COMMENTARY

Hanoi (1965-68), Gaza (2014)

Continuity and Divergence
over Half a Century
Sumanta Banerjee

The parallels between Hanoi

(1965-68) and Gaza (2014)
are chilling. Yet, while the
Vietnamese liberation fighters,
through similar trials and
tribulations, could emerge
victorious after two decades of
fighting (1950-70), why are the
Palestinian liberation fighters,
with an equally heroic record of
struggles and sacrifices spanning
more than four decades of armed
struggle (from the 1960s till now),
still limping towards their goal of
a homeland, suffering disastrous
defeats at every stage?

Sumanta Banerjee (suman5ban@yahoo.com)

is a long-time contributor to EPW and is best
known for his book In the Wake of Naxalbari:
A History of the Naxalite Movement in India
(1980).

16

omparisons do not always imply

parity, but also disparity especially in historical contexts. The
present tragedy in Gaza tempts us to
compare it with what happened in
Vietnam some half a century ago. The
chilling similarities encirclement of a
civilian population and cutting them of
essential commodities and services, shelling of their homes, killing of thousands
of innocent women and children recall
the plight of the citizens of Hanoi, when
in February 1965, the US President
Lyndon B Johnson decided to launch
Operation Flaming Dart to bomb North
Vietnam. It was followed next month by
the use of napalm to destroy fields and
human beings. Over the next years, the
US flew 3 million sorties and dropped
nearly 8 million tonnes of bombs over
Vietnam four times the tonnage
dropped during all of second world war.
Apart from killing and maiming thousands, it resulted in the displacement of
at least 3 million civilians due to the
destruction of their villages.
The replication of this military strategy
in Gaza today by Israels Operation
Protective Edge, should alert us (who
are living in the much celebrated postcolonial era) to the continuation of the
old colonial policy of expanding territorial control through predatory violence
(in the tradition of the Western colonists,
and their later US successors), as evident
from Israels attempt to gobble up lands
in Palestine today. But we must also
recognise the differences between the
politics of Vietnam and Palestine
which should also explain the divergences in the strategy and tactics of
resistance, and the asymmetry in global
public responses to the two situations.
The US aggression in Vietnam to
suppress a liberation war drew widespread protests from all sections of
world opinion ranging from the draft
september 6, 2014

dodgers in the US itself to students and

youth in Europe and elsewhere (including India), from Buddhist monks (who
immolated themselves in Vietnam) to intellectual giants like Bertrand Russell
(who came out in the streets) to express
their revulsion against the atrocities
committed by the US. Their sense of
revulsion was all the more because here
were a people, the Vietnamese, who
were not only fighting for independence,
but also trying to establish a regime
based on egalitarian, democratic and
secular values values which were
enshrined in the universal liberal
humanist tradition. Their comrades had
already established such a regime in
North Vietnam with Hanoi as its capital,
after liberating it by defeating the
French colonial forces, under the leadership of a highly respected personality
like Ho Chi Minh, whose strategy was
marked by a combination of nationalism
and socialism.
Led by him, and his comrade, the
brilliant military strategist Vo Nguyen
Giap, the Vietnamese liberation fighters
succeeded in achieving their objective
of defeating the US invaders and ousting them from South Vietnam, through
a multi-pronged strategy and multi-level tactics. Spanning a few decades, they
combined mass mobilisation, guerrilla
attacks (the famous Tet Offensive in
South Vietnam, launched on 31 January
1968), frontal warfare, and creation of
international public opinion in their
favour to pressurise the US to sit with
them in a series of negotiations. All
these finally led to the surrender of the
all-powerful Washington to the tiny
capital of Hanoi in Vietnam, with the
humiliating departure of the US forces
from South Vietnam on 30 April 1975,
and the reunification of the two parts
of Vietnam.
The celebration of a heroic triumph
of a liberation movement in Vietnam 39
years ago, coincides with the mourning
over the disaster of another liberation
movement in Palestine today. However
painful, this is a moment when both
the international supporters of the
Palestinian liberation struggle and the
active participants in that struggle,
should engage themselves in an honest
vol xlIX no 36

