The International Trotskyist Opposition (ITO), the League for the Fifth International (LFI), the Permanent Revolution Collective (CoReP), the Revolutionary Workers Party (RRP) of Russia, and …, finding themselves in agreement on proletarian revolutionary perspectives for Palestine, have adopted this joint statement.
The constant oppression, eviction, and killings of Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza has once again seized the world’s workers attention through the counterattack led by Hamas and other resistance fighters (Jihad, PFLP, DLFP) on October 7 and the brutal response of Israel against the whole population in Gaza, greater than its previous attacks there. This has outraged and mobilized millions worldwide against the Zionist state and the fulsome support it has received from its imperialist and racist backers.
It is the urgent duty of all revolutionaries to give maximum support to this worldwide movement, while at the same time presenting a clear revolutionary anticapitalist perspective for its development. For this purpose, we present the following statement and call on all who see the situation as we do to join us in this effort.
A colonial settlement through terrorism
Zionism has been a settler-colonial project from its inception in 1897. Its goal is to expel the indigenous Arab population of Palestine to clear space for Jewish settlers. In this aim, Jewish bourgeois nationalists looked for the help of European imperialist states, included the 3rd Reich from 1933 to 1944.There was a common goal for Zionism and Anti-Semitism: Jews don’t belong in Europe, America, North Africa, Middle East but Palestine… During the 1930’s, bourgeois states barred most Jews from emigrating to the US and Western Europe. During the 2nd World War, the “democratic” British and US states did nothing to protect Europe’s Jews; Hungarian, Romanian, Italian and French states joined the Nazi extermination of Jews, Tziganes and Communists.
A Zionist colony in Palestine seemed far-fetched until the Holocaust murdered six million European Jews and left many of the other three million desperately seeking a refuge. Anti-Semitism barred most Jews from emigrating to the US and Western Europe. Zionist organizations brought many to Palestine. The only current of the world workers movement which opposed colonization of Palestine was the 4 th International.
The trade union Histadrut (General Federation of Hebrew Workers in the Land of Israel) was founded in 1920. It limited membership exclusively to Jews because its aim was not to defend workers but to replace Arab workers by Jewish ones and to subjugate the latter to the national Jewish bourgeoisie.After the war, the two wings of Zionism set up its own terrorist organization:
- Irgun was the strong arm of the racist and fascist Revisionist Zionism, led by Menahem Begin (founder of Likud and 6th Prime Minister).
- Haganah was the strong arm of the Histadrut bureaucracy and of the secular bourgeois workers party Mapai (Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel), led by David Ben-Gurion (the 1st Prime Minister of Israel, as Mapai).
As the British State retried, the UN decided on November 1947 a partition of Palestine which endorsed the colonization. In one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, one terribly oppressed people, the European Jews, inflicted terrible oppression on another oppressed people, the Palestinian Arabs. In 1948 Nakba, Zionists seized 78 percent of Mandatory Palestine and declared it Israel. Zionist militias and the Israeli army expelled 750,000 Palestinians, and many thousands more fled. Most of them were Muslim, but a minority was Christian. The Nakba reduced the Arab population in the territory claimed by Israel from 1,324,000 in 1947 to 156,000 in 1948.
Ever since, Zionism is terrorism on large scale, state terrorism.
Zionism and imperialism
In 1947, USSR bureaucracy supported the UN partition and, in 1948, the proclamation of Israel while, inside its frontiers, Stalin regime became more and more anti-Semitic. But the US offensive against the degenerated workers state (so-called Cold War) led USSR to support the bourgeois Arab states against Israel in 1955 and to sever its diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967.US and European imperialism, Israel’s allies, have two primary interests in the Middle East: its strategic position at the crossroads of Asia, Europe, and Africa, and its oil and gas. For more than a century, they have tried to dominate the region through a combination of violence and playing sections of the population off against each other.
Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, the US displaced Britain and France as the dominant imperialist power in the region, and they became junior partners. French State gave Israel the nuclear weapon in 1956-1960. The trio sponsored monarchs and military dictatorships and coups from Morocco to Iran and found ways to incorporate former nationalist governments, such as those of Algeria, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, into their neocolonial world order.
Israel proved highly useful in creating the neocolonial imperial order, especially after it defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The US has sent billions of dollars in aid and arms to build up Israel as a gendarme in the center of the Arab world. Israel has a political function too, as it allows the US to mask its military operations and helps the reactionary, comprador Arab governments divert attention from their own misrule to an external enemy, Israel.
