Crafar Farm Sale: whose land is it anyway?

[This article is from the latest issue of our magazine, Socialist Review]

John Key’s phrase “tenants in our own land” has become a political cliche, picked up by almost all parties commenting on the Crafar farms sale. Echoing Key, on January 27th the Dominion Post quoted David Shearer describing the sale of the farms to Chinese business interests as ''open[ing] the way for more New Zealanders to become tenants in their own land''. Shearer, who has had nothing supportive to say about the Maritime Union’s campaign at Ports of Auckland, has been vocal in his opposition to the sale. The Greens pitched in too, describing the sale as “short-sighted”, while for Winston Peters, predictably, it is “treasonous.”

The farm sales have aroused a lot of indignation, and still more confusion. But workers – whatever the power of nationalist ideas amongst our class currently – have no stake in the populist passions being generated at the moment. This case taps into – and revives – old, and powerful, racist currents in New Zealand politics, currents that serve to divide our class, and to make us look to so-called foreigners as enemies, instead of focussing on the real divisions within New Zealand society.

Aotearoa is Māori Land

The irony is lost on bourgeois politicians.  New Zealand,  a capitalist settler colony, was founded on the sale of land to foreigners – white, British foreigners. Sometimes that land had been bought from iwi; more often, it had been stolen.

The idea that more recent foreign ownership will make us “tenants in our own land” is nonsensical. Māori already are tenants in much of their own land, and it has taken decades of hard struggle to win back what land rights some iwi now have. And how many Pakeha workers own, like the Crafars did, 7892 hectares of farmland? The outcry about the Chinese-backed bid has nothing to do with self-determination or democratic control. It is a racist distraction, trying to make us feel like we have common interests with our rulers.

Labour and the Greens have tried to put a left-wing spin on this anti-Chinese argument. Greens spokesperson Steffan Browning argued that "foreign ownership of the Crafar farms means that the profits will flow overseas." Other politicians have suggested that foreign ownership is somehow more of a threat to Māori land rights than ownership by New Zealand citizens.

But Māori have had to fight local businesses and big farmers for their rights in the past, and it is hard to see how the situation would be any different with Chinese owners.

And  the idea that profits will “flow overseas”  does not match with how capitalism operates. Plenty of major New Zealand capitalists, from Fonterra to Cater Holt Harvey, invest profits abroad already. And companies within New Zealand don’t exploit us for profits in order for those profits to ‘flow’ to the rest of us! Profit goes towards the pursuit of more profit, to the expansion of business production. It is workers’ labour that makes this profit for the bosses, not their generosity in living amongst us that keeps it around us.

With friends like these…

Any idea that New Zealand capitalists would be better owners of farmland than Chinese capitalists should explode when we stop to consider just who those prospective New Zealand buyers were. Michael Fay – famous for his role making money through New Zealand’s deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s – is estimated to be worth over $700m. In 2002 Fay and his business partner David Richwhite agreed to pay  agreed to pay $20 million to settle an insider-trading case over their sale of shares in Tranz Rail shares. When facing the heat over other tax deals, Fay relocated to Switzerland! Is this really a figure likely to help ordinary people?

Anti-Chinese Racism

New Zealand capitalism was founded on land theft and the attempted destruction of Māori society. For that reason white society has always been characterised by a paranoid, anxious racism, insisting that we are “one people” while forever trying to suppress and forget the details of this history. For most of the last century Asians, initially the Chinese and then the Japanese, were the scapegoated “Other” for this paranoid nationialism.

This is the context in which we need to understand the noise around the Crafar sale. When John Campbell – as he did through January – leads stories with questions about whether “New Zealanders will be able to keep the farms in Kiwi hands” or whether they will go to “the Chinese”, he is encouraging the revival of this vile racist tradition. Worse, a poster on the Labour-supporting The Standard blog described a supporter of the sale as an “enemy of the people” and a “traitor to this country.”

