Palestine and the Arab revolution. Part two

10.00 plait. noon Casey Gran‹ 6.05 6.15 6.45 7.30 8.15 THE ISRAELI Defence Minister, Moshe Dayan, has once again added a new phrase to the Hebrew political vocabulary.

His previous contribution, made shortly after the June 1967 war, was in reference to his expansionist policy, when he used the phrase *Merhay lehya'-living space, or as Hitler used to say 'lebensraum'® Dayan's latest contribution to Zionist political jargon is 'haanasha svivavit' - neighbourhood punishment, the phrase he used recently when declaring the official policy of the Israeli occupation forces from now on; collective 'punishment' of Arab villages or districts for resistance activities.

Pretext

Previously, when Arab houses were destroyed the pretext was that the occupants had assisted the guerrillas. From now on, it will be enough that they have not collaborated actively with the occupation forces, by giving information, etc.

General Barlev has said that if there are incidents in Bedouin areas, the whole tribe Will be punished. In Hebron at the beginning of November, 'neighbourhood punishment' was implemented: following a grenade attack on a military vehicle, Israeli troops seized 26 shops on the main street.

Some Israeli government members are said to annoyed about Dayan's policy statement: Abba Eban, the Foreign Minister, among them.

Eban is shortly to visit the United States. Presumably his objection is that Dayan's bellicosity does not help Zionist diplomacy. It can hardly be on humanitarian grounds, since the policy that Dayan declared official has already been apWEEKEND TELEVISION SATURDAY a.m. Repondez s'il vous 10.30-11.00 Wie Bitte? 12 Weatherman. 12.05 p.m.

On October 25, Israeli forces destroyed some 20 houses in the village of Halhul, for alleged assistance given by the villagers to saboteurs. There have been a number of house demolitions carried out in Gaza recently as a 'punishment' for grenade incidents.

'Curfew' tactics have also been widely used as a collective punishment technique.

The village of Beit Sahhur was placed under curfew following rocket attacks from nearby hills on Jerusalem. The curfew was for 22 hours a day, and was enforced for nearly four weeks.

Neighbourhood punishment' was the phrase used by Dayan (above) to describe the official policy of the Israeli occupation forces.

During this time people were not even allowed to open their windows.

During a curfew at Rajah, Israeli troops shot two curfew "breakers' on November 17. Curfews are now in force in Ramallah, and in Gaza, where an unsuccessful attempt was made on November 16 to assassinate the military governor, Brigadier-General BenMeytiv.

Gaza's largest boys' secondary school has been contiscated for military purposes because of demonstrations by pupils. Wales: 6.15-6.45 p.m. Disc A Dawn. Noresus News Summary. 1.2510555 Square One. 12.07 a.m. Weather.

The Israeli newspaper, 'Haaretz', on November carried an editorial criticizing Dayan's declaration. It stated:

Neighbourhood punishment, in fact, amounts to collective punishment....

"The method of "neighbourhood punishment'' will strengthen feelings of animosity to Israeli rule. And if as a result of this the saboteurs enjoy increased co-operation in the territories, what shall we do then ?' A good question. Perhaps the answer, so far as Dayan's supporters are concerned, can be inferred from the letter which Mrs Meir sent to Nixon, congratulating him on his November speech which pledged continuation of the Same course The Zionists are embarking on the same course as led to the US imperialist murder of Tu Cung village.

The Israeli government is in the same trap as any other occupying, colonial power, oppressing another people. The harsher their repression and the bigger their reprisals, the more the bitterness and determination of their victims grows, and the stronger becomes the resistance.

In the past, Zionist propaganda sanestinianetended not exist.

did not exist.

More recently, it has claimed that there is no popular backing for the Arab guerrilla movements.

According to a Zionist pamphlet distributed this summer entitled 'The Aim of Arab Terrorist Organizations' the Arab guerrillas received no aid or comfort from the Arabs in the areas which Israel presently administers...

It claimed :

"The attempt to equate the aims of Arab , terrorists with those of a genuine resistance movement is . clearly invalid They have failed to get any serious support from the Arab population of the ministered areas' Maybe these Zionist propagandists can succeed in convincing themselves.

They obviously haven't convinced their own military, who would rather rely on policies like 'neighbourhood punishMaybe the Zionist politicians feel better if they say 'administered areas instead of occupied areas. The officers, however, being closer to reality, know that they are an army of occupation with the job of crushing the Arab Moshe Dayan is a realist. There has been a division of labour within the Zionist movement between 'realists' like Dayan, carrying out their dirty work of aggression, and idealists' like Eshkol and Meir who pretended that reality, the Palestinian Arabs, did not exist.

When Eshkol was asked by the American magazine 'Newsweek' about the Palestinians he answered :

'What are the Palestinians? When I first came, there were some 250,000 non-Jews here: mainly Arabs and Bedouins. It was a desert; more than underdeveloped. Nothing.' New state Dayan, speaking inside Israel, is more honest:

'We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is, a Jewish State here. In considerable areas of the country we bought the land from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab Villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal [Dayan's own village] arose in the place of Mahlul, Gvat [a kibbutz] in the place of Jibta, Sarid [another kibbutz] in the place of Naneifs, and. Kiar Yehoshua in. tbe place of Tel Shaman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population. ... (Dayan's speech to students at Haifa Technion, March 1969.)* On another occasion, in 1956, Dayan spoke at Nahal Oz, near Gaza, at the funeral of a kibbutz guard killed by infiltrators.

'Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. Who are we that we should argue against their hatred ?

For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, we turn into our homesteads the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. ...We are generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon we cannot plant a tree and build a house.

'This is the fate of our generation, the choice of our 1 Speech quoted in 'Israca Information Bulletin, No. 2, June-July, 1969 Published by. "Israeli Revolutionaries Action Committee Abroad'. life - to be p armed, strong an‹ Dayan has a ledged:

the fact that we secured through arms."

In contrast with the myths of Zionist propaganda idealism, that 'we only wish to live in peace, etc., Dayan speaks plainly as a brute-force militarist.

ism is war, more war.

Zionist colonization created the Palestine conflict. The Zionists bought land from absentee landowners or terrorized Arab farmers into quitting. The Zionist movement opposed the employment of Arab workers.

Everywhere that the Zionists acquired land, the Palestinian Arabs were driven out.

'We want Palestine to be Jewish as England is English,' declared Weizmann.

There had to be Arab resistance to Zionist conquest, and there was resistance.

In 1936 came the Arab general strike, and between 1936 and 1939 there was peasant rebellion throughout the countryside, against Zionist colonization and British rule.

However, the Palestinian masses lacked the leadership they needed for their struggle.

Dominated

The Palestine Arab community remained dominated by the landowners, who might incite anti-Jewish feeling, but were ready to profit from the sale of land to the Zionists.

The landowning class could not develop the popular struggle, and did not want to break with imperialism.

From 1947 to 1948, Zionist policy, following the United Nations (UN) partition decision, was carried out by military means. There was the massacre of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948.

Menahem Begin wrote :

'... Arabs began to flee in terror. ...Hagana was carry2 Both quotes from Uri Avneri, Israel Without Zionists', Macmillan. Dayan: "Thu It failed in its object. Tl ere were mass demonstrations in Amman, demanding that people should be armed fight Israel.

Prepared and I tough. ..:

Iso acknowis that since achieved was the force of offered by Zionoppression, and ing out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter. The Arabs began to flee in panic shouting "Deir Yassin". One million Arabs were driven from their homes to become refugees. Ben Gurion declared: "Thanks to Haganah, we have a state that is bigger, and more Jewish"?

Palestine problem became obscured as the 'Arab-Israeli problem'.

Zionist propaganda presented it to the world as being purely a conflict between states, with 'poor litle Israel' surrounded on all sides by aggressive neighbour states bent on her annihilation.

Eskol: Tried to pretend Palestine Arabs did not exist.

Inside Israel, the government seized thousands of acres of Arab land, while denying the refugees the right to return. The Palestinian people were scattered, and lacked political identity or leadership.

In the late 1950s, however, a new generation emerged of young Palestinians seeking to lead the masses of their people in a popular struggle, to liberate their homeland and create a Palestinian state. They did not believe in relying on the existing Arab governments.

By 1965, groups of Palestinian commandos were making raids across the Israeli border.

The Israeli government continued to pretend that it was only confronting belligerent neighbouring states; but the November-1966 raid by Israeli forces on the village of Es Samu was clearly aimed at intimidating the Palestinian masses.

The Israeli expansion 1967 again solved nothing the Zionists.

It brought under Israeli occupation, among their other subjects, the masses of Palestinians whom they had driven out in 1948, and these came into contact with the generation that had grown up under Israeli rule.

The 'Palestine problem' reemerged clearly, as a national liberation struggle, and the conditions were created for a real popular resistance move-

did The Zionists' creation of more retugees, their repression and deportations, only succeed in building up against them a bigger wall of bitterness and hatred.

Not only have they failed to impose acceptance of their rule upon inhabitants of the newly-occupied territories, they are also kept busy now with surveillance and detention of young Arabs in Galilee, Haifa and elsewhere.

They have also had to take repressive measures, including arrests, against those Jewish youth who have had the courage to stand up against chauvinism and Zionist aggression.

Although Zionist propaganda tries, to play down the effectiveness of the Arab guerrillas, the fact remains that more Israeli troops have been killed in the occupied areas than were killed in the actual June The Palestinian people, after 20. years of neglect, have gained world recognition for their problems - thanks to their own struggle, to the fighting spirit of their youth.

Not only the Palestinians, but all the Arab masses, accord a respect to the guerrillas which they do not give to the Arab governments...

They have seen the debacle of these governments in June 1967 and contrasted it with the heroism and determination of the guerrillas one year later at the battle of Karameh.

Wide appeal

When the Palestinian liberation movements denounce great power diplomacy and Arab reactionaries, when they say that they do not put their faith in the Arab governments but in the masses, they have a very wide appeal for the workers and peasants throughout the Middle East.

The Arab governments, whether feudal reactionaries or nationalist bourgeois army officers, do not like this, any more than they like to lose the initiative in the Palestine issue.

The line-up of forces was shown in the Lebanon crisis.

It is not only a question of whether the guerrilla movements can defeat the Zionists, but also whether they can prevent a stab in the back from Arab reaction.

The Arab masses must be mobilized, with revolutionary leadership.

After many years of corrupPalestinian Palestintague and pitrayal, ave opened the door to a new kınd of politics in the Middle East. Are they prepared for the next step ?