(The following article appeared in the October 27 issue of Inprecor, a fortnightly bulletin published by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.]
In the view of many commentators both in Israel and abroad, the results of last May's elections to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, signified a turn in the political life of the Jewish state. Indeed, after more than forty years of uninterrupted rule first over the Zionist movement and then over the Israeli state, the Zionist Labor parties were ousted by the Likud ("coalition"), a bloc of far-right parties led by Menahem Begin, former chief of the Irgun terrorists.
There is little doubt that the end of Labor hegemony and the victory of those who the Zionist regime had for more than twenty years considered dangerous extremist mystics who had to be excluded from all political responsibility does mark the definitive end of one period and therefore constitutes a political event whose causes must be analyzed. But it is no less important to examine to what extent the change in leadership of the Zionist state also marks a real turn in the policy of this state.
A precise understanding of the policy of the new Israeli government is particularly important since the strategy of all the revolutionary forces of the Arab East depends on it.
We must be clear on one point. During the last elections the Israeli voters did not choose between two programs, one more moderate, one more extremist. The supporters of Menahem Begin on the one hand and of Yitzhak Rabin on the other voted for virtually identical platforms, at least as far as Israeli-Arab relations are concerned, which remain decisive for the policy of the Zionist state. Throughout the election campaign Likud did all it could to appear as a party prepared for a negotiated solution with the Arab governments on terms quite similar to those defined by the Labor government. On economic and social policy Labor and Likud preached austerity in almost the same terms, the latter expressing greater hostility to the Histadrut, which was not displeasing to some layers of working-class voters.
The Likud victory was the consequence of a twofold phenomenon which results from the two last wars the Jewish state has been involved in. The 1967 war caused deep changes in the social structure and dominant ideology of the Zionist state. The bourgeoisie was Israeli significantly strengthened by an economic boom, and ruling ideology changed profoundly, with accentuation of nationalism and an religous mysticism. The occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the accelerated colonization, and the complete refusal to recognize the existence of Palestinians represented points for which the far-right Zionist parties had fought, against the Labor leadership, for more than twenty years. The Labor Party was carrying out Begin's policy, and this gave new credibility to a political line that had been called utopian and dangerous for many years.
Once post-1967 reality and the policy of the Labor government had put an end to the relative isolation of the parties that now make up the Likud, all that was needed for Begin to demand and obtain the leadership of the Jewish state was a crisis headed or be of the Labor leadership. This crisis of leadership was touched off by the October War of 1973. The serious political defeat of the state of Israel compelled the old Meir- Sapir leadership to cede to a new team which proved completely incapable of inspiring the Israeli masses with confidence and a new sense of security, both of which had been deeply shaken following the October War. The many financial scandals and other instances of corruption delivered the coup de grâce to Labor hegemony.
Above all else the Likud victory is the defeat of the Labor Party, whose ineffectiveness and ever sharper internal tensions were to provoke a split resulting in the establishment of the Democratic Movement for Change (Dash), a politically heterogeneous formation composed of security generals, various chiefs of services, bosses of Histadrut-owned factories, and private industrialists united around a program of "return to order and propriety" and determined to wage a campaign against the "corrupt rule of the political parties." The fifteen seats Dash won from the Labor Party enabled Likud to win a plurality; it was then called upon to form the new government.
According to commentators writing immediately after the elections last May, the state of Israel was going to be hit be a real earthquake when Begin took over. Today, four months later, fear of rupture given way to a sentiment of has continuity. The new government has done its best, with some success, to lend itself an image of moderation and respectability. Those who had built their program on maximum nationalist rhetoric ever since 1948 and had posed as the guardians of Greater Israel against the Labor Party capitulators have now had to admit in practice that their opponents had been implementing their own policy.
The first gesture of the Begin team, following in the footsteps of all previous governments, was to make the traditional pilgrimage to Washington to expound the general lines of Israeli policy and present the usual shopping list of arms and advantageous loans. The two objectives were closely linked, and Begin repeated the general lines of the policy of his predecessors: Israel is always ready to hold peace talks with the various Arab governments and to accept withdrawal from most of the Egyptian and even Syrian territory occupied since June 1967, but in no case is Israel prepared to withdraw from the territories of historic Palestine, not to mention its obvious rejection of any talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Begin arrived in Washington holding some trump cards: he had rapidly managed without much difficulty to establish a new coalition commanding a rather comfortable Knesset majority; to the surprise of many, he had succeeded in winning the support of the entire Jewish community in the United States; the vote of the Jewish population in Israel had proved rather conclusively that the great majority did not support any negotiated solution not in accordance with the Likud strategy.