The failure of Pan-Arabism
Zionist settlement, expulsion and oppression of Arabs of Palestine has caused a Palestinian national consciousness and resistance. The first wave was led in the 1930s by the feudal and clerics. Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was antisemite and bet on Italian and German imperialism.In 1949, the leadership passed to the secular and nationalist pan-Arab fraction of the Palestinian bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie with the help of Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt). After the success of guerilla warfare in China, Vietnam and Algeria, the common strategy of all the components second wave of the Palestinian resistance federated in the PLO (hegemonic Fatah; PFLP, DLFP, PLF rivals) was guerilla against Israel and looking for help from Arab states as from USSR.
In the 1967 war, Israel defeated Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan bourgeois armies. It captured Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, completing its occupation of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It also occupied the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.
The Palestinian resistance was then at the head of the revolutionary movement of the Middle East. But its class nature made its leadership unable to take up the challenge, because it meant to defy Arab regimes and USSR bureaucracy. The leaderships stuck to the line: first democratic revolution, later socialism.
In the 1973 war, Egypt and Syria fought Israel to a standstill. Egypt regained the Sinai and, in 1979, recognized Israel. Some of the biggest blows to Palestinian refugees and fighters came not from Israel but from sectors of the neighboring Arab bourgeoisie: Jordan Kingsdown in 1970, Lebanese Phalanges and Ba’ath Syrian regime in 1976, Lebanese Amal and Ba’ath Syrian regime in 1985-1986. As a result, OLP militias was expelled from Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.
The guerrilla strategy warfare from neighbouring states has failed. One more time, the stage revolution has collapsed. The people of Palestine need a proletarian leadership. The working class of Palestine – Arabs and Jews alike – needs a strategy of permanent revolution.
Intifada
The Oslo Accord and the surrender of Arafat and Fatah
After Islamist counter-revolution in Iran in 1979, the restoration of capitalism in USSR in 1992, the Islamist counter-revolution in Afghanistan in 1992, the imperialist invasion of Iraq in 2001, the imperialist intervention in Libya in 2011, the former pan-Arab regimes have vanished (Iraq, Libya) or abandoned all previous claims to socialism (Egypt, Syria, Algeria…).Since then, a pattern has emerged: Israel, backed by the US and its European allies, occupies Palestine; the Turkish, Persian and Arab states protest but do nothing; and the Palestinians periodically rise up to contest their marginalization, as the First Intifada of 1987-1993.
The First Intifada of 1987-1993 led to the Oslo Accords, which created the Palestine National Authority (PNA) to administer the West Bank and Gaza.
In 1993, the US State imposed the Oslo Accords to a Fatah devoid of any perspective. Officially, the Accords implied a two-state solution: the PLO recognized Zionist colonization of the main part of Palestine and in exchange got the Palestinian National Authority over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Edward Said described Oslo Accords as an “an instrument of Palestinian surrender”.
Hamas was founded in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada. It started as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an arch-reactionary pan-Islamist and antisemite organization that was founded in Egypt in 1928 (where it torched Christian churches in 2012). In 1973, Hamas began, with Israel tolerance, as a religious charity (Mujama al-Islamiya) which offered medical treatments, meals, youth clubs… The money came from Qatar (that exploits furiously foreign workers, Palestinian included), from Iran (that oppress workers, women, Kurds, Arab, Azeris), from Turkey (that oppress Kurds and persecute Syrian refugees). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.
Well before 2023, the leadership of the movement changed from Pan Arabism to Pan Islamism, from Fatah to Hamas. The Second Intifada of 2000-2005 forced Israel to “disengage” from Gaza by withdrawing its troops and dismantling the Israeli settlements there. Fatah, based in the West Bank, and Hamas, based in Gaza, competed in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Hamas won a plurality, which led Fatah to split the PNA. After a brief civil war, Fatah consolidated its position in the West Bank, and Hamas took control of Gaza. Since, Egypt has bolstered Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Israeli expansion
Zionist capitalism is not grounded on overexploitation of native workers, as was Apartheid South Africa, but on their expulsion. It even prefers to import migrant workers from other parts of Asia: Philippines (35 000), Thailand (30 000), India, Nepal…and from other continents (Ukraine, Argentina…).Israel oppresses Palestinians in all three sectors of its apartheid occupation: the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself.
Since 2007, Israel has further expanded into the West Bank and Golan Heights. 450,000 Israeli settlers have moved into the West Bank apart from East Jerusalem, 220,000 into East Jerusalem, and 25,000 into the Golan Heights. The settlers are religious fanatics, racist supremacists and an armed paramilitary force. Backed by theIsraeli army and abetted by the PNA police, they terrorize their Palestinian neighbors and steal their land.
Israel has no settlers in Gaza, but it controls the territory’s airspace, its seacoast, and six of its seven land crossings. Israel controls Gaza’s water supply, electricity, and telecommunications. The Israeli military maintains a no-go zone inside Gaza and enters the territory at will. Israel launched major wars against Gaza in 2008-2009 and 2014 and attacked nonviolent protestors during the Great March of Return of 2018-2019.
