Workers World, Vol. 19, No. 39
October 10 – Ten days ago the United States and the Soviet Union issued a joint statement which for the first time declared that they favored “a comprehensive settlement of the Middle East problem” and called for a conference to start in Geneva “not later than December 1977.” This declaration has been widely regarded as representing either a shift or a breakthrough in the U.S. position on the Palestinian question.
There is not much on the face of this document to lend credibility to such a broad assumption. However, it does specify that a resolution of “the Palestinian question” would assure “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”
This is the point on which the storm of opposition from the Israeli regime has centered. Sections of the ruling class in this country, particularly those most vociferous in championing the cause of the Israeli puppet regime, have also raised a big hue and cry. And it goes without saying that the Zionist elements are furious.
Of course, the phrase “legitimate rights of the Palestinians” could be interpreted in many different ways. More often than not, joint resolutions or communiques of a diplomatic character conceal rather than reveal the real understanding reached by the parties involved. To the ordinary person, this language could convey a multitude of divergent interpretations.
Nevertheless, this is the first time that the U.S. government has used such a phrase. The Israelis have long been opposed to such language. They have seen it in the past, and may even more in the present, as an opener to a process which will ultimately dislodge the Israeli regime from all the occupied territories and bring the Palestinians back to the national homeland – a territory forcibly usurped by the Israeli regime with collusion and help from the imperialists, above all the U.S.
However, the phraseology of the joint statement may be merely a change in the form of U.S. negotiations with the Arab people and not at all a change in substance. What lies behind the phrase “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” can only be determined in the course of the Palestinian struggle.
Since the statement there have been ten days of back-and-forth negotiations, all in secret, in which Carter has reversed himself several times and even permitted himself to say that he would “rather commit political suicide than hurt Israel” – a widely publicized remark made to a group of congressional leaders last week. However, it does seem on the basis of an examination of the capitalist press here and of the statements of various high aides of the Carter administration plus other representatives of the ruling class, that some sort of shift has been made and that the U.S. is attempting to find a way to include the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the negotiations at the projected Geneva conference, of which the U.S. and the USSR are co-chairs.
It’s not hard to see why American capital might want to gain some sort of recognition for the PLO, if that met with their overall objective. Carter and the section of the ruling class he speaks for might opt for a “homeland” for the Palestinians on the West Bank, where they would be maneuvered into a specified and severely restricted area. At this writing, the Israeli regime is arrogantly and defiantly opposed to even this, although this may be only their pre-Geneva negotiating position. In the meantime, they continue to plant settlements in the occupied areas to show they mean business.
There is certainly no indication that the U.S. intends to displace the Israeli regime from the territory it has occupied ever since 1948. In fact, there is no indication that the full national rights of the Palestinians are being considered at all, even by the Arab regimes like Egypt, Syria, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia.
But the shift by the Carter administration, even if it turns out to be only in the realm of semantics, must nevertheless be seen in terms of the realities of the Mideast situations, first of all as these pertain to Israel.
The Israeli state is an artificial one built up over a period of years into a giant military garrison by huge infusions of U.S. capital. Israel is not now, never has been, and cannot possibly become a viable state precisely because of its artificiality and because it is merely a dangerous extension and instrumentality of American finance capital in a foreign and hostile terrain.
However, it has always been regarded as a highly valuable asset by the U.S. ruling class, not because of any “moral values” or “democratic affinity,” but because of its intrinsic value to the U.S. imperialist establishment in terms of dollars and cents – as is always the case between master and client. Its extraordinarily enlarged significance lies in the fact that over several decades it has become the principal means by which the U.S. has held the oppressed Arab nation at bay.
More significantly, it has served to protect and defend, where need be, the fabulous empire of vast oil riches controlled by the U.S. in that part of the world.
But the political situation in the Middle East is on the threshold of a vast deep-going radical socialist transformation. And even at present the Arab states have grown more powerful while the Israeli regime has become more and more of an economic liability to the U.S.
Israeli’s inflation rate is higher than any country in Europe. Its population is declining; emigration in the last few years has been greater than immigration, a point which can scarcely be lost on even the most fanatical of the Zionist element here.