Nevertheless, the trip to Washington ended in failure. The theatrical stunts and facile demagogy were insufficient to mask Israel's refusal to make any steps toward a compromise acceptable to the various Arab regimes. The differing American and Israeli conceptions of the modalities of the coming Geneva conference became apparent as the Zionist government refused to make ambiguous declarations or to hypocritically appear prepared to negotiate. Unless there is very strong pressure, the Israeli reaction to which would be difficult to predict, Israel is not prepared to accept a solution that includes the PLO. The Begin government says so openly, and even adds that the whole question of Israeli sovereignty over "historic Palestine" is not ne gotiable.
The problem for the new government does not lie in its strategy, which remains fundamentally that of its predecessors, but in the cover it now has to lend the demagogic criticism it imade of the parties previously in power. Indeed, when the Labor coalition established eighty colonies in the territories occupied in 1967 (assiduously avoiding thunderous declarations), the right opposition upped the ante and supported the extremists of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of Faith), which demanded "colonies everywhere immediately."
Today the Gush Emunim and the Likud rank and file are demanding that Likud make good on its promises and unconditionally support the colonies established by the partisans of Greater Israel. It is here that the conflict with Washington is most evident and clearly shows that the interests of Tel Aviv do not necessarily coincide with those of its most important ally. As the report of the Brookings Institution pointed out two years ago, U.S. interest requires permanent movement, even if only by millimeters; Israel, on the other hand, remains interested in blocking any process, at least as far as the Palestinian question is concerned.
The new Israeli government thus remains confronted with the same problems as those of its predecessors, aggravated by the commitments it had made when it was still in the opposition.
Histadrut Elections
As far as economic and social policy is concerned, the situation is a bit better for the Begin team. Indeed, the balance-sheet of the Labor Party was catastrophic. In spite of a real decline in the purchasing power of the workers, the economic crisis had not been resolved. The general sentiment that there was no coherent economic plan enabled the opposition parties, both Likud and Dash, to put themselves forward as capable of putting the Israeli economy on an even keel again. Relatively little involved in the financial scandals, the Likud leaders enjoy some confidence among the workers. Thus, the ruling economists merely had to implement their plans rapidly.
Contrary to the Labor Party, which has always cloaked its offensive policy against the workers in "working-class"
phraseology, Likud has never concealed its objectives: toughen anti-strike legislation, reduce the workers' buying power by more than 10%, and "rationalize unemployment" through the creation of "floating minimum unemployment." Quite significantly, Minister of Finance Simha Ehrlich has chosen the sadly famous Milton Friedman as an economic adviser, and the latter hurried to Israel to help the new government set the economy in order.
In the space of three months, and without triggering any significant response from the workers, the new government has succeeded in reducing subsidies to products of prime necessity by more than 20% Family allowances for the first two chil dren have been eliminated, several thousand jobs have been cut from the public sector, and a bill aimed at banning the right to strike in "vital" sectors of the economy has been drafted. Concurrently, a whole series of measures, especially fiscal ones, have been taken to facilitate investment and increase the rate of profit.
This success in the first stage of the new government's economic plan is due on the one hand to the hope, shared by broad layers of workers, that the new leadership team will be capable of reorganizing the economic system that has always been dominated by the Zionist workers movement, even before the foundation of the state of Israel, and on the other hand to the complete inability of the leadership of the Histadrut to mount a counteroffensive.
Since the Knesset elections were held ahead of schedule, for the first time in many years the elections to the Histadrut were held one month later; normally they are held before the Knesset elections. In the past the results have been more or less the same in both elections, since the electorate and the slates are virtually identical. But that was not the case this time. The Labor Party was able to regain nearly all the votes it had lost to the rightist formations and thus to preserve its absolute majority in the leading apparatus of what is a state within the Zionist state.
