The History of the Palestinian Question

From the 19th century to the Oslo Accords (1993–1995)

Introduction

This pamphlet was first published in Greek one year after October 7, 2023. On that day, Hamas and other Palestinian organizations’ militants launched an unprecedented attack on Israel by breaking out of the Gaza Strip. An estimated 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed in the attack, while some 250 were taken hostage and brought back to Gaza.

The October 7 attack was a huge blow to the prestige of the Israeli state, which appeared totally unprepared and unable to prevent an assault of such magnitude, despite its powerful army (the Israeli Defense Forces – IDF) and its notorious intelligence service (the Mossad).

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies responded to Hamas’ attack by launching a genocidal war against the Palestinian people. As of the time of this publication (August 2025), at least 61,500 Palestinians have been killed.

Most of the victims in Gaza and the West Bank have been civilians — women and children — as the IDF has repeatedly bombed schools, hospitals, churches, refugee camps, and even UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestinian refugees) facilities.

After almost two years of relentless bombardment, Gaza has been flattened and turned into a ghost area. All basic infrastructure — housing, water, sanitation, energy, food production, health care, etc. — has been destroyed, while hundreds of thousands have been injured. The more than two million Palestinians living in Gaza are constantly on the move, seeking safe refuge within a tiny piece of land of just over 360 km², which is continuously bombed.

At the same time, attacks by the Israeli army and armed Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank are continuing. In September 2024, Israel escalated the conflict with terrorist attacks using beepers and walkie-talkies, while razing entire building blocks in Beirut and assassinating the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. In June 2025, Israel — followed by the US — attacked Iran, in a move that threatened to turn the entire Middle East into a war zone. Now, the Israeli government seems to be preparing for a military occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Internationalist Standpoint has analysed and taken a stand on these dramatic events in a series of articles published on internationaliststandpoint.org since October 2023. We will not repeat all of our analysis and positions here. The purpose of this long article is to outline the main milestones in the historical development of the Palestinian question, from its origins at the end of the 19th century to the Oslo Accords (1993–1995).

We believe that a more comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the history of the Palestinian question can better equip those who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s demand for freedom and self determination, those who are involved in the movement against the war and genocide inflicted on the Palestinians, and those who struggle for peace, freedom, and prosperity for all the peoples of the Middle East and the wider region — regardless of religion or nationality.

The Birth of the Palestinian National Question

The Palestinian question has taken different forms over its hundred-year history — a history of mass uprooting, occupation, brutal oppression, endless massacres, and untold suffering, which the Palestinian people are still experiencing today.

The policies of the imperialist powers and the Zionist–Jewish bourgeoisie are primarily responsible for the creation of the Palestinian question, the ethnic oppression, and the bloodshed that has lasted for so many decades. On the other hand, the ruling classes of the Arab countries and the various Palestinian leaderships, which have changed over time, have failed to lead the Palestinian people to the goal of freedom and the creation of an independent state. The cycle of violence and chaos seems impossible to break, and the cost is being paid by innocent people — overwhelmingly Palestinians, but also innocent Israeli citizens.

The Palestinian people are experiencing genocide and ethnic cleansing, living in miserable conditions and without a state of their own. Yet Israeli citizens also do not live in security and peace, as promised by the Zionist narrative.

To understand the Palestinian question in depth, we need to go back in history and start from the beginning.

The roots of the Palestinian question lie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The historical circumstances of that period can be briefly summarised as follows:

• The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, to which the Middle East and North Africa belonged.
• The economic, political, and military penetration of British and French imperialism into the region.
• The attempts to establish independent Arab nation-states.
• Anti-Semitism and pogroms against Jews in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, combined with the emergence of the political movement of Zionism.

The Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire

Since the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire had been in a process of disintegration. The major imperialist powers of Europe — mainly Britain and France — were expanding their economic and political influence in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.

This economic penetration, combined with reforms under the Ottoman Tanzimat period and the growing influence of European powers, paved the way for capitalist methods of production. European capital, backed by its national governments, invested in the region, building railways and other infrastructure, and thus opened up domestic economies to the world market.

As feudal relations receded, capitalist relations developed. These changes had a major impact on the wider region of Palestine, where land began to be concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy individuals.

At the same time, France and Britain were steadily strengthening their political influence by opening consulates and “educational institutions.” In doing so, they were preparing to divide among themselves the spoils that would result from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. These were the decades before World War I, when competition among the most powerful imperialist countries for international markets and world domination was becoming increasingly intense.

Like the Balkans, the geographical area of the Middle East was a mosaic of many different ethnic and religious groups: Arab Muslims (mainly Sunni and Shia), Druze, Jews, Orthodox Christians (both Greeks and Arabs), Catholic Christians, and others. The vast majority of the inhabitants of Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century were Arab Muslims (see data below).

The different ethnic and religious groups lived side by side, with no border divisions, as they all belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The administrative system of the Sultan’s power was based on a network of local notables who acted as intermediaries between the central state and the various provinces.

From the end of the 19th century until 1948, around 50 notable Palestinian families concentrated considerable political, economic, and religious power in their hands. Most of these notables held positions in the religious hierarchy of Islam (muftis, imams, etc.).

At the same time, the various currents of Arab nationalism began to develop. Arab nationalism expressed the interests of the rising bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes in the big cities, who were mainly merchants and gained influence through the opening up of the Palestinian agricultural economy to the international market.

However, Arab nationalism also reflected the aspirations of the poor peasant masses of the countryside (the fellahin). The fellahin, increasingly reduced to tenants on their own land, faced the constant threat of eviction whenever the new, often foreign, landowners decided to expel them.

The rise of Arab nationalism was also fuelled by the growing fear among the Arab masses of the increasing Jewish immigration from Europe, which had begun in the 1880s under the direction of the Zionist movement. During this period, Zionist organisations were purchasing land and establishing agricultural settlements in Palestine.

A key aim of Zionist policy was to remove the local Palestinian population from the land, in order to make both land and jobs available for the new Jewish settlers. The first outbreaks of violence occurred when large landowners — mostly absentee landlords and often non-Palestinians — sold tracts of farmland to Zionists.

Zionism and the Jewish Socialist Movement

In Palestine, as in other areas of the Middle East and North Africa, there had been Jewish communities for centuries. By the late 19th century, the Jews of the region were a small minority, while the vast majority of the population were Arab Muslims.

The majority of Jews lived in the diaspora. Large Jewish communities existed in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe, in countries such as Russia and Poland. The Jews of Europe were known as Ashkenazim, while those expelled from the Iberian Peninsula were called Sephardim.

In the period under discussion, diaspora Jews faced discrimination, racism, persecution, and oppression. The ruling classes and European governments scapegoated Jews, blaming them for the social crises they themselves had created — much as refugees and immigrants are scapegoated today.

In Poland and Russia, violent pogroms were launched against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a result, around 4 million Jews emigrated to Western European countries and the USA in search of safety.

Jewish communities were, of course, not uniform. There were deep class divisions: on one side stood wealthy Jews (merchants, bankers, industrialists, etc.), and on the other, the poor working-class Jews.

These class divisions found political expression in two opposing currents within the Jewish communities. Gradually, sections of the Jewish bourgeoisie turned to Zionism, while large sections of the Jewish working class embraced socialist and revolutionary ideas.

Jewish workers, because of the double oppression they suffered, played an important role in the labour and socialist movement — either through the Social Democratic parties in their respective countries or through the General Jewish Workers’ Federation (Bund). For socialist Jews, the primary task was the struggle for rights and emancipation in the countries where they lived, and they linked this struggle to the revolutionary fight of the entire working class against capitalism.

In contrast, for the Zionists, the central goal was the creation of a “Jewish homeland” — a Jewish national state. For the Jewish capitalists, the Jewish state promised by Zionism could best serve their own class interests, both in competition with other capitalists and in relation to the working class.

Some early tendencies within the Zionist movement claimed to have a connection to socialism. The most important organisation of this type was Poale Zion (“Workers of Zion”), founded in 1905 in Russia and acquiring an international character in 1907. In essence, however, Zionism was the political expression of the class interests of the Jewish bourgeoisie.

