By International Commission of the Workers’ Party (PO, Argentina)
The meeting of Palestinian and international organizations supporting the Palestinian resistance—to be held in Madrid on November 7 and 8—comes at a momentous time. After more than two years of resistance against a genocidal war in Gaza, Trump and Netanyahu are trying to impose a pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist “solution” to the historic struggle that has been waged for more than a century against colonialism and oppression, and which took a leap forward with the Nakba of 1948 in the formal constitution of the Zionist State of Israel.
The current genocidal war has become a regional one
As has happened in the past, the Middle East is a central stage for inter-imperialist conflicts over control of the region’s wealth and the subjugation of its peoples to super-exploitation. Capitalist expansion and its transformation into imperialism have entered a stage of crisis and parasitism, provoking imperialist wars and revolutions against this murderous and reactionary course. In the First World War, to clear away the decaying Ottoman Empire in favor of Anglo-French colonization. In the Second World War, for a division of the Arab world between the fascist powers (Germany and Italy) and the “allies” (Great Britain, France, and the United States).
Today, in the transition to a new world war. NATO’s war against Russia in Europe and Israel and NATO’s war against Gaza are directly linked. Along with the Western powers’ appetite for plunder, Russia has shown that it wants to conquer a place of power through territorial annexations and the subjugation of other peoples, that is, the will to replicate, to the extent of its capabilities, imperialist domination. The BRICS countries are not progressive in relation to the United States and Europe, but rather compete for their place in the same system of global exploitation. The continuity of their relations with Israel during the genocide is yet another refutation of any anti-imperialist or peace-seeking pretensions.
The genocidal war of the Zionist-imperialists against the Palestinians in Gaza has been regionalized with bombings and military actions against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Qatar, and Iran. A modification of political regimes and the geopolitical map of the area is proposed. Netanyahu has clearly stated his intention to annex more territory for a “Greater Israel,” which would increase its value as a Western outpost not only in the Middle East but also with an eye on the global geopolitical dispute.
This is one of the most critical scenarios in the class struggle and the imperialist offensive against peoples.
A call to action based on a program of struggle
In this context, we would like to welcome, first of all, the fact that this meeting openly and clearly defines the “Zionist project” as “settlement colonialism, with the aim of occupying the whole of Palestine and establishing a ‘Jewish state’ there to turn it into ‘Eretz Israel’, supplanting its native population through occupation, terrorism, displacement, apartheid, and genocide.”
Secondly, we welcome the fact that it states that “any past, present or future solution is contingent upon the defeat of the Zionist project and the establishment of its fundamental antithesis: a democratic Palestinian state from the river to the sea.”
Third, it concludes that “therefore, our people must abandon all kinds of non-solutions, including two states, binationalism, confederation (…) and instead return to our historical vision for liberation: dismantling the Zionist entity, liberation, and return to a democratic and secular Palestinian state.”
Fourth, within this framework, it raises the need to fight for the “right of return” of all Palestinians expelled during the Nakba in 1948 and the current war of genocide.
These are essential definitions at a time when we are facing a bloody and genocidal imperialist-Zionist ultimatum against the people of Gaza.
The heroic Palestinian resistance and international mobilization
The struggle of the Palestinian David against the Zionist-imperialist Goliath has sparked and strengthened a powerful international movement of young people and workers against the genocidal war. Mobilizations in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle have been growing around the world. They have begun to develop especially in the imperialist countries (Great Britain, Italy, the United States, etc.). And they have taken a leap forward with important sectors of the working class carrying out general strikes (Italy, Spain) and measures of struggle and boycott in ports and arms factories (France, Great Britain, the United States). Young people are also occupying universities and carrying out strikes and large marches. The Global Sumud Flotilla, the March of Solidarity with Gaza from Egypt to the Rafah border crossing, festivals, and sporting events are all part of this surge of mobilization against the imperialist-Zionist war.
