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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The ‘Principal Threat’: Time to Talk about the Palestinian Class Struggle</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ramzy Baroud - Romana Rubeo - November 10, 2022<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_labak4ci0" alt="image.png" width="435" height="273"><br><p>On Monday, October 31, Palestinians in the town of Al-Eizariya, east
of Occupied East Jerusalem, observed a general strike. The strike was
declared to be part of the community’s mourning of 49-year-old Barakat
Moussa Odeh, who was killed by Israeli forces in Jericho a day earlier.</p>
<p>This is not an isolated case. General strikes were observed
throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories in recent weeks as a
form of civil disobedience, and protest of the Israeli attacks on the
cities of Nablus, Jerusalem, Jenin, and Hebron, as well as to mourn
Palestinian fighters who were killed, following shooting operations
against Israeli soldiers of illegal Jewish settlers.</p>
<p>Historically, general strikes have been declared and observed by
working-class Palestinians. This form of protest often represents the
backbone of popular, grassroots resistance in Palestine, starting many
years before the establishment of Israel on the ruins of the historic
Palestinian homeland.</p>
<p>The return of the general strike tactics suggests that the new revolt
in the West Bank is a direct outcome of working-class resistance.
Indeed, many of the young Palestinian fighters hail from refugee camps
or working-class population centers. Their revolt stems from the growing
realization that the political tactics of the elites have resulted in
nothing tangible, and that Palestinian freedom will certainly not be
achieved through Mahmoud Abbas and his self-serving politics.</p>
<p>The budding revolt seems to also have many similarities between the
Palestinian anti-colonial revolt in 1936-39, as well as the First
Intifada, the popular uprising of 1987. Both of these historical events
were shaped and sustained by working class Palestinians. While the
interests of wealthy classes often negotiated political spaces that
allowed them to exist alongside various ruling powers, working class
Palestinians, the most disaffected from colonialism and military
occupation, fought back as a collective.</p>
<p>Palestinian writer and historian, Ghassan Kanafani – himself
assassinated by the Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, in July 1972 –
analyzed the events leading to the 1930s Palestinian revolt in his essay
‘The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine’, published shortly before his
untimely death. Kanafani argued that there are three enemies that pose
“principal threat” to the Palestinian national movement: “the local,
reactionary leadership; the regimes in the Arab states surrounding
Palestine and the imperialist-Zionist enemy”.</p>
<p>“The change from a semi-feudal society to capitalist society was
accompanied by an increased concentration of economic power in the hands
of the Zionist machine and, consequently, within the Jewish society in
Palestine. (By the late 1930s, Palestinian) Arab proletariat had fallen
victim to British colonialism and (Zionist) Jewish capital, the former
bearing the primary responsibility.”</p>
<p>Expectedly, Palestinian workers are, again, at the front line of the
struggle for liberation. They seem perfectly aware of the fact that
Israeli settler colonialism is not only an agent of oppression, but also
a class enemy.</p>
<p>Settler colonialism is often defined as a form of colonialism that
aims at settling the colonized land, exploiting its resources while
simultaneously and methodically eliminating the native population. The
work of historian, Patrick Wolfe, has been particularly illuminating in
this regard. He argued in his seminal work ‘Settler Colonialism and the
Elimination of the Native’ that “Settler colonialism is inherently
eliminatory”. However, according to Wolfe, “The logic of elimination not
only refers to the summary liquidation of Indigenous people, though it
includes that.”</p>
<p>The longevity of settler-colonial societies is predicated on key
factors that allow these societies to be sustainable over long periods
of time. One of these factors is for settler-colonial projects to
maintain complete hegemony over natural resources, including the
systematic exploitation of the native population as a cheap workforce.</p>
<p>Sai Englert argues in ‘Settlers, Workers, and the Logic of
Accumulation by Dispossession’, that, “in settler colonial societies,
internal settler class struggle is fought not only over the distribution
of wealth extracted from settler labor, but also over the distribution
of the loot accumulated through the dispossession of the indigenous
population.”</p>
<p>Englert’s logic applies to the Zionist settler-colonial model in
Palestine, starting long before the establishment of the State of Israel
over the Palestinian homeland in 1948. Englert highlights the Zionist
dichotomy by citing the work of Gershon Shafir, who describes early
Zionism as a “colonization movement which simultaneously had to secure
land for its settlers and settlers for its land.”</p>
<p>However, since the settling of Jewish migrants – mostly from Europe –
in Palestine was a long, protracted process, settler Zionism felt
compelled to carry out its colonial project in stages. In the early
stage, starting in the late 19th century till the 1930s, Zionist
colonialism centered on the exploitation of indigenous Palestinian Arab
labor and, eventually, on the exclusion of this very labor force in
preparation for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people
altogether.</p>
<p>Explaining the Zionist model at that historical stage, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé writes,</p>
<p>Early Zionists were fully aware of this process, that of the
exploitation of Palestinian labor as a mere stage – as in ‘temporary
exploitation’ – in the development of what Zionist leaders, David
Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, described as “avoda ivrit”, or ‘Hebrew
labor’. “My hope is that, in due course, we (meaning ‘Hebrew labor’)
will grasp the decisive place in the Palestine economy and in its
collective and social life,” Ben-Zvi said.</p>
<p>“It is obvious who was to occupy the marginal role in the economy:
the Palestinians who formed the vast majority of the population at the
time,” Pappé elaborates.</p>
<p>“Yaakov Rabinowitz (one of the founders of Agudat Israel Orthodox
party), saw no contradiction in heading a seemingly socialist movement,
such Hapoel Hazair, and arguing for a segregated, colonialist labor
market: ‘The Zionist establishment should defend the Jewish workers
against the Arab one, as the French government protects the French
colonialists in Algeria against the natives’.”</p>
<p>The legacy of those early Zionists continues to define the
relationship between Palestinian labor and Israel to this day, a
relationship that is based on racial segregation and exploitation.</p>
<p>The nature of Israel’s settler colonialism has not fundamentally
changed since its inception in the early 20th century. It remains
committed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the usurping of
Palestinian resources, including Palestinian labor. All attempts at
circumventing this ongoing exploitation have largely failed because
Palestinian workers remain equally vulnerable in other workspaces as
well, whether in the limited, semi-autonomous economy operated by the
Palestinian Authority or by the equally exploitative Arab regimes.</p>
<p>Despite all of this, Palestinian workers continue to resist their
exploitation in many ways, including unionizing, striking, protesting,
and resisting the Israeli occupation. It should come as no surprise that
the various Palestinian uprisings throughout the years were fueled by
working-class Palestinians.</p>
<p>Such reality compels us to rethink our understanding of the
Palestinian struggle. It is not a mere ‘conflict’ of politics,
geography, or narratives, but one that is predicated on several strata
of class struggles within and without Palestine. And those struggles, as
experiences have shown, have stood at the very core of the history of
Palestinian Resistance, manifesting itself clearly in the Palestinian
strike and rebellion of 1936-39, all the way to the present.</p>
</div><p>
<em>Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “</em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092"><em>These Chains Will Be Broken</em></a><em>:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons”
(Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research
Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim
University (IZU). His website is </em><a href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><em>www.ramzybaroud.net</em></a><em> </em>
<em>Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The
Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and
academic journals. She holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and
Literature, and specializes in audio-visual and journalism
translation. </em>
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