It is no coincidence that the Comintern (Communist International or Third International), at the time when Lenin, Trotsky, and other major Marxist revolutionaries were in its leadership, refused to admit pro-Zionist “socialist” organisations into its ranks and described Zionism as a tool of British imperialism. It also predicted that Jewish immigration to Palestine would lead to bloody conflicts between Jews and Arabs.

In its early stages, Zionism was a minority political current among diaspora Jews, for whom the only “homeland” was the countries where they had lived for generations and where they generally saw themselves as part of the working class. Zionism represented not a struggle for liberation but an “escape” to an unknown land.

In 1896, the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State, which called for a “return to Palestine.” In 1897, the first international congress of Zionist organisations was held in Basel, Switzerland, at which the World Zionist Organization was founded. In 1906, the 5th Zionist Congress decided that the goal of Zionism was the establishment of a Jewish state in part of Palestine.

From 1882 to 1914, two large waves of immigration brought around 65,000 European Jews to Palestine, increasing the Jewish share of the population to about 13%. The Zionists promoted the slogan: “A land without a people for a people without a land.” But Palestine was not uninhabited — at the dawn of the 20th century, the Arab population exceeded 600,000.

The growing pressure felt by Arabs from the steady increase of the Jewish population and the eviction of poor Palestinian farmers from their land led to the first violent clashes between the two communities. In 1909, Zionist organisations formed paramilitary groups known as Hashomer (“The Watchman”). These units were tasked with guarding newly acquired lands and the growing number of Jewish agricultural settlements.

World War I and British Imperialism

The Zionist leadership pursued a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, they organised and financed — largely with the support of wealthy Zionist capitalists — the immigration of Jews to Palestine in order to alter the demographic balance. On the other hand, they approached the imperialist powers, seeking to convince them that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would serve their strategic interests. Such a state, they argued, would not only offer a “solution” to the Jewish question but would also safeguard imperialist interests in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

As a result, the Zionist movement established close links with the economic and political elites of Europe, particularly in Britain.

World War I broke out in August 1914. The Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of Germany. In order to weaken the Ottomans, the British promised the Arabs independence in exchange for launching a revolt against the Ottomans — and thus against the German-led alliance.

In 1916, the Arab Revolt, led by Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi in the Hejaz region (the western coast of present-day Saudi Arabia), began under direct British guidance. The revolt succeeded: the Ottoman Empire was defeated, and in 1918 Hussein’s son, Faisal, established an Arab government in Damascus with the participation of Syrians, Iraqis, and Palestinians.

But the imperialists are not known for their honesty. At the very time they were promising independence to the Arabs, Britain and France secretly signed the Sykes–Picot Agreement in 1916 (named after the negotiators Mark Sykes of Britain and François Georges-Picot of France).

The Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Origins of the British Mandate

The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the Middle East into zones of influence between Britain and France. Britain took control of Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq, while France claimed Syria and Lebanon. The imperialist powers drew arbitrary borders—often literally with a ruler—creating the straight lines that still mark today’s maps. In 1920, the French ousted Faisal, burying the prospect of an independent Arab state—“Greater Syria”—once and for all.

The agreement provoked anger across the region. Between 1919 and 1920, violent riots erupted in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. After 1917, Palestine came under British control and administration, a period that lasted until 1948, when the State of Israel was established. Officially, this era was called “British Mandate for Palestine”.

The Balfour Declaration

A turning point in the creation of Israel was the Balfour Declaration. In November 1917, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour wrote to the Zionist leader and wealthy capitalist Lord Rothschild:

“His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”

This was the first explicit commitment by British imperialism to support the Zionist plan for a Jewish state in Palestine.

The First Clashes

The Balfour Declaration was incorporated in full into the “British Mandate” for Palestine, approved by the League of Nations in 1923. The League—described by Lenin as the “League of Thieves”—was the forerunner of the United Nations in the interwar period. Under the Mandate, Britain undertook to create the conditions for a Jewish national state and was obliged to assist Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine.

The Mandate also granted the “Jewish Agency for Israel” official status as a public body with broad economic and social powers. Until then, the Agency had been responsible for Jewish immigration and settlement from the diaspora. Now, with Britain’s backing, it evolved into a parallel embryonic state and organized the Jewish militia, the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israeli army.

British policy under the Mandate greatly strengthened the Zionist side and accelerated Jewish immigration to Palestine. In the early 1920s, the population of Palestine included around 700,000 Arab Palestinians, 83,000 Jews, and 80,000 Christians and Druze. By the mid-1930s, Jews made up about 30% of the population.

Land ownership also shifted rapidly. Zionist organizations bought large tracts from poor, indebted Palestinian farmers, while Jewish capital from abroad poured into Jewish businesses. For Palestinians, the British Mandate became inseparable from the Zionist project. Tensions exploded in April 1920 with the first major mass clashes between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish community.

By 1929, the situation had become explosive. On August 23, under the influence of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, nationalist Arabs launched attacks against Jews in response to Zionist provocations. The riots began at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Arab attacks targeted Jewish communities as well as Zionist institutions. The death toll was 133 Jews and 116 Arabs.

In the face of these developments, the young PCP (Palestinian Communist Party) took a stand against nationalist conflicts and in favour of unity between Arab and Jewish workers.

According to the then (Jewish-born) leader of the PCP, Joseph Berger-Barzilai, Britain fomented nationalist and racist hatred in order to divide the two communities because it feared the unity of Jewish and Arab workers.

In a statement, the PCP cited the deteriorating living conditions of Arab workers and peasants as the main cause of the 1929 riots. According to the PCP, the British colonial administration managed to turn what was initially an anti-colonial movement into an anti-Jewish pogrom, and reactionary Jewish and Arab leaders each played their part in fomenting religious conflict by turning the Western Wall into a symbol of a struggle for power.

At this stage, the PCP maintained the consistent class-internationalist position developed by the Comintern when Lenin and Trotsky were in its leadership, before the rise of Stalin in 1924. The PCP’s position promoted the unity of Arab and Jewish workers against British imperialism, Zionism, and the Arab reactionary national elites. At the time, the PCP published two newspapers in two languages and sought to organise Palestinian and Jewish workers into joint trade unions.

Later, when the dominance of Stalinism in the USSR turned the Comintern into a representative of the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy abroad, the PCP abandoned its independent class position. From the 1930s onwards, the policy of the Comintern and the USSR towards the Palestinian cause was characterised by constant zigzags according to what suited the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy at any given moment. Thus, while in the 1930s the bureaucracy and Stalin sought “national unity” with the Arab nationalist movement, later, during the 1948 war, they appeared to ally themselves with Zionism, recognised the establishment of the State of Israel, and sent arms through Czechoslovakia to the Haganah.

The first Arab uprising of 1936–1939

Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, along with the establishment of other fascist governments in Europe during the same period, intensified persecution against the Jews of Europe and further strengthened Zionism, leading to new waves of immigration. Between 1929 and 1939, an additional 250,000 Jews emigrated from Europe to Palestine.

This situation led, in April 1936, to the first major Palestinian uprising. In its first phase, the uprising took the form of a massive general Arab strike that lasted for six months, until October of that year. In its second phase, between 1937 and 1939, it developed into armed clashes between guerrilla groups and local chieftains in the countryside.

The leadership of the uprising was initially held by the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), which was dominated by urban nationalist elements, landowners, and religious leaders (muftis). The AHC mainly targeted Zionism but avoided a direct confrontation with the British, seeking instead to negotiate with them.

In the second phase of the uprising, leadership passed from the Arab Higher Committee to the religious-Islamic Qassamite movement. The Qassamites took their name from the Islamist guerrilla leader Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, who was killed in a clash with the British in 1935. The Qassamite movement had links to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and was influenced by the Islamic doctrine of al-Salafiyya, which advocated holy war (jihad). Their main slogan was: “Jihad, for God and country.”

In July 1937, a British government commission under Lord Peel proposed the partition of Palestine into two states. According to the Peel plan, the Jews would take 20% of the land of Palestine, while the Arabs would take about 70%, which would be incorporated into the single Arab state of Transjordan. Britain would retain control over Jerusalem and a corridor to the port of Jaffa. The plan also envisaged a population transfer, overwhelmingly to the detriment of the Arab Palestinians.

