Palestinian resistance as a political, social and economic struggle constitutes a basic cornerstone in confronting the policies of globalisation. Setting aside the academic and cultural dimensions of globalisation, we should distinguish between two conflicting dimensions of the issue:

One, globalisation is a development in the human experience through which the interests of nations and people, the progress of science and technology and the information and communications revolution are passing. In this sense, globalisation is a phenomenon encouraging inter-action between peoples, religions and cultures within the conditions of equality and respect for differences.

This requires an understanding of the history and experience of humanity as a comprehensive and cumulative process.

Two, globalisation is a process of monopolising knowledge, imposing control on other nations and peoples and negating their civilisation and cultural differences. Globalisation becomes an instrument for plundering and dominating the means of scientific and technological power and transforming them into tools for political, social or economic subjugation. This leads to viewing the history of humanity through a racist perspective whereby only experiences that replicate the hegemonising American model are acknowledged.

Those who believe that the US blindly supports the Israeli Occupation and their inimical policies relating to the Palestinian people because of a misunderstanding or a lack of information are gravely mistaken. Likewise, those who identify the Palestinian people or their use of armed struggle as the problem are equally misguided. The truth is that the US fears Palestinian resistance and the possibility that Palestine will achieve its freedom through its struggle because it provides a dangerous model that threatens US economic and geopolitical interests in the region. For this reason, America adopted Israeli policy and operates within the strategy of force in order to defeat the Palestinian people and to impose a political solution according to the criteria and strategies that serve the US interest of long-term hegemony.

For decades the Palestinians have been paying the price for their resistance to these policies. Although the Palestinian people may not be aware of this, they are standing on the front lines of the struggle against the brutality of globalisation. The details and goals of the Palestinian struggle are linked with those of the international anti-globalisation movement. The political-social-intellectual spectrum included in the phenomenon of the anti-globalisation movement is varied. Nevertheless, the diverse experience of the Palestinian people and its struggle form a solid political-social embodiment which reveals in depth the policies of the Group of Eight (G8), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These institutions are subjugating the interests of billions of human beings to the priorities of oil, arms monopolies and drugs merchants. They are transforming the world into a casino for quick profit in a global race to the bottom, involving the death and marginalisation of millions of people and the repression of entire communities, including people in the most developed industrial countries.

In this political-social-cultural sense, the Palestinian people are standing with the victims of globalisation. Based on this conviction, which is firmly established as a vision, position and practice, we look at the movement against globalisation as a universal political-social-cultural response.

When the Palestinian people wage their struggle for freedom and independence, they wage their struggle in the name of all, from the jungles of the Amazon to the deserts of Australia. Its victory is a victory for all, and its defeat is defeat for all. The Palestinian people are facing a powerful and fierce alliance that cannot be confronted except by an international union with the anti-globalisation movement as its lever.

Since the bloody conflict is raging on a daily basis, a gathering or meeting on occasion is not enough. We need a method that makes the role and action of the anti-globalisation movement a daily and active presence that is visible and concrete. We do not have the luxury of wasting our energies. We must put pressure on the ?leadership? and force them to recog-nise that they are confronting a serious popular movement that is taking control of its own fate.

However, while the international anti-globalisation movement can assist the Palestinians in toppling the Occupation and US-imposed dominance, we must ask ourselves, as Palestinians, what we have done to master our own fate. Specifically, what has the Palestinian left done in the current social and political struggles of the Intifada?

The Squandering Role of the Palestinian Left

Like all the Palestinian opposition parties, the Palestinian political left is in the habit of reserving the lion?s share of their anger and criticism for the dominant political force ? as if they were exempt from responsibility for the Palestinian predicament. Of course one might consider this a universal trait of opposition parties, but in the case of the Palestinian left, I would suggest that this points to a deeper defect in our political thinking. It reveals an incapacity for self-awareness which is ultimately selfdestructive in its dimensions.

After nearly four years of this Intifada, the political landscape of Palestine continues to be polarised by the dual power processes of Fatah?s ever tightening control on the institutions of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Islamic parties? continual reinforcement of their popular support. Where are the forces of the Palestinian left? Over the last few years it appears that we have become marginalised to the extent that we are not only no longer perceived as a serious alternative to Fatah and the Islamic parties, but we are not even regarded as an important influence on them. How did we become so irrelevant when we were so influential during the 1970s and the 1980s?