How can this rapid change be explained? In essence, there are two main answers. First, a defeat in the Histadrut elections would have meant not only a death blow to the Labor Party, which given its present crisis would not have recovered from a double defeat, but also and more importantly the loss of the Labor bureaucracy's greatest material base. For more than forty years these bureaucrats have been accustomed to confusing their own pockets and the treasuries of their parties with the state treasury and the various political structures, the Histadrut among them. This has been shown by the recent financial scandals. It is clear that Labor's concern about this material base played a role in the Histadrut elections. For example, the members of the kibbutzim, a large minority of whom had turned to the rightist parties during the Knesset elections, voted nearly unanimously for the Labor bloc in the Histadrut elections.
The Labor Party, infused with the energy of a fighter with his back to the wall, really mobilized for the Histadrut elections. The entire country was covered with posters; hundreds of meetings were organized in the neighborhoods and industrial centers, and the entire kibbutz movement placed its resources and membership at the disposal of the Labor apparatus. The "class-struggle" style was suddenly in vogue, and Shimon Peres was suddenly talking about socialism and the dangers of big capital trying to challenge the gains of the workers. It is true that some Likud leaders did not take these elections seriously enough and made statements that may have frightened many workers of the privileged layers; they spoke, for instance, of dismantling Histadrut-owned industry and challenging of many of its privileges. The challenge to the structures of the Histadrut and to some of the privileged layers it organizes was a sufficient danger for the Labor bureaucracy to mobilize energetically to preserve its grip on this immense apparatus.
The second reason for the Labor victory in the Histadrut elections brings us back to the real causes of the Likud victory in the Knesset elections. Thousands of voters had opted for Likud to express their defiance of the Labor bloc and not because they wanted Begin in power. They were often frightened by the results of their vote, and they tried to attenuate these results by voting Labor in the Histadrut. This was especially true since the leaders of the Liberal Party (in the Likud bloc)-contrary to some leaders of Herut (Freedom), Menahem Begin's party, who utilize workingclass demagogy and have a popular basehave never concealed their class hatred and plans.
There were many who feared or hoped that a Labor victory in the Histadrut would compel the Laborites to use this apparatus to mount an offensive against Likud and regain the confidence of the voters. But nothing of the kind has happened. The Histadrut is not a class organization and the pressure of the workers cannot make itself felt within it. Its objectives and those of its Labor leadership are the same: subordinate the workers to the national interest, to the mobilization of the Zionist state against the Arab countries. So long as the privileges of the bureaucracy are not challenged, and it is not in the interest of the Zionist state to challenge them, the Likud leaders can rely on the "understanding" of the Histadrut leadership.
Moreover, the workers today are not prepared to be used by the Labor leadership against the government, which still has the confidence of many of them. A work stoppage called by the Histadrut leadership in July after the reduction of some subsidies to products of basic necessity was met with indifference and even hostility by the workers. Only a real mobilization on a clear class basis would be capable of arousing the Israeli working class, which does not at all appreciate the anti-working-class measures of the new government. But the leadership of the Histadrut will never do this. That is why the workers are taking a wait-and-see attitude and do not seem ready to respond to the increasingly severe attacks on their buying power and rights.
Although there have been few substantial changes in overall economic and political measures since the Begin government came to power, it would be wrong to say that there is no difference between the two major Israeli political currents.
The mystical-religious ideology of Menahem Begin and a portion of Likud will have effects on various aspects of political and social life in Israel: deep reforms in the content and form of public education have been instituted, with an intensification of religious and "civic" education; official declarations are permeated with religious expressions like "if God wills," "with God's help," and so on; the radio and television have been reeled in quickly, "anti-patriotic and defeatist elements" being censored.
In general, one may say that there is a feeling in Israel that a new order is taking root, one based on the traditional values which people feel had been distorted by the corrupt regime of the Labor Party: patriotism, chauvinism, and religious mysticism. Such a state of mind must inevitably have consequences on the functioning of the various institutions of the Jewish state and on its personnel, in which there will be a gradual turnover.