At the time, Britain exerted enormous influence over the kingdoms of Jordan and Egypt, treating both as “strategic allies.” Through these two Muslim countries, it sought to implement policies that served its own interests without provoking opposition from the broader Arab Muslim masses. This is why Britain preferred incorporating Palestinian territories into Transjordan rather than creating an independent Palestinian state.

The Zionists welcomed the partition plan, which favoured them, while the Palestinian Arabs rejected it. The Peel plan played a decisive role in transforming the uprising from a mass movement of general strikes, demonstrations, and protests led by Arab nationalists into an armed movement led by the Qassamites.

The Qassamites won massive support among poor peasants in the Palestinian countryside, reaching some 20,000 armed fighters. In response, Britain mobilised troops and launched a brutal crackdown, leaving 5,000 Palestinians dead, 10,000 wounded, 30,000 displaced, and over 2,000 homes of suspected insurgents demolished.

By the end of the uprising in 1939, the Zionists had emerged stronger. Jews now constituted 31% of the total population and dominated industry, banking, and commerce. The Haganah had by then become an experienced and well-organised military force. On the other hand, some of the Islamic currents leading the insurgency began developing links with Hitler’s Nazi regime in reaction to British imperialist policies.

In particular, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, turned to Hitler’s Germany on the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my ally.” Husseini met Hitler in 1941, resided in Berlin from 1941 to 1945, adopted a publicly friendly attitude towards the Nazi regime, and helped organise a Bosnian Muslim unit in the Waffen-SS.

In 2015, Netanyahu attempted to exploit these events to blame Palestinian Muslims for the Holocaust of the Jews in the Nazi death camps—an historical falsification that amounted to an indirect “exoneration” of the Nazis.

Establishment of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba

World War II also played a pivotal role in the development of the Palestinian question.
The extermination of 6 million Jews – along with Roma, LGBT people, communists, trade unionists, and others – in Nazi concentration camps had a catalytic effect on Jewish consciousness.
The Zionist project promised Jews a safe homeland in Palestine. The prospect of a Jewish state was also supported by the United States, which emerged strengthened from World War II and took over the reins of global dominance from Britain.

On November 29, 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, which provided for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an Arab and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem to remain under international administration. Britain announced it would withdraw from Palestine.

The UN decision favoured the Zionist side. While Palestinians made up about 70% of the population (around 1.4 million people) and, before 1947, owned 92% of the land, the resolution gave them only 43% of the territory. By contrast, Jews, who made up 30% of the population (about 600,000), were allocated 57% of the land.

Immediately after the UN resolution was made public and Britain’s withdrawal was announced, Haganah and other Zionist militias began clearing territories of their Palestinian inhabitants.

On May 14, 1948, the day before the British mandate in Palestine officially ended, the Jewish People’s Council proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. The following day, May 15, the first Arab-Israeli war began when troops from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia entered the former British Mandate territories.

The war ended in the summer of 1949 with an Israeli victory. Israel now controlled 77% of historic Palestine – significantly more than the territory allocated to it by the UN in 1947. In addition, Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip and Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

As a result of the war, about 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes and became refugees in neighbouring Arab countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt). Their homes and property were expropriated by the new Israeli state.

The refugees were settled in camps, living in miserable conditions and in deep poverty. Other Palestinians remained in areas now part of Israel, where they faced oppression, repression, and systematic discrimination. The Israeli state imposed martial law on Palestinian villages and towns from 1948 until 1966.

In Israel, the 1948–1949 war is officially called the “War of Independence.” For Palestinians, however, it is remembered as the “Nakba,” meaning “Catastrophe” or “Destruction.”

The Nakba shaped the contemporary Palestinian question, whose core elements remain:
a) the mass displacement of Palestinian refugees alongside the occupation of Palestinian territories by the newly established State of Israel, and
b) the absence of an independent Palestinian state.

The post-war world

The end of World War II shaped a new global balance of power. The United States emerged far stronger than Britain and France and became the undisputed leader of the capitalist countries of the West.

The USSR also expanded its influence in Eastern Europe, where capitalism was overthrown and power was transferred to Communist Parties—under conditions of a one-party bureaucracy. In Eastern Europe, no genuine socialist regimes with workers’ democracy were established, unlike the early years of Soviet Russia after the 1917 revolution. Instead, the regimes in Eastern Europe were from the outset deformed workers’ states, reflecting the nature of the USSR after Stalin’s rise to power.

In the USSR and Eastern Europe, economies were nationalised, capital expropriated, and central planning applied. But rather than power passing to the working masses, it became concentrated in the hands of a privileged and parasitic bureaucratic elite within the state and party apparatus. The foreign policy of the USSR was a continuation of the internal policy of the bureaucracy, primarily aimed at maintaining its privileges rather than overthrowing capitalism internationally. On this basis, Stalin agreed at the Moscow and Yalta conferences with British and US imperialists to divide the world into spheres of influence, establishing a new global status quo.

The resulting balance between these two competing blocs after World War II became known as the Cold War.

The Middle East, lying on the southern border of the USSR, with its vast oil reserves, and Egypt, with control of the Suez Canal, became even more strategically important within the Cold War context.

After World War II, peoples in former colonial countries rose up demanding independence from the shackles and brutal exploitation of British, French, and other Western imperialisms. Mass movements and revolutions erupted across Asia, Africa, and Latin America (China, Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam, etc.). This was the era of the Colonial Revolution—the revolutions of colonised peoples.

In the Arab world, the working class and poor masses were radicalizing to the left and looking towards the USSR (and secondarily towards Mao Zedong’s China). However, the mass left parties in Arab countries lacked the independent, class-based, internationalist policies that the Bolsheviks had applied to the national question.

In contrast to the Bolshevik policy, the Arab Left adopted the Soviet bureaucracy’s stance, which was dictated by maintaining the post-war status quo rather than promoting socialist revolution as the way to overthrow imperialism and national oppression.

The Arab Left embraced the Stalinist Stages Theory. According to this theory, in countries oppressed by imperialism, national independence and bourgeois parliamentary democracy must be achieved first; only after this process is completed should the question of socialist revolution be raised.

The practical task arising from the Stages Theory was to create a Popular Front of national unity between the working class and the local ruling class of the oppressed countries, to oppose imperialism and national oppression. The result was that bourgeois-nationalist political forces led the anti-colonial movements. Naturally, for these bourgeois nationalists, defending their own class interests for the period after independence took precedence over the anti-imperialist struggle.

Thus, the withdrawal of British imperialism from its various post-WWII possessions, combined with the divide-and-rule policy Britain methodically implemented globally, led to many national conflicts and unresolved issues, such as the Cypriot, Kurdish, and Middle East conflicts, to name a few.

The Second Arab–Israeli War – The Suez Crisis

Let’s examine the impact of the new world situation on the Arab–Israeli conflict.

First of all, the Zionist ruling class in Israel was forging a strategic alliance with the United States, which wanted Israel to serve as the gatekeeper of its interests in the Middle East.

With U.S. backing, Israel was arming itself and building a highly capable military. The state played a central role in the economy, which grew rapidly, while substantial social benefits were provided to the Jewish population. This state intervention was even presented as “socialist” by the Zionists of the so-called Labour Party (Mapai), which governed Israel until the mid-1970s.

Moreover, the Holocaust had deeply shaken Jews across the world, driving even more of them towards the newly created State of Israel, which promised to be a safe haven. Between 1948 and 1951, some 600,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, doubling its Jewish population to around 1.4 million.

Following the 1948–49 victory, the Zionist state passed a series of laws transferring the property of the Palestinian refugees of the Nakba to the Israeli state and its institutions. At the same time, about 400 villages abandoned by Palestinians were razed to the ground.

The Zionist leadership succeeded in achieving unprecedented national unity within Israeli society. The horrors of the Holocaust, the sense of being surrounded by a hostile Arab world, the extensive state benefits that ensured a high standard of living for Jewish citizens, and the absence of a mass, independent workers’ socialist party in Israel were the foundations on which the national unity and militarisation of Israeli society were built.

On the other hand, the Arab countries and their governments were still trying to recover from the defeat of 1949. The failure of the Arab regimes, the loss of most of Palestine, and the social ferment generated by the Colonial Revolution led to a series of left-wing military coups against the monarchies of the Arab world.

Egypt became one of the focal points of these developments. In 1952, the Free Officers movement overthrew Egypt’s pro-Western King Farouk. Gamal Abdel Nasser, an officer who had fought in 1948, emerged as a leading figure.