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly

COMMENTARY

effort at soul-searching, reassessment

of their hitherto followed strategy and
tactics, and their reconstruction to
enable them to gain their objective of a
Palestinian state embracing all parts of
their homeland.
The massacre of thousands of innocent citizens of Gaza in July-August 2014
recalls the slaughter of Vietnamese
civilians at Mai Lai by US soldiers on 16
March 1968. The sounds of the bombardment of Hanoi and Haiphong by
US B-52 bombers in 1972, reverberate
through the Israeli shelling of Gaza
today. Just as in the past when the US
sought to cut off all supplies to North
Vietnam by blocking the sea route,
today Israel is imposing a land, air and
sea blockade on Gaza cutting off its
besieged inhabitants from the supply of
essential commodities and humanitarian
aid. Following the same US military
strategy of reducing North Vietnam to
rubble, the present Israeli government
wants to destroy Gaza.
The parallels are chilling. Yet, while the
Vietnamese liberation fighters, through
all these similar trials and tribulations,

could emerge victorious after two decades of fighting (1950-70), why have the
Palestinian liberation fighters, with an
equally heroic record of struggles and sacrifices spanning more than four decades
of armed struggle (from the 1960s till
now), are still limping towards their
goal of a homeland, suffering disastrous
defeats at every stage? The difference
between the two liberation movements
may be traced to a number of factors
(i) the ideological and political orientation of the participants; (ii) the respective strategy and tactics adopted by the
fighters; (iii) the territorial size and
nature of the terrain where the battles
are fought; and (iv) the balance of international forces, then and now.
Politics and Ideology
The liberation movement in Palestine
had gone through various stages of
political changes. In the early years of
the movement (the late 1960s corres
ponding to the period of the Vietnamese
struggle), the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) succeeded in drawing into
its fold nationalists, Nasserites, Arab

Baathists, socialists, religious groupings

as well as Marxists. There were two
broad trends in the movement in those
days, one represented by the nationalist
Al-Fatah and the other by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PFLP) led by George Habbash, which
was Marxist-oriented. Despite these differences, all these trends veered around
the common objectives of (i) armed
struggle to fight the main enemy which
was the Zionist state of Israel; (ii) establishment of a democratic state of Palestine;
and (iii) working towards Arab unity
among all Arab governments.
A significant feature of the Palestine
movement during those years was the
aim to bring together Jews and assure
them of protection. As Yasser Arafat,
on behalf of Al-Fatah said then: The
Palestinian revolution is against Zionism
and not against Jews. Our Jewish brothers,
the sons of Israeli sectare Palestinians
in Palestine. In a similar vein, the PFLP
said: The aim of the Palestinian liberation movement is the establishment of
a national democratic state in Palestine
in which both Arabs and Jews will

The Problem of Caste

NEW

Edited by

Satish Deshpande
Caste is one of the oldest concerns of the social sciences in India that continues to be relevant even today.
The general perception about caste is that it was an outdated concept until it was revived by colonial policies and
promoted by vested interests and electoral politics after independence. This hegemonic perception changed irrevocably
in the 1990s after the controversial reservations for the Other Backward Classes recommended by the Mandal Commission,
revealing it to be a belief of only a privileged upper caste minority for the vast majority of Indians caste continued
to be a crucial determinant of life opportunities.
This volume collects significant writings spanning seven decades, three generations and several disciplines, and discusses
Pp xi + 425 Rs 595 established perspectives in relation to emergent concerns, disciplinary responses ranging from sociology to law, the
ISBN 978-81-250-5501-3 relationship between caste and class, the interplay between caste and politics, old and new challenges in law and policy,
2014
emergent research areas and post-Mandal innovations in caste studies.

