with which Daam regards the revolutions in the Arab world. In a region where the only voice that was heard belonged to military and police-backed dictatorships on the one hand, and political Islam on the other, there has been a new voice in the past two years—the voice of the people. This voice has joined others from outside the Arab world—Spain, Israel, US, Greece, Turkey and Brazil, all sharing a yearning for a new economic and civil order, as coined by Daam in its campaign slogan: Equal justice for all.

The seminar reflected the political, social and economic processes that are confronting the existing order. These processes are at times very exciting and at other times horrifically cruel, but the genie of aspiration for justice cannot be returned to the bottle. This is why we are obligated to examine these revolutions and study their successes and mistakes, in order to promote agendas and programs that fulfill their potential.

In his opening remarks, Daam General Secretary Yaacov Ben Efrat said, “Egypt has been a source of inspiration for Daam, as well as a source for learning and understanding the ways in which to conduct social protest and offer a political alternative. From Egypt’s revolution we have learned that from the city square it is possible to pose demands, argue and protest, but not to run a state. One must work hard for revolution. The notion that politicians (or in Egypt’s case, the army) will work for us, and all we need do is to hand them our list of demands on the street or on Facebook, is misguided.

“Real democracy has a price. In Egypt it was necessary to allow the Muslim Brothers to exhaust their political power, when on the one hand they adopted a neoliberal economy and on the other preached Islam as the solution. A political parliamentary alternative should have been created to beat them at the ballot box. The coup that brought down the Muslim Brotherhood has set back the democratic process. How can the liberal and leftist powers speak in the name of democracy when it has been used so selectively?”

Assaf Adiv and oudeh basharat

In another discussion, co-led by Assaf Adiv, National Coordinator of WAC-MAAN, and writer Oudeh Basharat, a member of Hadash, the crisis in Egypt was compared to the revolution in Tunisia, where civil and religious powers are currently attempting to divide control over the country. Where Egypt is concerned, Basharat was in favor of military intervention in cooperation with the liberal forces for three main reasons: (1) the Muslim Brotherhood tried to use democracy only in order to annul it when the time was right; (2) the Egyptian army is a popular army and cannot be compared to other armies (the remark was made before the Egyptian military’s massacre of protesters); (3) knowing the organizational weakness of the liberal forces, it does not make sense to wait until they accumulate enough political power to defeat the Brotherhood.

Dr. (MD) Ali Abu Awad arrived at the seminar as part of a delegation from the Golan Heights to discuss the Syrian question. Abu Awad identifies with the National Syrian Council, the official Syrian opposition calling for the immediate ousting of Assad. A couple of days before the seminar his car was blown up near his house, an attack from which he and his family emerged unharmed. According to Abu Awad, this is not the first case of violence against Assad opponents in the Golan. He described with great pain the complete devastation of Syria, with 100,000 civilians dead, 200,000 injured, 2 million refugees fleeing the country and many more displaced within Syria. Abu Awad expressed lack of faith in US Secretary of State John Kerry’s initiative as a political solution. He also claimed that Israel is interested in the continuation of Assad’s regime, referring to the permission Israel gave Syrian tanks to go through the Quneitra pass to continue the slaughter of civilians.

Two discussions were dedicated to questions of nationality and class from the perspective of the protests in Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dani Ben Simchon, a WAC activist, addressed the contradictory situation of poor workers in Israel and the fear of the protest movements to deal with this contradiction:

“The Mizrahi worker class is in a state of inner contradiction. On the one hand, it has built its identity on turning away from its Arab heritage and adopting Israeli patriotism. On the other hand, its traditional party, the Likud, has abandoned its social values, leading a neoliberal economic agenda. They are in deep crisis, facing a dead end.

“The Jewish workers have not yet changed their voting patterns and have not internalized the fact that voting for Netanyahu (or any other right wing party) does not result only in strengthening a political right-wing agenda, but also in the reinforcement of a right-leaning economic policy, which in turn harms them as workers.”

“Our acquaintance with the forces active today on the ground—the Ma’abara, Lo Nechmadim, Daphni Leef—shows us that they share a common position: (1) that the political-national questions are to be separated from the social-economic questions, and (2) that they oppose partisan involvement. Despite the fact that these activists are leading important struggles, they continue to ignore the political and class-related aspects of the conflict.

