Gorbachev's proposals signal

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On May 13, 1987, A. Vasilyev, the assistant director of the Institute of Africa of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, wrote an article in the Moscow daily Izvestia in support of the idea of an international conference on the Middle East. Vasilyev's article is revealing:

"To put an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Soviet Union favors an international peace conference... A close examination of our proposals will show that they do not encroach on the rights and security of Israel... The existence of the state of Israel cannot be debated at an international conference."

Vasilyev's support to Israel and his concern for its security—the rationale the Zionist state has always used to crush the Palestinian people-should come as no surprise. The Soviet Union, along with the United States, was one of the first to recognize the Zionist state in 1948.

It is nonetheless somewhat surprising that on Jan. 19, 1988, at the very the state of Israel would remove a weapon from Zionism, quite the opposite would occur. The Zionist politicians would then be able to say that even the "terrorists" have been forced to accept Israel.

They would say that 40 years of "irrational intransigence" were responsible for the conflict and that at last it is clear that the only Palestinians with whom Israel can deal are the ones who all along accepted the Israeli state.

Jesse Jackson's denunciations of the P.L.O.'s past positions of "destruction and frustration" and his appeal for "mutual recognition" play right into the hands of the Zionists. Jackson's strong implication is that the Palestinians have gotten what they deserved over the years.

Were South Africans to advocate an Weissman: Ralph, the news director of the station has just walked in with a dispatch from Associated Press which says that "Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat is offering to make a deal with Israel and the United States. He says that if those countries agree to an international conference on Middle East peace, he will recognize Israel's right to exist. The White House says this could be an encouraging sign..."

There has been a lot of noise about an international conference to discuss a negotiated solution. What do you make of this noise?

Schoenman: An international conference in which the Israeli state and its sponsor, the United States, are the principal participants is a conference which would be designed to find a formulation that is compatible with imperialism holding its sway in the region and which would be predicated upon legitimizing and preserving the Israeli state.

You cannot short-circuit the process through which people have to struggle for their emancipation from brutal forms of rule of this nature.

The P.L.O., which has been the national expression of the Palestinian people, has never followed through on a political program or strategy for the populations of the West Bank or Gaza, or for that matter for the people within Israel itself.

At a certain stage of the P.L.O.'s development, a program for Palestine-that of a democratic and secular Palestine—was put forward. This would be a Palestine where rights would be granted to anyone regardless of ethnicity and religion. But in the recent period, the moment the Israeli government was imposing a policy of collective punishment upon the insurgent people of the West Bank and Gaza, the Soviet Union announced that an Israeli delegation would be welcomed in Moscow to discuss the resumption of diplomatic relations.

The Soviet bureaucracy broke off ties with Israel following the 1967 Middle East war. But within the last year the Soviet Union has established a consulate in Israel. Moreover, according to the Washington Post (Jan. 20, 1988), "Moscow has said that ties [with Israel] could be resumed in the course of a Middle East settlement process, dropping its insistence that Israel first retreat from territories occupied in 1967."

This is just one more example of what Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meant when he promised Ronald Reagan that he would help promote "regional stability" in key areas of the world. —R.S.

international conference predicated upon the preservation of the South African regime, the guarantee of its security, and the policing of a Black entity by the apartheid regime itself, no one would fail to see the social and political meaning of such a proposition.

An international conference designed to legitimize the security interests of apartheid Israel in exchange for a Palestinian "Bantustan" can never be viable except if a Palestinian leadership were to provide this plan with protective coloration.

Such an outcome will merely hand to the P.L.O. the unenviable task of policing the Palestinian people and of converting self-determination into another sad replica of the country-selling regimes which plague the Arab masses-from Jordan to Syria and him or herself with so blatant an effort to betray the long years of struggle for Palestinian self-determination and emancipation, let alone translate the Palestinian cause into a plea for a role in preserving the status quo in the region—with its grinding poverty and relentless exploitation and subordination to U.S. imperialist control.

Another strategy needed The rights of the Palestinian people can never be advanced in this way.

The alternative is before us in the upsurge of the Palestinian masses. The struggle awaits a political strategy which poses the need to dismantle the Zionist state of Israel and to establish a democratic and secular Palestine.

Such a program was first advanced by Arafat's Fatah organization in 1968— though it has since been shunted aside in P.L.O. has abandoned this perspective, focusing instead upon what they call an "independent state" or a "twostate solution"-which is based upon accepting the continued existence of the Israeli state.

