This is part III of our series on October 7th anniversary. Read part I here and part II here
The class approach
In Palestine we have national oppression of the most brutal character, suppression of democratic and human rights, clear practices of colonization and strong similarities to Apartheid. But like every national question, the Israel-Palestine one has a clear class character as well. Whenever a national problem is based on the existence of a serious conflict of capitalist interests, as a general rule the problem cannot be solved under capitalism.
If we have a quick look at the broader region (Middle East and Balkans) we will see many examples, that verify this position: in Syria divisions of decisive importance are drawn on national lines (Israel, Turkey, Druze, Kurds, Alevites, etc) and block attempts at a unitary state; the Turkish ruling class will not accept the existence of a Kurdish state so the Kurdish national problem remains unresolved for over a century; the over a century’s old conflict of interests between the Greek and the Turkish ruling classes remains unresolved and the antagonisms actually deepen, raising (again) the danger of military confrontation in the future; the Cyprus problem has ended up in a quagmire and a permanent partition is the nearly certain outcome; in the Balkans, despite (but also because of) the many wars, the national problems continue to play a central role – between Greece and North Macedonia, between Bulgaria and N. Macedonia, between Albania and Serbia, etc., etc. If we look at the international plane, the picture is similar across the planet. The list is actually endless: Russia and Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Armenia, India and Pakistan, India and China, China and Japan, to mention only a few. Even national problems which the ruling classes declared resolved in the past decades, for example in Ireland, are still alive and can lead to new conflicts in the future.
The experience of decades, or centuries in some cases, of the existence of such problems should make it clear that capitalism is not in a position to find solutions to them. As Trotsky’s Theory of the Permanent Revolution enables us to understand, and as we have developed in numerous articles, only the working classes of countries facing serious national antagonisms can solve such problems, by coming together and fighting against nationalism and against their “own” ruling classes.
In the case of Israel-Palestine the main responsibility for taking the initiative for a political programme and the practical steps for the class collaboration of Israeli and Palestinian workers, would be expected to lie with the working class of the suppressor nation, i.e., the Israeli working class. But this is an abstraction, a theoretical assumption – in practice this possibility is related to the consciousness of the working class, which is determined by a multitude of factors, and crucially by the leadership of the working-class organisations. So, the fact that no such initiative has been taken in the past decades is linked to the fact that the leaders of the political, trade union and other organizations of the Israeli working class, have capitulated to the pressures of the ruling class and in their majority act as its agents.
Having said this, we should note that a mass movement from below, under certain conditions, could help speed up events, in the direction of new mass workers’ organisations and at the same time in the creation of sizeable anticapitalist/Marxist forces. We should also note that in Israel there is a small minority, such as the left party Hadash and some social movements, that although they do not raise the perspective of revolutionary change, they do raise the need for a united struggle between Israeli and Palestinian workers. We should also remember that in past decades the forces of the Left were dominant in Palestine and the Middle East – but they failed to show a way forward due to their pro-Soviet Union or pro-Chinese character, and this played a key role in the rise of Islamism and Islamic fundamentalism (see https://www.internationaliststandpoint.org/positions-of-isp-on-palestine/, paragraph 34).
The responsibility of searching for a way forward based on the class approach of the Palestinian and Israeli workers also lies with the Palestinian workers and youth – for no other reason but in order to serve their own interests! Because, otherwise, no solution is possible. We need to elaborate a bit on this because it is an issue of controversy inside the Left.
Revolutionary socialists have a duty to defend and support the rights of oppressed nations – that goes without saying. But this does not mean that they should offer support to the leaderships and ruling classes of such oppressed nations. Marxists’ support goes wholeheartedly and unconditionally to the Palestinian masses. But they do not have any obligation to support the leaderships of the Palestinian organizations which are in government, either in the West Bank (Fatah) or in Gaza (Hamas). The same is true for the people of Iran. The same for the people of Syria and so on.
The leaderships of the Palestinian organizations, just like the Israeli ones, unfortunately, never attempted to approach the national problem on a class basis. On the contrary they followed policies and tactics that actually enable the Zionist governments to rally the Israeli masses around them. The terrorist tactics of Fatah and other Palestinian organisations in the past (e.g. the attack against Israel’s Olympic team in 1972) played this role. So did the October 7 offensive, led by Hamas. The trade union leaders of the Israeli workers and youth, just like the parliamentary opposition to Netanyahu used these mistaken methods of Palestinian organisations, to justify their capitulation to the Israeli ruling class and its nationalist/Zionist aspirations and policies.