This convergence between the Palestinian resistance, which, despite the genocidal savagery and blows it has suffered, has maintained its presence, and the growing international mobilization, has forced imperialism to call a ceasefire in the open genocide it has been carrying out. The fact that the resistance has maintained its operations and territorial control, and that Zionism and imperialism have had to negotiate with it after a massacre of unprecedented historical proportions, are signs of the Palestinian people’s will for liberation and how they are using all the tools at their disposal to achieve that end. However, imperialism is trying to advance its reactionary objectives through political-diplomatic maneuvers. Trump (and Netanyahu) seek to impose an extortionate ultimatum on the Palestinian resistance in order to transform Gaza into a protectorate manipulated by imperialism under the command of Tony Blair (a promoter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq), completely disarming all resistance by the Palestinian people and enthroning an imperialist military force and reactionary Arab regimes (Egypt, Jordan).
On the other hand, the handover of hostages by the Palestinian resistance has not been reciprocated by the Zionist state with a total ceasefire. With fabricated excuses, the bombings and Palestinian victims return.
More than ever, it is necessary to deepen the struggle for solidarity worldwide, to strike at these maneuvers of the genocidal forces, to stop new aggressions, and to defend the struggle of the Palestinian people.
The complicity of Arab and regional governments and ruling classes
Throughout the war, most Arab and Muslim governments in the region were complicit in the genocidal actions to crush Palestinian resistance. The Egyptian government closed the Rafah border crossing, joining the Zionist blockade of Gaza and condemning its population to starvation and death due to lack of medicine and food. It repressed solidarity movements with the Palestinian struggle on its territory and also the Global March to help break the siege on Gaza. The Jordanian government was an active participant in the Zionist defense against retaliatory rockets launched by Palestinians, Yemenis, Hezbollah, and Iranians. Qatar has a US base with more than 10,000 soldiers, aircraft, and missiles, which is part of the military force responsible for attacks on countries (Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran) that, to varying degrees, supported the Palestinian struggle.
Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Arab ruling classes have been co-opted by various imperialisms and have surrendered the struggle to unite the “Arab nation.” They defend their clan, dynastic, and property interests against their own peoples, who are repressed and deprived of their democratic and social rights. They try to hide their reactionary actions and their collusion with imperialism behind false “nationalist” banners, class conciliation, and the political subordination of the exploited masses to the powers that be, who secretly and publicly conspire with imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian struggle.
It is false that imperialism promotes economic development and democracy. In the Middle East, imperialism blocks all independent economic development and is the pivot of all reactionary and repressive regimes. What “democracy” can we talk about with the reactionary fundamentalist absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia or the repressive-torturing authoritarian government of Sisi in Egypt? These are bourgeois oligarchies, pillars supporting the large landowners, monopolies, and imperialists.
The struggle for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination has been facing and will have to overcome a coalition of forces made up of the imperialist powers, their Zionist colonial enclave, and these reactionary Arab oligarchies.
They have in their favor the fact that the Arab masses openly support the Palestinian struggle, but they are blocked from intervening by the repressive policies of the regimes allied with imperialism-Zionism. The struggle against Zionism and imperialism raises the need to put an end to these exploitative regimes. The “Arab Spring” in 2010 showed a trend towards the uprising of workers and peasants against these repressive and exploitative governments. But tragically, they were contained, diverted, or heavily repressed and/or drowned in blood (Egypt). They mark a path, a precedent, and a perspective to be overcome. The social explosions in Lebanon in 2019 and Iran in 2022 also show that there is potential for independent mobilization among youth and workers. It is necessary to thoroughly develop the class struggle against the exploitative bourgeoisie and imperialist agents, mobilizing the masses of workers, peasants, and youth for their demands. The democratic tasks of the revolution (expulsion of imperialism, elimination of Zionist colonialism, agrarian reform, arming of the masses) will be closely linked to the resolution of the demands of the masses. This will only be possible with workers’ and peasants’ governments in each country and with a common struggle to establish unity around a Socialist Federation of the peoples of the Middle East. This is not an illusory proposal, but a necessity imposed by reality. Already, the struggle throughout the Middle East is a common struggle against imperialist-Zionist intervention. It is part of an international struggle against war and ongoing imperialist colonization. Because the global capitalist crisis is once again setting back historical evolution and creating a tense hybrid situation in which nations that achieved formal independence are regressing from a semi-colonial status to a more directly colonial one. This is already the situation in Libya (and is becoming so in Syria), and now they propose to institutionalize it in Palestine, transforming it into an imperialist-Zionist colonial protectorate.
