Contradiction is the law of life. Nowhere is this now more glaring and acute than in the field of international imperialist diplomacy.At the end of January, the world was witness to two international conferences. Both were intimately connected with each other and bound by a common objective. One, held at the United Nations on Jan. 31, cast itself in the role of a meeting of world leaders. They proclaimed the end of the cold war and raised the prospect of a safe and equitable world. This meeting was widely praised in the entire capitalist press for its noble objectives.
In reality, the aim of this conference, dominated by the principal imperialist bandits, was not so much to end the cold war as to turn their attention from what was at one time considered the principal enemy to a more intensive exploitation of the oppressed peoples of the world. Their principal objective is to widen and deepen imperialist control of the vital arteries of the world economic and political system.
It is undoubtedly a tall order. Even as they were meeting, they could not but be conscious of the disastrous capitalist economic crisis that is intensifying throughout the globe.
Moscow conference on Middle East
A couple of days earlier, on Jan. 28, another conference opened, this one in Moscow. The imperialist press cast it as a Middle East conference. In years to come--and today as well--students of this period in history will surely wonder, why should a Middle East conference be held in Moscow? Why were earlier sessions held in Madrid and Washington?
If it is a conference on the Middle East, why hold it in Europe or the United States? Why not in the Middle East? But the Palestinians had objected to that on the ground that it was not a meeting of Middle Eastern powers.
The Palestinian leadership knows only too well that what happened didn't bear the slightest resemblance to a real conference of Middle East countries. It was a concoction of the imperialist powers that was carried out with the full cooperation of the counterrevolutionary leadership of Russia.
Both conferences were the product of the same social and political forces that dominate the vital arteries of the globe at this moment in history: U.S. finance capital, its junior partners in France, Britain, Germany and Japan, and the lesser imperialist satellites.
At both conferences the claimed objective was to establish a "peaceful order" in the Middle East. But the real intent is to liquidate the Palestinian issue in a way that suits imperialist objectives and strengthens the political, economic and strategic importance of Israel. This has been an invariable objective of imperialist diplomacy for decades.
Just note this absolutely astonishing aspect: The Palestinian delegation itself, according to spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi, was "barred from the conference by the U.S. and Russia, who objected to the presence of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and from outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip!" (New York Times, Jan. 29)
How could the U.S. and Russia bar the Palestinians, who were the fundamental subject of the conference? Aren't the Palestinians fighting to regain their homeland? Hasn't this been their objective since the very beginning of the invasion by European settlers?
Of course the Palestinians will be included, they say. But later. Later.
At this moment Bush, the Pentagon and Boris Yeltsin, their neocolonialist instrument holding power for now in Russia, are making the basic decisions. They think they can coerce the Palestinian people, especially since the example of the destruction of Iraq by the allied imperialists.
How could such a situation come to pass? How is it possible for U.S. finance capital to stretch its tentacles so far and hold in its grip one of the most vital areas on the globe? Is it the power of monopoly capitalism alone, of the financiers on Wall Street, Lombard Street, the Bourse and the other world centers of finance capital?
No, it is not the financiers alone, nor their partners in the Pentagon. To think that is to take a totally false and narrow view of the global situation.
It is in great part the result of the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe and the consequent disorientation of a substantial part of the working class and oppressed people worldwide.
China-Israel relations
Consider this: On Jan. 25, the English-language newspaper from Beijing, China Daily, proclaimed in a bold front-page headline "China and Israel Start Diplomatic Relations."
"China and Israel established full diplomatic relations yesterday in Beijing, opening a new era for cooperation between China and the Jewish state," the article reported.
"Visiting Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy and his Chinese counterpart Qian Qichen signed the agreement ... setting up ties on the ambassadorial level."
Even a decade ago, such a development would have been considered impossible. In the early 1950s, immediately following the Chinese Revolution, it would have been regarded as preposterous.
At that time, the Israelis were among the very few states to quickly extend recognition to the Peoples Republic of China, ahead of the U.S. and other imperialists. Then and in succeeding decades, the Israelis continuously and assiduously pursued every available avenue, no matter how narrow, to approach the PRC.
But China would not respond.
In vain did Abba Eban, then Israel's diplomatic representative in the UN and subsequently foreign minister, push as hard as he could to break out of the isolation in which the Israeli entity found itself. A U.S. reporter interviewing Eban asked if he had had any success in his efforts to reach the PRC. Eban replied he had not. "Each time, our overtures are rejected with scorn and contempt," he said.