Without mass (political and trade union) organisations that adopt a class approach to the solution of the Palestinian problem, it is not possible for the working-class masses to adopt such an approach spontaneously and on their own. And this is precisely what is missing on both sides of the border but also in the broader region: mass revolutionary socialist political forces, determined to fight for the common interests of Israeli and Palestinian workers, against the nationalism and the aggression of the Israeli ruling class, and for the overthrow of capitalism on both sides of the border. Under certain conditions, mass movements from below can speed up this process, which has a double character: building broad political and trade union organisations of the working class, independent from the ruling class, on the one hand and a revolutionary-socialist pole on the other.
Debates in the Left
If this was a problem only in Israel-Palestine it would have been easily overcome – international developments/processes would sooner or later be reflected there as well. But unfortunately, the crisis of the Left is an international phenomenon. The ex-reformist Left of various colors and shades have capitulated to the pressures of the ruling class. The anticapitalist organizations and those that have a reference to revolutionary Marxism are extremely weak and with very serious deficiencies in their vast majority. So, as a general rule, there is no significant pole of the revolutionary-socialist Left that can provide/propose a way forward.
Especially on the issue of Palestine there is very widespread confusion. In our debates with other left currents in the recent period we have come across views like the following:
- What we have in Palestine, as well as in Lebanon, Syria, etc., is a war between Israel and Western imperialism on the one hand and the Arab people on the other, who are suppressed and exploited and fighting against imperialist barbarism; therefore, our position is simple, we are on the side of the Arabs against the Israelis.
- It is impossible to have unity between the Palestinian people and the Israeli working class because the latter is part of the oppressor nation.
- The right of self-determination should not hold for the Israeli people.
- There should be no Israeli state, there should be only one Palestinian state in which the Jews could also live if they want.
- Israel cannot be described as a class society because the working class is fully associated with the Israeli ruling class and has been riddled by the Zionist poison.
- The reasons why Israeli workers and youth take to the streets is not because they respect the rights of the Palestinian people, it is because they want to save the hostages.
- Hamas should not be criticised for the October 7th, 23, attack because it represents the oppressed nation.
- Ideas about a socialist future for Israel and Palestine are good, but they belong to a distant future, so for now we should call for the victory of the “Palestinian resistance”.
The approach revealed by statements like the above may reflect the anger at Israel’s atrocities, but fails to grasp the substance of the problem and to show any way forward.
It is entirely wrong to equate all Arabs just because they were oppressed by the colonial powers in the past and by Israel and Western Imperialism in the decades that followed. All Arab societies are class societies, including the Palestinian one. It should be noted, for example, that Palestinian refugees leaving the cities and villages of Gaza to live in camps, cannot afford tents or lories to carry their belongings due to the astronomical prices of many hundreds of US dollars – that is why many families escape on foot. According to reports, the black market which has developed means that “a kilogram of sugar now costs $106, up from 89 cents pre-war; a 25-kilogram sack of flour is $305, up from $10; a kilogram of tomatoes costs $30, compared to 59 cents, etc.”.
The leaders/governments of the Arab as well as the non-Arab Moslem countries, in one way or another play a reactionary role, either by adhering to the imperialist countries, or by establishing dictatorial (and often non-secular) regimes, or both. The distinction between the classes is absolutely crucial.
Inside Israel
The Israeli masses do of course belong to the oppressor nation, but so did the Russian masses in 1917, and yet they carried through a mighty revolution establishing fraternal links with the workers (and peasantry) in the oppressed nationalities and nations of Russia and of the Czarist empire. Also, the English workers in the 19th century were undoubtedly influenced by the “poison” of the British Empire as well as by racism, particularly towards the Irish workers; but still Marx and Engels never lost faith in their revolutionary potential (criticizing at the same time the shortcomings in their consciousness).
Denying Israeli workers their revolutionary potential becomes even more bizarre, when up to one million of these same workers, in a population of just over 10 million, are ready to demonstrate and strike against their government, as was shown on August 17. Also, when up to 50% of the reservists refuse to enlist!