As James Reston of the New York Times put it, “The notion that Israel can keep a million Arabs [on the West Bank – S.M.] under occupation is just unreal. No way can it be done. And why should the U.S. perpetually maintain that situation at tremendous cost to the international [read “imperialist” – S.M.] community ... and to the security of Israel if the Arabs become radicalized.” (He really means revolutionized.)
As Reston sees it, the security of U.S. imperialism, of the oil interests like Exxon, Mobil, and the others, lies in cutting Israel down to size – a very small size, one compatible with the present reactionary regimes in Syria, Egypt, and above all, Saudi Arabia. These three, at the present time, constitute a formidable reservoir of reaction against revolutionary developments in the Arab world, particularly in Palestine. And it is necessary for the U.S. to meet them “half way” by making some concessions on what is the central question – the Palestinians and the status of the Israeli regime, an intruder pointed like a dagger at the heartland of Arabia.
Moreover, it is recognized on all sides that “the U.S. government itself cannot continually pour in supplies and aid to Israel which amount to nearly $2 billion in military aid yearly, which is more than the U.S. gives to any other country in the world” (New York Times, Oct. 7).
Just as pertinent is the growing realization that while U.S. finance capital has won a staunch ally in Egypt, the largest and most important of the Arab countries, the ruling group there is in growing peril of being overthrown. The Sadat regime, which came to power in 1970, is today facing its severest economic crisis. There is growing unemployment, a huge government deficit, galloping inflation, and an increasingly restive petty-bourgeoisie, not to speak of widespread dissatisfaction among the workers.
Repressive legislation by the Sadat regime has not succeeded in silencing either the new leftist ferment in the country or even the extreme rightists, who are equally dissatisfied but for reactionary reasons.
A settlement with the Israelis could possibly rescue Sadat as well as some of the other regimes, including Saudi Arabia, the richest but nonetheless the most insecure. (Could it be anything else when an absolute monarchy reigns supreme on behalf of the oil interests, without even the semblance of any limit on the arbitrary rule of the royal family?)
These strains and stresses engendered by the reemergence of the transnational corporations in Egypt and other Arab countries have produced acute class antagonisms in practically all the Arab lands. The U.S. has to try and resolve some of the ills and unrest flowing from these class antagonisms, and relieving some of the external pressure produced by the existence of the Israeli state is thought to be a partial solution to the increasingly acute situation.
But the inner relations between the Israeli state and U.S. imperialism and their reciprocal relations to the Arab states, especially around the role of the Palestinians, are but one aspect of the Middle East problem, although the fundamental one.
The other is the USSR, and the two are intimately connected.
According to the Washington Post of Oct. 2, the joint U.S.-Soviet statement “grew out of a Soviet initiative and leans more toward Arab terms for a conference and agreement than it does on Israeli conditions.” The New York Times on the same day quotes the PLO as expressing satisfaction that “the joint U.S.-Soviet statement constitutes a constructive step towards finding a just settlement to the Middle East problem and for the first time covers the essential aspect of the crisis.” The same quote from the PLO appears in the Daily World of Oct. 4.
One of the most important questions concerning the ultimate effect of the joint statement rotates around the role which the USSR will play if and when negotiations are really resumed in Geneva and if the PLO, as may be assumed according to present accounts, is represented. It is highly unlikely that the conference would ever take place if the PLO were not represented or were inadequately represented.
Of course, the PLO is in reality a de facto Palestinian government and has been recognized as such by 105 member states of the UN. As a government, however, it represents a coalition of diverse political factions, among whom are an ever-growing number who adhere not only to socialism as a vague concept but to Marxism and Leninism. This is another reason why the U.S. and the Israelis, and for that matter the reactionary regimes in the Arab world, fear the Palestinians, and must concede to them in many respects.
The participation of the USSR as co-chair in Geneva may become the axis of the struggle in the U.S. bourgeoisie. The ultra-right may tend to ally itself with the pro-Israeli element in the establishment and “make Russia the issue.” They are already asking why the USSR was brought back into the Middle East picture after it was “thrown out of Egypt,” and so on.
