Economic crisis shakes Begin

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The new year has brought no respite for the Israeli government with one major crisis and political scandal following another.

Prior to Christmas the government narrowly survived a no confidence vote by 57 to 54 votes resulting from the announcement that the inflation level was around 130% and forecast to rise to reach an annual average of 160%.

The economic downturn was complemented by political or babesncer nine thinister of the Minister Religious Affairs and further aggravated by the expulsion of the Palestinian mayors of Hebron and Halhoul.

The expulsion even provoked criticism from many Zionist sources including militarist Moshe Dayan.

This reflects firstlv a recognition of the difficulty of repressing the resistance of the Palestinians and secondly disagreement over how best to combat that resistance.

All present opinion polls show that the Labour Party under its new leader Shimon Peres would win any election held in the near future and indeed the possibilitv of the Begin-led coalition holdins out until November have never Inoked slimmer.

A further blow to the Zionist establishment was dealt by the release, prior to Shrist mas, of new statistics showing that in the face of 130% inflation, Israelis have been leaving the country in droves.

33,000 more Israelis left the country than entered in the first ten months of 1980, compared to a figure of 14,000 in the same period the preceding year according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

Also a 40% drop in Jews moving to the so-called 'safe haven' of Israel, against the previous year, was recorded.

Against this background the West Bank has witnessed a massive wave of Palestinian nationalism publicly displayed through strikes and demonstrations, many centred around the expulsion of the two mayors and most viciously attacked by the Zionist occupation forces.

However the rousing welcome for Mayor Bassam Shaka of Nablus on his return to the West Bank last week shows that this popular feeling refuses to be cowed by Israeli repression. for tor the Shaka lost both legs in a car bomb explosion last June shortly after a meeting with the then Israeli defence minister Ezer Weizman, who threatened him with violence during the meeting.

This week has seen the Begin coalition government rocked by a new scandal over an attempt Interior and Police to hold up the investigation into corruption in his ministry.

Burg summarily dismissed, insubordination, the InspecGeneral of Police leading investigation!

The economic crisis combined with the rotten corruption and reactionary outbursts of the ruling Likud politicians has brought the government to the brink of collapse-a journey hastened by the boldness of the Palestinian resistance.

60,000 teachers or ronnisen 30 and 60%, which if successful would provoke an avalanche of similar claims has added further pressure.

. Finance Minister Hurvitz has resigned following the cabinet decision to pay the award and unless this resignation is reversed as we go to press, it will quite possibly destroy Begin's tiny parliamentary majority.

There can be little doubt that such a collapse would return a so-called 'Labour This might in turn herald some attempt at a shabby land offer to the Palestinians as an alternative to Begin's view that the biblical land of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) should forever be a part of Israel.

Such an offer does not answer the Palestinian demand for national self determination.

What it represents is a recognition by sections of the Zionist establishment that pure repression, relying totally on the armed forces, may not be a financially viable policy.

Jewish workers must be granted sufficient concessions to prevent them entering the arena to combat 160% inflation and therefore threatening the class collaboration on which Zionism and the Israeli state rest.

Many pro-Zionists clearly see Begin's determination to prevent any agreement which may eventually lead to a small Palestinian statelet, as an embarrassment at a time when the future viability of the Jewish state itself is in question.

The government's policy of sanctioning more settlements on the West Bank has stoked Palestinian resistance at a time when the economy can ill afford its defence bill.

Defence spending

The desperate nature of the domestic economic crisis is reflected in the decisions in December to attempt to curb internal defence spending. Defence accounts for 32% of the country's budget-with a further third of the budget servicing and Iepayıng foreigr debt most of which is incurred for military purposes.

There is clearly some truth in the joke about whether the country has an army or the army has a country.

Harsh economic realities have pointed the knife at the previously sacrosanct Defence Ministry and these are the same realities behind the Zionists in the Israeli Labour Party who can offer no lead to Arab and Jewish workers.

The Middle East-and in many ways this means the Palestinian question-is central to the problems of US and Western imperialism in general.

In the immediate future we will doubtless hear many different voices preaching the need for some kind of restricted statelet for the Palestinians, liberally sprinkled with warmedover platitudes about "human rights"

Britain and Germany can be expected to favour some such deal due to the possible economic expense of the military Rapid Deployment Force-type. alternative.

Some Tory MPs advocate the political "buy off" in the shape of a restricted state as the cheapest way to guarantee oil and block Soviet influence in the Middle East.

In sifting the genuine support from its opposite, socialists must fight for the overthrow of the Zionist Israeli settler state.

In struggling on this basic question they will find no friends in the Israeli Labour Party or the British Tory Party.

The real disgrace for British workers is that they will find precious few such friends in the ranks of the leadership of the British labour movement either! grants, political refugees, inde- ism' pendence fighters, homosexuals, condemned.

Giscard has meddled in interest. He has not only The prospects for 1981 must be one of struggle to make the implementation of these new attacks unworkable and to get them thrown out-along with Giscard himself, who is now trailing Socialist leader Francois Mitterand in the opinion polls.