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[The original contains many links.--DC]
23/07/08
Monthly Review Press
Reclaiming the Commons in Palestine/Israel:
¡Ya Basta!/Khalas!
by Bill Templer
The regime that will succeed the nation-state will not be the fruit of
preconception or social engineering, but of sociological and political
imagination wielded through transformative actions.
-- Gustavo Esteva
Que se vayan todos ('Let's get rid of them all').
-- message written on the walls of Argentina
The No-state Solution
Even as the neo-liberal turn takes fierce hold on the Palestinian
economy, the unending impasse in Palestine/Israel points up an ever more
apparent fact: the nation-state is unworkable in its conventional
capitalist sense. Palestine exemplifies the dead end of thinking that
the state is any kind of a 'solution.' My reflections on the impasse in
Palestine/Israel are in the spirit of Andrej Grubacic:
"what is needed, not just in the Balkans, is an alternative to
nationalism, colonialism and capitalism. [. . .] It should be a
politics of a Balkan federation. A participatory society, built from
the bottom up, through struggles for the creation of an inclusive
democratic awareness, participatory social experiments, and an
emancipatory practice that would win the political imagination of all
people in the region."
Rage and Outrage in Ni'lin
Now, in the midst of the stench of the tear gas in Ni'lin, the hail of
bullets against the peaceful, as hundreds resist the building of the
Wall and the murderous Ihtilal (Occupation *** Suffocation), we have to
understand the enemy is not just the Israeli state and the plutocracy
and power it represents. Not just the Zionist state. It is this
nation-state itself: we need to move beyond its violence and blindness,
hype and illusions. Jamal Juma' (2008) of the key initiative
Palestinian Grassroots Anti Apartheid Wall Campaign writes: "Nil'in will
soon be ghettoized and isolated from the rest of the West Bank, with its
main entrance being a tunnel running under the segregated settler-only
road. Not only will this involve the confiscation of a further 200
dunams, but it will also effectively give the Occupation military full
control over movement in and out of the area."?
Neve Gordon reminds us that what is happening in Ni'lin is singular
resistance, "popular acts of civil disobedience that persist despite the
ruthless repression of an occupying power." And that this is
'ta'ayush,' radical solidarity: "scores of Jewish Israeli and
international activists are standing beside the Palestinians residents
as they try to stop military bulldozers from destroying Ni'lin's land."
But what he does not say is that this is part of what should become a
mass movement of resistance for another kind of society, the groundswell
for radical transformation of the whole society and economy on both
sides of this divide.
Thoughts on such transformation are not non-existent. Joel Kovel's
(2007) vision looks to a socialist alchemy of change, one centered on a
single post-capitalist state, 'Palesrael.' The Haifa Conference on the
Right of Return and the Secular Democratic State in Palestine in June
2008, organized by Abnaa elBalad and other groups, highlighted the
urgency of new thought on the single state solution, although a
socialist vision for moving forward was perhaps not clearly enough
projected. Eitan Bronstein and Norma Musih also contemplate such a
vista of radical change, imagining what a state might be after massive
refugee return:
We propose thinking about a form other than the familiar nation-state --
one that will not have to define itself in defensive terms against an
external enemy but will instead be defined by the communities of which
it is composed.
They do not say socialist commonwealth, though they may dream it. What
else can work? As in Chiapas, a Zapatista-like bottom-up movement to
capture the imagination and energy and activism of ordinary Israelis and
Palestinians has to be built. At the June conference in Tel Aviv on
implementing the massive return of Palestinian refugees, Uri Gordon was
one of the few panelists to stress the need for a socialist (and
social-anarchist) transformation at the grassroots to create a viable
foundation for any kind of a single state of Palestinians and Jews and
the building of a movement to catalyze that. Uri warned about the
dangers of continuing a capitalist neo-liberal structure for any such
polity. This seems only obvious. Yet a recent interview with Ilan
Pappé and Noam Chomsky, for instance, makes no reference to socialist
transformation as part of a solution in Palestine. We have to undo this
silence.