In 1953, Egypt was declared a republic, and in 1954 Nasser became the country’s president. Nasser’s programme was essentially one of pan-Arab nationalism which, in the context of the Cold War, took a left-wing, anti-imperialist direction.

Nasser began implementing extensive pro-people measures, nationalising many private companies and banks, and opposing Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood. His policies significantly improved the living standards of the masses, earning him enormous popular support.

To counter pressure from the United States and Western imperialism, Nasser turned to the USSR, signing arms and military cooperation agreements. At the same time, Egypt became the first non-communist country to recognise the People’s Republic of China.

Nasser also offered assistance to nationalist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements in Arab countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Palestine. In 1961, Nasser played a central role in the Non-Aligned Movement, which brought together countries that were aligned with neither the US nor Soviet Russia, such as Tito’s Yugoslavia, Makarios’ Cyprus, Indira Gandhi’s India, and others.

However, Nasser was not a Marxist; he did not lead a workers’ revolutionary party and therefore did not proceed to overthrow capitalist economic and social relations, nor to abolish capitalist rule and build workers’ democracy and socialism. His left turn and rapprochement with the USSR were empirical moves within the specific international conditions of the Cold War. This policy, of course, made Nasser a “red rag” for the US.

After the defeat in 1949, the Palestinian fedayeen (guerrilla fighters) developed armed actions against Israel, with the support of Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

On 26 July 1956, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, which until then had been under the control of Britain and France and was of strategic importance for international trade.

The nationalisation of Suez, Nasser’s pro-Soviet policy and his support for the Palestinian fedayeen were the reasons why Britain, France and Israel decided to react militarily.

Thus, on 29 October 1956, Israel invaded and occupied the Gaza Strip, which had been under Egyptian control since the 1948 war. On 31 October, France and Britain landed troops in the Egyptian port of Port Said with the aim of taking control of Suez and toppling Nasser from power.

The intervention by the British, French and Israelis did not have the approval of the US, which feared a disruption to the oil supplies to the West and a possible reaction from the USSR, which threatened military intervention. Under US pressure, a ceasefire was announced on 7 November, and on 22 December the withdrawal of British and French troops from Suez, and Israeli troops from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, began.

Despite the military successes of Israel and its allies, the end of the war was recorded as a partial victory for Nasser, who gained even greater popular support among the Arab masses, both inside and outside Egypt. The current of pan-Arab nationalism was gaining strength.

The establishment of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

At the end of the 1950s, a small group of young Palestinians living in exile in Kuwait decided to found a new resistance organisation with the aim of liberating Palestine.

The organisation took the name Fatah (Palestinian National Liberation Movement). Yasser Arafat and Khalil al-Wazir (known as Abu Jihad) were two of its founding members. Fatah adopted armed guerrilla struggle as its method of resistance and was modelled on the liberation movements of Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam.

Fatah had a nationalist ideology and programme, aiming to unite all Palestinians, regardless of class divisions or political beliefs, in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine, the creation of a Palestinian state across the whole of historic Palestine, and the dissolution of the State of Israel. It saw this struggle as the duty of the Palestinians and the Arab peoples, and sought the support of the Arab regimes in the region.

Fatah gained its first supporters mainly among Palestinian refugees living in displacement in neighbouring Arab states. It built cells in Gaza, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc. In 1962 it secured Algerian support and in 1963 Syrian support, and set up fedayeen training bases in Jordan, where most of the Palestinian refugees lived.

On 1 January 1965, Fatah carried out its first armed operation against Israel by blowing up water infrastructure.

A little earlier, in May 1964, the first Palestinian National Congress convened in East Jerusalem with the support of the Arab states, which sought to control the Palestinian movement as they regarded Palestine as their own territory under Israeli occupation.

The first Palestinian National Congress decided to establish the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the representative of the Palestinian people and the organiser of the struggle for the liberation of the homeland. Former diplomat Ahmad al-Shuqairi was elected Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee. The Congress considered the establishment of the State of Israel to be invalid and sought its dissolution.

The “National Liberation Army of Palestine” was also established, with units created in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. In practice, these units were under the control of the Arab states in which they were based, not the PLO. Initially, the PLO was mainly an instrument of the Arab regimes and therefore not a very independent Palestinian organisation, while Fatah was critical of it.

The Six-Day War and the rise of the PLO

After 1965, relations between Israel and the neighbouring Arab states deteriorated rapidly. The Fatah fedayeen intensified their attacks against Israel, storming out of their bases in Jordan and with the support of Syria.

In November 1966, Syria, ruled by the left-wing nationalist Ba’ath Party, signed a joint defence agreement with Egypt. In April 1967, Syria and Israel came to the brink of war after army and air force skirmishes. King Hussein’s Jordan also signed a defence agreement with Egypt in May 1967, and allowed Iraqi military forces to enter its territory as part of the build-up of Arab forces in preparation for war against Israel.

Faced with this build-up, Israel did not wait for the Arab states to attack. On 5 June 1967, the Israeli air force launched a lightning strike against Egypt, destroying in one day more than 300 Egyptian aircraft, which did not even have time to take off. It then turned on Jordan, destroying the Jordanian air force as well.

At the same time, the Israeli army invaded and occupied the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

The defeat of the Arab states in six days was crushing and humiliating. The State of Israel now occupied all the territory of historic Palestine that the Arab states had held since the 1948 war. These territories subsequently became known as the “occupied territories”.

The Six-Day War led to the flight of another 400,000 Palestinians, mainly from the West Bank, who crossed the Jordan River and settled in refugee camps in Jordan. The Zionist regime used its victory to promote Jewish settlements in the territories it had conquered in the war.

The humiliating defeat of the Arab states had a significant impact on the consciousness of the Palestinian masses. A growing number of Palestinian refugees concluded that they had to rely on their own forces for liberation, and thousands joined the various resistance organisations, the most important of which was Fatah.

The Palestinian masses, living in miserable conditions in the refugee camps, were radicalising to the left. In December 1967, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was founded. While it initially had a pan-Arab ideology, it soon turned to Maoist ideas and was modelled on the national liberation struggle in Vietnam.

The guerrilla movement was intensifying and the Palestinian resistance was growing stronger, which caused great concern to the reactionary Arab regimes. These regimes sought to control the Palestinian movement while also fearing for their own survival.

The turning point in the mass growth of the fedayeen resistance movement came with the battle in the village of al-Karama. On 21 March 1968, powerful Israeli forces crossed the Jordan River and invaded Jordan in an attempt to crush the Fatah base in al-Karama. Fatah, supported by units of the Jordanian army, strongly defended the village, inflicting heavy casualties on the Israeli forces.

The heroism of the guerrillas increased the appeal of the resistance organisations, and many young Palestinians joined the ranks of Fatah and other groups.

In February 1969, at the 5th Palestinian National Congress held in Cairo, Fatah won a majority in the PLO, and Yasser Arafat was elected Chairman. The PLO became an umbrella organisation for all the resistance groups waging a guerrilla struggle, setting itself the goal of establishing a secular Palestinian state that would guarantee the democratic rights of all its citizens, regardless of religion or language.

Black September 1970

After the defeat of the Arab states in the 1967 war and the battle of al-Karama, the PLO gained significant support among the Palestinian refugees in Jordan, who made up about half of the country’s population. The PLO’s armed fedayeen controlled the refugee camps in the capital, Amman, and other cities, creating a parallel authority to that of King Hussein.

The Jordanian masses were influenced by the radicalisation of the Palestinians, in an international context marked by revolutionary movements (most notably May ’68 and the Vietnam War). Their revolutionary mood was rising, turning them into a serious threat to the reactionary monarchical regime of King Hussein. Some factions within the PLO now spoke openly about the need to overthrow the monarchy, and twice King Hussein narrowly survived assassination attempts.

The polarisation reached a peak in July 1970, when Gamal Abdel Nasser and King Hussein entered into discussions on a settlement of the Arab–Israeli conflict based on the plan presented by the United States — the Rogers Plan. Yasser Arafat and the PLO rejected the Rogers Plan and denounced both Nasser and Hussein.