“But the political question has become critical and significant today. In the new conditions, the Jewish worker cannot enjoy social justice without dealing with the class-based aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She must confront the connection between social justice, ending the occupation, and ending the discrimination against Arab citizens within Israel.”

Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka compared the approaches of the various Arab parties with that of Daam: “Whereas the nationalistic and Islamic parties see Israel and Arab society as unchanging entities, to which the rules of history do not pertain, Daam claims that the nationalistic Zionist ideology comes with an economic basis, and as such it follows the same social and historical rules that affect other societies. The occupation is yet another burden that deepens the inner contradictions. Israel has two problems: a political-security problem on one hand, and a social-economic one on the other. One cannot view Israel only through the prism of Zionist ideology.”

Khader Shama gave a lecture on the principles of Arabic music and improvisation using the Oud

Dr. Iris Meir, a lecturer at Sapir college, and Nir Nader, an activist at WAC and Daam, dedicated their lectures to the neoliberal realities in Israel and the US. Meir started her lecture with a quote from Democracy in America (1835) by Alexis de Tocqueville, who defined the unique characteristic of American democracy as “equality in social conditions.” Meir then questioned this statement, referring to Hedrick Smith’s present-day book, Who Stole the American Dream? Relying on Smith, Meir surveyed the monstrous social gaps in American society today and the connections between capital and government, which perpetuate these gaps and make social mobility nearly impossible:

“America has seen the rise of a new class—the new poor. These are members of the middle-class who have sunk into poverty, millions of people who have become victims of the long freeze in living conditions since the 1970s. Their numbers are huge. Apart from 6 million people who are perennially unemployed, it was reported in 2010 that 2.6 million more Americans had fallen into poverty. Altogether there are 46.2 million Americans in poverty, the highest number in 52 years.”

Nir Nader and Iris Meyer

“The figures show that America is becoming a caste society. Increasingly, the privileged classes are maintaining their privileges, while the poor remain in the same place. The social mobility that characterized the American dream is long gone. America is classified nowadays as a country with low social mobility. Being born into a low socio-economic class is more of a limitation in America than in any other country.”

Meir also criticizes Smith’s approach: “His call to demand the government to stop working for capital and start working for the people is, in my view, a liberal approach that requires the current system to continue, while asking to implement certain changes to make it function in way that seems more just. In Israel too we have witnessed this kind of approach, which dissolved the 2011 protests and turned them into dust in terms of their political impact.”

“One cannot expect those who serve capital to start serving the working person. In order for work, rather than capital, to have power and representation, these must be built. The protests on the street have to be translated into real, effective, political-party power. This holds for Israel as it does for the US. The Israel of 2013—Bibi’s, Bennet’s and Lapid’s Israel—is almost a carbon copy of the situation I have been describing. The breaking of organized labor, the eroding of the middle-class, employment insecurity, rising poverty—all this in favor of the big capital that has been buying up the country and its politics.”

Michal Schwartz and Orna Akad

The seminar concluded with lectures by Michal Schwartz, Women’s Work Coordinator in WAC, and Orna Akkad, playwright and author. Schwartz described the unfortunate state of Arab women in Israel today.

“The majority of Arab women in Israel live in a rigid, conservative patriarchal system, whose grip on the women has increased in recent years, despite a rise in the level of education and and the decrease in birth rates. The influence of the family is more prevalent among uneducated women who live in the villages, women with a large number of children, but the major group is the most significant one.

“There is no doubt that in terms of living standards and legal rights, the situation of Arab women in Israel is better than that of their Egyptian counterparts. But in terms of activism and leading social and political change, the women in Israel are far behind. In Egypt and Tunisia, women’s participation in the popular struggles has brought them to the front stage of history.”

In contrast with the Arab woman in Israel who is not part of the social struggles, Orna Akkad characterized the Egyptian women as highly active in the ousting of Mubarak. Nevertheless, the situation in Egypt is far from perfect: “For eighteen days, until the fall of Mubarak’s regime, the protesters of Tahrir square, men and women, were united, without attention to differences of gender, religion etc. All came out in solidarity, and with one goal—the overthrowing of Mubarak’s regime and changing the status quo. However, a few weeks after Mubarak’s fall, women protesters that stayed in the square became a target for sexual harassment by men, as well as violence and rape, especially by the military. Many of those women are now active in organizations protecting women from harassment. They do not plan to give up and return to their homes. The revolution allowed them to go on the street and they are not going to let the men take that away from them.”