Israel claims to be a democracy, but it denies democratic rights not just to the 5.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza and a similar number living as refugees outside Palestine, but also to the 2.1 million Palestinians living in Israel. A Jew living anywhere in the world can move to Israel and become a full citizen. A Palestinian whose family has lived in Palestine since long before Israel existed can never become a full citizen. Palestinians are systematically discriminated against, economically and politically excluded, and treated as enemies.
October 7 and subsequent genocide
Since the 1978 Camp David Accords, the US has tried to get the governments of the Arab states to normalize relations with Israel, despite its treatment of Palestinians and the hatred this engenders among the Arab and Muslim people. In 2020, the US brokered agreements that normalized Israel’s relations with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia began talks to do the same.The October 7 attack blew up suspended the Israeli and imperialist plans. After a year of careful planning, dismissed by the Israeli security forces, Whereas Netanyahu and Zionist Army were focused on colonization of West Bank, Palestinian fighters led by Hamas overran Israel’s border defenses and struck dozens of civilian and military targets, as well as some civilian ones. They took hundreds of hostages before they were forced back across the border, a legitimate tactic in any dissymmetric war.
The mistreatment, torture, and killing of unarmed civilians, not of military age, must be condemned without equivocation, even though we recognize that this was, in part, an expression of the anger of Palestinians at the Israeli massacres and dispossession of their people. It played into the hands of the Zionist propaganda machine’s dehumanizing Palestinians and “justifying” their own war crimes, greater in scale than those of Hamas or the other resistance forces. But most parts of the operation, including the taking of hostages, was militarily legitimate.
The attack halted the US-sponsored process of “normalization” of Israel’s relations with Arab and Muslim states, revealed the underlying settler-colonial war of Israel against the Palestinian people and put Palestine back on the world’s agenda.
In the weeks Since, Israel has launched a genocidal war on Gaza. The Israeli military has bombed houses, hospitals, schools, and community centers, killing many times thenumber the October 7 raid killed. Half the victims have been children, a much larger proportion than the October 7 raid killed. The Israeli military agreed to a brief ceasefire to exchange prisoners and has now resumed its genocidal attack, driving the 2.3 million population into an ever-smaller corner of the Gaza Strip, threatening a new Nakba.
Accusation of anti-Semitism
The imperialist bourgeoisies all over the world slander any criticism of Zionism and Israel as anti-Semitic. This is a powerful ideological and political weapon against all solidarity forces in Europe and America. For several years, people from Islamic countries have become the main target of reactionary medias. They are denounced as potential assassins, enemies of democratic freedom and spreaders of a new anti-Semitism.Fascistic parties such as the FPÖ in Austria, the AfD in Germany, the RN in France, RUK in Britain, Vox in Spain, the Fratelli d’Italia of Meloni, Fidesz in Hungary are united behind the Netanyahu government and the massacre of the Palestinian Arabs. A fascist group attacked a meeting on Palestine in Lyon (France) the 11 November. The same forces that have historically denied or downplayed the Shoah since 1945, waged anti-Semitic election campaigns and railed against a “globalism” – that is only a code word for “international Jewry” – now present themselves as defenders of Israel. The basis of this shift is the construct of ethnopluralism represented by the fascist “New Right”, whose goal is the so-called “remigration”, i.e. the rejection of all migrants and their forced return to their home countries.
This reactionary offensive must be opposed decisively by workers united front and self-defense by workers and oppressed minorities. Even if the fascist gangs and fascistoid parties today direct their fire at Muslim migrants, the old anti-Semitism can be revived at any time, under the “philo-Semitic” guise of ethnopluralism: after all, there is a “Jewish state” in Israel, so all Jews worldwide should be in settle in this state. It is yet the opinion of many Christian fundamentalists, like the anti-Semite televangelist John Hagee who addressed the (mass) Rally for Israel called by the Jewish Federation in Washington on November 14.
Workers international solidarity
The boldness of the Palestinian resistance and the ferocity of the Israeli counterattack have relaunched the Palestine solidarity movement worldwide. Enormous demonstrations have been held across the Arab world, and also in Europe Great Britain, the US, and elsewhere. The solidarity movement had been lulled by the slow strangulation of Palestine and the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and four more Arab states. October 7 The Israelian genocide in Gaza brought the movement back to life.Revolutionary Marxists should participate in students and workers solidarity actions of all kinds. A ceasefire in Gaza and the withdrawal of the Zionist Army Israeli DefenseForces (IDF), to stop the genocide is the most urgent priority, but the solidarity movement should also demand humanitarian aid for Gaza, curbing the Israeli settlers in the West Bank, protecting the rights of Israeli Arabs and anti-Zionist Jews in Israel, the right of return of the refugees, and cutting military ties with Israel.