Indonesian President Sukarno convened the Bandung Conference in 1955. It was the historic meeting at which for the first time representatives of 29 newly independent African and Asian nations assembled. China was a leading sponsor of a resolution keeping out Israel, South Africa, Taiwan (then known as Nationalist China), and the puppet state of south Korea.
China was then the leader of the anti-imperialist struggle and outdid the USSR in attempting to rally the oppressed people of the world in a united struggle against imperialism. Recognition of Israel at that time would have been a wholly improbable and preposterous development; it would have made no political or diplomatic sense for China.
But now, in January 1992, China has made a complete turnaround. The Chinese foreign minister even made a point of embracing his Israeli counterpart at the UN conference. Yet all this is not solely the result of internal changes in the Chinese government. Far from it. While it is true that China has undergone vast internal changes over the last several decades and has broken with the revolutionary policies of earlier decades, recognizing Israel does not directly and inevitably follow from those changes alone.
It has much more to do with the reactionary transformations in the USSR and Eastern Europe and the collapse of their perspective for socialism. This has affected China as well as many other countries.
India follows suit
It didn't take long for India to follow suit and recognize Israel. For a number of years, India had made minor responses to the Israelis' constant badgering for diplomatic ties. Unlike China, India is a bourgeois state. But like China it has an immense population. For India to establish diplomatic ties enormously enhances the Israeli regime's diplomatic and political position in the Middle East.
Thus, on the surface, it would appear that the Israeli regime, an artificial creation of imperialism, has come of age and has established itself as a legitimate power in the Middle East with the blessing of most of the world's population.
Under such circumstances, it becomes all too easy to obscure the real character and position of the Israeli statelet, leaving the younger generation, especially in the imperialist West, prone to ignore its historical evolution. To do so would be a tragic mistake and leave them at the mercy of imperialist historiography.
Jewish emigration to Palestine
Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine began in the 1880s--an epoch properly characterized as one of worldwide imperialist expansion. At that time there were only about 20,000 Jews in Palestine. Even as late as the 1920s, there were no more than 50,000-60,000 European Jews there, living alongside a Palestinian population of 1.25 million.
Surely one would say that 60,000 people could not be a great danger to more than a million Palestinian people. But there was this sign of a dangerous tendency: while the Jewish population was very small, it had already taken over 6% of the arable land.
If this were just an immigration of individual Jewish people seeking a haven from continual anti-Semitic outrages in Europe, it might be regarded from a wholly sympathetic point of view. But it was much more than that. It was part of a planned and engineered conception to take over Palestine and disperse and oust the native population.
A fantastic idea, one would say, especially when one considers the minuscule character of the Jewish population in all of Europe compared to the Arab population of the Middle East.
Viewing it in abstract terms from the point of view of mere logic, without seeking its material roots, it could appear to be merely a fantastic plan. But this phantasmagoria was part and parcel of what by the 19th century had become a common practice.
Is not the entire Western Hemisphere the result of barbarous invasions that resulted in the displacement and extermination of millions of native people, a process that continues to this very day?
It is improper to divorce and isolate the invasion of Palestine from the entire course of imperialist invasion and the subjugation of oppressed peoples over several centuries.
The Balfour Declaration
Britain took over Palestine in 1917, during World War I, and immediately issued the Balfour Declaration, which partitioned the country and promised a "Jewish homeland." Was the Balfour Declaration an act of generosity to oppressed Jews by an exponent of imperialist democracy?
What was the aim of the Balfour Declaration? Would Lord Balfour have countenanced the partition of Britain? Would he have agreed to the separation from England of Scotland, Wales, and especially Ireland?
The Balfour Declaration came just one year after the secret Sykes-Picot treaty in which Britain, France and czarist Russia divided up the Middle East among them. It was an instrument of imperialist adventure; it was part and parcel of an imperialist strategy of conquest.
Its objective aim, regardless of what some Jewish settlers might have had in their minds as individuals, was the dispersal of the native population, the ouster of the people who inhabited the land, the theft of their rights and properties.
Wasn't this what brought about the 1948 war? Wasn't this how a whole population--the Palestinians--became refugees in their own land as well as abroad?
In 1948 the UN ratified the partitioning of Palestine, granting the Israelis 54 percent of the land. One would think that should satisfy them. But they opened up a murderous war, taking over 81 percent of the total area of Palestine and uprooting more than a million Arab people. The Israelis occupied hundreds of towns and villages and obliterated hundreds more in a process that can only be compared to the conquest of Peru.
