Palestine
Rashid Haifawi writes in GLW #338 that I am "becoming emotional, irrational, harsh and completely detached from the reality of Israel's occupation and the enormous difficulties the Palestinian Authority is facing".
Thank you, Rashid, for pointing out "the reality of Israeli occupation" which I must have forgotten every day as I travel to work through Israeli checkpoints and past Israeli settlements, when I visit people in Hebron whose houses have been demolished by the Israeli military, or I speak to friends who describe their torture in Israeli prisons.
As a Palestinian from the diaspora, I understand Rashid's difficulty in coming to terms with the direction of the current Palestinian leadership. But to understand this evolution is critical in developing a correct analysis of the current situation.
Rashid is right — I am opposed to the PA, as are a great number of Palestinians I live and work amongst. The question is why? I support the Palestinian struggle against Zionism and it is now blindingly obvious to anyone who cares to examine the facts that the PA does not represent those interests.
As evidenced by the recent agreement, the role of the PA is not one of a liberation movement (any honest observer will admit that the PLO does not exist in anything more than name) but rather to guarantee Israeli "security".
Can anyone associated with the Palestinian movement believe otherwise when the central core of the agreement is the close working relationship of the PA with the CIA and the Israeli military? Ask anyone who has lived under any US-backed government in the Third World about the wonderful role of the CIA. Or perhaps you should ask the parents of the 16-year-old boy who was shot and killed last Sunday by PA security forces during a demonstration by Fatah against the Palestinian Authority?
This is not a question of a few mistakes, or "difficulties" but the central strategic role that the PA plays in Israel's strategy. If you examine my articles over the last year, this has been the main point I have been trying to make — the basic premise of Oslo, which both the Rabin and Netanyahu administrations have followed, is to implement the Israeli vision for the West Bank and Gaza which was drawn up by Israeli General Yigal Allon following the 1967 war i.e. how to control the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Palestinians.
For the first time in decades, Israel has found Palestinians who are willing to police their own people and contain the struggle against Zionism. The reason is clear — there are those that benefit from "peace" and those that don't.
The PA falls into the first camp while the vast majority of Palestinians are in the latter. It's not just a problem of corruption but rather the general structure of a Palestinian comprador bourgeoisie and their hangers-on who are very happy with their new BMWs, three houses (witness Hannan Asfour, the chief of the Palestinian Negotiations Department) and the freedom of movement denied to most Palestinians.
These are friends I'd rather not be amongst.
Ramallah, Palestine
[Abridged.]
No mandate
It is absolute nonsense for Federal Treasurer Peter Costello to claim that the Coalition has a mandate for a goods and services tax.
Neither the ALP or the Coalition received a majority of primary votes in the recent election and the only reason the Coalition was elected last time and returned this time was because the return of a Labor government was too horrible to contemplate. After all, the ALP still has much of its pre-1996 leadership intact.
The fact that the Coalition has a majority of seats is simply the result of the two-party defraud system, not because of support for the GST or for privatisation of public assets.
Alawa, NT
Correction to Kosovo article
In my article on Kosovo in GLW #338 (October 28), an edited line gave a sentence an opposite meaning to that intended. The line reads, "when British defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind was asked why Britain considered lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia" suggesting Britain did consider this. This sentence should have continued "the worst possible option" i.e. British imperialism, along with France, was the most implacably opposed to lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia, due to its long-time political, economic and military ties to the Belgrade regime.
Newtown, NSW
Greens MPs
So now that former state parliamentary Greens leader, Christine Milne, has left parliament, she has decided to go into "business" (the Mercury, October 9).
Politicians from the "old parties" are notorious for using their stints in parliament to further their business careers (read: get rich). One might have hoped for better from a Green.
Naturally, for Christine it is going to be "clean, green" business, not the nasty, dirty stuff that the Labor and Liberal politicians get into.
There is little doubt that the people of Tasmania will be worse off now that three Greens have been kicked out of parliament (due to Labor/Liberal changes to the parliamentary system). However, there always was a big gap between the potential benefits to the progressive movement from the Greens' parliamentary resources and influence and what the Greens actually did with them.
One reason is the massive wall the Greens erect between what they call "politics" — parliamentary manoeuvres — and the real life grassroots movement.
There is still a lot the former Green parliamentarians can give to the movement due to their profile and influence. I sincerely hope they don't squander it. They should take their place alongside other grassroots activists to keep on working for the changes that are so desperately needed.
West Hobart
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