Authors: Satish Deshpande Irawati Karve M N Srinivas Dipankar Gupta Andr Bteille Rajni Kothari Kumkum Roy Sukhadeo Thorat
Katherine S Newman Marc Galanter Sundar Sarukkai Gopal Guru D L Sheth Anand Chakravarti Carol Upadhya Ashwini Deshpande
Meena Gopal Baldev Raj Nayar Gail Omvedt Mohan Ram I P Desai K Balagopal Sudha Pai Anand Teltumbde Surinder S Jodhka
Ghanshyam Shah Susie Tharu M Madhava Prasad Rekha Pappu K Satyanarayana Padmanabh Samarendra Mary E John Uma Chakravarti
Prem Chowdhry V Geetha Sharmila Rege S Anandhi J Jeyaranjan Rajan Krishnan Rekha Raj Kancha Ilaiah Aditya Nigam M S S Pandian

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17

COMMENTARY

live together as citizens equal both in

rights and duties.1 This spirit of democratic accommodation was incorporated
in the PLO national charter that was
adopted in Cairo in July 1968, and which
at the same time reinforced the will of
the Palestinians to continue the armed
struggle in the face of the defeat suffered by the Arab states in the 1967 war.
During the decade from 1968 to 1978,
the predominance of the Al-Fatah in the
PLO, and the charismatic image of its
leader Arafat, helped the Palestinians to
gain international recognition from the
Arab League and socialist and nonaligned nations. Arafat addressed the
UN General Assembly, explaining the
cause of his people, and the PLO was able
to open offices in some of the progressive African states like Tanzania.
The diplomatic success of the PLO in
the international forum, was bolstered
by its military achievements in its war
against Israeli aggression. Through a
series of actions both guerrilla struggles and straight fights the Palestinian
liberation forces could defeat the Israeli
offensive and retain their bases in

J ordan and Lebanon. A six-day war

between U
S-armed Israeli aggressors
and joint Palestinian-Lebanese forces in
southern Lebanon in March 1978, ended
with the retreat of the Israelis. This victory
not only rallied the youth of Arab states
behind the Palestinian cause (many
among them swarming Palestinian offices
to register as fighters), but also inspired
an anti-war movement within Israel,
spearheaded by none other than some
top officers of Israeli combat units. They
raised the slogan: Peace rather than
territories!, demanding that Israel should
withdraw to the 1967 borders.2
But this euphoria was short-lived, as
within a few months, the US, panicked
by the developments, rushed to sow
divisions within the Arab camp. In September 1978, President Jimmy Carter
brokered an Egyptian-Israeli accord at
Camp David in the name of bringing
peace in the region. But, the treaty sig
ned by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt
and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of
Israel in March next year, further aggravated the situation. It went against the
Arab Leagues cardinal principle that its

members would engage in multilateral

talks with Israel, and none should enter
any bilateral agreement. The treaty
evoked widespread protests among
both radicals and moderates among the
Palestinians, as well as other sections of
the Arab population. It led to long-term
repercussions in the politics of the
region. As one on the most prescient observers of west Asian politics, Dilip Hiro,
was to comment later:
Sadats betrayal of the Arab cause and negation of the popular will marked the germination of Islamist militancy and terrorism which resulted in his assassination and
much greater violence and bloodshed3

Terrorism and Islamisation

It was not only the Camp David accord,
but several other developments in both
the international arena and within
Palestine also, that shaped the later
course of the Palestinian movement in
the direction of Islamisation and adoption of terrorist tactics. First, by the 1980s,
secular Arab elements in the Palestinian
organisations were losing their influence
and credibility, as the degeneration of

Decentralisation and Local Governments

Edited by

T R Raghunandan
The idea of devolving power to local governments was part of the larger political debate during the Indian national
movement. With strong advocates for it, like Gandhi, it resulted in constitutional changes and policy decisions in the
decades following Independence, to make governance more accountable to and accessible for the common man.
The introduction discusses the milestones in the evolution of local governments post-Independence, while providing an
overview of the panchayat system, its evolution and its powers under the British, and the stand of various leaders of the
Indian national movement on decentralisation.
This volume discusses the constitutional amendments that gave autonomy to institutions of local governance, both rural
and urban, along with the various facets of establishing and strengthening these local self-governments.