As early as 1968, the PFLP, which was part of the PLO, had been hijacking Israeli and Western aircraft, directing them to various Arab states. Reacting to the Rogers Plan and demanding the release of Palestinians from Israeli prisons, the PFLP carried out a spectacular triple hijacking between 6 and 9 September 1970.
Two American and one Swiss plane were seized by the PFLP and taken to Jordan. On September 12, after releasing the passengers, the PFLP blew up the three planes in a live television broadcast. The PFLP’s aim was to turn Amman into an “Arab Hanoi,” i.e. an external base for the PLO to escalate the war against Israel, along the lines of North Vietnam. Hussein appeared to have lost control of his country.

There was a revolutionary upheaval among the masses, and the PLO seemed to have sufficient social support to attempt to overthrow Hussein and take power in Jordan. However, the PLO leadership was reluctant to break ties with the Arab ruling classes, who were hostile to Palestinian radicalism and the independent movement of the poor masses. The PLO sought good relations with the Arab regimes from which it expected support for the national liberation struggle.

Thus, faced with the threat of being overthrown, Hussein announced martial law on September 16, 1970, and brought tanks into the Palestinian refugee camps and the working-class districts of Amman.
The USA and Israel mobilised military forces in support of Jordan but did not intervene directly. This tipped the balance in Hussein’s favour.

The battles in Amman and elsewhere lasted more than 10 days, during which the PLO camps were even bombarded with napalm and phosphorus bombs. More than 3,000 Palestinian fighters and civilians died in the massacre. On September 27, the PLO signed a truce with Hussein, while incidentally the next day Nasser died of a heart attack. Clashes between Palestinian fedayeen and the Jordanian army continued until July 1971, but the Palestinian resistance had suffered a heavy and bloody defeat at the hands of the “allied” Arab regime. As a result, the PLO left Jordan and moved its headquarters to Lebanon, followed by many thousands of Palestinian refugees.

Black September, as the Jordanian massacre came to be known, had a major impact on the development of the Palestinian movement.
The PLO lost the stable military and social base it had in Jordan, from which it could launch raids into the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank. In addition, for the first time the Palestinian fedayeen suffered a heavy military defeat at the hands of an Arab country which, until then, had been considered an ally of the Palestinian struggle. After the events, the Jordanian regime opened channels of communication with the West and Israel.

In order to avenge the massacre and increase pressure on Western states, the PLO created (undercover) the “Black September” organisation, with the aim of carrying out armed attacks abroad. Terrorist acts in many countries were claimed in the name of Black September. At the same time, it developed relations with armed organisations in other countries such as the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Germany (Baader–Meinhof), the Japanese Red Army, etc.

In September 1972, during the Munich Olympics, Black September launched an attack on the Israeli sports delegation, aiming to kidnap Israeli athletes and exchange them for imprisoned Palestinians. The whole operation ended in bloodshed: in the end, 11 Israeli athletes, 3 Palestinians, and 1 German police officer were killed.

After the expulsion from Jordan, Lebanon became the base from which the PLO continued its guerrilla warfare against Israel. At the same time, the PLO also maintained significant forces in Syria. However, Lebanon was a country in a fragile state, with major internal ethnic and religious conflicts that were exploited by external powers to serve their own interests.
Internal polarisation, combined with the intervention of imperialism and Israel, led Lebanon into a bloody civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990.
The PLO and the Palestinian refugees living in Beirut and in the south of the country had a major influence on the balance of power, and thus became part of the civil war. Meanwhile, in 1973, the fourth Arab–Israeli war, the so-called Yom Kippur War, broke out.

The Yom Kippur War – 1973

In the Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Between 1969 and 1970, Nasser waged a war of “attrition” with Israel along the Suez Canal, which formed the border between the two countries. He also prepared for a new war, in response to the defeat in ’67.
After Nasser’s death on 28 September 1970, Anwar Sadat became president of Egypt. In Syria, the pro-Soviet dictator Hafez al-Assad and the Ba’ath Party were in power. Both regimes wanted to regain the territory lost in the 1967 war and strengthen their position in the broader balance of power in the Middle East.
Thus, on October 6, 1973, they launched a coordinated attack against Israel on the day of the great Jewish religious holiday of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). In parallel with the attack, Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing Arab countries imposed an embargo on oil exports to American companies and reduced exports to Europe by 5% each month. This move triggered the first international oil crisis.
In the first days of the war, the two Arab armies achieved significant successes on the battlefield. However, very quickly Israel managed to halt the advance and went on the counter-attack, seizing even more territory than it had before. The Soviet Union, fearful of losing the Suez Canal, threatened military intervention in favour of Egypt and Syria. Before the start of the war, there were about 20,000 Soviet military personnel in Egypt.
The two superpowers of the time feared that the war could spiral out of control and turn into a global conflict, at a time when Israel was threatening to use its nuclear weapons. Faced with the threat of nuclear conflict, the USSR and the US came to an agreement, and as a result the UN Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution on 22 October. On 28 October the final ceasefire was signed.
The end of the Fourth Arab–Israeli War found Syria back on its pre-war borders and Egypt gradually regaining part of the territory it had lost in ’67, including the Suez Canal. Israel was technically the winner of the conflict, but its prestige had been damaged.
After the defeat in the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat began a gradual change of strategy, seeking a permanent agreement with Israel and a rapprochement with the US. In December of the same year, the Geneva Conference was held under the auspices of the US and the USSR. Egypt, Jordan and Israel took part in the conference. Syria refused to participate and the PLO was not invited.

Negotiations between Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and US President Jimmy Carter culminated in the Camp David Accords in September 1978.

The fourth military defeat of the Arab states by Israel also influenced the strategy of Arafat and the majority of the PLO. The PLO continued the guerrilla struggle but at the same time began making overtures to the West, increasingly seeking recognition by international organisations and the USA.

In June 1974, at the 12th Palestinian National Congress, the majority of the PLO adopted the “Ten Point Programme,” which left open the possibility of liberating part—rather than all—of historic Palestine, and thus implicitly recognised the existence of the State of Israel.

In November 1974, the UN General Assembly recognised the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, independence, and national sovereignty. The UN granted the PLO observer status at the General Assembly and recognised it as the representative of the Palestinian people. On 13 November 1974, Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly in what he presented as recognition of the PLO by the “international community.” Wearing his gun holster, he famously declared:

“Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

This gradual change of strategy and the “Ten Point Programme” were not accepted by the PLO as a whole, leading to internal fragmentation. In October 1974, the Rejectionist Front (opposed to the Ten Point Programme) was formed, including the PFLP and other PLO factions, supported by the Syrian and Libyan regimes. The confrontation between the Rejectionist Front and the majority of the PLO under Arafat turned violent, with assassinations of PLO officials loyal to Arafat carried out by Rejectionist Front militants.

The Lebanese Civil War

Lebanon was—and remains—a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, French imperialists and reactionary Arab regimes exploited and fuelled Lebanon’s ethnic and religious divisions for their own interests. Western imperialism backed the Maronite Christians, who formed the wealthiest and most powerful section of the ruling class, and sought to maintain their control over Lebanon’s Muslims and Druze, the majority of whom were poor.

The events of Black September in Jordan, as mentioned above, led to the relocation of the PLO headquarters, along with thousands of fedayeen and Palestinian refugees, to Beirut and South Lebanon. The dynamics of internal social polarisation and religious/nationalist divisions culminated in the outbreak of civil war in April 1975. The PLO became involved, fighting on the side of an alliance of mainly Muslims and Druze with leftist leanings. On the other side stood an alliance of Maronite Catholic Christians, led by the extreme right-wing Phalange Party (Kataeb), which had paramilitary battalions under its command and was inspired by the rise of fascism in Europe.

Israel saw the Lebanese Civil War as an opportunity to crush the Palestinian resistance and the PLO, and therefore sided with the Phalangists.

The war began on 13 April 1975, when Phalangist gunmen murdered 30 Palestinians on a bus outside Beirut. In May 1976, the Syrian army invaded northern Lebanon and clashed with Palestinian fighters of the PLO. It was the second time—after Jordan—that an Arab state fought against Palestinian rebels. In August 1976, the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in Beirut fell after a seven-month siege by the Phalangists, leaving over 2,000 Palestinians dead, most of them women and children.