Thinking outside the Capitalist and Statist Box
A sustained dialogue about options within and beyond a one-state
solution is needed. But beyond all talk, it requires energizing a
movement that dares to project beyond principled opposition to the
viciousness and brutality of the Occupation and its outrages 24/7.
Building that movement. The morass in Palestine/Israel is almost an
icon of the need for such thinking. And any solution that builds toward
a new architecture of a cooperative commonwealth, based on decentralized
structures at all key scales from neighborhood on up (cf. Getting Free),
will necessarily look likewise to transforming the greater transnational
neighborhood, Mashriq and Maghreb. As Moshe Machover has often
stressed, the encompassing vision has to be socialist liberation across
the whole region, a dynamic federative socialist structure beyond the
turf of Palestine.
How can the Palestinians who are now in forced Dias****a return in
massive numbers? New ideas are advanced by Bronstein and Musih, and
there was a lot of concrete talk at the recent Tel Aviv conference on
the Refugee Right of Return. But how can there be any return to
anything other than a space transformed by a new sense of mutual aid?
How can Jewish Israelis can be awakened from decades of moral and just
plain physical blindness? Inside the Israeli Leviathan, New Profile has
been tackling that job of changing hearts, minds, and mindsets for over
a decade, laying a foundation for a paradigm ****ft in thinking and
feeling. But it won't come without a radical socialist movement.
ADRID, the Association for the Rights of the Internally Displaced, is
organizing and agitating for a just society for all citizens of the
Israeli state, and challenging Israeli apartheid. It is associated with
Ittijah, an umbrella of Arab initiatives for change inside the Israeli
Leviathan. But a movement is needed that dares to say socialism. That
dares to say: capitalism khalas, enough. Violence khalas. Otherwise
talk about a 'single democratic state' is grand naiveté. We need to get
a ball of discourse rolling in a slightly different direction. NO to
Occupation. NO to capitalism. NO to Zionism in any form. And NO to a
politics centered solely on resistance. YES to people's dignity on both
sides of this divide. YES to equity and solidarity. YES to a massive
return of all refugees, the key catalyst for changing the nature of the
Zionist state (Kovel, 2007).
Commenting on Zapatismo in Mexico, Gustavo Esteva, however, stresses the
tentativeness of what vision should be, rooted in what ordinary people
are doing and thinking:
"It seems to us to be as insane as it is ridiculous to propose that some
ideological or doctrinaire vision of that 'at large' should be a
prerequisite for us to get moving, that every political initiative must
define beforehand its final goal or the abstract future condition of the
world. Those who live with their feet on the ground don't hang
themselves with abstract 'at larges' or final finalities."
Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth
The goal of a libertarian-socialist multicultural and multi-faith
Commonwealth could begin to energize new forms of decentralized direct
democracy, people's participation and horizontalism, neighborhood
autonomy as it moves beyond received notions of a capitalist 'state' run
by a cor****ate ruling class -- in Israel a veiled dictator****p of 15
families over the Israeli economy, media, and politics.
Of, course, it's easy to say we need a mass movement striving to create
a mosaic society of ta'ayush, Arab-Jewish synergy, founded on autonomy,
authentic direct democracy, mutual aid. But beginnings can be forged,
at the most grassroots, place-based local scales. In people's own
neighborhoods, workplaces. Central here is creating a dynamism of a
"'prefigurative politics' that involves constructing concrete
alternatives, especially in terms of social relations. Prefigurative
politics thus combines reference to both dual power strategies and to
realising a libertarian and egalitarian ethos in the movement's own
structures, social dynamics and lifestyle" (Gordon, 2008).
Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods
One window looks to the kind of neighborhood Household and Home
Assemblies that James Herod envisions in Getting Free: Creating an
Association of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods (2007). That could
begin to generate a whole geometry of people's initiatives from the
bottom up, a network of dual power, the incubators of a new society of
ta'ayush and power to the people -- not just slogans, but concrete
scaffolding for transformation. Adel Samara argues that the secular
democratic state conceived without concomitant radical social and
economic transformation "will serve the Zionist and Arab Comprador
solution." I agree. But change is a process, not an event. And has to
be bottom-up. Could the turmoil in Ni'lin also generate the seeds for
that neighborhood organizing? Only they can do it.
Paradigms from other corners can be examined and learned from. The
ongoing re-establishment of the SDS in North America is a kindred
potential paradigm for ideas for participatory social activism, with a
strong left-libertarian socialist thrust. What the Power to the People
campaign in the U.S. has been doing over the past half year is in part
building that kind of movement, now newly linked with Hip Hop social
activism. And it has put two black women -- Cynthia McKinney and Latina
Rican Hip Hop activist Sister Rosa Clemente -- on the Green Party ticket
to stand in the electoral arena, challenging the cor****ate plutocracy
and its parties:
"we are sup****ting our commitment to the building of an uncompromising,
unswerving, people's movement [. . .] We are refusing to collaborate
with this Empire's system of oppression. Rather, we are working to
dismantle it and build a fundamentally and systemically different system
that addresses human needs, not human greed."
The GPUS has a clear statement on the need for exploring equitable
alternatives to a 'two-state' solution and is the only major formation
on the U.S. left to issue such a declaration.
Zapatismo and Beyond
Look to the Global South. Social pragmatist paradigms for such
organizing initiatives are now multiplying in Latin America, within
Zapatismo in Chiapas, the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil,
the rise of the indigenous peoples in Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere,
and as a complex of autonomous movements across Argentina, a "socialism
of the people, participatory and decentralized" (Sitrin, 2006). What
can be applied to spur movement building on the ground in Palestine and
inside the Israeli Leviathan? As Holloway sees it, the imperative
everywhere is horizontalidad:
"Probably we have to think of advancing through experiments and
questions: 'preguntando caminamos' -- 'walking we ask questions' -- as
the Zapatistas put it. To think of moving forward through questions
rather than answers means a different sort of politics, a different sort
of organization. If nobody has the answers, then we have to think not
of hierarchical structures of leader****p, but horizontal structures that
involve everyone as much as possible. What do we want? I think we want
self-determination -- the possibility of creating our own lives, the
assumption of our own humanity. [. . .] The drive to collective
self-determination should be the guiding principle, the utopian star
that lights up our questions and our experiments. That means, of
course, an anti-state politics."
Those horizontal structures are already forming in spaces of resistance
like Ni'lin. In Palestine under the boot, and the Israeli soldiers'
state, that would require a massive popular movement to "reclaim the
commons" among ordinary Jews and Arabs, energizing a new ensemble of
struggles for direct and inclusive democracy and participatory economy,
including dynamic inclusion of large numbers of returning refugees. It
means bringing people in the neighborhoods into a new kind of political
and economic decision-making in their own streets and communities, a
pro-active role in the management of their own affairs, their work
places. The progressive dismantling of all forms of Zionist ideology
and domination -- within workable proposals for new forms of political
life, based on local control, autonomy and creative resistance. Buoyed
by a utopian realism, with practical, workable paradigms that can be
learned from in the Peoples' Global Action and World Social Forum,
catalyzing an alchemy of social transformation bottom-up in
Israel/Falastin, centered on human dignity and autonomy. Don Gregorio,
a Yaqui Indian in Mexico, put it well: "Autonomy is not something we
ought to ask for or that anyone can give us. It is something we have,
despite everything. Its other name is dignity."
It entails a transformation in the reality of the Arab Palestinians who
are now Israeli citizens, third-class. Wakim Wakim, of ADRID, projects
that clearly:
"we need a revolution of thinking within the 1948 borders, to ensure the
rights of all of us based on legal arrangements, mutual citizen****p, a
constitution, a separation of religion and state, a new legal system to
adapt to the new reality, et cetera. An entirely new definition of a
collective identity is all of our responsibility."
