Was the Red Flag Flying There?
Review of Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab Israeli-Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948-1965, by Joel Beinin. 317 pp,. London: I.B. Tauris, 1990.
Avi Shlaim
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, September 1992.
The story of Marxist parties on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide
is largely the story of disorientation, disintegration, fragmentation
and progressive marginalization. A study of how these parties
viewed the Arab-Israeli conflict and its possible resolution may
thereon appear at first sight as an academic exercise of very limited
value. But in Joel Beinin these parties have found a scholar who
is not only sympathetic but immensely knowledgeable and
penetrating. His book is a comparative study of communist and
other left wing parties that were active in Egypt and Israel from 1948
to 1965. His aim is to re-examine the Arab-Israeli conflict
through the lens of Marxist politics and his analysis is deeply
influenced by the ideas of Antonio Gramsci and especially his
conception of hegemony. Beinin's study builds on the work
published by revisionist Israeli historians in recent years, and he
extends the revision of the conventional wisdom on the reasons behind
the deadlock in Arab-Israeli relations into the 1950s and early 1960s
with an epilogue on the period since 1967.
Comparative political research on the Middle East which includes
Israel is uncommon not least because of Israel's alleged
uniqueness. Beinin notes in his introduction that to treat Egypt
and Israel in the same analytical framework may seem odd because at
first glance their political systems, cultures and historical
trajectories are so different. His justification for doing so is
that 'the processes by which nationalist ideologies became the
hegemonic political discourse in the two countries were both similar
and dialectically related ' (p.6).
Beinin's great strength is that he reads both Arabic and Hebrew
and is able to draw on an impressive range of primary sources and to
place the activities of the Marxist parties in Egypt and Israel in
their broader political context. He provides a rich and
illuminating account of the process by which these parties, which in
1947-49 were closest to the international consensus in advocating a
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, were overwhelmed
by what Beinin calls the 'hegemonic nationalist political discourse' in
both countries. The fusion of the communist and the Zionist
movements was made possible in 1947 because the Soviet Union supported
the partition of Palestine and saw Zionism as an anti-imperialist
force. But in the 1950s it was Ben-Gurion's aggressive and
activist Zionism which shaped the political culture of the new
state. Similarly, in the aftermath of the Suez war, it was
Nasser's brand of pan-Arab nationalism which set the agenda in Egyptian
and inter-Arab politics, relegating the Marxist forces to the sidelines.
Beinin's explanation of the failure of the Marxist parties to
gain support for their view of the Arab-Israeli conflict within their
respective countries is two-fold. First, in the realm of ideas,
Marxist theory was incapable of explaining the power of nationalism,
whether Arab or Israeli. Second, and more important, is the
political weakness of the social forces on which the Marxist parties in
both countries were based. The Gramscian strategy for
combating the hegemony of the ruling class is to create a
counterhegemonic bloc consisting of the working class, but the creation
of such a bloc was not possible in either Egypt or Israel. In the
period since 1967, while the political power of the Marxist parties
continued to wane, the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict which they had favoured all along began to gain
credibility. These parties can claim a moral victory, yet, as
Beinin observes, this victory is not unproblematic since the main
arguments advanced in support of the two-state solution are pragmatic
and national.
While the questions raised in this book are not new, the approach
is innovative, the analysis is cogent, and some of the new material is
fascinating. The book makes a valuable contribution to the
literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict and, more generally, on the
role of left wing forces in the politics of the Middle East.
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