Worldwide Protests Halt Racist Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing

NEGEV, December 12 —  Massive protests both here and around the world forced Beni Begin (the Israeli government official in charge of “resolving” the Bedouin settlements in the Negev) and Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel the racist Prawer-Begin Plan which would evict (read: ethnic cleansing) 40,000 Bedouin workers. This massive victory against apartheid was only made possible by international and multi-ethnic solidarity of workers against racism and fascism.
Two weeks before, on Nov 30, thousands of Palestinian-Bedouin workers and peasants, as well as Jews and Palestinians from the rest of the country, rallied near the poverty-stricken Bedouin town of Hura against the racist Prawer Plan. The multi-ethnic protestors stood for two hours, facing heavily armed cops and mounted police and demanding justice, as well as the recognition of all Bedouin villages. After two hours of protest, the cops charged in, attacking the unarmed workers and peasants with clubs, tear gas, concussion grenades, water hoses and horses.
Dozens were arrested and brutally beaten, including a 10-year-old child. As of Dec 15, they are still in custody, children included. In response, local youth threw stones at the cops and blocked the road with burning tires. The fighting continued for two more hours. Then some of the protestors drove to the police precinct to demand the release of their arrested comrades. Two PL’ers joined the protest, from beginning to end, standing together with their Bedouin comrades against the racist plan.  
The Prawer Plan was nothing but thinly-disguised ethnic cleansing. It called for the deportation of 40,000 Bedouin workers and subsistence farmers from the so-called “unrecognized” villages to crowded (mis-)”planned” towns where unemployment reaches 50% and over 60% are below the poverty line. The bosses’ goal was massive land-grab of Bedouin ancestral lands, to be seized by the state and handed over to U.S. and local real-estate tycoons, such as NYC’s Ronald Lauder (worth $32.3 billion), who would have used it to build fancy houses for the rich.
The state claims that the Bedouins are “squatters”, but how can someone be a “squatter” on lands their families have lived on for generations? The real “squatters” are the Zionist regime and its fat-cat U.S. patrons, who wish to do a somewhat smaller “Nakba” of 1948 (the deportation of 750,000 Palestinians, yet to return to their lands).
Even after the defeat of this plan, Bedouin workers and peasants live in the “unrecognized” villages that still lack basic infrastructures and amenities and have inadequate education and healthcare, all while being harassed by the Jewish (read: Zionist) National Fund who seek to take over their lands and livelihood. The government claims that it cannot provide services to tens of small, “scattered” villages even while it provides excellent infrastructures and services to dozens of well-off Kibbutzim, Moshavim and individual farms, all exclusive to upper-class Jews. These excuses reek of racism.
Capitalism, especially in its Zionist form, is hell for all workers in historic Palestine “from the river to the sea” (an anti-Israeli slogan). However, experience from South Africa and Zimbabwe shows that replacing colonialist (in this case, Zionist) capitalism with Palestine boss capitalism will solve very little of the workers’ problems. Racist apartheid was replaced by native capitalist rule, in service of U.S. imperialism, and now increasingly oppresses workers and murders striking miners. Capitalist “national liberation” holds no promise to the impoverished workers of all ethnicities and “races.”
The victorious fight against the Prawer Plan shows us the way to defeat our class enemies: working-class unity and struggle to the end. The only real solution to the horrors of capitalism is communist revolution under the flags of Progressive Labor Party and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat from the river to the sea. This could help create a red Middle East and a red world. Under communism we will share all land and resources equally, and smash all remnants of racism. Join us!