The USSR for its part may decide to play a nominal role only – merely acting as proxy or surrogate and espousing whatever views the PLO conveys to the Soviet delegates.
It can, however, play a tremendously progressive role by vigorously supporting the aspirations of the Palestinian people to the fullest extent. But it is also possible – and here is where the danger comes in – that it can act in a regressive role and throw its tremendous weight in a reactionary direction.
In this heartland of anti-communism more than anywhere, the enemies of the USSR are far too numerous and substantial and represent the basic approach of the ruling class. Violent anti-communism has been the daily diet of their general propaganda since the birth of the Soviet Socialist Republic. The times in which there have been truces or so-called normal relations can be counted on one hand.
But the need on the part of the U.S. and also on the part of the USSR to collaborate on occasions when their interests converge has also been strikingly revealed, particularly during the Second World War.
The wartime collaboration was, of course, of a special character since the U.S. and the Soviet Union were so-called allies against the common enemy, the fascist powers.
The joint Soviet-U.S. statement on the Middle East may reveal itself to have much wider implications than the Middle East question. Most of the serious elements in the capitalist press have commented on the timing of the issuance of this statement. It occurred precisely at a time when there was wide speculation that another “thaw” in U.S.-Soviet relations was in the making.
It could not possibly go unnoticed that in Carter’s speech to the UN General Assembly last week there was a conspicuous omission. He failed to refer to the phony “human rights” issue. This has been his basic orientation toward the USSR, and was elaborated by Brzezinski and company as well as the hard-liners in the Pentagon. It was nothing less than a challenge to the very legitimacy of the USSR as a socialist state, a drive for internal subversion in the USSR, and an overt, highly publicized call for arms escalation.
Also at the Belgrade conference on European security, the U.S. delegate, who months ago was cast in the role of a blatant anti-Soviet propagandist on the “human rights” issue, gave a rather too obvious low-key presentation on the very issue on which Carter had presumably built his entire political and diplomatic approach to the USSR.
More significantly, however, the press reports that substantial progress has been made in the SALT (strategic arms limitation talks), and this has so far gone undenied. In his UN address, Carter referred to significant gains made in the SALT talks with the USSR. In a general way, there has been a toning down by the U.S. press, and public attacks by the Carter administration officials against the USSR have diminished.
The Carter administration also announced on Oct. 3 that it had switched its policy on the Horn of Africa from one of “aggressively challenging the USSR” in that area of the world to playing a “neutral role.” This is hardest of all to believe.
All these diplomatic gestures must be seen, however, against the background of U.S. preparations to deploy the neutron bomb, the new and even more deadly MX missile system which would mean a quantum escalation of the nuclear arms race, and the move in Congress and the administration to go ahead with research and development of the B-1 bomber. These concrete military moves, costing tens of billions of dollars, loom over the negotiating table as tangible proof of imperialism’s ever greater reliance on war production to solve its political and economic crises.
Nevertheless, there is now the possibility, if we are to believe the reports in the capitalist press, that there may be an attempt at a worldwide agreement between the U.S. and the USSR on a variety of issues. Central among them are the Middle East question and an agreement on strategic arms limitation to follow up the expired SALT I.
As far as the working class and oppressed people are concerned, the question is how to evaluate the Soviet Union’s sponsorship of the joint statement in light of a possible worldwide agreement. Will it be a progressive step insofar as the Arab people in general, and the Palestinian people in particular, are concerned? Or will the Soviet leaders tend to trade away, to sacrifice or subordinate the Palestinian and Arab struggle in the interests of their “higher,” “national” interests?
With respect to a general arms agreement, it can almost be taken for granted that neither the USSR nor the U.S. will make substantial concessions to one another which would in any way weaken or put them in an unequal position. It is simply not possible in the contemporary situation. What is possible is an agreement that limits each other’s arsenal in such a way that neither side will be given an advantage or disadvantage thereby. (We said the same at the time of the signing of the Vladivostok agreement.)