It takes a little more to 'up the anti' and start talking about a
socialist revolution in thinking and grassroots organizing. There is no
alternative to this. Kovel (2007) is guarded: "perhaps it will never
come, given the awesome wealth and power at the command of the empire,
and its craven press, cowed public, and corrupted political
consciousness. Or perhaps it will. . . ."
One Big Union
Grassroots working-class syndicalism among Palestinians and Israelis,
forging new bonds of solidarity, is one pathway out of the morass of the
'national question' -- and the immense ever widening gap between poor
and rich in Israeli-Jewish society. It can become a hands-on incubator
for overcoming mutual distrust.
As the Palestinian economy is transformed to "formalize a truncated
network of Palestinian-controlled cantons and associated industrial
zones, dependent upon the Israeli occupation, and through which a pool
of cheap Palestinian labour is exploited by Israeli, Palestinian and
other regional capitalist groups," an imperative is grassroots radical
labor organizing. One option that can appeal to workers and the many
unemployed is to create IWW-like base groups in both communities. Not a
small political party, but a horizontally structured independent
movement -- oriented to people's everyday problems to make ends meet and
have a say, and broader issues of self-determination and vernacular
dignity. Building, from the bottom up, a scaffolding for organizing and
change, aspiring to "a world in which production and distribution are
organized by workers ourselves to meet the needs of the entire
population, not merely a handful of exploiters." A Wobbly union is one
such non-hierarchical vessel for nurturing autonomy and workers'
collective action. It is potentially robust, concrete, a structure that
workers and working families can understand. Gregory W. Esteven is
right on in his perception:
"I've long thought that the Industrial Workers of the World's objective
of organizing skilled and unskilled labor together, across national
boundaries, was ahead of its time. Far from being relics of a bygone
era, the work they are doing now is cutting edge. They have a better
understanding of the present conjuncture than many mainstream unions,
which have been slow to adapt to the realities of the postindustrial
economy."
Now is the time, across Palestine, from the river to the sea, and out
into the region. Here is a small paradigm.
Piqueteros against the System
Or imagine a movement like that of Argentina's piqueteros across Israel
and Palestine: protesters, many unemployed and underemployed workers,
large numbers of landless Bedouin from 'unrecognized' settlements in the
Negev (al-Naqab) and Galilee (al-Jalil), staging marches again and again
against the government to draw attention to the people's plight,
mounting the barricades against the plutocracy that rules them. And
massive non-violent struggle across the entire topography of the
Occupation. Taking the resistance in Bil'in and Ni'lin as paradigms.
As Chomsky recently stressed: "a non-violent struggle would have had
considerable prospects for success. I think it still is the only
prospect for success." ? ?Authentic organization springs from struggle,
not vice versa -- sustained struggle, and not just in resistance to the
Occupation. Samara asks: "For those who are busy marketing the S[ingle]
D[emocratic] S[tate] today: [. . .] What is their practical program? On
what basis are they going to mobilize the m*****?" It makes little
practicable sense to argue a single democratic state unless a new
conception of polity and socialist economy is its guiding vision of
transformation. Only within such a framework can they move toward
'advocacy' -- spelling out "a realistic path from here to there" -- not
simply 'proposal' (a distinction stressed by Chomsky).
Nodes for Anti-authoritarian Spaces
Nodes for an anti-authoritarian groundswell are imperative. Some are
already budding. The social-anarchist space now opened on the Israeli
left by the libertarian affinity group One Struggle (Ma'avak Ehad) needs
to be broadened and extended into Palestinian society. The need is for
popularizing its anti-authoritarian values into a grassroots movement to
prioritize equity, diversity, solidarity, and self-management within and
across the communities in this internecine struggle.
