November 2001

PTS facing the palestinian revolution

From the reactionary policy of “self determination right”
to the general “solidarity” as MAS in the 80s.

Facing the begining of the Palestinian revolution, PTS started to stand up a position that focused in the “defense of the self determination right of the Palestinian people” that, as we have already explained in our first Call published in our BIOI #1 –Second Epoch-, it is a reactionary policy as behind it there are only the recognition of the exsistence of “two nations”, one of the oppresive Israeli” and the other “one oppressed Palestinian”.  This is a way to back “on the left” the Oslo Agreements.  Meanwhile this policy was standing up, PTS put and took out from its articles the fighting slogan for the destruction of the Israeli State, in regards to the pressures and not to hurt the feelings of the “democratic” pettit bourgoisie from Capital Federal.  In order to cover this capitulation, they talked about a “Socialist and Worker Palestine” in general, abandoning the fight to take up to the end the democratic and revolutionary program for the destruction of the State of Israel and for a secular democratic nonrascist Palestinian State, and without stating any power slogan, this is without fighting for a worker and peasant government of the uprising Palestinean masses.
Today, four months since the Palestinian revolution started, PTS rearranged in regards to the most outrageously capitulators aspects of their previous positions. Thus, in LVO (PTS paper La verdad Obrera) No. 76, on January 5th, 2000, said: "Because we defend the right (the Palestinian people) to their freedom, we argue that this will only be possible with the destruction of the racist state of Israel and the expulsion of imperialism in the region. The conquest of a state where they can live in peace Arabs and Jews will only be effective with a workers and peasants government in a Socialist Worker Palestine". Despite this circumstantial rearrangement, it is clear that they have abandoned the revolutionary democratic program that is the engine of the fight of the Palestinian people, ie the destruction of the State of Israel inextricably linked to the struggle to impose a secular, democratic and not racist Palestinian state, which can never be separated.
Hoever, in a full-page article, which is nothing but a rehash of information from the bourgeois newspapers on the comings and goings of  the negotiations between Clinton, Barak and Arafat, what PTS does not talk, what PTS does not say , what does not exist, it is about the reolution that the Palestinian workers and masses are carrying on. PTS continues supporting that weare facing a simple "revolt": so much it is in ths wat that they even refers to it as ... a "significant conflict"! The Palestinian workers and masses with their insurrection have blown up Oslo Agreements and they have dismantled all the insittutions and control mechanism, the masses keep with their daily clashes agaisnt the Israeli army and the setlers that have killed nearly 400 workers and youths, they have divided the Zionist bourgoisie, divided the Palestinian police forces of Arafar, they have armed theselves and have settled a dual power in the camps and cities, they have exeutionated the collaborators. However, for those pseudo-intellectuals who repeat the gestures of the right wing left from the dock of Buenos Aires and look the reality from their classroom of the bourgoisie university, for them it is just about a simple “revolt”, an “uprising".
And even if they were right, if it were just a simple  "uprising", should not we fight for its transformation into an open revolution? Do not we have to fight to set up worker and peasant councils, for the generalized armamnet, for workers' militias, to defeat the bourgeois nationalists leadership of Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah, so on.., and for a revolutionary leadership for the Palestinian masses who prepares an insurrection and the take of power? Because, if it is not the case, do you want us to explain how the State of Israel is destryed, how a worker and peasant government is imposed, and that " Socialist Worker's Palestine" you talked about, how it is imposed?
From all this, PTS is silent: it shows that its "program" written again at midnight is just a "socialist" empty litany, and its real and true policy towards the great Palestinian revolution, it is a "solidarity" campaign in general, the same kind done by MAS in the '80s. And we have no doubt that, sooner or later, we will see these pacifist social-democrats end up like MAS ended in the '90 against the heroic struggle of the Bosnian Muslim people for their independence: organizing "campaigns of worker aid " with "blue helmets" of UN, taling food and medicine, this time for this" backward" Palestinian people and its" significant conflict "!