In 2011 two Thai women were abused both physically and verbally in Nelson, a couple set their dogs on a Filipino man and Japanese student in Christchurch, a man in New Plymouth attacked his Indian neighbours' car with a machete, and a Chinese student was assaulted at an Invercargill petrol station. These are some of the physical and verbal attacks on Asians reported in the Human Rights Commission’s review of discrimination and harassment. According to the Commission’s survey, 75% of respondents named Asians as the most discriminated against group in society currently.

Racist populism not only distracts us from the real divisions facing workers, it encourages a climate where attacks like this can take place. That climate is a real problem for all workers. This dispute about ownership is the side-show.

Dougal McNeill

Indian workers show their power

by Snehal Shingavi

[This article first appeared at Socialist Worker.org, website of the International Socialist Organization, U.S.]

TENS OF millions of workers took part in a one-day general strike in India on February 28 in the country's largest industrial action since its independence in 1947.

This is the first time that India's main trade union federations, which are all affiliated to one or another political party, have come together to protest "neoliberal economic and labor policies" pursued by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the governing coalition led by the Congress Party. The action was also supported by more than 5,000 independent unions.

This reveals two important things about India that are usually forgotten by the Western media.

First, India is not merely a seething mass of desperation, composed of peasants and the abject poor. It has a massive working class with organizations that are capable of bringing out large forces. Second, the economic realities of neoliberal growth do not go unchallenged indefinitely. Even in the places where the vice grip on workers has been tightened to extreme levels, people find a way to fight back.

Among the demands that the unions made were the establishment of a national minimum wage, the end of temporary employment (what are called "contract laborers" in India) in favor of permanent jobs, more efforts to curb runaway inflation (the official rate is hovering at around 7.5 percent), guaranteed pensions, and an end to the privatization of publicly owned companies.

The banking and insurance sectors were hit hardest by the strike, but other workers, including dockworkers, postal workers and transportation workers, were heavily involved. The coordination of a national strike on this scale marks the beginning of a new stage in the confrontation between labor and capital in India, as the benefits of India's boom has produced an economy in which the benefits accrue to the few at the top.

Despite threats from the central government and a last-minute offer to negotiate, the strike took place and brought out millions.

In Kerala, the state government threatened workers with a "dies non" order (no work, no pay), while in other places like New Delhi, the government attempted to enforce the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to force workers in industries like power generation back to work. In West Bengal, members of Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) party also attacked and injured strikers.

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FOR THE past decade, India has been the darling of the economic pundits globally, with massive growth rates and a burgeoning middle class whose consumptive powers have fuelled the national mythology of "India Shining." According to current estimates, the Indian economy grew at around 7 percent last year and is projected to grow again at a similar rate in 2012.

At the same time, the benefits of that growth have been massively skewed. As Katherine Boo's new book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, demonstrates, the growth of the Indian economy has happened at the same time as the growth of its underclass.

Mumbai, the symbol of India's new economic power and famous for its massive film industry, is now commonly referred to as "Slumbai"--more people live in slums in Mumbai than don't. Many of these slum dwellers work in the hyper-exploitative informal economy--if they work at all.

Agricultural reforms implemented in the past 20 years have immiserated people in the countryside. Last year alone, there were more than 15,000 farmer suicides as a result of indebtedness and bad harvests. Desperate farmers then migrate to the larger cities and towns where they form the massive reserve army of the unemployed, which drives down wages.

The national strike was a response to these conditions and the pinch that workers are feeling throughout the country. Last year, there were some spectacular job actions at places like the Maruti-Sazuki auto plant in the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, where workers fought a pitched battle for wages and occupied the factory for almost two weeks.

At the same time, the official line of the Congress Party-led government and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is that neoliberal economic policies are going to continue. At the heart of the fight with the unions is the controversial pensions bill now before parliament, which would tie workers' retirement benefits to market-driven financial instruments and put employee retirements in jeopardy.

But also at issue are Singh's plans to sell off major state holdings in order to finance repayments on international loans and budget deficits. Singh did, after all, cut his teeth as the economic architect of India's neoliberal reforms, which began to be implemented when he was the finance minister under former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

All this puts twin pressures on unionized workers in India. On one side is the threat of being pushed into the growing underclass, which labor is trying desperately to unionize. The other peril comes from neoliberalism and the attack on union rights. This has produced the conditions for greater worker militancy in India.

