Zionist crisis grows

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The desperate political crisis of the Zionist regime in occupied Palestine has opened up over recent weeks against the background of a series of important strikes.

Bank Leumi, one of the largest in Palestine, has locked out its workers since the beginning of the month after they made a 120% pay demand.

This claim would just about make up for the rate of inflation for the last year.

Similar demands are coming forward from teachers and other public sector workers.

This crisis is reflected in a number of ways within the regime itself.

The efforts of the ultra-reactionary Begin government to reach a deal with Sadat in Egypt against the Palestinian liberation struggle has been pre-empted by the setting up of a new organisation even to the right of Begin's Likud Begin This new organisation, called the Tehiya ('Rebirth') wants to expand the Israeli state to the whole 'land of Israel' including the West Bank and probably also parts of Syria and Lebanon.

It attracted 3,000 people to its recent founding conference in Jerusalem.

This movement provides the political expression of the efforts of various ultraZionist groups to establish new settlements.

They are largely connived at by the Begin government but may in the end outflank them within the Zionist movement, especially as they express more accurately the Zionist state's continual need to seek further plunder.

The weakness of Begin's position at this point is shown by his inability to bring about the cabinet reshuffle . he needs to appease the reactionaries.

He is known to want to dismiss his liberal' finance minister Simcha Erlich, but cannot do so for fear of upsetting the delicate balance between 'left' and 'right'.

In the end it may be that the Zionist regime may try to rescue itself, as always, by beginning a new war.

This time, however, the crisis-ridden regime may find it more difficult to hold back workers confronting 100% inflation, who are still denied any independent trade union organisation.