Zionist historiographers assiduously cultivate the myth that the struggle there is all a result of a conflict of cultures. Like the "conflict of cultures" between the Europeans and the Native people in North America? Isn't it a fact that Armenians, who are not Moslems, have lived for years in the Middle East without carrying out the same genocidal assaults? Yasir Arafat, in his historic talk to the UN General Assembly in 1974, mentioned the Circassians in the same light.
The factor of oil
No matter how predatory the imperialist powers may be, their hunger for booty becomes multiplied a hundredfold when the factor of oil is added. Then what might have been merely a geopolitical need is radically changed into greed for vast and fabulously rich oil fields.
No matter how many new wells are drilled--whether in the far reaches of the Arctic Ocean, in the North Sea, off the coast of China, Vietnam or Nigeria, in Mexico or Venezuela--the richest prize remains the oil fields of the Middle East. As long as that remains the situation, U.S. imperialism's need to have a military outpost in the Middle East is of commanding significance.
Of course, in the long run new sources of energy may diminish the significance of oil, to the same extent that oil has diminished the significance of coal as a fuel. But this is speculative and off in the future. It is not something that political leaders in the struggle to liberate Palestine can remotely count on.
It is from the actual historical circumstances that we in this country must construct, develop and pursue a revolutionary, anti-imperialist policy. No nation can be free if it enslaves others. Nowhere is this more applicable than the Middle East.
Diplomacy and power
Diplomatic recognition is only important in the long run if it reflects real power--real social, political and above all economic strength at home. For many years, the Soviet government was unable to get recognition from the U.S. government. But the U.S. finally decided in 1933 that it had to recognize the USSR because of the enormous economic and industrial strides made by the revolution.
Of course, there were other factors besides the economic successes. There was the change in the world situation due to the victory of the Nazis in Germany and the growing power of Japanese imperialism in the Far East. In the final analysis, however, the relations between the USSR and the U.S.--both of which were regarded as superpowers just a few years ago--were due to the economic and resulting military strength of the USSR based on socialist construction.
John Foster Dulles, a venomous enemy of the Soviet Union, explained post facto that U.S. recognition of the Soviet government was based on the urgent need to form an alliance against Japan. But such an alliance was necessary for the U.S. even in 1922. The State Department never approached the USSR for such an alliance then, precisely because it looked to the restoration of the czarist regime.
People's China could not get recognition from U.S. imperialism for many years, even after taking its proper seat in the UN in 1971. There was a standing ovation by the delegates when their two-thirds vote to seat China finally overwhelmed U.S. opposition. When Washington finally recognized China in 1979, it was not merely because of its enormous population but because it had built a solid economic foundation and military defense. Of course, there were other factors in the U.S. decision, including the attempt to offset the power of the USSR.
Thus diplomatic power, in the final analysis, is only significant if it reflects internal economic and industrial prowess. This is precisely what is missing in Israel. For all its vaunted military strength and its scientific and technological know-how, it is a tiny, poor country wholly dependent on the U.S. imperialist colossus. Now and then it may be able to exert a modicum of so-called independence, but only to the extent that the U.S. considers it wise to allow it.
Israeli dependence on U.S.
How poor it really is comes through in the way it is going about illegally building settlements in areas forbidden by innumerable resolutions of the UN. The Israeli government is trying to hide the scope of its vast settlement program in the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and especially the West Bank. All of this is a gross infringement on the rights of the Palestinian and Arab people and irrefutable evidence of Israel's organic tendency to expand ruthlessly and recklessly with U.S. financial support.
The Jan. 29 Washington Post reported details about the Israeli government's attempts to conceal the broad scope of the settlements. They were also the subject of an Evans and Novak column the same day.
They wrote: "When the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, without real debate or consideration, in the middle of the night suddenly switched millions of dollars from long- delayed road building and repairing in Tel Aviv and Israel proper to settlements in the West Bank two weeks ago, the result was political revulsion. Never before had the national budget been so twisted out of shape to satisfy the pro-settlement minority."
The Bush administration, at least for public purposes, is at this point holding back $10 billion in guaranteed housing loans to Israel unless it stops constructing the settlements. That Israel has to divert funds from badly needed repairs in Israel itself in order to build new housing in the West Bank is not only a measure of its expansionist character but of its poverty and dependence on the U.S.