Authors:
V M Sirsikar Nirmal Mukarji C H Hanumantha Rao B K Chandrashekar Norma Alvares Poornima Vyasulu, Vinod Vyasulu Niraja Gopal Jayal
Mani Shankar Aiyar Benjamin Powis Amitabh Behar, Yamini Aiyar Pranab Bardhan, Dilip Mookherjee Amitabh Behar Ahalya S Bhat, Suman
Kolhar, Aarathi Chellappa, H Anand Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo Nirmala Buch Ramesh Ramanathan M A Oommen Indira
Rajaraman, Darshy Sinha Stphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal M Govinda Rao, U A Vasanth Rao Mary E John Pratap Ranjan Jena, Manish Gupta
Pranab Bardhan, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Abhirup Sarkar M A Oommen J Devika, Binitha V Thampi

Pp xii + 432 ISBN 978-81-250-4883-1 2012 Rs 695

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september 6, 2014 vol xlIX no 36 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

COMMENTARY

their political counterparts (the ruling

Nasserite and Baathist states in the
Arab region) into corrupt and authoritarian regimes, rubbed off on them. The
popular disgust with widespread nepotism, disenchantment with economic
policies that widened the gap between
the rich and the poor, and resentment
against suppression of dissent in these
Arab states continued to simmer, driving a desperate people to seek avenues
for protest through Islamic fundamentalist groups (e g, Muslim Brotherhood,
and other secret militant organisations).
Invariably, these groups also found their
way into the Palestinian movement.
It is significant that Hamas (acronym
of Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah,
meaning Islamic Resistance Movement),
the Islamic militant group that controls
Gaza today, was formed in 1987, at the
start of the first Intifada (the Palestinian
uprising against Israeli occupation that
lasted from 1987 till 1993 and ended
with the Oslo peace accord in 1993). In
1988, Hamas adopted a charter which
declared its aim of establishing an
Islamic state in Israel, West Bank and
Gaza, as well as the rest of the region,
as under Article 6 of the charter: Only
under the shadow of Islam could the
members of all regions co-exist in safety
and security for their lives, properties
and rights. Article 17, defining the role
of women, said that they should manufacture men and play a great role in
guiding and educating them Article 8
sums up its ideological and tactical
objectives by stating that Allah is its
goal, the Prophet its model, the Quran
its constitution, Jihad its path, and death
for the cause of Allah its most sublime
belief.4 Unlike the PLO charter which
recognised the legitimacy of the state of
Israel, Hamas aimed at its destruction.
Second, the transformation in the
balance of international powers in the
1980s, with the withdrawal of the Soviet
Union from Afghanistan in the face of
the triumph of the US-backed Taliban,
further emboldened the Islamic fundamentalist groups to rally the Muslim
masses in west Asia and other parts of
the world in support of their call for
a sharia-based Islamic world order
that was claimed to be superior to the
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

september 6, 2014

socialist states, or the Arab nationalist

and secular regimes both by then,
having been thoroughly discredited in
the popular mind. The youth in the
Arab states, who had grown up in the
era of disillusionment following the
Camp David accord, and disenchantment with the domestic policies of
their ruling parties, gradually began to
drift to these Islamic groups which offered them an alternative ideology of
liberation that involved them in actions which demonstrated immediate
impact on Israel (e g, suicide bombing
as a perverted form of martyrdom,
which killed both the freedom fighter
and Israeli soldiers, as well as noncombatant civilians).
Third, within Palestine, by the late
1990s, the charismatic image of Yasser
Arafat had suffered a dent. Following
the 1993 Oslo peace accord, he assumed
the leadership of the Palestinian government in 1994. But popular optimism
soon gave way to dismay, when over the
next few years, skeletons kept pouring
out of Arafats Fatah-led government, revealing massive corruption that involved
not only its ministers and officials, but
also Arafat himself. Allegations were
made (by one of his closest confidants)
about his amassing wealth and transferring it to Swiss banks.5 The Palestinian
government turned out to be yet another
replica of the corrupt Baathist and other
secular Arab regimes. This alienated the
youth from the Fatah, and drove them
into the arms of the Hamas.
Hamas to the Fore
With the expanding influence of Hamas
and other Islamic jihadist groups on the
Palestinian movement, the tactics also
changed. The first Intifada of the 1980-90
period, for instance, was marked by a
combination of both civil disobedience,
like economic boycott, and armed actions.
Before that, the armed struggle had
gone through various phases, from sabotage and ambushes of Israeli government and military forces to guerrilla
warfare, from mobile warfare to war of
fixed positions. The targets were mainly
the Israeli soldiers.
The second Intifada (2000-05) was
however marked by a shift of emphasis
vol xlIX no 36

