David Ben-Gurion, who died last week, and Gamal Abdel Nasser would seem to have had little if anything in common; but both were men whose death symbolised the end of an era. Nasser died in 1970 just as the aura surrounding his name in the Arab world was beginning to crumble under the combined impact of the Israeli victory in the war of June 1967 and the rise of the Palestinian resistance. The decay of petit-bourgeois Arab nationalism, represented par excellence by the man who ruled Egypt for 18 years, had already set in after the 1967 debacle, but Nasser's death came just in time to save what remained of his prestige among the Arab masses.
David Ben-Gurion, Nasser's arch-enemy and a leading figure in the Zionist colonisation of Palestine, was the very incarnation of the petit-bourgeois Zionist dream. An ardent nationalist, he dedicated his life to fostering a massive Jewish settlement in a country populated by an overwhelming majority of Arabs, and didn't shrink from using any methods necessary to achie ve his aim of a Jewish State. It is only fitting, therefore, that Ben-Gurion's passing should prefigure the fate of the system in whose creation he was so instrumental-for this founding father of Zionism, well-versed in Cervantes, Plato and Aristotle, yet unable to speak a word of Arabic, lived just long enough to witness the beginning of Zionism's death agony.
BURIAL GROUND The epitaph for both Ben-Gurion and Nasser is soon to be writ large in Geneva, where Israel, Egypt and Syria are scheduled to meet on 18 December to try to work out a definitive Middle East settlement under the friendly guidance of US imperialism and the Kremlin. Geneva, that hallowed site of bourgeois civilisation, will come to be seen as the burial ground both of Nasser's anti-imperialist retoric and of the doctrine of unlimited Israeli supremacy. Here, under the auspices of imperialism, the changed balance of forces created in the Middle East as a result of the last war will be consecrated by an agreement in volving withdrawal by Israel to its pre-1967 borders and recognition by the Arab ruling classes of the permanence of the Zionist State. No doubt that is how the future is en visaged by Sadat of Egypt, Assad of Syria, and the increasingly important man-behind-the-scenes, Faisal of Saudi Arabia. There is no doubt either that the United States, for whom the oil boycott (whatever its inconveniences) facilitates a shift away from unilateral support for Israel towards a more 'even-handed' policy, is determined to enforce its will upon its Israeli ally.
The immediate problems of enforcement of the ceasefire terms remain, however, and if the The overthrow of the Thai military dictatorpeoples in the next few months, their whole strategy of relance on American imperialism will be seriously called into question. Sadat and Assad are well aware of the possible pitfalls, and it is for this reason that they are insisting on moves by Israel to withdraw to the 22 October ceasefire lines prior to the Geneva conference. They correctly believe that Israel's response will be a useful indication of her longterm intentions.
RIGHT-WING OPPOSITION The right-wing opposition within Israel, however, is using the emotional issue of alleged Syrian and Egyptian torture of Israeli prisoners to block progress towards a settlement. The hypocrisy of this blatant propaganda exercise is breathtaking-Israel inflicted devestating Tosses on the Syrian economy in the last war (of the order of £750 million), as well as deliberately bombing civilian population centres in Damascus and elsewhere, and expelling the inhabitants of newly-conquered areas. But Kissinger is unlikely to tolerate such "sabotage' on the part of Israel's hawks. The deep malaise within Israel now reflects itself in a growing polarisation - between those who realise that the Jewish State can no longer remain the all-powerful Queen of the area, and must accommodate itself to the new realities, however bitter, and those whose obsession with Royal status inclines them towards renewed war. But since money is the nerve of all war, and the United States controls the flow of funds to Israel, it is clear that the diehard militarist faction of Zionism stands little chance of holding out against the tide of 'constructive diplomacy under way.
PALESTINIAN STATE Not least of all the problems faced by the organisers of this Geneva summit is the conflict which has arisen between Hussein and the Palestine Liberation Organisation over the issue of Palestinian representation at the forthcoming conference. Egypt, Syria and the Soviet Union favour the establishment of a Palestinian State on the West Bank of the Jordan, and even US imperialism is not necessarily hostile to the idea. Jordan and Israel, on the other hand, are totally opposed to the creation of a third state in the Palestine area, especially a state controlled by the Palestinian resistance. This is nothing but the latest instance of a 25-year old partnership between Zionist colonialism and the Hashemite monarchy. In 1948, Ben-Gurion and Abdullah of Jordan, Hussein's father, agreed in a secret deal to the annexation by Jordan of the area allotted by the United Nations for the formation of a Palestinian Arab State; and both Amman and Tel-Aviv have a long history of co-operation to crush all independent activity on the part of the Palestinians (in September 1970, Israel threatened to intervene in Jordan if there was a danger that Hussein might be overthrown). In this situation, revolutionary Marxists uphold VACUUM Newsweek's view of Kissinger's role in the Middle East peace talks the right of the Palestinians to self-determina tion, and oppose both continued Israeli occupation and the re-annexation of the West Bank by the butcher of Sandhurst, both of which prospects are abhorrent to the vast majority of the West Bank population. Internationalists must respect the democratic wishes of oppressed nationalities, in this case the Palestinian Arabs. We have to defend their capable of finally solving the national and social problems of the Arab and Israeli working masses.
Alan Adlei
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-SAR3 the Arab socialist revolution, which alone is