With the worsening economic situation in Jordan, the population is being and will be pushed into one of two camps: Islamic fundamentalism or socialism. So far, Islamic fundamentalism is the more popular of the two. Such is the traditional stronghold of Islam in Jordan, that without even questioning the viability of this solution, people blindly accept the so-called Word of Islam.
The fact that Zionism continues to posit the Hebrew speaking Jewish people of Israel as part of a world Jewish nation testifies to the unique nature of both the Zionist project and the essentially artificial nature of Israeli nationhood. Politically and economically the basis of Israeli nationalism is the sponsorship by imperialism and the consequent attempts by Israel to dominate and subjugate the Palestinian people within and the Arab peoples without. This is the material basis of Israeli Jewish nationalism.
During all those years when Israel demanded of the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate from there to Israel, all Israeli governments consistently denied the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
Revolutionary or progressive ideas cannot be derived from dogmas that claim divine origin and include so many reactionary and oppressive tenets, not least those concerning women. Religious ideology is therefore a false consciousness, which mystifies the potential revolutionary consciousness of the oppressed and has often provided a cover for the manoeuvres of the ruling classes.
In 1982 the West Bank's entire hydrological system was integrated into the Israeli national water company Mekorot. A suppressed report, prepared a few years ago, saw this integration of water systems as an obstacle to Palestinian independence: "It may thus become practically and politically impossible to sever the water administration of the Occupied Territories from those of Israel".
Eight young women had been arrested that night and deported to 'Amman the following morning. Eight women, representing eight families in a village of 60 families. A great suffering for the women, for their men and children and for many of their relatives.
Women Against Fundamentalism was launched on May 6th 1989, as a network to challenge the rise of fundamentalism in all religions. Women's groups involved in this campaign include Southall Black Sisters, Brent Asian Women's Refuge and the Iranian Women's Organization in Britain.
The policies of the great majority of the Israeli-Jewish society are influenced neither by Palestinian restraint nor by lack of it, but by Palestinian force, by the Palestinians' effectiveness in causing harm to Israel ‒ be it military or financial, through other countries such as the USA.
The left and other secularists failed to mount a serious challenge to Islamization. The acceptance of Islam by the bulk of the population does not signify callous indifference to the slaughter of individual leftists; rather, it is an expression of despair. The population feels powerless.
"The Political Economy of the West Bank" not only develops and stimulates a number of important debates, it also constitutes a useful compilation of data, rendering it a valuable read for those concerned with the Palestine of today and the Palestine of tomorrow.
The following letter was written by a Palestinian leftist activist in the West Bank. It was published (in Hebrew) in December 1988 in issue #1 of Meha'ah (Protest), organ of a coalition of some of the more radical Israeli anti-occupation protest groups. The letter is directed to the less radical – and wholly Zionist – 'peace camp', including the Peace Now movement
In this article, published in place of an editorial in the first issue of Meha'ah (see Introduction to the previous item), the writer, member of the radical and anti-Zionist Socialist Organization in Israel (Matzpen) polemicizes against an article by Ari Shavit in the left-Zionist journal Politika (Politics).
This article is based on an interview with Comrade Lafif Lakhdar as well as on articles in Le Monde Diplomatique (December 1982, October 1986 and November 1988) , Le Canard Enchainé (2.11.88) and a booklet 'Immigration and French Imperialism' by Combat Prolétarien (1980).
The following report was sent to us by Professor I Shahak, Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. It was written by an Israeli who visited the Dahariyah prison compound; he managed to get in by mingling with the members of a Palestinian prisoner's family. Since this is against the rules, his name is withheld.
According to the Jerusalem Post of 7th May, very few books are allowed Into Qezi'ot. Among books that have been banned are not only tracts on Marxism and a biography of George Orwell, but also the Dialogues of Plato.
The sense in which socialists ought to be “more radical” than liberation nationalists is not in vying with the latter’s nationalism, but in putting forward revolutionary social aims. Liberation nationalists do not propose to overthrow the existing social order; what they want is just to put an end to the oppression of their own nation. Socialists, on the contrary, must seek to promote in every national liberation struggle the aim of overthrowing the existing order of class exploitation.
This is a re-print of an article that was originally published in September 1969. "The formula that restricts the struggle to Palestine alone, despite its revolutionary appearance, derives from a reformist attitude which seeks partial solutions within the framework of conditions now existing in the region. In fact, partial solutions can only be implemented through a compromise with imperialism and Zionism".
The Palestinian working class and its trade-union movement is bearing the brunt of many of the Israeli fascist measures. Eight out of the eleven members of the Executive Committee of the General Federation have been arrested, including the General Secretary, Mahmud Ziadah. More than 50 other members, including members of the Federation's Council, secretaries of branch unions, members of Administrative Committees and active unionists, have also been arrested.
This English-language appeal, dated 2 November 1988, was sent to Khamsin by the Women's Organization for Women Political Prisoners, a committee recently set up in Israel, devoted to defending the rights of women political prisoners, both Palestinian and Israeli.
The struggle for independence is foremost in the mind of the Polisario. The declared intention of the Polisario is the setting up of an independent, secular, republic, with a multi-party system, where religion is a private matter, and where the status of women will be equal to that of men.