However, this confrontation between labor and capital in India will not be decisive. To start with, the unions have only put forward a tentative one-day strike, with a long and vague list of demands. Moreover, the official trade unions are all connected to various political parties, and these massive days of protest are usually connected to political gamesmanship that the parties play against one another.

The unions at the head of the strike were led by the official left in India, which is still dominated by Stalinist and Maoist political organizations. So in India, there is the All-India Federation of Trade Unions (run by the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) Janashakti faction), All India Central Council of Trade Unions (dominated by the CPI-ML Liberation faction), All India United Trade Union Center (run by the Socialist Unity Center), the All India Trade Union Congress (run by the Communist Party), the Center of Indian Trade Unions (controlled by the Communist Party of India-Marxist) and the United Trade Union Congress (run by the Revolutionary Socialist Party).

Since many of these parties are no longer revolutionary, they tend to play a dampening role on the class struggle, rather than developing it.

This isn't to say that workers don't fight back. They do, but the unions do their best to limit their struggles. In 2006, there was an attempt to form a federation of Independent Trade Unions called the New Trade Union Initiative, which holds out some of the best possibilities for an independent trade union movement in India. Many of these unions also participated in the recent one-day action.

Second, there are also reactionary trade unions, like the Hindustan Mazdoor Sabha run by the right-wing Bharatiya Janati Party (BJP), and the Bhartiya Kamgar Sena, run by the ultra-right-wing Shiv Sena. Both of these unions also participated in the strike, largely because the leftist unions kept the slogans vague enough that the right wing could use the one-day strike as cover for purported populist politics.

Part of the reason that the right and the left were able to come together (as they have in the past, under the Janata Party government in the 1970s) is because they are both now in the opposition to the Congress Party's UPA coalition that runs the central government.

In fact, despite agreeing early on to support the strike, the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC, run by the Congress Party) withdrew after the party leadership put substantial pressure on it. "The strike is politically motivated and illegal. We will oppose it on Tuesday," said Ashok Chaudhary, the national president of the INTUC.

But this alliance between left and right can only be temporary and opportunistic, as the BJP and Shiv Sena are both pursuing neoliberal policies in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra respectively, where both play much larger regional roles. The left-right labor alliance is also dangerous, since the right wing has not been shy about stoking up ethnic and communal hatred in times of economic contraction.

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PART OF the reason that the strike took place in as spectacular a way as it did was because the traditional left was routed at the polls in the last elections.

During the time that the left was in power in places like Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal, they were able to play a dampening role on industrial actions. But once they were removed from office, they found it possible to allow the discontent of their members to be expressed in order to embarrass the current government. But only to a point: Too much worker militancy threatens their own ability to contain mass anger. Indeed, these parties have, in the past, used their ability to keep a lid on struggle to lure capital investment to their economically impoverished states.

Thus, in those traditional leftist strongholds, the strike was strongest, and it went beyond industrial work stoppages to actually disrupt traffic and business in major cities. In other places, such as Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Karnataka, the effects of the strike were not as strongly felt.

But the most significant showdown was clearly in West Bengal, where Chief Minister Bannerjee attempted to flex her muscle against what she called "the politics of bandhs" (protests that shut downs entire cities). Having recently beaten the Communist Party of India (Marxist) at the polls, Bannerjee is now in the position of having to do the bidding of large capital, despite having organized strikes and bandhs herself in the past.

In Kolkata, the police were out in droves, attempting to get people back to work, while Bannerjee's TMC party sent many of its members to break up rallies and pickets throughout the city.

Ironically, Bannerjee came to power on the basis of an electoral backlash against the CPM when it tried to raze entire villages in order to make way for a manufacturing campus in the countryside for industrial giants like Tata Motors. Now, Bannerjee is doing the work of the same capitalists she claimed to oppose--an opportunistic about-face that will only expose her to greater challenges.

What the general strike reveals is that although working class anger at the economic and political system in India is growing, the major left parties have been unable to deliver anything but symbolic and token changes in their lives.

The general strike revealed that the working class in India is quite large and has muscle. But to take the struggle forward, workers will need new forms of political and union organization.