How can these factors be underestimated – one has to be blind not to see the importance of these developments, whatever the reasons that initially pushed the masses to the streets (such as the issue of the hostages for many of them) and against their government. And, of course, there is no such thing as a movement with a clear political consciousness in history – consciousness is always in a process of development and so is the mass movement itself. There are always, contradictory factors and confusion. But, given this objective reality, the issue is if and how Marxists can build on such movements.
Numerous accounts of the way consciousness developed over the past couple of years, coming from inside Israel, indicate that in the initial phase of the war the masses rallied behind the government – this, actually, is the rule of what happens in the initial phases of any war, irrespective of the reasons that sparked it. The mood inside Israel began to change when they realized that Netanyahu was actually responsible for not reaching a ceasefire and that his aims in the war were not at all defensive, but offensive. And this turned into greater anger when reports about the Palestinians being starved to death became daily news and official (by the UN, among others), when the IDF shot unarmed Palestinians queuing for food, and when the latest attack on Gaza city began in September.
The rage that many activists feel internationally against the genocide in Palestine often pushes them to extreme positions, like denying the right of Israel to exist as a state. This is understandable, but politically it is non-sensical and wrong, in fact it undermines the right of the Palestinian masses themselves to have their own state!
Generations upon generations of Jews have been living in Israel and any attempt to deny them the right to have a state will make them fight like “one fist” against those who want to destroy their state, it will send them directly into the arms of the most far-right nationalist wing of the ruling class. The intervention of Marxists should aim at breaking this kind of inter-class alliance, by driving a wedge, widening and deepening the class divisions between the ruling class and the working class.
In the same way as it would be naïve (not to say outrageous) to expect a solution to the conflict, by denying the right of the Palestinian people to exercise their Right of Self Determination and have their own state, in exactly the same way it would be naïve to expect a solution while denying the Jewish population of Israel the right to have a national state.
Who wants to destroy Israel?
Any plans, short term or long term, by any force/s, to destroy the present state of Israel, would mean war, actually a series of wars, between Israel and its opponents.
The question raised is how can anyone seriously defend such a position and at the same time miss the fact that, historically, Israel has won all the military confrontations with its opponents in the M. East?
The current one is the fourth major war, since the creation of the Israeli state, that has been won by Israel on the military level, with minimal losses (politically and diplomatically, of course, Israel has been seriously weakened, and this is very, very important, but it’s a different matter for discussion). The question therefore is, what do the proponents of the position that the Israeli people do not have the right to their own state actually propose? Endless wars that will be paid with rivers of blood by the Palestinian and other Arab people?
As regards the argument that “a socialist approach is good but it belongs to the distant future, now we must support the victory of the Palestinian resistance” the answer is that this, above all, is an illusion. The “Palestinian resistance”, which in the present conjuncture means, essentially, Hamas, cannot win, precisely because of its political character and tactics/practices.
Historical experience has one simple and valuable lesson: Israel cannot be defeated by guerilla tactics or by acts of terrorism; and it cannot be defeated militarily by its neighboring Arab states or Iran, because it has the support of the US and European imperialist allies.
If “Palestinian resistance” however took the form of mass protests, strikes and demonstrations, as was manifested in the First Indifada, with a class appeal for solidarity to the Israeli and the international working class, it would be an entirely different matter. The Israeli masses have in fact good reason to support the creation of a Palestinian state, if the two states could have peaceful relations and respect between them, because that would mean an end to the endless wars and militarization that they are living through.
The power of socialist ideas
Some on the “radical” Left argue that they don’t agree with Hamas’ programme, but the choice is between Hamas on the one hand and Israel and Western Imperialism on the other. Therefore, according to this logic, we should choose to support Hamas.
Apart from the fact that Hamas cannot win, as developed above, there is another factor of major importance. The role of the anticapitalist/Marxist Left ought to be to have an internationalist perspective – capitalism cannot be fought and defeated on a long-term basis on a national basis. The aim of the anticapitalist-internationalist Left, internationally, should be to build sizeable forces in the Middle East, with the aim of uniting the working classes against imperialism and national oppression, which in practice means against capitalism and for a socialist society. Supporting Hamas puts a full stop to any attempt to unite the working classes in the area – isolating first and foremost the Israeli working class, but not just that. Supporting Hamas, therefore means, in the end, abandoning the internationalist perspective. The logic of this, inevitably, leads to ideas of the kind “there is no working class in Israel”, “Israel is not a class society” and we shouldn’t bother. This approach is a dead end.
