A new start

by Uri Avnery

One day the Israeli Labor Party felt that it needed a new leader.

That happens to this party every couple of years. The party is in bad shape. It looks more like a political corpse than a living organism. Wanted: a new leader, charismatic, energetic, enthusiastic.

So they found Avi Gabbay.

Why him? Nobody is really sure.

Avi Gabbay has no visible qualities of political leadership. No charisma at all. No special energy. No enthusiasm himself and no ability to inspire enthusiasm in others.

After serving as a government employee dealing with the mobile phone industry, he himself became the successful director of the largest mobile phone concern. Then he went into politics and joined a moderate right-wing party, and was appointed Minister for the Protection of the Environment. When the extreme right-winger Avigdor Lieberman was appointed Minister of Defense, Gabbay resigned from the government and his party and joined Labor. That was only a year ago.

He has one significant asset: he is a Mizrahi, an oriental Jew. His parents are immigrants from Morocco, he is the seventh of eight children. Since the Labor party is considered a Western, Ashkenazi, elitist grouping, these passive attributes are important. Up to a point.

Gabbay did not waste time in presenting his political identity card.

First he made a speech asserting that he will not sit in the same government with the “Joint List.”

The Joint List is the united (or disunited) list of the Arab community in Israel. It joins together the three very different “Arab” parties: the Communist party, which is overwhelmingly Arab, but includes some Jews (including a Jewish member of parliament), the Balad party, which is secular and nationalist, and a religious Islamic party.

How come these diverse parties created a joint list? They owe this achievement to the genius of the great Arab-hater, Avigdor Lieberman (see above), who saw that all three parties were small and decided to eliminate them by raising the electoral threshold. But rather than perish separately they decided to survive together. There is no doubt that their list represents the vast majority of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, who constitute more than 20% of the population. Strange as this may sound, every fifth Israeli is an Arab.

The simple numerical fact is that without the support of the Arab members in the Knesset, no left-wing government can exist. Yitzhak Rabin would not have become prime minister, and the Oslo agreement would not have come into being, without the support “from the outside” of the Arab bloc.

Then why did they not join Rabin’s government? Both sides were afraid of losing votes. Many Jews cannot envision a government including Arabs, and many Arabs cannot envision their representatives sharing “collective responsibility” in a government mainly occupied with fighting Arabs.

This has not changed. It is highly unlikely that the Arabs would join a Gabbay government if invited, and even more unlikely that they would receive such an invitation.

So why make such a declaration? Gabbay is no fool. Far from it. He believes that the Arabs are in his pocket anyhow. They could not join a Likud government. By making a blatantly anti-Arab declaration, he hopes to attract right-wing voters.

His predecessor, Yitzhak Herzog, publicly complained that too many people considered the Labor party to consist of “Arab-lovers.” Terrible.

If anyone hoped that this was a one-time anomaly, Gabbay put them right. After the first blow came more.

He declared that “we have no partner for peace.” This is the most dangerous slogan of the populists. “No partner” means that there is no sense in making an effort. There will never be peace. Never ever.

He declared that God promised the Jews the entire land between the sea and the Jordan. That is not quite correct: God promised us all the land from the Euphrates to the River of Egypt. God never made good on that promise.

Last week Gabbay declared that in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians, not a single Jewish settlement in the West Bank would be evacuated.

Until now, there has been tacit agreement between Israeli and Palestinian peace activists that peace will be based on a limited exchange of territories. The so-called “settlement blocs” (clusters of settlements near the green-line border) will be joined to Israel, and an equivalent area of Israeli territory (for example, along the Gaza Strip) will be ceded to Palestine. This would leave some dozens of “isolated” settlements in the West Bank, generally inhabited by fanatical religious right-wingers, which must be evacuated by force.

Gabbay’s new statement means that after a peace agreement, these islands of racist extremism will continue to exist where they are. No Palestinian will ever agree to that. It makes peace impossible, even in theory.

In general, Gabbay agrees to the “two-state solution” – but under certain conditions. First, the Israel army would be free to act throughout the demilitarized Palestinian state. The Israeli army would also be positioned along the Jordan River, turning the Palestinian “state” into a kind of enclave.

