One State, Two States: Who Is the Subject of Palestinian Liberation? by Max Ajl

[freepalestine]

One State, Two States:
Who Is the Subject of Palestinian Liberation?
by Max Ajl 24.01.12

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/ajl240112.html





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[blake 3:17]

From the article:

For example, South African apartheid was vulnerable to strategic economic disruption in a way that Israeli apartheid is not. South African capitalists were dependent on black labor. Israeli capitalists have undertaken over the past two decades to reduce their dependency on Palestinian labor through the closure policies that have diminished Palestinian labor movements to Israel, wholly cutting off the flow from the Gaza Strip. That Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid should not be used to conflate two different regimes of oppression.


By now the entire structure of Israeli society is invested in the occupation and the militarization it both relies on and reproduces. Different fragments of Israeli power may have different levels of investment in it, but surely no one wishes it to stop, except the wizened carcasses of Peace Now and the NGO-ized Israeli liberal class who itinerantly gather in poorly attended demonstrations in Tel Aviv, huffing about the two-state solution scarce few fought for when it mattered. Meanwhile the lower classes -- the Mizrahi Jews domiciled in the subsidized settlements and serving in the IDF, the Russian strata who do the same -- are aligned with the Ashkenazi elite at the top of Israeli society who get fat off Israeli militarism and the occupation which is a nearly ineluctable part of it. The extremist settlers compound these obstacles, and they represent increasing portions of both the army and those living in the settlements. They are also generally armed. The constituents of the old liberal Zionist organizations in Israel won't confront them, and those who could -- the real rulers of Israel -- have little incentive to do so.

Under pressure, perhaps the Israeli elite would drop the occupation. But the pressure which would be required would be tremendous, not least because the deep restructuring of Israeli society that ending the occupation would entail might tear the state apart as the right wing of Israeli society recoils and the upper class gets suddenly forced to provide new homes for hundreds of thousands of people and do so not on the stolen land of the West Bank but on the land it took over in 1948. Why give from your own when you can take from the Palestinians?

Folks should watch this great talk by Salim Vally: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3954121793221540407