The encroachments onto Palestinian land could only be carried out with U.S. support. The Israelis could not do it on their own, especially in light of the tremendous Palestinian resistance--the Intifada.
So the talk by the U.S. that it is withholding the $10 billion is merely for the purpose of moderating Israel's rhetoric, rather than undermining its plans.
Nor can Israel handle Soviet immigration without U.S. support. The number of highly skilled Jewish immigrants coming from the Soviet Union is so great that Israel cannot begin to absorb them.
Natan Sharansky, regarded in the imperialist media as leader of the Soviet Jews in Israel, wrote in the Feb. 2 New York Times Magazine that "61 percent of the [Soviet] immigrants have higher education, compared with 28 percent of native Israelis." Most of them are either unemployed or working at unskilled jobs.
Sharansky also says that after Gorbachev introduced perestroika in the USSR, "small businesses and cooperatives started springing up everywhere, and that of these businesses, roughly 50 percent were run by Jews. ... Many of them now feel that the atmosphere is becoming increasingly risky, both economically and politically, and after gaining some experience in the Soviet Union, are in a hurry to move to Israel."
So perestroika, by unleashing the forces of the market and causing greater social differentiation, hunger and chaos, has also added grist to the mill of anti-Semitism.
USSR and Gulf war
The hasty diplomatic recognition of Israel by both China and India, coming at this moment when the Palestinians are passing through a most difficult period, is part of a larger process that began with the erosion of the socialist camp.
The USSR was regarded as a most significant factor in the Middle East, particularly in opposition to the U.S. The U.S. achieved its supreme objective when it got the leadership of the USSR, under Gorbachev, to go along with all the imperialist powers and approve their attack on Iraq.
The Moscow conference, which was calculated to reduce the Palestinians to a statelet without power or population, is the logical result of this destruction wreaked upon the Iraqi people. And now comes the next step: the U.S., Russia and practically the whole "European community" decide the composition of a delegation of Palestinians.
It's somewhat reminiscent of the round-table discussions on Vietnam in which the U.S., in conjunction with others, tried to hamstring Vietnam and impede the Vietnamese Revolution. The U.S. tried to hem in the Vietnamese and get an agreement that would legalize the division of their country. But the Vietnamese pulled out of the diplomatic straitjacket and won their liberation through struggle. The tactic of U.S. imperialism failed because of the determination of the Vietnamese people.
The Palestinians are no less determined to win their struggle.
The principal Palestinian groupings--the Democratic Front, the Popular Front, and the Palestine National Council--have passed many resolutions opposing sham negotiations and calling for an independent Palestinian state in Palestine.
China should understand this better than others because it suffered the same treachery at the hands of General George C. Marshall. As a plenipotentiary of the U.S., he attempted to broker a rotten settlement of the civil war between the Chiang Kai-shek forces and the Chinese Red Army. He wanted to make the revolutionary troops an appendage to Chiang's mercenary forces.
India too should remember the many ways the British imperialist bourgeoisie tried to retain its hold on India by various forms of negotiation that obstructed real independence.
In the USSR, the classic example of an imposed treaty is of course the one Germany forced on the Bolsheviks at Brest- Litovsk in 1918. It was signed by the Soviet government under extreme protest. The Bolsheviks alerted all the anti- imperialist and progressive elements in the working class movement in Europe to vote against it.
Since the displacement of the Palestinian people began, their population has not only grown tremendously in many countries, but it has developed. Now there are thousands and thousands of Palestinian physicians, teachers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, etc., who are the indispensable personnel of a viable nation and state. They have all the characteristics of nationhood but need a state in their own homeland.
Above all, the Palestinians have developed a tempered and educated proletariat, born of struggle in the most difficult conditions and shaped by persecution and oppression. Their experience in the fires of revolution has prepared them for the task of building a socialist society.
It is the fundamental task of the working class and the oppressed nationalities in the United States--the belly of the beast--to unconditionally support the struggle of all the peoples in the Middle East who are the victims of imperialist oppression, inflicted by the capitalist government of the U.S., its bankers, its industrialists, and above all its Pentagon and intelligence services.
More than that, it is necessary to do this not only in literature but to actively organize public support--to strive to achieve strong and powerful demonstrations that will not only be helpful in illuminating the nature of the struggle for the working class in the United States but also be helpful to the Palestinians and all other oppressed people in the Middle East.