This is a “peace plan” without takers. Gabbay is much too clever not to realize this. But all this is not devised for Arab ears. It is meant to attract right-wing Israelis. Since a Labor-led “center-left” coalition needs rightist or religious votes, the reasoning looks sound. But it isn’t.

There is no chance whatsoever that a significant number of rightists will move to the left, even if the left is led by a person like Gabbay. Rightists detest the Labor party, not since yesterday, but have done so for generations.

The Labor Party was born a hundred years ago. It was the main political force that led to the creation of the State of Israel, and led it for almost thirty years. Its power was immense. Many (including me) accused it of dictatorial tendencies.

During all these years, the main occupation of the Zionist leadership was the historical fight against the Palestinian people for the possession of the country. Except for a tiny minority, the party was always nationalist, even militaristic. It was left-wing only in its social activities. It created the Jewish workers movement, the powerful trade union (the “Histadrut”), the Kibbutzim and much more.

This social network has long since degenerated. Corruption became endemic, many scandals were uncovered (mainly by my magazine). When the right-wing under Menachem Begin finally took over, in 1977, the Labor Party was already a living corpse. It has changed its name many times (its current name is “the Zionist Camp”) but it has dwindled from election to election.

Avi Gabbay was called in as a savior. His nationalist declarations are conceived as patent medicines. No chance.

Can the Labor Party be saved at all? I doubt it.

In the last elections, after a powerful, spontaneous social upheaval, there seemed to be a new chance. Some of the young leaders, female and male, who had appeared from nowhere, joined the Labor Party and entered the Knesset. They are genuine leftists and peace activists. Somehow, their voices became quieter and quieter. Instead of inspiring the party, the party subdued them. It seems to be beyond repair.

A question never asked is — does the party really, really want to assume power? On the face of it, the answer is yes, of course. Isn’t that the supreme prize of politics?

Well, I doubt it. The existence of a parliamentary opposition is a cozy one. I know, because I was in that situation for ten years. The Knesset is a good place, you are coddled all the time by the ushers, you get a good salary and an office, you have no responsibilities at all (unless you create them for yourself). You must, of course, make an effort to be re-elected every four years. So, if you are not particularly keen on becoming a minister, with all the work and responsibilities and public exposure that this entails, you just stay put.

What is the practical conclusion? To forget the Labor Party and create a new political force.

We need new leaders, young, charismatic and resolute, with clear-cut aims, who can energize the peace camp.

I do not subscribe to the picture of a public divided between a right-wing majority and a left-wing minority, with the orthodox on one side and the Arabs on the other.

I believe that there is a right-wing minority and a left-wing minority. Between the two there is the great mass of the people, waiting for a message, desiring peace but brainwashed into believing that peace is impossible (“there is no partner”).

What we need is a new start.

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Whither Now Democracy in Spain? Mediation and Dialogue or More Violence and Alienation?

An Open Letter to Spain and Catalonia

We watched with growing concern the rising tension between Madrid and Catalonia in the lead up to the October 1st referendum regarding the future of Catalonia. Neither side is free of errors in dealing with the process, which did not start with this referendum but instead seven years ago with the Constitutional Tribunal invalidation of the 2010 autonomy statute passed by the Spanish Parliament.

While little has been done by the central government since then to adequately address the simmering issue, we would not have predicted the extreme and unhelpful measures emanating from Madrid in response to the referendum. The scenes of police brutality, violence and the use of rubber bullets against the Catalonian people on October 1st are not anything we would have expected in today’s Spain. We have joined leaders around the world in condemning the use of force in Catalonia — yet we see the apology of the Spanish government of that violence as a step in the right direction. Yet so much more needs to be done. And time is short.

While we do not take a position on constitutional issues, we believe that mature democracies find ways to allow freedom of expression. Other nations have done so with separatist referendums carried out, for example, by Scotland and by Quebec. In each case the “no” vote won. Scotland remains part of the UK and Quebec part of Canada. We believe that violent responses by a central government to desires for free expression of a citizenry only further heighten hostility and create disaffection where it might not have existed previously.