The bourgeois press has said many times in these last ten days that the basic motivation of the Carter administration in agreeing to bring the USSR into the Middle East picture, to use their own phraseology (others said it was really a Soviet initiative), was because the USSR can have a “moderating” effect on the PLO, over which the USSR presumably has political influence. There is, of course, no doubt at all that large sections of the PLO, both in the rank and file and the leadership, and particularly in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), look upon the USSR as a friendly power capable of making a progressive contribution to their cause.
It can, of course, also act in the current situation as champion, rather than moderator, of the right of national self-determination for the Palestinian people. Should the USSR assume such a role, the U.S. would of course regard it as destructive of its interests and its version of détente. But it would, of course, be to the great advantage of the Palestinian people and the Arab people generally if the USSR were to consistently espouse their cause.
It should also be noted that any agreement should at the very least represent what the Palestinian and Arab people generally have won on the battlefield. Even with all the defeats suffered by the Palestinians at the hands of the Jordanian-CIA monarchy and the brutal assaults by the Assad regime against the Palestinians in southern Lebanon, they nevertheless constitute a very, very formidable force and are in truth a de facto state.
What remains for the Geneva conference in the light of the developing struggle is to give de jure recognition to what in fact exists – a Palestinian state – but in their own original homeland.
The settlement of the Palestinian question – that is, not merely legitimatizing the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people, or setting up a West Bank state, but restoring them to their homeland – require a deliberate campaign and struggle and not merely diplomatic maneuvers. There is not a single example in the history of this century where a really important international question has been settled by mere negotiation rather than by force.
Negotiations, however, can do more than ratify what really exists. They can also anticipate what will ultimately happen anyway. The Palestinians are overdue to win nationhood and statehood – and in their original homeland. From that point of view, the Geneva conference could indeed be more than a conventional diplomatic jockeying ground.
It is virtually impossible to arrive at a clear conception of the motives of the USSR leadership or of what they are capable of accomplishing unless we first take into account the class character of the USSR and the political orientation of the current leadership.
The imperialist press over the years has characterized the relationship between the U.S. and the USSR as one of rivals and superpowers who contend for leadership in various areas of the world but also find it to their interest on occasions to collaborate.
While this has been the line of the bourgeoisie, it has not inhibited them in any way from conducting the most vicious anti-communist and anti-Soviet slanders. Whenever the rivalry has become intense, so have the slanders; whenever there have been periods of truce, there has been a moderation in the anti-Soviet campaigns.
There is now a new variety of lies, slander, and vilification coming from the so-called left. These attacks on the USSR vary in form but in reality have an identical objective effect and therefore are not substantially different from the open anti-communism of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
For instance, in his speech to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 29, Huang Hua, chairman of the delegation of the People’s Republic of China, delivered an address which for the most part repeated the slanders of the imperialist bourgeoisie against the USSR but utilized revolutionary rhetoric as a disguise. Again and again, he inveighed against the two “super-powers” which “contend and rival” in the Middle East for “power and hegemonism.”
Even if all he said were true (and he put it precisely the way the bourgeoisie does), it confuses the issue. Mere rivalry and contention between two powers does not necessarily condemn them both.
For instance, before the imperialist epoch the nascent capitalist class contended with the feudal aristocracy. They rivalled and contended for influence and for power and this inevitably led to collisions in which one overthrew the other.
In a more recent period in the United States, the northern states contended with the southern states and rivalled with them for hegemony and supremacy. Superficially, one could easily condemn them both. In reality, however, it was a struggle between two rival and irreconcilable social systems – the rising capitalist system of wage slavery and the outmoded system of chattel slavery. Regardless of the contention and rivalry, and the untold miseries this caused on both sides, the victory of northern capitalism over the chattel slave-holding aristocracy was of a progressive character – even though it never solved the national oppression of the newly freed Black people.
Even if one were to regard the Soviet leadership as wholly regressive and reactionary in character, it is inconceivable that in a struggle between two social systems, and this is what the struggle between the U.S. and the USSR is really all about, the leadership of the USSR could at will and with impunity turn their backs on the Palestinian and Arab people without inflicting upon themselves a serious catastrophe.
This leads us to seek the historical and political roots of U.S.-USSR diplomacy in the Middle East in order to dispel the current confusion by the Maoists on the nature of Soviet Mideast diplomacy.
Last updated: 11 May 2026