Anarchists Against the Wall is another paradigmatic space. In its
fierce commitment to direct action, AATW could serve as a mini-paradigm
of joint Palestinian-Israeli action, its praxis perhaps a template for
future more systematic radical organizing of workers (and students as
workers-to-be), One Big Union 'from the river to the sea.' AATW is
involved in both direct action and demonstrations against the Wall,
including in the villages of al-Ma'asara, south of Bethlehem, Beit
Ummar, north of Hebron, Bil'in, and recently, almost daily, facing the
brutal repression by the IDF in Ni'lin in the West Bank and elsewhere.
Some sense of the terrible repression of peaceful demonstrators is
visible here: <www.awalls.org/topics/niilin>. Here is a recent petition
against human rights abuses there:
<http://www.petitiononline.com/nilin/petition.html>.
Add your signatures.
AATW is committed to a joint struggle of Palestinians and Israelis. Its
contribution, an unprecedented mode of joint Arab-Jewish sumud
(steadfastness), is widely recognized in both the Palestinian and
Israeli media and is regularly re****ted on A-Infos. They recently
issued a call for sup****t of the legal defense of hundreds of arrested
activists. Donate if you can: <http://www.awalls.org/donations>.
Profil Hadash is another such node. Its charter stresses:
"We, a group of feminist women and men, are convinced that we need not
live in a soldiers' state. [. . .] We understand that the state of war
in Israel is maintained by decisions made by our politicians -- not by
external forces to which we are passively subject. [. . .] We will not
go on enabling them by obediently, uncritically supplying soldiers to
the military which implements them."
Its work in struggling against militarism as an ideology and everyday
mindset in a soldiers' state is exemplary.
Of core im****tance is the initiative Zochrot, foregrounding for
Israeli-Jewish consciousness the ****ba and the multiple evil and
injustice it has wrought.
Among Arab Palestinians, ARDIB, the groups inside Ittijah and other
activist initiatives, such as the huge resistance mounted by the Ni'ilin
Popular Committee against the Apartheid Wall, and the movement Abnaa
elBalad are all such nodes of resistance and transformation. But
sustaining them needs, we would argue, a socialist vision. And active
discussion, people's think-tanks. As Yael Lerer (Balad Party) said at
the June 2008 Tev Aviv conference on implementing refugee return: "We
should have think-tanks inside every kibbutz. Start planning within our
own communities, with other communities. This is exactly the activity
that needs to start happening, with or without the approval of the
government." I would add: think-tanks in every neighborhood inside the
Israeli state, from Metulla to Eilat.
A Hundred Flowers Can Bloom?
A hundred schools of thought can contend in this pluralistic mix of
ideas for transformation. We're at an incredible juncture in the
capitalist world system, maybe a socio-seismic ****ft. The chances for
fundamental social and economic transformation in this planetary crisis
are multiplying. Esteven senses that: "What comes next we cannot be
sure, but it seems that the time to revive the socialist project has
arrived, and it must be one adapted to the needs of the 21st century."
Building a profound sense of social empathy and solidarity with
ordinary people in their oppression is part of what we are about. That
is what Zochrot is addressing, hands-on: "Only when Jews come to see the
Palestinians who live here, and those who were expelled, as people worth
living with can we hope to live here fairly and equitably."
Geographer David Harvey (2000) has noted that there's a time and place
"where alternative visions, no matter how fantastic, provide the grist
for shaping powerful forces for change. I believe we are precisely at
such a moment. Utopian dreams . . . are omnipresent as the hidden
signifiers of our desires" (p. 195). Que se vayan todos.
References
Gordon, U. (2008). Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from
Practice to Theory. London: Pluto Press.
Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Juma', J. (2008). Open Letter to Shawn Brandt, Tyendinga Mohawk
Community. June.
Kovel, J. (2007). Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic
State in Israel/Palestine. Pluto Press: London.
Sitrin, M. (2006). Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina.
San Francisco: AK Press.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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