ROLAND RANCE, is an anti-Zionist Jew who has been working at the Alternative Information Centre in Israel, which was closed in February last year by the Israeli authorities. He talked to Socialist Action about recent events in Israel and the occupied territories.
The uprising is now moving into a different pattern. It started as a massive OULOUISE ot anger al zu years of occupation.
Now, in one sense it has quietened down. aTel zewel demonstrations. This is due to the increasing and effective closure of the terBut it is also because throughout the West Bank, institutions are being restructured from the bottom health, educational, agricultural, cultural, women's organisations, and students' organisations. They are all answerable to popular and local communities, and are co-ordinating nationally.
Popular It is less spectacular, so it can seem as though nothing is happening. It is also more difficult to find out about, because it is happening outside the eyes of the authorities. The uprising is settling into a pattern that has gone beyond a revolt, into the beginnings of a revolutionary change of the whole of society.
About ten thousand people are now in jail from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, out of a population of about a million and a half. About two thousand of these are under ministrative detention, which, under recent changes, means jail without trial for six months, with no right of appeal.
One in two hundred of the adult male population is held under administrative detention. About a quarter of them are held in one jail, Ketziot, in the Negev desert. They are held in tents, in sandy desert, in fierce heat, with little water, no toilets, poor food, with scorpions and snakes for company, and very harsh disciplinary measures.
Schools, police stations and army bases are being used as jails. A few weeks ago a special jail was opened to hold children aged 9-16. On Israel Children's Day, eighty children were released. We have no idea how many are being held.
But the repressive measures are not breaking the strikes. The barrier of fear in the army has been broken. This is beginning to have its effects in Israeli society: so far, 21 people have been sent to jail out of about 500 who have refused to serve in the West Bank.
They are using more troops now to maintain order in Gaza and the West Bank than it took to occupy them in 1967. In 1967 they called it the six day war. Now there is no end in sight.
Inflation The direct cost of maintaining the army there is in hundreds of millions of dollars; at one stage Rabin said $412 million.
The continuing strike has brought the Isracli building trade, which is totally dependent on Palestinian labour, to a standstill. In Tel Aviv and other places the streets are not being cleaned. It is estimated that the uprising has cost something like one and a half billion dollars. Inflation has started to rise.
Tourism has dropped. The economy is The political impact has been to strengthen both right and left. Overall there has been a shift to the right, and in the elections this year the Likud is likely to win a majority. Forces to the right of the Likud, such as the Tehiya up: Particularly the Citizens' Rights Moveminers in sheetection, bill se Tehiya on the right, and the Citizens' my. not for recognition of the PEO, no unequivocally for an end to the occupation. It is for negotiations with Palestinian representatives which could be the PLO, and for a peace settlement which almost complete withdrawal. It is not a socialist or militant party, but it represents some consistent liberal position and has done good work on the prison camps and the There is also a huge growth in extrapolitics protest movements. About a month into the uprising representatives of some 50 organisations attended a co-ordinating meeting of protest movements in le Aviv. Some of them were small groups But there are now about 20 active and militant protest groups working together, on a common agreed platthe Occupation!
Israeli/Palestinian Peace!'. Some peoPle, so me in til their limitations, are some in all their limitations, are working on the right lines. Material and political support is needed for people inside Israel working for an end to the Yesh Gul, the draft LID Palestinians in Israel already say that tne reo represents tem The Unified Leadership of the Uprising consists of representatives from the main tendencies involved in organising the uprising. That is: Fatah (the leading the PLO), Popular Front, the Communist Party, the Islamic Jihad movement, and the Democratic Front, more or less in order of size.
Decisions are taken in the various groups and brought there to be discuss ed and implemented. it suggests a sophisticated level of organisation, and a close link between the leaders and the people. It is a leadership that has grown not just from the uprising, but from 20 years of occupation, through being in Israeli prisons together.
It is not the traditional leaders that the Western press always talks to like Hanna Siniora. It is people you and don't know. Mainly young people whe have come out of Israeli jails on a of occasions, whe therefore have worked together. The munger sunkes u jans nave armos always represented all the political tendencies in the jails at any one time. and it has always had a unifying effect on the cadres involved.
Israel wants to delegitimise any form of political activity involving Israen Jews and ralestian Ardos, par ticularly Arabs from the '67 occupied territories. They will pick up a Palestinian and say 'this person is a member of the Democratic Front, therefore this sympathiser of the Democratic Front Boycott In that context, the trial of the AK and DerechNitzotz are waymarks tha the Israeli liberals will ignore at thei peril.
Freedom of the press should b taken up: journalists under ad ministrative detention, the closure o the occupied territories to journalists une assaults on onotograpnicis, acme of press credentials, steps taken agains foreign press as well as Israeli an Palestinian press.
Finally the time is increasingly righ for a boycott campaign. Israeli artist called for a boycott of the Israc festival. The poets who were appointe by the government to organise the inte national poetry festival resigned, calle on the poets not to come and tr festival was banned. The 21st Yea Committee is organising a boycott c goods produced in the occupied te ritories. This is starting to take off i Istaci The very least that can be done her is to follow this, and I would hope tha now there is the impetus for a fu boycott campaign.