Meanwhile, inside Israel, Palestinian opposition was growing against the forced expropriation of land belonging to Arab citizens of Israel. The Committee for the Defence of Arab Land, formed in January 1976, organised mass protests and demonstrations. On 30 March 1976 it called a general strike involving Palestinians in the West Bank and Lebanon. The State of Israel violently suppressed these demonstrations, killing six unarmed Palestinians and injuring over 100. Since then, Palestinians have commemorated 30 March each year as “Land Day.”

In 1977, the right-wing Likud party won elections in Israel for the first time since the founding of the state in 1948. The Likud government, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin — leader of the Zionist Irgun militia, which committed ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in 1947–48 — and Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, was even more aggressive than the previous “Labour” governments. Likud promoted settlements in order to make the occupation irreversible. Begin saw the Lebanese Civil War as an opportunity to definitively crush the Palestinian resistance and drive the PLO out of Lebanon, from where the Palestinian fedayeen continued to launch attacks against Israel.

Between 1975 and 1978 the PLO carried out a series of attacks, including inside Tel Aviv. Following one such operation, Israel invaded South Lebanon in March 1978 but soon withdrew, while the Palestinian fedayeen maintained their forces. Their strength was estimated at between 15,000 and 18,000 fighters.

In September 1978, Egypt and Israel signed an agreement at Camp David in the US, brokered by President Jimmy Carter. Egypt became the first Arab state to recognise the State of Israel, and Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula, which it had occupied since 1967. Having thus secured its southern border, Israel turned its attention to Lebanon in order to eliminate the PLO.

On 6 June 1982, Israel launched a much larger invasion of Lebanon, code-named “Peace for Galilee.” The Israeli army advanced to Beirut and for more than three months laid siege to and continuously bombed Palestinian refugee camps. In the first two weeks of the invasion, at least 14,000 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army.

After fierce fighting, the PLO was forced to withdraw almost entirely from Lebanon, retaining only small forces. In August 1982, around 14,000 PLO fighters boarded ships and evacuated Beirut under the supervision of an international military force of French, Italian, and American troops. Yasser Arafat left Beirut and moved the PLO headquarters to Tunisia.

A few days after the withdrawal of the PLO fedayeen from Beirut, the Phalangists — with the help of the Israeli army and under the supervision of Ariel Sharon, later Prime Minister of Israel — committed one of the greatest massacres against the Palestinian people. On 16 September 1982, armed Phalangists stormed the Beirut district of Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp, which was surrounded by the Israeli army, and massacred more than 3,000 Palestinian civilians — women, elderly men, and children.

Ariel Sharon and the Zionists believed that by expelling the PLO from Lebanon they had achieved a crushing victory over the Palestinian resistance. In reality, however, they were laying the foundations for the creation of a new opponent—Hezbollah.

Hezbollah was an Islamic organisation based in southern Lebanon, where the majority population were Shiites, who were facing constant Israeli attacks as well as poverty and exclusion within their own country.

Hezbollah was financed and armed by the Khomeini Islamic regime, established after the 1979 revolution in Iran. From the outset, Khomeini’s Iran turned against the United States and Israel—countries that had actively supported the Shah’s dictatorial regime, which was overthrown in 1979.

Hezbollah built a massive social base by initially creating a social safety net for poor Lebanese Shiites. From the early 1980s, it turned to armed struggle and acts of individual terrorism.

In 1982–83, it carried out the first suicide attacks (unprecedented at the time), using cars filled with explosives that rammed into buildings housing American and French military personnel in Beirut, killing over 300 people.

At its peak, before the recent (2024) Israeli attack, Hezbollah was a very well-equipped and formidable military force. It claimed to have 100,000 fighters, while US intelligence estimated the number at around 45,000. In 2006, it confronted the Israeli army—when it attempted to invade southern Lebanon—and forced it to retreat. In addition to Iran, it was supported by the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Hezbollah controlled southern Lebanon and, beyond being a military power, also held political influence, participating in both parliament and the government.

After the defeat in Beirut in 1982, Arafat and the majority of the PLO leadership sought rapprochement with the Jordanian monarchy and began discussing the plan presented by the US Reagan administration to resolve the Palestinian question. This shift was causing a new, even deeper, schism within Fatah itself. Abu Musa, a senior Fatah official and organiser of the Beirut defence, rejected this tactic and founded Fatah–Intifada (Fatah–Uprising), which was supported and armed by the Syrian regime.

Fatah–Intifada entered into armed conflict with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah in May 1983. The Assad government declared Arafat persona non grata and expelled him from Damascus. At the same time, in December 1983, the last 4,000 Palestinian Fatah loyalists were forced to leave Lebanon, which was largely under Syrian occupation.

The End of a Historical Cycle

The expulsion of the PLO and Arafat from Lebanon and Syria marked a turning point for the Palestinian resistance.

Thirty-five years had passed since the Nakba. In those decades, Arab states had come into military conflict with Israel four times but failed to bring independence and freedom to the Palestinian people. As a result, some of the regimes began changing their strategy and sought understanding with Israel, abandoning the Palestinian people.

As mentioned above, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed unilateral agreements with Israeli Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the late 1970s. The agreements provided for Palestinian autonomy in the territories occupied in 1967 and a long, gradual transition to some form of state.

In addition to Egypt’s rapprochement with Israel, Jordan (in 1970) and later Syria (in 1983) came into military conflict with the PLO and committed massacres and persecutions against the Palestinians.

The expectations that Palestinian liberation and the return of refugees could be achieved with the support of the Arab regimes, the national unity of all Arabs, the backing of the USSR, and the guerrilla struggle of the PLO had been dashed.

Despite the four Arab-Israeli wars, despite the heroic struggle of tens of thousands of Palestinians who took up arms, and despite countless sacrifices and victims, national independence, the overthrow of oppression, and the return of the refugees had not been achieved.

These deadlocks would soon lead to a new path: a mass uprising of Palestinians living in the territories occupied by Israel. In December 1987, the first Intifada broke out.

A few years later, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell—a turning point that triggered the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc and the restoration of capitalism in these countries (1989–1991). Despite the mass uprising of the Intifada, Arafat and the PLO leadership around him turned toward Western imperialism, a process that would culminate in the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995.

During the first Intifada, a new political organization in the Palestinian resistance, Hamas, was founded and rapidly gained mass support.

The First Intifada

On 7 December 1987, the First Intifada (uprising) broke out in Gaza and the West Bank. It began spontaneously and completely unexpectedly for both the PLO and the State of Israel. The immediate trigger was the killing of four Palestinian workers who were run over by an Israeli military vehicle in Gaza. The causes, of course, ran much deeper.

Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza had largely lost hope that ending the occupation and achieving national independence could be brought about either by PLO fighters or through intervention by the Arab states. As mentioned earlier, the PLO had lost much of its prestige after its defeat and withdrawal from Lebanon. At the same time, the Arab regimes had repeatedly betrayed the Palestinian movement and, on several occasions, had committed massacres against Palestinian refugees and PLO fighters. For the Palestinian masses in the occupied territories, daily life was a combination of poverty, a constant struggle for survival, and ethnic oppression, with no prospect of improvement.

It was in these conditions that the fuel was found to sustain the First Intifada for six long years.

From the outset, the State of Israel responded with brutal repression. The Israeli army used plastic and live bullets, tear gas, water cannons, blockaded Palestinian towns and villages, and carried out mass arrests, imprisonment, and torture. Yet it was unable to crush the movement. On the contrary, the uprising quickly gained mass support and involved the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as significant mobilisations by Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The iconic image of the First Intifada is that of young Palestinians—often still children—wearing the kufiya (Palestinian headscarf) and throwing stones with slingshots at heavily armed Israeli soldiers and tanks. Protests, street clashes, and barricades were indeed a defining feature of the uprising. The heroism of Palestinian youth facing Israeli fire with nothing but stones sparked a wave of international solidarity and moved a significant section of public opinion within Israel itself.

But the Palestinian masses also adopted other, equally powerful forms of struggle. General strikes (both in the occupied territories and within Israel) and civil disobedience—such as refusal to pay taxes to the state or to comply with official shop opening hours—played a decisive role in giving the uprising the scope and depth it achieved.

