Israel/Palestine

By Uri Avnery , from the Gush Shalom website. First all, a warning. Tent cities are springing up all over Israel. A social protest movement is gathering momentum. At some point in the near future, it may endanger the right-wing government. At that point, there will be a temptation – perhaps an irresistible temptation – to “warm up the borders”. To start a nice little war. Call on the youth of Israel, the same young people now manning (and womanning) the tents, to go and defend the fatherland. Nothing easier than that. A small provocation, a platoon crossing the border “to prevent the launching...

The last few weeks has seen the most powerful protest movement in Israel’s history on issues not relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict. On 30 July, a series of huge demonstrations took place across the country, involving 150,000 people (Israel’s population is slightly over one tenth of the UK’s). The movement has been so powerful that it has won words of support from centrist Kadima party, and even prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has conceded some ground. Kadima, like all liberals, love to "vote with the wind." They jump on the band wagon when they see a movement has public support. The fact...

As we reported , the Salit quarry workers, organised by the radical Workers' Advice Centre union, are on strike to demand recognition from their Israeli bosses. Their dispute is now entering its second month. For more details on how you can make solidarity, see the WAC website: www.wac-maan.org.il/en/article__211

On 11 July, the Israeli knesset (parliament) passed a law which makes the Israeli left's campaign of boycott against settlements in occupied Palestine illegal. In March, we commented : "In Britain, as things currently stand, the issue of boycotting the settlements is difficult to separate out from the reactionary and counter-productive drive for a general boycott of Israel. In Israel itself it is quite a different matter. Gush Shalom initiated a boycott of settlement products thirteen years ago as part of a more general political campaign against Israeli colonialism in the Occupied Territories...

By Avirama Golan, from the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz Israel is in second place after Japan in the number of hours worked. Every year, people work more, earn less and are able to buy less with their shrinking paychecks. In the face of such pressure, the effect of the strike at Haifa Chemicals takes on added force due to the impressive solidarity shown by the Generation A workers. Without fanfare, a labor court issued an order this week referring the dispute between Haifa Chemicals' management and its striking workers to mediation. It's hard to believe that management, which just two months ago...

From the Workers' Advice Centre , a radical trade union which organises both Jewish and Arab workers in Israel. For a background briefing, see here . For more information or to send messages of solidarity email oda@netvision.net.il or ring +972-50-4330038 On June 16, 35 Palestinian workers at Salit Quarries in Mishor Adumim (a settlement area east of Jerusalem) began a general strike. The workers, organized with the independent Union WAC-Ma'an, are demanding an end to exploitation and humiliation, and insist on signing a first collective agreement. The strike began after the workers and the...

On 22 June 2011, Unison National Delegate Conference voted against a policy of “critical engagement” with the mass Israeli trade union federation, the Histadrut. The effect of this vote is to suspend relations with Histadrut pending a review and further recommendations next year. The debate on conference floor was very confused. In November 2010, a Unison delegation travelled to Palestine and met with the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU). The PFTUC recommended the policy of “critical engagement” with the Histadrut. In April 2011, this advice was repeated. Then in May 2011 a...

On 17 May, the National Union of Students national executive council passed policy on Israel-Palestine - itself something of a departure for NUS. What it passed was a toned down version of a "left" motion remitted from national conference in April to the NEC. Immediately, the Union of Jewish Students issued a statement condemning the very fact that the NEC had taken the vote. It described the decision as being made by "around 10... activists - most ex-students - [who] spoke on behalf of 7 million students". In fact there were 16 NEC members present, and they were not just random NUS activists...

Are the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace any more immanent after President Obama’s recent speech? Does it break any new ground? The short answer would have to be no. Not because American imperial interests would not be better served by a two state solution. Brokering such a deal would enormously enhance America’s prestige and credibility with an awakening Arab street, a public justifiably suspicious of Western intentions given imperialism’s history of sustaining their oppressors. The world of imperial puppetry, where elite interests are manipulated through authoritarian surrogacies -...

On 15 May, groups of Palestinians living in Syria and in Lebanon gathered and crossed the border into Israel, in demonstrations to mark Nakba (catastrophe) Day (the Palestinian name for the anniversary of the declaration of the state of Israel). The Israeli army responded in typical ten-eyes-for-an-eye fashion, killing fourteen. According to a sympathetic report on the Lebanese border action in Counterpunch by Franklin Lamb, who took part in it, buses to the border were organised by the Islamist party Hezbollah. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah told the crowd that the action was a gesture of...