10.10.1996

A kinder form of oppression

The brief flurry of fighting caused by the Zionists’ provocative opening of a tunnel near a mosque has died down, for the moment. The underlying conflict remains.

The Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas has been keeping its head down somewhat. The sight of Palestinian policemen subordinate to the PLO leader Yasser Arafat engaging in gun battles with the Israelis is damaging to the prestige of the Islamic organisation. Hamas hates Arafat and has traded on its willingness to resist the Israelis. A further attack by Hamas is only to be expected now.

The West and especially the US president Clinton are eager to get Arafat and Netanyahu talking. They do not want the ‘peace process’ upset. This process is essentially Zionist, but the West would have preferred someone a little more sensitive than Netanyahu to implement it.

Unless the Palestinian masses intervene, Arafat might go back to the half-hearted collaboration with the Israelis that he practised earlier.

In its subtle style, BBC TV made much of an Israeli soldier who recently refrained from shooting dead a Palestinian youth who had thrown a stone at him. The approach was typical of the bourgeois media: as long as the essential balance of forces (ie, overwhelming Israeli superiority) is not changed, they want the oppressor to be a little bit more lenient.

Communists want the oppressor removed, by any means necessary.

John Craig