from collective armed actions to individual

acts like suicide bombing, abduction and
taking of hostages, and attacks on the
civilian population in Israel. The Hamas,
and the other terrorist group known as
Islamic Jihad (which has also found a
place in the current negotiations being
held in Cairo), played a major role in
this change of tactics. The Hamas set
the pattern in 1989 by abducting and
killing two Israelis. Following it, the
second Intifada came to be dominated
by tactics of assassination of individuals, revenge killings, suicide bombings,
sniper attacks on the Israeli civil population, as well as gunfire exchanges
with Israeli soldiers.
This led to more civilian casualties
among Israelis (although their number
was far less compared to the massacre
of Palestinians by the Israeli military
all through the two Intifadas). The first
Intifada led to the killing of 94 civilians
and 91 soldiers among the Israelis, as
against the second Intifada, which saw
a ratio of 731 civilians to 332 security
forces, among those killed in Israel.
These Israeli victims of the terrorist
tactics of the Palestinian liberation
forces were mainly common people
attending open-air markets, or using
public buses. About 40% of these killings were attributed to Hamas.6 Even
today, while the number of victims
of Israeli air strikes in Gaza runs to
thousands, mostly civilians, Hamas
through its missile attacks on Israeli
territory has succeeded in killing a few
Israeli soldiers only, the rest of its targets being a handful of non-combatant
Israeli citizens.

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COMMENTARY

It is also necessary in this connection

to remember that there had always
been an opportunistic terroristic streak
in the Palestinian liberation movement
a streak marked by utter indifference
to humanitarian concerns and ideological principles. As early as 1972 when
the PLO was led by the Al-Fatah a
Palestinian terrorist group launched an
attack on the Munich Olympics Game
site, killing 11 members of the Israeli
team, who were innocent sportspersons.
While the act known as Black September did indeed draw world attention
to the demands of the Palestinian cause,
it also caused revulsion among the
general public which dissuaded them
from coming out on the streets to
condemn the horrific repression that
was unleashed by Israeli authorities on
the Palestinians soon after the Munich
tragedy. Today, after more than 40 years,
it has been revealed (from German
intelligence agency files) that the Palestinian terrorist group that launched
that assault was helped by a local

German neo-Nazi group a collaboration indicating the unscrupulous length

to which sections of the Palestinian
movement could go.7
A Third and Final Intifada?
It is evident that the Hamas-led offensive from Gaza attuned as it is to its
strategy of setting up a theocratic Islamic state by destroying Israel through the
tactics of suicide-bombing and missile
attacks that indiscriminately kill innocent Israelis is actually leading to the
suicide of the Palestinian liberation
movement itself, and the destruction of
the principles of a secular and democratic society on which the movement was
based at one time. Unlike the Vietnamese struggle for liberation which was a
politically integrated and militarily welltrained movement under the leadership
of a universally respected personality,
the Palestinian movement remains divi
ded (between Fatah and Hamas, as well
as other various factions) without any
effective leadership.