We support the calls for mediation and negotiations toward a peaceful resolution of the current stand-off between the Spanish government and Catalonia. A people who feel repressed seldom go quietly into the night.

Original signers:

Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize (1997)
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize (1976)
Betty Williams, Nobel Peace Prize (1976)
Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize (1980)
Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Nobel Peace Prize (1982)
President José Ramos Horta, Nobel Peace Prize (1996)
Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize (2003)
Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize (2011)
Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Peace Prize (2011)

Since this was first published on October 9, more Nobel laureates in various fields have added their signatures. However, with the arrest of prominent Catalan independence activists and Madrid’s moves to suspend the region’s autonomy and depose its elected government, the crisis has deepened.

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The final phase of Panama’s capitalist development?

by Marco Gandásegui, hijo

We face a changing social reality. A few decades ago we had an economy based on agriculture and services offered to the shipping route. The fortunes that had conquered political power collected the crumbs owing to the country’s geographical position. The A great many workers managed to survive by informal labor on the outskirts of Panama City and Colon as well as in rural areas. We had high rates of illiteracy and contagious diseases. We lacked a state capable of defining national policies. It was an unstable political system, subordinated to the hegemonic world power of the time.

The 21st century shows a country quite different from that described above. Political power is in the hands of a financial capitalist class that dominates the transit route — the Panama Canal and its economic environment. There still persists a mass of informal workers in the marginal areas of Panama City. This coexists with a working class and middle classes inserted into the consumer market. The incidence of illiteracy has been reduced to almost zero and the contagious diseases mostly eradicated. Educational levels have stagnated and health services have collapsed for the informal workers who represent more than 50 percent of the population.

Even when the country managed to get the United States to evacuate the military bases surrounding the Panama Canal Zone, pull up the colonial “stakes” around the Canal Zone and turn over the waterway in 1999, it still didn’t have a government capable of defining national policies. The political system continues to be unstable and dependent on the hegemonic power.

In the 20th century Panama went through three phases of capitalist development. The first was the continuation of dependent mercantile capitalism. A major capitalist investment (the railroad and the canal) would reproduce company town capitalist social relations. This was replaced, beginning with the Second World War, with an industrial capitalism dependent on big investments in North American technologies and generated a combative working class and youth movement. Starting with the US invasion of 1989, the Washington Consensus of neoliberal policies dismantled industry and a good part of agriculture. This, in turn, produced a succession of conservative governments (1990-2017) that dismantled the popular organizations and deactivated the militancy of the youth.

The Panamanian industrial bourgeoisie that emerged and prospered between 1935 and 1980 abandoned the manufacturing sector and invested its money in the financial sector. Panamanian banking replaced industry as the “engine” of the capitalist economy. The reforms to the canal treaty with the United States in 1935 and 1955 jump-started industry. It was supposed that the Torrijos-Carter Treaty of 1977 — not considering the one about neutrality — would give the industrial sector the impulse that it needed to be competitive. General Torrijos’s watchword about giving “the most collective use” to the canal revenues was twice replaced after his violent death in 1981. The first was when General Noriega, between 1983 and 1987, tried to transform the former Canal Zone into a center for training an army. The second was after the invasion when Washington turned to “the market as a fundamental tool for assigning the resources” generated by the canal.

Currently the Panama Canal Authority collects some $3 billion that it can’t invest in national development projects. In the next five years that will be around $15 billion. About $10 billion will go directly into the governments coffers. This money will be in service to the great foreign corporations that invest in projects ranging from seaports, railroads, mines, shipping and real estate.

Without a national development project, the country has no vision of the future. Nor can we hope to study the opportunities that come to the country. Companies from China threw out the idea of a “bullet” train between Panama City and the Costa Rican border. The people in charge, with their lack of vision, can only guess that they are welcome.

It’s possible that we are in the third and final phase of capitalist development. It is urgent that broad sectors of society, in an organized fashion, assume responsibility for leading this country into the framework of a national development plan.

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