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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

The tail does not wag the dog

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE in the imperialist heartlands have demonstrated in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In response, the Biden administration is trying to breathe new life into the ‘two-state’ solution to appease their feudal Arab allies who fear the angry crowds on the Arab street that could easily turn on them if nothing is done to end the crisis.

The ‘two state’ solution is, in fact, a watered-down version of the original UN 1947 Palestine partition plan, which divided the British colony into rival Jewish and Arab states with an ‘international’ zone for Jerusalem.

The Jewish community, then just a third of the entire population, got over half of Palestine. But this wasn’t enough for the Zionists. When the British colonial mandate ended in 1948 the State of Israel was proclaimed. On that day, the first Arab–Israeli war began. It ended with Israel seizing even more Arab land and driving out nearly a million Palestinians from their homes.

Those refugees and their descendants have never given up their right to return to their land. And this is the heart of the crisis in the Middle East that has led to five full-scale wars and continuing simmering conflicts. The US-sponsored Camp David talks in 2000 floundered because the refugee issue was not dealt with seriously by the Israeli side.

Trump’s worthless “deal of the century” simply ignored them. The events of the last two weeks showed how terribly wrong he was.

Some argue that Israel will never recognise the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. Others say that massive Zionist settlement in the West Bank has made a ‘two state’ solution is unworkable. But at the end of the day Israel will do whatever the Americans want.

The Zionists still dream of dominating the Middle East and colonising Palestine. But their petty ambitions are not the driving force of US imperialism.

Israel is essentially an American protectorate. It is economically and politically entirely dependent on US imperialism, and successive Israeli governments have existed to serve the needs of US imperialism in the Middle East. Those needs are to weaken and divide the Arabs to ensure that the big oil corporations can continue their exploitation and plunder of Arab oil until it eventually runs out.

The tail does not wag the dog, and Israel and the American “Zionist lobby” does not dictate US foreign policy – they serve it. In the past they provided US imperialism with a convenient alibi to pose as ‘honest broker’ in the Middle East. They enabled the feudal Arab oil princes, whose thrones are propped up by imperialist bayonets, to claim that the Arabs’ enemy is not imperialism as such but Israel and this supposedly all-powerful “Zionist lobby” that pulls the strings in the USA.

In a slightly more sophisticated way, Israel’s ruling circles play the same game, claiming to serve a mythical Zionist ideal as a bulwark against persecution. In reality, they simply provide imperialism with cannon fodder for the strategic aims of US imperialism. Far from being a Zionist paradise, Israel today is one of the worst places for Jews to live, racked by continuing conflict with Palestinians, and economic hardship due to its isolation and total dependency on the USA.

Past United Nations resolutions have provided the basis for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. Firstly, Israel must withdraw totally from all the occupied territories seized in 1967, including Arab East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. The Palestinians must be allowed to establish a state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian refugees whose homes are now in Israel must be allowed to return or, if they so wish, be paid appropriate compensation in exchange. All states in the region, including Israel, should have internationally agreed and recognised frontiers guaranteed by all the Great Powers.