We unconditionally support all effective national struggles against imperialist-Zionist oppression: we have been doing so with regard to the Palestinian resistance. But it is necessary to be clear about the need to take up the common strategic struggle throughout the Middle East. It is necessary to denounce the capitulations and betrayals of the Arab bourgeoisies and call on the workers to organize independently.
This, of course, transcends the Middle East region. The ceasefire was imposed on Netanyahu and Trump’s initial proposals to continue the genocidal war until the total annihilation or outright expulsion of the Gazan masses from the Strip. The large demonstrations, especially the strikes in Italy and Spain, and the marches in Britain and the United States, have undermined the governability of the powers that support Israel and thrown into crisis the vulgar surrender that the Arab regimes were prepared to make, forcing them to seek this treacherous and deceitful path to try to impose international demobilization and achieve the total ebb of Palestinian resistance, a situation that they have not been able to accomplish on the battlefield.
The best traditions of proletarian internationalism are being revived, but unfortunately without the existence of an international leadership of the workers. The First International supported the revolutionary uprising in Poland against the Russian tsar and sided with the struggle against slavery in the American Civil War. The Third International took the side of the struggle for Irish independence (and called for the colonial rebellion of the Arab peoples against imperialist oppression). At the end of the 1960s, large masses of youth and workers mobilized around the world, particularly in the United States, in favor of the Vietcong and for the withdrawal of US imperialist troops from Vietnam, playing a decisive role in the Yankee retreat.
Independent workers’ parties and a revolutionary socialist international must be built as a strategic objective.
The struggle to end the Zionist colonialist state and for a single, secular and socialist Palestine throughout Palestine
Those who claim to be ‘realistic’ consider it utopian to propose the struggle for a single, secular Palestine ‘from the River to the Sea’. They argue that, almost 80 years after the establishment of the Zionist state of Israel, this is now a reality that must be recognised. They thus supported all the ‘agreements’ (Oslo, etc.) that sought to institutionalise the Zionist colonisation of much of Palestine, countering the prospect of establishing a Palestinian state (following the ill-timed 1947 UN ‘partition’ resolution, which has been modified time and again, in increasingly negative ways after each war). But, on the contrary: all the ‘agreements’ established show that this is indeed a reactionary utopia that paralyses the struggle against imperialist colonialism. The Palestinian National Authority has become a Quisling accomplice to Zionist oppression against the Palestinian people, persecuting Palestinian fighters on behalf of the Zionist-imperialist colonialists.
Each capitulation by the historical leadership of the resistance, from 1982 in Lebanon to the Oslo Accords, has allowed the advance, by contrast, of radicalised political Islam, with its formations occupying an important place and authority, due to their real clashes with Israel and imperialism, and enjoying the support of various bourgeois governments in the region. All members of the effective resistance deserve the support of the friends of the oppressed Palestinian people. However, the policy of trusting the regional bourgeoisies and establishing a religious state has a reactionary content, which does not open the way to liberation and the convergence of peoples. That is why we support the development of revolutionary, secular and internationalist variants within the resistance, and the debate, to which this conference contributes, on what is the fundamental solution to the Palestinian drama.