Naturally, no discussion of this topic can ignore the impact of international transformations, in particular the collapse of the USSR, on the role of the left in Palestine, as everywhere else. Here again, however, it is too easy to fall into the trap of pointing to others to account for our own deficiencies. Historically, the presence of the Palestinian left was an objective response to the contradictions within the Palestinian reality, and these internal social and economic inequities remain ? indeed, they are probably increasing. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow, religious figures and parties continue to increase their influence within our social-political landscape and authoritarianism and contempt for democratic processes have become so commonplace within Palestinian society that we hardly seem to notice anymore.

Perhaps if we were to look honestly at ourselves, however, we would notice that we are the masters of our own demise. We would perhaps note our failure to produce policies impacting our natural constituency ? our social base ? which distinguish a role for the Palestinian left different from that of the Islamic opposition and the PA. In actuality, we have only been able to produce policies which are pale imitations of the political forces that we seek to oust or at least moderate.

The testing ground for the role of the Palestinian left is its ability to realise its democratic vision in concrete ways. If we fail to do this, we lose the essential dynamic which justifies our existence. And we have failed to do this. We have been guilty of a ?continuous escape to politics? ? an exclusive focus on confronting the Occupation as if national liberation were our start and end point. Somewhere along the way we have mislaid the idea that the process of national liberation should be inextricably linked with social reform. We have lost sight of the fact that our goal should not just be a state, but a state founded in the struggle against corruption and for progressive values and practices in all spheres, including women, youth, development, education, health and culture.

Even a cursory glance at our current performance in relation to our social base shows how slight the role and influence of leftist democratic forces is in these areas. Although we engage with the social struggle in the media and in our literature, there remains a vast distance between what we say and what we do. This much became very clear during the process of drafting the Palestinian Constitution; we heard very few democratic, leftwing voices in the debate. It was as if the social struggle was not of concern to us, or could be postponed indefinitely under the pressure of confronting the Occupation. In our daily practice, we on the left are just like everyone else; we have no clearly defined role for the cadre or for those who would participate in our social programs. We have become an elite class.

The same cannot be said of the Islamic forces in Palestine, who have been hugely successful in reinforcing their political role through social practice. One may point to the edge they have gained because of the hopelessness of the political situation, which ultimately derives from Israeli actions. Even so, if the Islamic parties had failed to transform this ?competitive advantage? into mass support, we would still be able to point to their methods of incitement and propaganda to judge their success or failure. Meanwhile, what can we on the left say we have even tried to do?

Even as an elite group, I would argue that we have lost our way because we have squandered our ?intellectual advantage?, and with it our ability to influence culture and ideology. We have contented ourselves with confronting the other political forces in Palestine with mere slogans, while saying almost nothing about the class and social contradictions that permeate Palestinian society. Even when we do say something, we no longer seem to believe what we say. It is as if we are afraid of declaring our intellectual identity. While political Islam arms its supporters with religious doctrine, and the PA garners support around its ?liberal nationalism?, it is difficult to even say what the Palestinian left is offering, let alone whether anyone wants it.

Given our abandonment of both the task of engaging the social base and our intellectual heritage, it is little surprise that the Palestinian left has a poor relationship with democratic and progressive forces internationally. We have a negligible influence in the anti (or alternative) globalisation movements or the democratic and leftist parties and institutions of Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. We are the recipients of wisdom, never the providers; no one even asks us what we think, and we do not promote our opinions or perspectives to others.

There is, of course, plenty of Palestinian representation at international gatherings, a function taken almost exclusively by Palestinian nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). While their role is not without importance, it does not make up for the absence of Palestinian left-wing political parties. The danger of making NGOs the sole representation of Palestinian leftist forces is that it gives the false impression that Palestinians are concerned with nothing but their own immediate concerns, as if we care only about this or that humanitarian project. With well-meaning but depressing reductivity, we are paraded in front of international audiences to describe our difficulties in getting to the conference, and even applauded for overcoming these obstacles. With even more depressing regularity, Palestinian representatives find they have little else to talk about.

While the Palestinian left wing may be diminutive, we are worth more than this. We are concerned along with everyone else about poverty, the environment and pollution, weapons of mass destruction, international peace, third world debt and corporate globalisation. No one has more first-hand knowledge of what it means to struggle against wars, hegemony and the dominance of imperialist countries than the Palestinians, and yet we have become little more than bystanders in the international struggle against these forces.

I would argue, therefore, that the problems confronting the Palestinian left are many. We may even be approaching the point where our relevance within the Palestinian political landscape is at question. While we have many difficulties, continuing to avoid them inevitably means continuing to retract. No one else will create the changes necessary for us to rejoin the democratic struggle in a meaningful way either locally or internationally; we must do this ourselves, and the first stage is to recognise that our increasing irrelevance is primarily our own fault, but the need for a genuinely democratic alternative in Palestine has never been greater.