But the new order is already having very concrete effects in some spheres of social life. The first victims of the new government have been women. Indeed, the religious parties with which Likud established its coalition government have demanded and obtained abolition of the law authorizing abortion (with many restrictions) as well as a further increase in the powers of the religious authorities over family life. The new government represents a real step backward for women, and all signs are that the same will be true for culture (several television broadcasts have been censored recently) and democratic rights.
Clear changes must be expected of the new government in the realm of democratic rights. Having made "return to order" and a harsh line against "troublemakers" the center of its election campaign and sincerely believing that the problems of the Jewish state are caused primarily by these "troublemakers," the Likud leadership will probably try to impose some limits on the democratic rights that still exist in Israel. Measures will be taken mainly against Arabs (we will return to this point below), but also against anyone considered extremist by the parties in power. The official threats against the Revolutionary Communist League for its political activity among the Palestinian population are unequivocal: the new government will not tolerate certain things that were tolerated by its predecessor.
It is true that Likud can more easily afford selective repression than the Labor bloc; in fact, the latter often felt limited in its acts by its Social Democratic friends and other liberals whose advice and criticism were taken rather seriously. Such is not the case with Menahem Begin, who saw Mussolini as an ally before the Second World War and whose friends are Vorster and Ian Smith. And they will not complain if democratic rights are violated in Israel.
The Occupied Palestinians
As far as the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation is concerned, a distinction must be made between those who have lived in Israel since 1948 and those who inhabit the territories occupied since 1967. Paradoxically, it is the former, officially citizens of the Jewish state, who will suffer more from the new Israeli order.
It is no accident that one of the first statements of the new leading team concerned those the Zionists call "the Arabs of Israel": "We will aid the positive elements within the Arab population," declared Amnon Lin, the man who had demanded the outlawing of the Communist Party (Rakah) and is now in charge of Arab affairs, "but we will act with a firm hand against subversive elements who have no loyalty to the state of Israel."
And this is just what the new government has begun to do. On the one hand a number of statements have been made asserting that the refugees of Birim and Ikrit would finally be allowed to return to their villages, which provoked a storm of criticism from the Labor Party. (The inhabitants of these Arab villages were "temporarily" ousted from their homes in 1948 and have been denied permission to return. Nevertheless, they are "good Arabs" who had not fought against the Zionist state and voted in their majority for the right-wing Zionist parties.) On the other hand, some measures of intimidation have been taken against presumably radical elements: arrest of a theater troupe, infiltration of informers into Arab marriage ceremonies, which often become Arab cultural demonstrations, interrogation of known nationalist leaders, etc.
The initial effect of this policy has been to generate a wait-and-see attitude among the Palestinian population of Israel, many militants preferring to find out what the policy of the new government will be before undertaking normal political activity.
The attitude of the Begin government toward the territories occupied since 1967 is dictated by the desire to integrate these territories into the state of Israel rapidly. This is what accounts for the project to grant the inhabitants of these territories the same social rights as Israeli citizens. It is also what explains the plan of General Sharon, minister of agriculture and chairman of the ministerial colonization committee. His plan calls for the rapid establishment of (Jewish) industrial centers throughout the West Bank, linked together by major strategic routes. The only problem with this plan is its financing, and it is not clear that the United States is prepared to foot the bill for this sort of project.
Nevertheless, the annexationist projects may paradoxically have a positive effect: Any opportunity for legal political activity would open new possibilities for the political forces struggling against the Zionist occupiers under very difficult conditions. Now, the annexationist project requires precisely a relative liberalization of the existing political system. Nonetheless, up to now the new government has not had to use especially harsh repressive measures, not out of concern for liberalism, but because the popular mobilization is now experiencing a certain ebb.
Since the Labor Party has not emerged from its crisis, one might expect a substantial strengthening of the forces to the left of the Labor Party and an increase in their activity. Not at all.
The Zionist left was crushed in the May elections, despite the fact that it presented a united slate for the first time. This would not be so serious if these forces envisaged counterbalancing their electoral weakness with a real policy of mobilization in the streets. It is possible, even on a Zionist basis, to initiate mobilizations against the most repugnant aspects of the government's policy. Nevertheless, even though the left Zionist forces have characterized the Begin government's policy as suicidal (with great exaggeration), they have never been less capable of mounting a political offensive.