The Israeli state, as I mentioned before, with its $90 billion subsidy over the past 40 years, is nothing but an extension of U.S. power in the region. It can only exist upon a base of exploited Palestinian labor and expansion. I do not regard an international conference as offering any prospects for the emancipation of the Palestinian people.

Weissman: It seems to me historically what you've had is two nationalisms confronting each other: Jewish nationalism, otherwise known as Zionism, and Palestinian nationalism. I'd like you to continue your discussion on what you think can be expected to come out of these recent events...

Schoenman: I don't accept your formulations of two nationalisms, of Jewish vs. Palestinian nationalism in the area. The Zionist movement is a colonial movement analogous to the colonial movements in Algeria or Southern Rhodesia.

I don't think anyone would say that in Rhodesia there were two nationalisms: European nationalism and African nationalism. Everybody understood that what was existing in Rhodesia was a colonial-settler state. And that is what we have in Israel: a colonial-settler state in which the people who came as settlers came with arms or came to live on land that had been taken by force of arms from the indigenous population.

Weissman: We probably will have to discuss this at some other time. We only have one minute left. I am democratic Palestine of Fatah's vision was one "in which Jews and Palestinians would live as equals and without discrimination." Arafat described his proposal as follows: "We were saying 'no' to the Zionist state, but we were saying 'yes' to the Jewish people of Palestine. To them we were saying, 'You are welcome to live in our land, but on one condition-You must be prepared to live among us as equals, not as dominators."

We in this country must not advocate a peace based on acquiescence, a peace based on a "Bantustan" policed by Israel and its agents.

We must link our demands for the release of all the political prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza and for an end to the deportations of Palestinian activists to demands which address the root of the conflict in the Middle East-that is, the very existence of the state of Israel.

And for that we must campaign end all U.S. aid to the Israeli state.

This pamphlet by Ralph Schoenman, former general secretary of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and author of the U.N. report 'Prisoners of Israel, discusses the origins and sordid history of Zionism.

With thorough documentation, it shatters the myths that color the consciousness of most people in this society about Zionism.

'The Hidden History of Zionism 96 pages. Price: $3.00. Send $1.00 for postage. Order today going to give it to you to wrap up think will come out of the situation.

Schoenman: I would just like to reiterate that we have to recognize that the state of Israel and the Zionist movement have been mythologized, that what we have here is a colonial movement modeled after the South African and Rhodesian colonial ideas of the late 19th century.

The struggle of the Palestinian people will continue. The attempts on the part of many in the leadership of the P.L.O. to cut the struggle short or to settle for less than the emancipation of their people cannot, in my judgment, succeed in the long run.

To my way of thinking, what has happened now in the past six to eight weeks in the West Bank and Gaza is the beginning of the generalized uprising of the Palestinian population in the territories, which is inevitably going to take on an increasingly political form.

I think the question of where the struggle goes turns in large part upon the emergence of a leadership from within the Palestinian struggle which poses the alternative of a Palestine without Zionism, of a Palestine which is not based upon rights flowing from ethnicity or from religious affiliations.

The future of the struggle of the Palestinian people is tied up with a political strategy which addresses itself to the working-class Jews as well, and which calls upon the Jews to join with the Palestinians in a struggle for a democratic and secular Palestine, in the struggle for a socialist society in Palestine and the Middle East.

IST ACTION FEBRUARY 1

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By CARL A serious debate has erupted in the anti-intervention movement over what stance to take toward events in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Northern California Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice has become a focal point for this dispute because it has refused to include demands referring to the Middle East in its previous demonstrations.

The Mobilization is one of the most authoritative local coalitions in the United States. It has consistently organized major protests during a three-year period with broad labor, church, and community support. Last year, it organized the Western States Mobilization of 80,000 in San Francisco.

The coalition maintained its original four demands throughout this period—No U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean; Freeze and Reverse the Nuclear Arms Race; End U.S. Support to South African FINAMORE exposing the colonial-settler character of the state of Israel.

Separate action coalitions needed A separate coalition needs to be built for this purpose. Because of confusion around issues in the Middle East, the task won't be easy. A number of recent coalitions have already made serious political errors.

Supporting self-determination for the Palestinian people, for example, should not be confined to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This is the most common mistake made by coalitions eager to obtain broad support.

The apparent broader support that comes from limiting political proposals to the West Bank and Gaza prevents a real defense of Palestinian rights. There can neither be peace nor justice for Palestinians—or Jews-as long as the Zionist state of Israel exists.

The Palestinian fight for self-determination is necessarily a struggle to replace the Zionist state of Israel

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