For these reasons, the class approach and the socialist perspective, however distant they look, are actually the only realistic way to solve the national problem. The forces that can lead this struggle are not Islamic (like Hamas) or pro-capitalist (like Fatah), they are left, anticapitalist and internationalist. They don’t exist today on a mass basis, so they have to be built. But they can only be built on the basis of taking a clear distance and openly criticising Islamic forces, their ideas and their tactics, as well as pro-capitalist forces.
The fundamental reason why Marxists have a duty to criticise the tactics followed by Hamas is precisely this: they undermine the possibility of building unity on a class basis between the Israeli and Palestinian workers, and between workers in the region.
It is true that such tactics are the result of desperation after decades of occupation and national oppression. But this understanding should not blur the political and social repercussions of such policies and actions.
It is impossible to build Marxist revolutionary organisations in the region without clear positions against terrorist actions and mass murder of civilians.
Having said this, it should be stressed that Marxists need to be clearly in favour of the right of the Palestinian masses to armed self-defence and resistance. But this is different from attacking and killing civilians, like on October 7, 2023. At the same we need to remember that neither Hamas nor Fatah, governing Gaza and the W. Bank respectively, have a policy of arming the Palestinian masses and forming people’s militias.
Some on the Left raise the argument that it is better to have a fighting organisation like Hamas as opposed to the passivity of Fatah in the West Bank. But this is a wrong comparison. Hamas’ policies and tactics should not be compared to (pro-capitalist and corrupt) Fatah, but to what could be achieved if Hamas was not an Islamist organization but a socialist one, appealing to the Israeli workers for joint struggle, for peace and for a socialist future in the benefit of both.
We need to fight for:
The political programme that we propose for a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has been developed quite extensively in previous material as well[1]. The main points can be summarized as follows.
- Oppose the war by every possible means. Demonstrate, protest, boycott, use the social media, organise public meetings and rallies. Expose Israel’s brutal policies. Show support to the Palestinian masses.
- At the same time be aware that these are not enough to stop a war. What is required is strike action, in specific sectors but also general strikes, combined with refusal by transport workers (marine, rail etc) to transport materials to Israel.
- Defend the right of the Palestinian people to have their own state/homeland – i.e., the “right of self-determination”.
- Defend, at the same time, the right of the Israeli people to have their own state.
- Israeli Jews and Palestinians can live side by side in peace, either in a single workers’ state with full rights for minorities, or in a socialist federation/confederation of two separate entities. This is something for Jewish and Palestinian workers to decide in the future.
- Defend the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
- Reverse the policy of expanding Israeli settlements, now numbering 700,000, in the occupied territories (considered as a war crime by the Fourth Geneva Convention).
- Appeal to Israeli workers and youth to take the initiative to approach the Palestinian workers and youth on a class basis. Appeal to the Palestinian workers and youth to do the same in relation to Israeli workers.
- Encourage more Israeli citizens to refuse serving their mandatory military service. Defend the conscientious objectors and the reservists who refuse to show up.
- Fight against anti-Semitism wherever it is encountered.
- Expose the nauseating hypocrisy of the West and the attempts on their part to suppress the democratic right to protest against Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing, labelling all protests as “anti-Semitism”.
- Raise these ideas with workers and youth in the whole region of the Middle East which was, still is and will continue to be in flames.
- Raise the perspective of the socialist federation of the Middle East, as the only way for peace and prosperity in the region.
- Build powerful revolutionary socialist parties in the West. This will inevitably have an impact in Israel, Palestine and the Middle East as a whole. And it will speed up the creation of similar mass revolutionary parties in the region (at the same time as fighting to build broad mass organisations, political and trade union, independent of the ruling classes) which is the absolute condition for a socialist solution to the national problem, the lack of democratic rights, capitalist barbarism and imperialist intervention.
[1] See, for example:
https://www.internationaliststandpoint.org/positions-of-isp-on-palestine/
https://www.internationaliststandpoint.org/palestine-a-never-ending-nightmare-is-there-a-way-out/