Translated to English by: Itamar Manoff

The post The Arab Spring and the Consciousness Revolution: Daam’s Ideological Seminar first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

At the outbreak of the revolution in Syria two years ago, the Israeli government announced that events there were none of its business and it would not interfere. Forty years of quiet on the Golan Heights had led Israel to prefer Assad over any conceivable replacement. Now, however, when the rebels rule wide areas, when the Syrian army is falling apart, and when the regime’s survival is in the balance, Israeli policy appears to have shifted from passivity to active intervention.

The pretext is to prevent the transport of Iranian arms through Syria to the Hezbollah, but the real purpose of the policy change is to influence the future of Syria in case Assad falls, as Israel thinks he will; Israel wants to push a future Syria away from its alliance with Iran. The weakness of Assad’s regime, especially its loss of control over areas bordering Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon, has created a new strategic situation. “The free Syrian army” has established a territorial base on which it can erect an alternative administration. This development has led Hezbollah to enter the fray, and that, in turn, has opened the chink through which Israel could worm its way in.

Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria began in secret, with Nasrallah denying it absolutely. But the battles in the city of al-Quseir near Homs, and the ethnic cleansing of the Sunni villages by Hezbollah, have exposed his interference. Hezbollah has lost all its political capital in the Arab world. Indeed, the “guru” of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yussef Kardawi, has gone so far as to damn Nasrallah and call for American intervention. Such a moment, with Assad in free fall and Nasrallah in disgrace, offers Israel a golden opportunity to demonstrate its power and thus ensure deterrence.

Israeli intervention

Israel makes a simple claim: We aren’t attacking the Syrian regime—we’ve gotten along fine with Assad and appreciate the quiet he’s maintained on the Golan. Our problem is with the Hezbollah and the arms from Iran, which threaten our security. However, this claim suffers from several flaws: First, the arms warehouse that Israel blew up was beside Assad’s palace; the fireworks panicked people in Damascus and severely harmed what little is left of Assad’s prestige. Second, what sense does it make to strike in the heart of Damascus—rather than simply wait for Assad’s fall, an event that in any case will cut off Hezbollah’s military lifeline? Instead, Israel chooses the very approach which the US and Europe avoided for fear of chaos.

Assad’s initial reaction has been to preserve the calm with Israel. There were several hours of tension, and then, as a sign that no reprisal was expected, Israeli PM Netanyahu boarded a plane for China. Al-Hayat reports that before the flight he spoke with Russia’s Putin, assuring him that the target was Hezbollah and not Assad. Putin passed the message to Assad, and apparently he also repeated his demand on Hezbollah that it not interfere in Syria (a demand made earlier by his Deputy Foreign Minister in a face-to-face meeting with Nasrallah). Israel emerged unscathed, but with hunger comes appetite, and Assad’s present restraint is no guarantee as to what the response will be the next time.

America on the Defensive

The bombing of Damascus occurred a few days before the visit of the American Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow. After an Israeli intelligence officer revealed that Assad had used chemical weapons, crossing the red line set by President Obama, the White House went on the defensive. Obama acknowledged that such weapons had indeed been used but he claimed a lack of definitive evidence concerning the culprit; in addition, he ruled out putting American soldiers on Syrian soil. To all who demand US military intervention in Syria, above all to Senator John McCain, Obama has always replied that this would be dangerous and complicated.

Kerry’s visit became crucial. On top of 70,000 killed and four million refugees, Hezbollah and Israel have now taken Syria as their battleground. After meeting Putin and holding nighttime discussions with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, Kerry released an innocuous statement that leaves the situation as is: America and Russia have again agreed on the Geneva approach from last June, which calls for talks between the regime and the opposition. Assad’s future remains in dispute: the Americans want him out while the Russians support him.

The Russians and Americans have also said that they will convene an international conference by the end of this month that will bring about negotiations between the opposition and the regime, but no specific time or agenda have been announced. Kerry does not believe that Assad can take part in a transition to democracy after the mass killing of innocent civilians, while Lavrov thinks that an opposition victory would break Syria into ethnic cantons.

And so the routine of horrors goes on. The regime continues with its ethnic cleansing, now in the village of al-Baida and the city of Banias, where the Alawite shabiha slaughtered men, women, and children with knives and the survivors fled.