There are sectors that declare and even mobilise for a ceasefire in Gaza and the withdrawal of Zionist-imperialist troops, but who are in favour of recognising the existence of the Zionist state of Israel and seek coexistence with a new Palestinian state (the ‘democratic socialist’ Bernie Sanders constantly talks about ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’). This would be a capitulation without any sense of progressiveness; it would be joining in with imperialist colonialist manoeuvres. That is why we welcome the proposal in the declaration convening this conference in Madrid, which rejects past, present and future proposals for recognition of and coexistence with the Zionist state of Israel and instead proposes ‘abandoning all kinds of non-solutions’ such as two states, confederation and the like. We advocate the dismantling of the Zionist state and the establishment of a single, secular and socialist state, that is, one led by a government of workers and exploited people residing in Palestine.
We consider it important that the call for this international conference defines its opposition to the creation of identity-based states (ethnic, racist, religious) that establish principles of inequality, although class inequality is absent from this categorisation. Defending the rights of the Arab ‘ethnic group’, today subjugated and repressed by Zionism, we believe that a future Palestinian state cannot be ‘apolitical’. A single, secular and socialist Palestinian state is the only one that will truly allow the development of each culture, its traditions, and even the religion of those who wish to practise it in complete freedom, particularly the Palestinian Arab tradition and culture, which has been the victim of a century of ethnic cleansing and repression.
The current social organisation is riddled with class antagonisms that we cannot ignore. Every state is a construction with a defined class character. The ruling classes in today’s capitalist society use the state to defend their property rights and exploitation against the dispossessed masses. The ongoing historical experience shows that the bourgeoisies at the head of the states in the region are incapable of consistently taking up the struggle for national liberation and the war against Zionism-imperialism and have ended up succumbing to their pressures. A government of workers and peasants will guarantee a tenacious struggle against the Zionist-imperialist enemies, mobilising the working class, peasantry and exploited masses who have been victims of their oppression and providing the vehicle for a progressive solution to the conflict that has been dragging on for decades.
Imperialism and its Zionist instrument are not fighting for a ‘national home’ for the Jewish people scattered throughout the world. That is a lie, a pseudo-ideological-political propaganda construct to justify the colonial occupation of Palestine by Israeli Zionism. Originally disguised as a project of ‘national liberation’ (and even socialism) for the heterogeneous and persecuted Jewish people, historical experience, and fundamentally the heroic Palestinian war of resistance to the genocide of Netanyahu and Trump, have served to expose the true colonialist, racist and imperialist face of the Zionist enclave. This has also revitalised the resurgence of an international (and also within Israel itself) anti-Zionist Jewish movement, which is mobilising in support of the Palestinian struggle. We are fighting for it to evolve towards internationalist and socialist positions, reviving the best revolutionary traditions of the Jewish people.
Of course, we reject the fraudulent Zionist ‘law of return,’ which gives rights of usurpation—to anyone who proclaims themselves Jewish—to Palestinian land. It is an amalgam of Europeans, Latin Americans, North Americans and others from other latitudes, many of them recruited as ‘mercenaries’ to survive, occupying Palestinian land, to be used as ‘cannon fodder’ for imperialist military adventures. We proclaim, instead, the need for the return of the Palestinians expelled from their lands in 1948 with the Nakba and after each war, and now, specifically from Gaza and the one that is intended to be consummated in the West Bank. Many of them live in camps on the borders of the Zionist state.
The nefarious role of NATO with Israel against Gaza is clear to many left-wing fighters and militants, who are mobilising for the unconditional withdrawal of Zionist troops from Gaza and the cessation of bombing. But they have a different approach to NATO’s war against Russia. They are on the imperialist side of NATO against Putin. This is a serious contradiction: is NATO progressive in the war against Russia and regressive in the fight against the Palestinians?
The struggle against imperialist war is common, and the main enemy of the workers is their own ruling class.
It is important to issue a statement of principles against Zionism, imperialism and the extortionate ultimatum of the false and hypocritical ‘peace plan’ of Netanyahu-Trump-Blair and in defence of the Palestinian resistance. The adoption of a programme of struggle against Zionism and a call for a united front in Palestine, the Middle East and around the world to increase the struggle in support of the Palestinian people’s resistance will be an important step that will help clarify the panorama that is opening up in this international struggle.