The ongoing actions already include demonstrations, civil disobedience, public events, media exposure, and campaigns for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Trade unions and other organizations are adopting resolutions calling for a ceasefire and cutting military aid. In some places, workers are responding to the call by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) to disrupt the production and shipment of arms to Israel.
Proletarian perspective
While revolutionary Marxists should participate in solidarity actions wherever we can, our unique role is to promote working-class understanding of the crisis and the solution.This begins with telling the truth. A ceasefire in Gaza is necessary but not enough, since the Zionists will continue their campaign to drive non-Jews Arabs out of Palestine. A negotiated settlement is impossible, since Israel won’t give up enough land for a viable Palestinian state, and it won’t give up Jewish supremacy for secular democracy in a binational state. US and European imperialism won’t stop to support Israel force Israel to accept either a two-state or a one-state solution, since they need Israel to help them dominate the region.
Capitalism in decay has no solution for Palestine. The alternatives are either the slaughter and dispossession of the Palestinians, or working-class intervention into history.
Workers in Israel could bring Israeli society to a halt, split the army, and prevent the Zionists from using their nuclear weapons. But for now, the great majority of the Israeli working class is committed to Zionism, seeing exploitation with Jewish supremacy as better than exploitation without Jewish supremacy, an old story in settler-colonial states. Only the prospect of a democratic, secular, socialist Palestine could give them a reason to break with their masters.
Workers in the US and Europe could deprive Israel of the economic and military backing it needs to pursue its genocidal policies. Sympathy for Palestinians is growing, as they resist as well as suffer. It may rise to the level of opposition to the Vietnam War by the late 1960s, which made continuing the war impossible. Revolutionary Marxists and other Palestinian solidarity activists — including tens of thousands of anti-Zionist student and workers Jews and tens of thousands of trade-unionists — should do everything we can to make this happen.
Since October 7th, anti-Semitism has undeniably become a problem that we can no more close our eyes to than we can turn a blind eye to anti-Islamism. As is well known,Zionism needs anti-Semitism to legitimize it. With the lying claim that Israel is the “state of all Jews,” the Zionists promote anti-Semitism, especially in Islamic countries. Religious obscurantists among the mullahs of all shades of Islam thus find ammunition for sermons against Jews worldwide, be they Zionists, bourgeois liberals, religious, agnostic or atheist. Just as internationalist communists must defend migrants from Islamic countries against fascist and xenophobic attacks, they must also confront anti-Semitism, especially if it tries to creep into the solidarity movement with Palestine.
Workers in the Arab countries of Middle East states could overthrow their collaborator governments, force the US and European imperialists to abandon Israel, and offer the Israeli working class the prospect of a secular, democratic future free from capitalist rule and endless war. The demonstrations in Iran in 2009 and 2022, the Arab Spring of 2010-2011, the demonstrations in Turkey in 2012, the Kurdish resistance to ISIS in 2015, the demonstrations in Israel, in Gaza and in Syria in 2023 showed the potential.
We can’t know how the injustice of Zionist rule of Palestine will end, or even whether it will end before capitalism plunges the world into ecological disaster or nuclear war. What we can do is to propose and fight for a program of action, starting from immediate demands and culminating in the only real solution: workers’ revolution throughout the region. Here is our proposal.
- End the genocidal assault on Gaza. Ceasefire now. Withdraw the Israeli troops.
- End the blockade. Open the crossings.
- Rebuild the devastated homes, hospitals, schools, universities, and infrastructure of Gaza at the expense of Israel and its imperialist backers.
- End the Zionist occupation of the West Bank. Withdraw the Israeli military. Expel the settlers.
- Free all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Full equality for Palestinians in the Israeli state.
- End US and other imperialist aid and arms shipments to Israel. Support boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Closing of all imperialist bases of of the Middle East. Departure of imperialist fleets. Opening borders to Palestinian refugees.
- Solidarity with the Palestinian and Arab people. No peace with Zionism and imperialism.
- For the revolutionary destruction of the Zionist state.
- For a secular, democratic, bilingual socialist Palestine from the River to the Sea.For the right of return of all Palestinian refugees. Equal rights for the Arab majority and the Jewish minority of Palestine.
- Down with the Arab capitalists, landowners, monarchies and other states, agents of imperialism. For the revolutionary unity of the Arab people. Down with the Arab, Persian and Turkish bourgeois states oppressors of Kurds, Berbers, Toubous… For workers’ revolution in the Middle East and North Africa. For a socialist federation of the region.
- For a proletarian party of Palestine. For a communist international grounded in Marxism.