Unlike the Vietnamese struggle again,

which received support from its socialist
allies the Soviet Union and China the
Palestinian liberation fighters are today
not fully buttressed by all the Arab
states, some among which are embroiled
in civil wars within their territories (like
Syria and Iraq), and some others (like
Jordan and Saudi Arabia) are aligned
with the US, and thus reluctant to get
into any confrontation with Israel. The
Palestinians are thus fighting a lonely
battle from an extremely isolated bunker
isolated not only territorially (with a
tiny space of some 6,000 sq km covering
the West Bank and Gaza, in contrast
with Vietnams wider terrain), but also
politically (in terms of international support). We must, by all means, lend our
shoulders to the demonstrations being
organised by peace activists in different
parts of the world to put an end to Israeli
depredations in Gaza. But at the same
time, we will fail in our responsibilities
if we do not remind our comrades in
Palestine that finally the ball lies in their

The Adivasi Question

Edited By

Indra Munshi
Depletion and destruction of forests have eroded the already fragile survival base of adivasis across the country,
displacing an alarmingly large number of adivasis to make way for development projects. Many have been forced to
migrate to other rural areas or cities in search of work, leading to systematic alienation.
This volume situates the issues concerning the adivasis in a historical context while discussing the challenges they
face today.
The introduction examines how the loss of land and livelihood began under the British administration, making the
adivasis dependent on the landlord-moneylender-trader nexus for their survival.
The articles, drawn from writings of almost four decades in EPW, discuss questions of community rights and ownership,
management of forests, the states rehabilitation policies, and the Forest Rights Act and its implications. It presents
diverse perspectives in the form of case studies specific to different regions and provides valuable analytical insights.

Authors:
Ramachandra Guha Sanjeeva Kumar Ashok K Upadhyaya E Selvarajan Nitya Rao B B Mohanty Brian Lobo K Balagopal Sohel Firdos
Pankaj Sekhsaria DN Judy Whitehead Sagari R Ramdas Neela Mukherjee Mathew Areeparampil Asmita Kabra Renu Modi M Gopinath
Reddy, K Anil Kumar, P Trinadha Rao, Oliver Springate-Baginski Indra Munshi Jyothis Sathyapalan Mahesh Rangarajan Madhav Gadgil
Dev Nathan, Govind Kelkar Emmanuel DSilva, B Nagnath Amita Baviskar

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september 6, 2014 vol xlIX no 36 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

COMMENTARY

court. It is they who have to decide

whether they want to continue with the
present tactics of battle which invite
massacre of their own people, or choose
some other methods both armed and
peaceful to achieve their goal.
It is a welcome sign that self-interrogating voices from within the Arab
community are emerging, which are
questioning the present leadership of the
Palestinian movement, and are expressing hopes for a new Intifada that would
transform the mentality of both the
Arabs and the Israelis. To quote one
of them:

Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

september 6, 2014

The Palestinians need to demand an end to

useless leadership, and resurface with new
leadership complete with a contemporary
vision and platform; one that truly and adequately represents the interests and rights
of the Palestinians.

He then asserts the need for the third

and final Intifada the Intifada of Transformation...An uprising that includes
Israeli citizens themselves against the
ideological regime that has been governing them since 1948.8

2
3

4
5

6
7

Notes
1

Quoted in Karrim Essack, The Armed Struggle,

Vol II, Thakers, Dar es Salaam, 1979, p 123.

vol xlIX no 36

Ibid, pp 154-57.
Dilip Hiro, War Without End: The Rise of Islamist
Terrorism and Global Response (London:
Routledge), 1989, p 406.
www.the jerusalemfund.org
Issam Abu Issa, former chairman of the
Palestine International Bank, in an article
entitled Arafats Swiss Account, in the US
journal The Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2004,
Vol XI, No 4, pp 15-23.
(i) Wikipedia; (ii) lens of history.
com/2014/08/06/history-hamas.
Gunther Latsch and Klaus Wiegrefe, in
the German newspaper Der Spiegel, 18 June
2012.
Ahmad Moussa, visiting professor at the
University of Duhok in Kurdistan, Iraq,
in an article entitled Time For a Third
and Final Intifada, Middle East Eye, 14 July
2014.

21