Meat Workers: Ready to Fight, Ready to Win

What an inspiration Ngaruawahia's Whare family are to all unionists! Kerry Whare junior, 22, and Maraea, 21 are two of over one hundred Meat Workers' Union members who have been locked out by their bosses in an attempt to force through dangerous and physically exhausting speed-ups ("increased productivity" in code). Their parents - Kerry senior and Rangi - are, with others in the union, on strike in support of their locked-out workmates.

The meat workers are ready to fight, and they're ready to win: Joseph Kumeroa, from the Feilding plant, told media there has been "amazing community support." Horotiu site union president Don Arnold summed up why the company's demands need to be resisted: workers are "human beings, not machines."

The Whare whanau's action shows why unionism means strength: standing together, and taking the slogan "touch one, touch all" seriously, we have a chance to defend our rights and our condition.

The bosses are on the offensive, from Ports of Auckland to rest homes, and hope to use the current recession to increase their exploitation of workers. Make no mistake, Affco - wholy owned by Talleys - see this as a political opportunity, a chance to attack the Meat Workers' Union, the democratic voice of meat workers. “Essentially it is a struggle over management control," Affco operations manager Rowan Ogg told the Gisborne Herald. "Affco management is seeking to draw a line on union influence in the workplace."

"Union influence" means health and safety; conditions we've fought for; the chance to fight together for improved pay. No wonder management want to "draw a line"!

But you can't run a meat works without meat workers. Affco are trying to intimidate their workers with this lockout -- if the workers stand strong, though, they can push back this attack, and offer an inspiration to us all. Affco may have the money and the public relations machine: the union has the potential of workers' power, collective action, and all the traditions of solidarity  symbolised by the Whare whanau's action together.

The International Socialist Organisation support the locked-out Meatworkers 100%. Over the coming weeks we'll be collecting money at our branch meetings, stalls, and public events. We'll post details of where you can donate up here when they become available. In the meantime, like "Support for Affco Workers" on Facebook for more information, and to find out about picket lines you can join.

Kaimahi Kaha - workers' power!

Film Review: In Time

[contains spoilers.]

Kevin Hodder


When I first heard about In Time, my immediate reaction was “just another typical sci fi film, and Justin Timberlake? Hell no”. I could not have been more wrong. The premise of the film is simple – genetic engineering of humanity has meant that from your birth till your 25th birthday, you age normally. After that, you cease aging but a literal biological countdown clock begins ticking down, and when it reaches zero, you die. The only way to live longer is to earn more time; for most people this means selling their labour power. Time is a currency, same as any other, and when you run out – game over.


From the very first scene, this film does a fantastic job of portraying the hand-to-mouth struggle for survival that your standard low wage worker experiences every day. Every pay check has to stretch to cover the basics, and finding that little bit extra for special events is often impossible. A paycut or a price rise can literally be the difference between life and death for many people already struggling to stay afloat. All the characters are gritty and you feel for them, as their lives differ not much from our own. The cities are divided into zones, where those with vast fortunes live in opulence and comfort, while the working masses are forced to remain in slums and tenements. The wealthiest families dominate the political arena, using the riches they fleece directly off of the working classes.

It brutally portrays the parasitic nature of loan sharks and the credit system, and how invariably this serves to drag struggling people deeper into debt. Meanwhile, those who operate the loan schemes specifically target the poorest sectors of society to boost profits.

If it were only for the portrayal of the reality of class differences in society, this film could be considered unique among the “everything is fine” crap so often produced by Hollywood, but it takes it one step further. Through an unusual sequence of events, the main character finds himself in possession of a vast wealth of time, and is inspired by his father’s sense of right and wrong to use his newfound wealth to attempt to undermine the system which leaves so many in poverty while the few live lives of luxury. While he initially believes it is possible to beat the wealthy at their own game, he soon realizes that the game is rigged. Like so many people throughout real-world history, only one logical conclusion can be reached – “the system is not broken, it was made this way”. The only moral thing to do is to destroy it; bring it down completely and rebuild. Not content with simple bank robberies and the targeting of corrupt individuals, the main characters recognize that the very basis of their “economy” is an evil thing designed to keep the vast majority in poverty and conclude that the only moral position one can hold is one that is counter to the system of exploitation.