The First Intifada also gave birth to a new form of organisation, initially outside the control of the PLO leadership, which expressed more directly the mood of the Palestinian masses in the occupied territories: the Popular Committees. These committees organised demonstrations and other mobilisations, distributed food and supplies during general strikes, and were responsible for guarding Palestinian neighbourhoods. In early January 1988, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising was formed to coordinate the movement. Although the PLO leadership had played no role in launching the uprising, it soon took control of it—while a new generation of leaders also emerged from the movement.

The Intifada achieved in a matter of months what decades of armed struggle had failed to accomplish: Israel’s ruling class began to realise that it was impossible to defeat an entire people through military means. Moreover, a significant section of Israeli public opinion began to look more sympathetically at the Palestinians and to call for a political solution to end decades of bloodshed. Internationally, a broad and important solidarity movement with the Intifada emerged, with large demonstrations taking place in many countries.

The first Intifada also brought significant changes to the Palestinian movement and its organisations.
Arafat and the PLO leadership in exile saw the Intifada as a way to put pressure on the “international community” and Israel to begin negotiations for a political solution.

In 1988, the Palestinian National Council met in Algiers, acting as a parliament-in-exile, and declared Palestinian independence.
Arafat, on behalf of the PLO, renounced terrorism and “methods of terror” as a form of struggle — in practice, he abandoned armed struggle in general. At the same time, the PLO dropped its aim of destroying Israel, recognised it as a state, and set the goal of establishing a Palestinian state in the territories occupied in 1967.

These were very important changes in the strategy of the PLO — the historic leadership of the Palestinians — which, having reached an impasse with guerrilla warfare, turned to diplomacy and negotiations. This process would, within a few years, lead to the Oslo Accords, limited autonomy in parts of the Palestinian territories, and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (1993–1995).

In the opposite direction to these developments, one of the most important events during the Intifada was the establishment of Hamas (an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya – Islamic Resistance Movement). In its charter (August 1988), Hamas declared itself part of the Muslim Brotherhood, described the land of Palestine as an indivisible Muslim waqf, and set the goal of liberating all of historic Palestine and establishing an Islamic state.

In practice, this meant not only the destruction of Zionism but also the denial of collective national rights for Israelis throughout historic Palestine — a position from which it stepped back somewhat in its 2017 revised charter.

Hamas built its social base by drawing on the poorest layers of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, creating a network of social services centred on religion and the mosques. Following the methods of Khomeini’s Islamists, Hamas organised soup kitchens, built schools and hospitals, supported the families of fallen Palestinian fighters, and identified religious faith with the goal of national liberation.

It is now well documented that the State of Israel viewed the creation of Hamas positively and supported it in its early stages, with the aim of undermining the influence of the PLO and Arafat.

Soon after its founding, Hamas formed its armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and began carrying out suicide bombings intended to cause the greatest possible number of Israeli civilian casualties.

During the First Intifada, Hamas refused to join the PLO-controlled “Unified National Leadership of the Uprising” and rejected the strategy of negotiations, recognition of the State of Israel, and the goal of establishing a Palestinian state in the territories occupied in 1967.

The Oslo Accords and the 2nd Intifada

The late 1980s and early 1990s brought new, world-historical changes to the international situation. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 opened a process that led to the collapse of the planned, nationalised economies and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc.

As Leon Trotsky had predicted in 1936, in his book The Revolution Betrayed, the privileged layer of the bureaucracy decided at some point that it was more advantageous to take ownership of the means of production rather than simply administer them. Thus, within a few months, the USSR and the other deformed workers’ states collapsed like a house of cards, enabling the US to emerge as the victor of the historic period of the Cold War.

The repercussions of the restoration of capitalism in Russia and the Eastern Bloc were global and affected every level. As far as the Palestinian question is concerned, the effects can be summarised as follows:

• The Arab regimes and the PLO lost the ability to exploit the rivalry between the US and the USSR for their own benefit and to put pressure on Israel.
• The balance of power in the Middle East changed abruptly and radically, and the US sought to exploit this shift for its own interests.
• By launching the Pax Americana narrative (the New World Order under American hegemony), the US aimed to show that, as the sole superpower, it could provide solutions to various international issues and bring stability to the Middle East—either through military force (as in the First Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 1991) or through diplomacy.
• Within the Palestinian movement, the left-wing organisations (PFLP, DFLP, CPP, etc.) lost influence as the vision of revolution and socialism suffered a major blow.
• The PLO leadership, under Yasser Arafat, turned even more decisively towards “realism,” i.e. rapprochement with the US and diplomatic negotiations aimed at some form of political settlement and agreement with the state of Israel.

It was in this environment that the US organised the Madrid Conference in October 1991, with the aim of reaching some kind of agreement on the Palestinian question. The conference was attended by dozens of countries, including the USSR—just a few months before its formal dissolution. The Madrid negotiations did not produce a final agreement, but they opened a process of discussions with the US acting as coordinator.

Alongside the formal negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis in the US, the PLO and Israel began direct, secret talks in Norway. In the summer of 1992, the right-wing Likud party lost the elections, and the Labour Party, led by Yitzhak Rabin, returned to government.

The Labour Party had no organic connection to workers’ interests, and Rabin was a Zionist who had fought against the Arabs for decades. In 1948, he fought in the First Arab–Israeli War; he was Chief of Staff during the 1967 Six-Day War and served as Defence Minister from 1984 to 1990. He faced the First Intifada with harsh violence and repression. Consequently, his change of stance had nothing to do with humanitarian motives, but rather with a shift in the attitude of a significant section of the Israeli ruling class.

The First Intifada continued for six years, despite the brutal repression of the Israeli army against the rebellious Palestinian masses. A section of the Israeli ruling class concluded that the direct and indefinite occupation of the Palestinian territories was too difficult to sustain.

Moreover, it was concerned about the effect the Intifada had on the internal dynamics of Israeli society. Inside Israel, a growing segment of the population began to oppose the army’s violence against unarmed Palestinians. There were also significant international reactions to the Israeli repression of the uprising.

As a result, the section of the ruling class represented by Yitzhak Rabin began to see a political–diplomatic settlement as the best way to serve their interests. Rabin’s election also reflected the popular demand for peace, which was gaining support among a growing part of Israeli society.

Although formal negotiations in the United States stalled due to major differences, secret talks between the PLO and Israel in Oslo led to an agreement in August 1993. On 13 September 1993, in Washington, D.C., Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the “Declaration of Principles for Provisional Self-Government Arrangements” and performed the historic handshake in the presence of U.S. President Bill Clinton.

The signing of the Declaration became known as the first Oslo Agreement. The second Oslo Agreement was signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995.

The main points of these interim agreements were:

• The Palestinians would be granted autonomy in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, administered by the newly created Palestinian Authority (PA) but with limited powers.
• The Israeli army would partially withdraw from the Occupied Territories but retain the right to intervene “for Israel’s security.”
• The Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 would be divided into three zones:
  • Zone A (most of Gaza and 14 enclaves in the West Bank – about 18% of the total): full control by the Palestinian Authority.
  • Zone B (about 22% of the total): political control by the PA, military control by Israel.
  • Zone C (about 60% of the total): full Israeli control.
• Movement between the Palestinian enclaves and Israeli territory would be controlled by Israeli police and army at multiple checkpoints.
• The PA would establish a Palestinian police force responsible for maintaining order in the autonomous Palestinian areas and for preventing armed attacks on Israel by groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This force would have no authority over Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories.
• The PLO would recognise the State of Israel and renounce “terrorism” (i.e., armed struggle).
• Israel would stop considering the PLO a terrorist organisation, recognise it as the official representative of the Palestinian people, and allow Yasser Arafat to return from exile in Tunis to the occupied Palestinian territories.
• After the implementation of the interim agreement, a prolonged negotiation period (at least five years) would follow, aiming for a final agreement that might eventually lead to an independent Palestinian state—at some undefined point in the future.

The Oslo Accords did not address a number of critical issues, including:

• The status of authority in Jerusalem, the eastern part of which had been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
• The future of the approximately 116,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel made no explicit commitment to withdraw them.
• The release of tens of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails.
• Most importantly, the return of the millions of Palestinian refugees from 1948 and 1967 who had lived for decades in squalid camps across the Middle East.

Israel’s concessions under the Oslo Accords in no way led to the national liberation of the Palestinians or the establishment of an independent state. Nevertheless, according to polls at the time, over 70% of Palestinians in the occupied territories said they accepted the agreements.