Before the elections the left Zionists justified their hesitations and retreats by the fear that the far right would profit from their attacks on the Labor government. We have seen how effective that tactic was. Now that Likud has won the elections anyway, the argument has been reversed, but the conclusions remain virtually identical: the workers forces and those of sound mind (which means the Labor Party and the Zionist left) must unite before launching an offensive against the Likud. The Zionist left, which has hitched itself to the wagon of a paralyzed Labor Party and is in no way prepared to break with "national unity," is thus condemned to immobilism.
What is more serious is that the Communist Party is developing a similar strategy. For Rakah the priority is to "stop the chauvinist right" and establish a broad front of "realistic forces" in which the Labor Party would be the dominant element. While this strategy has some coherence for the left Zionist parties, it becomes downright absurd for the CP, which in spite of its successive capitulations to Zionism continues-and will continue-to be considered an enemy party by the Zionist formations, one standing outside the "national consensus."
Apart from speeches in the Knesset, the only mass response that has yet been mounted to the reactionary projects of the new government has come from the feminist movement (and this has remained quite limited). In the framework of a broad campaign against the new laws aimed at outlawing abortion again and strengthening the power of religious authorities over family questions, the women's movement has organized several demonstrations that have succeeded in alerting broad layers of the population. The feminist movement is preparing a series of central campaigns this autumn, and these will probably be the only initiatives against the new order of the Begin government.
Obviously, revolutionary militants are supporting this mobilization, which in their view should serve as a model of the sort of response that is necessary and possible today: broad united fronts for the defense of democratic rights, against the annexation of the occupied territories and the new colonization plans, for defense of the rights of workers, and so on.
But what is central in the strategy of the anti-Zionist organizations today is to struggle against any illusion that defends moderate Zionism as embodied in the Labor Party against an extremist and dangerous Zionism allegedly represented by the present government. This mystification, which preaches relying on the Labor Party to "stop the chauvinist right," may be the biggest factor in paralyzing the beginning of a mobilization of the Jewish workers in defense of their immediate interests.
Labor Zionism is no more progressive and proletarian than the Zionism of Menahem Begin and Ariel Sharon. Both aim at lining the Jewish workers up behind a policy of expansion of the colonial state and the strengthening of its military might. To be convinced that the Labor Party does not stand to the left of the present government it is sufficient to examine the present criticism Peres and Rabin are making of the government, from an even more chauvinist standpoint. The Labor Party opposes the return of the Birim and Ikrit villagers to their homes and attacks the document of Vance and Dayan as a "capitulation to American pressure" and as evidence of the government's "suicidal moderation."
For the Israeli workers, the alternative to the Begin government is their independent mobilization in defense of jobs, buying power, and democratic rights. They must become conscious that they will pay a high price-in human life, in the reduction of their living standards, and in the erosion of their own democratic rights-for any attack on the rights of the Palestinian masses, any intensification of repression or continuation of the occupation.
Against the various attempts to establish "peace fronts" or "fronts of the workers forces" that are merely attempts to attach the workers to the Labor Party, revolutionary communists call for the formation of a broad anti-Zionist united front assembling all political forces struggling against the national oppression of the Palestinian Arab people around an intransigent action program for defense of all democratic rights.
This perspective, which was at the center of the election campaign of the Revolutionary Communist League (Matzpen- Marxist) is now getting some response from the most radicalized layers of the Palestinian population of Israel and their organizations and may soon be concretized in a series of united initiatives against the most flagrant government measures.
What will be more difficult, but no less important, will be the mobilization of more and more Jewish workers around these initiatives. They must be made to understand, through action and systematic agitation, that the interests of the Jewish workers require a break with national union and the fusion of the struggle they are waging, still in a dispersed manner, for defense of their immediate interests with the national struggle of the Palestinian masses.
As the embodiment of the ultimate logic of Zionism, the Begin government will allow for the demystification of a number of illusions in the Jewish state, both inside and outside it. Anti-Zionist militants will do all they can to enable the Jewish and Arab masses to draw the necessary conclusions, above all the need to unite to build in struggle the alternative to the new order now taking root in Israel. Not a return to the situation that preceded the May elections, but an alternative that puts an end to the root of the oppression Zionist colonialism inflicts, although in different ways, on both the Jewish and Arab masses.