While the film does focus on the actions of empowered individuals to change things for the majority, it does not hold these individuals up as heroes. It also does portray the mass of working people as being unable to change things themselves due to the difficulties of merely surviving in a world designed to subjugate, but it presents this as an intended control mechanism, moderated by the wealthy elite to ensure their continued dominance. There are genuine criticisms to be made of these portrayals, and I won’t pretend the film is flawless.

It nonetheless does leave the inarguable impression that it is morally justifiable to take from the “haves” to provide for the “have nots”; that the redistribution of wealth is not only a good thing, but something which we should actively inspire to. Sure, In Time is full of car chases, gun fights, explosions, and a frankly unbelievable cop character whose motivations are never clear, but these merely cannot hide the fact that this film is a scathing attack on the current privileged economic system.


The timing of this film could not have been more poignant. With the Occupy Wall Street and associated movements highlighting the massive wealth disparity which has been created by capitalism, I do not doubt that this message will have been recognised by a great many working class people who might not have taken it seriously only a few years ago. The defenders of capitalism have long tried to tell us that there is pie in the sky, and if we just hold on a bit longer, they’ll drop some crumbs. In Time is a timely reminder that the pie was put in the sky by these same people, and that if we want to taste some we’re going to have to tear down the system that holds it there, and rebuild society to provide for us all.

Wellington Action Against Transphobia

Queer Avengers activists Ian Anderson and Rosie Jimson-Healey published an excellent opinion piece today, rebutting Rosemary McLeod's hateful and transphobic Dominion Post rant from a week ago.

Ian and Rosie's article is important for what it says. They rebut McLeod's points one by one, and put transphobic bigotry in context.

But their article proves another important point quite apart from the arguments they present: protest matters.

By organising a picket to protest McLeod's column, The Queer Avengers not only stood up against transphobia; their activism also raises the level of political and intellectual discourse in the city. A column like this one is unthinkable without a movement behind it. Against the cries of the right-wing that their protest was against 'free speech', these kinds of pickets, protests and demonstrations create an atmosphere encouraging speech - speech of the kind that challenges bigotry and oppression.

You can read Ian and Rosie's article at gayNZ.com.

For details of Queer Avengers events, follow this link.

We Support the Maritime Union: on the Ports of Auckland Dispute

The International Socialist Organisation supports the Maritime Union of New Zealand in its strike at Ports of Auckland.

About 300 Maritime Union members have started strike action this week, and the pitch of anti-union stories in the media is building to try and discredit their case. But MUNZ's struggle is important for all working people: it's a fight against casualisation and for job security.

You can make a $5 donation to support the struggle by calling 0900 OUR PORT (0900 687 7678). There is more information - including a petition to sign and details of pickets - at the campaign site Save Our Port.

We reprint below an analysis of the dispute from the latest Socialist Review, our magazine.

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We support the Maritime Union: on the Ports of Auckland strikes.

by Josh O'Sullivan 

Strike action continues at the Ports of Auckland, after moves by the Board of the Ports of Auckland to axe jobs, outsource work to contractors and turn permanent staff into casual staff. These strikes, organised by the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) are the first on the docks in four years and the largest closure since the 1951 waterfront lockout. MUNZ members are fighting for conditions essential to healthy lives – regular hours and secure work – and their fight is one all workers in New Zealand have an interest in supporting.

Many similarities can be found between this an earlier waterfront struggles, even in the political tactics used by the government to use neoliberal policy to deregulate, privatise and cutback.

The aim of the outsourcing and casualisation is to drive a wedge between workers. Whether it is private contractors and a casual workforce or scabs undermining their union workmates, competition for jobs is the biggest enemy of the working class.