Internal chaos

The American refusal to provide military aid for the democratic opposition has contributed greatly to the internal chaos. Al-Qaeda-affiliates, though in the minority, are able to set the tone. They unwittingly supply the regime with grist for propaganda, for Assad can argue that he is fighting a joint al-Qaeda–Zionist plot. The fact that the US line is unclear, while Iran and Russia continue to arm the regime, sows confusion within the Syrian opposition.

This state of things is evident in the fact that soon after Moaz al-Khatib was elected to head the National Coalition of the Syrian Opposition Forces, he quit. He had agreed to enter negotiations with the regime, but the latter had responded by rocketing civilians. When the West nonetheless remained unwilling to supply arms, al-Khatib resigned. Until today no replacement has been found.

The world’s hands-off policy has led to general confusion that also affects nearby countries. Iraq is on the verge of civil war between Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the west, and Shiites in the south, while Iran stirs the kettle. Lebanon is split between the supporters and opponents of Assad. The Syrian regime seeks to built an Alawite state, some of the rebels in the north dream of a Sunni emirate, and the democratic opposition gropes in the dark. For fear of the turmoil in Syria, Turkey has smoothed things out with Israel after the troubles of the Marmara affair, while achieving reconciliation with its Kurdish minority.

The Israeli bombardment does not contribute to regional stability, nor even to the security of Israel itself. It is the latest chapter in a lengthy process, which began when Israel stuck its hand into strife-ridden Lebanon in the early 1980’s, supporting the Maronites, an act that would spawn the Hezbollah and years of bloodshed. Syria’s fate lies solely in the hands of its citizens, who have demonstrated their readiness to risk their lives for democracy and social justice. That is the reason why they first went into the streets to demonstrate, and that is the reason they keep on fighting.

A democratic Syria is the historical imperative dictated by the Arab Spring. The hour demands that the world spare further suffering by supplying arms to the opposition and providing safe zones for civilians, so that the Syrian people can fulfill its right to peace and freedom.

The post Israel, Assad, and the world first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

A political statement by Daam Workers Party on the recent Israeli air strikes in Syria

Daam Workers Party condemns the Israeli bombings of targets in Syria, especially in the heart of Damascus. This is blatant interference in the process that is underway in Syria, and it harms the revolution of the Syrian people: the struggle to topple the Assad regime and to live in dignity. Israel – which has been occupying the West Bank and the Golan Heights for decades, and which conducts an inhumane siege on Gaza – has no right to carry out an aggression which could lead to a regional war.

The Israeli adventure plays into the hands of the Assad regime, which conducts a barbaric attack on the Syrian people with support from Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah. The bombardment lends a sheen of credibility to Assad’s false claim that the revolution is an Israeli-American initiative. In recent days the regime, together with Hezbollah, has perpetrated a horrible massacre in the cities of Banias and Kassir; this is part of a program of ethnic cleansing, meant to terrorize the population and quell the revolution. The Israeli attacks distract attention from these crimes, putting the limelight instead on Israel’s long conflict with the Arab world. This is gratuitous service to the Assad regime.

The Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, which represents the Syrian people, demands international action in order to defend the civilian population and stop the massacres. The international community’s ongoing refusal to fulfill this demand has cost more than 70,000 lives, while the number of wounded and imprisoned is in the hundreds of thousands and the number of refugees in the millions. The world’s silence is destroying Syria. In the midst of it, Israel attacks without getting international or Arab support for its actions. Israel’s purpose is to show its strategic dominance over the region. It has nothing to do with the interests or the aspirations of the Syrian people which Israel never respected.

The toppling of the Syrian or Iranian regime does not interest Israel. The struggle belongs to the Syrian and Iranian peoples, which pit themselves against Fascist dictatorial regimes. The future of Hezbollah in Lebanon is likewise the interest of the Lebanese people, which has been hostage to Hezbollah’s sectarian ambitions.

Daam calls on public opinion in Israel and the world to take an unequivocal stand against the right-wing Israeli government and to call for an end to aggression, an end to the policy of occupation and settlements, and an end to the attitude of refusal that prevents a peace agreement.

We bend our heads before the Syrian revolution and its victims!

The post The Israeli attacks on Syria serve Assad’s criminal regime first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.