A Struggle against Casualisation

The existing collective agreement, which expired in September was designed to secure a certain percentage of permanent workers and to keep casual employments at 25% of workforce. At the basic pay rate of $27 an hour, a permanent stevedore works 260 8 hour shifts a year for $57,000. Overtime is common because the Port doesn’t want to employ enough permanents for its needs, and workers have to be available around the clock, on public holidays, and weekends. In theory, a stevedore could earn the mythic $90,000 that the Port talks about, but it would only be by working 64 hours a week, every week. Work on the wharf often involves unsocial hours, time away from family and friends, and difficult labour – the lies of the Port, repeated all too often in the media, are a side show. The wharfies fight is the fight of every worker who wants to resist casualisation.

Forget the myths. Far from being unskilled, easy work with plenty of breaks, port work is still dangerous. Three workers were killed at Tauranga, the so-called model port, last year. It is also highly skilled work, with many wharfies having multiple qualifications.

Ports of Auckland is actually highly profitable; last year the workers at the port increased productivity by 4.1%. So the current dispute is about management demanding the right to exploit them even more! The board members of the Ports of Auckland are are trying to drive the union from the port by removing the restrictions on the employment of casual workers, guaranteed shifts or hours, casualising the workforce and give workers no choice at all about any days off and reduce break times to minimum requirements. The port is offering a 10% wage hourly pay increase, but the offer is also to give contracts out to at least 3 private contractors, and, in this deal, no-one will receive an increase in pay due to the reduced hours. This is a blatant attack on the union in order to move it toward the "more efficient Tauranga model." And what are the workers asking for? To keep their current work rights and a 2.5% pay increase.

Tauranga: a model of ‘efficient’ divide-and-rule

The Port of Tauranga is privately owned. In around 1989 after a bitter prolonged industrial dispute, the Port was successful is dividing up its workforce into competing contractors. The Port itself own owns a stevedoring company, it employs some of its owns stevedores and it has four private companies also available to carry out the stevedoring work. The workers at the Port of Tauranga know that they are in competition with each other. Those prepared to take less pay, to cut corners, to be more “flexible” (that is, turn up as and when required with no guarantee of work) get the work. Two of the companies even formed their own unions to ensure MUNZ were kept out. Workers join the inhouse union rather than joining MUNZ or the RMTU, for fear of adverse employment consequences. This is a mirror of the 1951 waterfront lockout even down to the tactics used by business to force a wedge into the workforce. This all arises because each of the six main ports are in competition with each other and as there are only so many ships coming in the major companies that use the ships become price setters. They are able to force down the rate per container while the infrastructure is being subsidised by tax and rate payers, or competitive contracting.

The natural result of workers being divided in the workforce is lower wages, little security of employment and the high accident record. This result is praised in academic and industry journals: it is what the bosses mean when they talk about ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity.’

A Wider Bosses’ Offensive

Exports are essential for an island-based capitalism like New Zealand’s, and the smooth (and profitable) flow of commodities from the farm to the market is an obsession of our rulers. When Canterbury Meat Processing locked out its workers for 65 days to extort a 20% wage cut out of them, the media and the business ‘community’ didn't say a word in protest. These cuts to workers’ rights and pay in these sectors serve a purpose. The government is trying to increase the rates of profit for the export industry and in the current economic doctrine of Keynesianism for the rich and neoliberalism for the workers, the key sectors of major trade are targeted. This, combined with proposed massive expansion in dairy farming, make clear the National government’s economic plan.

Ports Of Auckland released a statement stating that strike action, planned for the 31st of January is "highly irresponsible" and says it strengthens their resolve to sack unionised workers. But MUNZ have indicated that they will not be intimidated, and more strike action is planned. If wharfies can win against plans for further casualisation, this could give confidence to workers in other industries – like fast foods – where casualisation and the roster system has weakened union strength.

MUNZ are standing up for their rights. It’s up to the rest of us to stand with them.

Palestine and the Arab Revolutions

Jonathan Maunder looks at how Hamas, Fatah and Israel have reacted to regional uprisings

The wave of popular revolutions across the Middle East is radically shaking up established political structures and allegiances—and the tremors from these centres of unrest have had an effect on Palestine too.

Palestinian politics is dominated by two rival organisations, Fatah and Hamas (see box). They signed a reconciliation pact last summer. This has led to agreement on a unity government this month, with elections expected this May.

The pact is essentially a product of the Arab revolutions, particularly in Egypt and Syria. Millions protesting in the streets have focused the minds of Palestinian leaders on their popularity among their own people.

Two divides have fuelled anger among ordinary Palestinians about their leaders. The first is that between Hamas and Fatah. The two have often seemed more interested in fighting each other than fighting Israel.

The second divide is between the mass of people and the elite. Many Palestinians see the Fatah-led leadership in the West Bank as weak and compliant in the face of Israeli occupation.

They see Fatah leaders living comfortable lifestyles in smart Ramallah villas, while the majority of Palestinian families live in poverty.

The fall of Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia and Egypt has been a key factor shaping the Hamas-Fatah agreement.

Mubarak was an important backer of the Fatah leadership led by Mahmoud Abbas. He provided money and weapons for Fatah to mount a coup against the elected Hamas government in Gaza. This coup was pre-empted by Hamas in 2007, an episode still misrepresented in the West as Hamas “seizing power”.

State

The loss of a stable and important ally forced Fatah into a strategic reorientation. Unity with Hamas is one aspect of this. The other is a shift away from the negotiations with the US and towards a bid for Palestine to become a state recognised by the United Nations.

For Hamas, the Egyptian revolution meant the fall of a hated opponent. It also opened up the possibility of a greater role for its parent organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood. This possibility was realised with the Brotherhood’s success in the Egyptian elections.

Egypt’s generals and the US are now courting the Brotherhood leadership. This has given Hamas the confidence to strike a deal with Fatah. But it also highlights contradictions in the politics of the Brotherhood and Hamas.

The Brotherhood is now caught between Egyptian popular support for Palestinians and the “stabilising” role that the generals and US expect of it.

The extent to which the Brotherhood compromises on key issues—such as policing the Egypt-Gaza border and respecting Egypt’s “peace treaty” with Israel—will have a big impact on Hamas’s credibility and strategy.

The Syrian revolution has also made Hamas more reliant on reconciliation with Fatah. Unlike Lebanon’s Hizbollah, Hamas’s leadership has refused to back Bashar al-Assad’s bloody repression of the revolution.

This prompted Assad to rebuke the Hamas leadership for failing to defend his regime against a “foreign conspiracy”. Most staff at the Hamas political bureau in the Syrian capital Damascus have now been moved out, leaving the leadership looking for a new home.

Tensions

Hamas’s leader Khaled Meshaal is now in talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah. The fact that Hamas is reaching out to a conservative pro-Western monarchy highlights the tensions in its strategy.

The natural home for Hamas would be Egypt. But the military regime there is not prepared to allow Hamas a permanent base.

A further option is Gaza. But this would place the leadership at grave risk of attack by Israel. It would undermine Meshaal’s attempts to reposition Hamas. It would also strengthen the influence of Hamas’s Gaza-based leader­ship, which wants to keep the option of armed resistance open.

For ordinary Palestinians, the important question is whether these shifts in Palestinian leadership offer any hope of resisting Israel’s brutal occupation and apartheid policies.

Despite the presence of courageous and principled activists on the ground, neither Hamas nor Fatah has a strategy that can win liberation for Palestine.

The Fatah leadership is deeply compromised and fearful of popular mobilisation. This was shown by an early demonstration in Ramallah in solidarity with the Egyptian revolution. It was violently broken up by Palestinian Authority security forces.

Hamas will now have to accommodate with this leadership and face further pressures if the Brotherhood in Egypt accommodates to Israel.

The reconciliation deal has already caused tensions within Hamas. The Gaza based prime minister Ismail Haniyeh argues that the Palestinians must reserve the right to armed resistance as well as non-violent civil resistance.

For many years socialists have argued that liberating Palestine would require popular revolutions across the Middle East to topple the regimes which prop up Israel. The road to Jerusalem runs through Cairo, as the saying goes.

The revolutions which have taken place in the past year have changed this from an abstract slogan to a tangible, if still distant, possibility.

The greatest hope for Palestinian liberation now lies in developing this self-conscious movement of the majority across the region—in the streets, workplaces, schools and universities.

[This article was first published in Socialist Worker UK]