On the Israeli side, the accords were enthusiastically received by the majority of society. To ordinary people, they promised peace and stability after decades of endless bloodshed and constant fear of war.

However, the Oslo Accords were inherently doomed. As several Marxist organisations pointed out at the time, the agreement—brokered by the Zionist ruling class in Israel, the Palestinian leadership, US imperialism, and reactionary Arab regimes—left the fundamental contradictions of the national question unresolved. The national oppression of Palestinians by the state of Israel would continue, albeit in a different form. Moreover, under capitalism, it would be impossible to raise the standard of living for the Palestinian masses, while the Palestinian authority would tend to become a new privileged, bourgeois, and oppressive power.

These contradictions were bound to surface and could be exploited by extremist forces on either side, triggering a new cycle of violence. In fact, challenges to the agreement began immediately after it was signed. The right-wing opposition in Israel organised continuous demonstrations against the accords. In 1994, an Israeli nationalist opened fire during Ramadan at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, killing 29 Palestinians. Simultaneously, Hamas and Islamic Jihad—both strengthened by the first Intifada—launched suicide attacks and bombings targeting buses, restaurants, and bars, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians.

The climax of this cycle of violence was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Israeli nationalist Yigal Amir on 4 November 1995, in Israel’s Kings Square during a rally supporting the Oslo Accords.

The years that followed dashed the hopes created by the Oslo Accords. Israel continued to maintain tight control over the Palestinian territories, with the army free to intervene at any time. The Palestinian Authority, along with its Palestinian Police, increasingly came to be seen by Palestinians as a traitorous force, carrying out the occupiers’ orders and managing the “dirty work” on behalf of Israel.

The Fatah leadership and officials took control of the Palestinian Authority, which they began to run without any accountability to society, in an undemocratic and authoritarian manner. The repression of Fatah’s political opponents was harsh, particularly targeting Hamas supporters. This process gave rise to a corrupt and wealthy elite, with a client network living in stark contrast to the masses, who continued to face poverty and unemployment.

The alienation of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority from the people allowed fundamentalist organisations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad to gain considerable strength.

Israel’s extreme Zionist right exploited this situation to further consolidate its power. After prolonged and ineffective negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, and as violence escalated and expectations of the Oslo Accords collapsed, the second Intifada erupted on 28 September 2000. This second Palestinian uprising differed significantly from the first: Hamas played the dominant political role. Unlike the 1987 uprising, the second Intifada was characterised far less by mass mobilisation and organisation of the masses and much more by Hamas rockets and suicide attacks.

After the 2nd Intifada

The end of the second Intifada marked the effective “burial” of the Oslo process, as negotiations largely ceased and violence steadily escalated.

Israel began construction of a massive barrier around the West Bank. The wall, together with countless checkpoints, isolated Palestinian enclaves and made daily movement to and from them a constant nightmare.

Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. This triggered a civil war for power between Hamas and Fatah, culminating in Hamas taking control of the Gaza Strip while Fatah retained control of the West Bank.

In response to Hamas’ takeover, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, effectively turning it into the largest open-air prison in the world. The Israeli army controlled the movement of people, water, and energy, as well as the supply of medicine, medical equipment, and food.

The ongoing blockade, the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners, the daily humiliation at Israeli army checkpoints, the extreme poverty, and the lack of future prospects created the conditions that led to the 7 October attack and the subsequent war launched by Israel against Gaza and the West Bank.

What is the way out?

As the above analysis has shown, the Palestinian question—that is, the national oppression and genocide of the Palestinian people and the vicious cycle of violence—was the result, first and foremost, of the policies of US and British imperialism and the Zionist ruling class.

The Arab regimes—reactionary and authoritarian in their politics, capitalist with feudal remnants in their class character—also bear significant responsibility in the historical development of the problem. Although they have long appeared as allies of the Palestinians, they have many times not only betrayed them but have also committed massacres against them.

For decades, the bourgeois governments and ruling classes of the West, Israel, and the Arab countries have attempted to “settle” the conflict and impose “solutions” serving their interests. These attempts have failed miserably, as the war that began after 7 October 2023—and which today threatens to engulf the entire Middle East—demonstrates.

A large part of Israeli society, particularly the working class, has historically rallied behind the Israeli ruling class. The Zionists promised Jews a country that would guarantee their safety after countless persecutions, the most tragic of which was the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis and their allies in Europe. The economic support of the US and the West enabled the Israeli ruling class to pursue decades of welfare policies and benefits that ensured national unity at home and led many Israeli citizens to strongly identify with the state and the military. The absence of a left-wing political force offering a genuine alternative in Israel played a key role in creating this climate of national unity.

History—and the current war—shows that this promise of security is a lie. No sense of security or lasting peace will be experienced by Israeli citizens as long as the oppression and genocide of the Palestinian people continues. Every military victory of Israel over Palestinian organisations has historically led to the emergence of new, even tougher opponents. The “safe haven” promised by the Zionists has instead become a country in perpetual war, where no one feels safe.

At the same time, Israel remains a bourgeois-capitalist society. As such, it is subject to the general course of capitalism, its contradictions, and the multiple crises it faces, and it cannot provide a permanently high standard of living. The Israeli working class bears the consequences of these crises and of neoliberal attacks on their living standards and also the constant encroachment of rights and liberties.

As history teaches us, and as we have written, “capitalism is incapable of solving the Israel-Palestine problem. Neither a “two-state” nor a “one-state” solution are possible under capitalism; in fact, no solution is possible at all.”

For their part, the Palestinian masses have waged countless heroic struggles and made enormous sacrifices in their long fight for independence and freedom. For a long time, they based their hopes on the national unity of all Arabs and the support of neighbouring Arab regimes.

The political line of the PLO leadership—a combination of leftist, pro-Soviet Arab nationalism and guerrilla warfare as a method of struggle—showed its limits and failed to deliver freedom and independence to the Palestinian people. The turn to diplomacy and Western imperialism by Arafat and the PLO also proved to be a dead end and ultimately disastrous.

The rise of Hamas, with its Islamic fundamentalism and attacks (often suicide) against political and civilian targets inside Israel, has produced no positive results. Quite the opposite.

As we have seen, after Hamas’ largest attack on Israel, the Palestinian people have paid a terrible blood toll, but the Israeli army and state have not been weakened at all. The Palestinian people are no closer to achieving an independent state, freedom, or solutions to their social problems. This does not mean that anyone other than the Israeli regime is responsible for the massacre and devastation in Gaza. However, the programmes and methods of struggle adopted by Palestinian leaderships must be debated and critically assessed in terms of their effectiveness.

For these reasons, Marxists have a responsibility to explain that only a class-internationalist approach can provide a real solution to the Palestinian problem—a solution that satisfies the Palestinian masses’ demand for freedom and independence while also addressing their enormous social problems. At the same time, it must ensure security and prosperity for the working class of Israel.

For this to happen, the national unity between the majority of Israeli society and the Zionist state must be broken. Simultaneously, the working class and the masses on both sides must come together in a common struggle against the Zionist ruling class, against Western imperialism (without illusions in the rising Chinese-Russian imperialist camp), and against the reactionary regimes in the region.

This cannot be achieved through uncritical support of Hamas (or Hezbollah, Iran, ect). The central task is to build independent workers’ parties with a revolutionary-socialist programme in Palestine and Israel, as well as similar parties in neighbouring countries of the Middle East, the South-Eastern Mediterranean, and internationally.

Internationalist Standpoint aims to contribute to this goal. Our main political proposals, adopted at the 2nd ISp Congress in March 2024, can be summarised as follows: 

• Fight against the war; build a mass anti-war movement; exert maximum pressure on the Western allies of the Israeli state.
• Defend the right of the Palestinian people to have their own state – the “right of self-determination”.
• Defend the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
• 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”.
• Mobilize trade unions to block export and transfer of military equipment in support of Israel’s offensive.
• Call for a selective and targeted boycott against Israeli or multinational corporations that are involved in Israel’s military machine, finance the war or exploit the occupied territories, in the context the of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanction) movement; but have no illusions that it can lead to the end of the war and a just solution to the Palestinian problem, as (at least some of) its instigators believe.
• Encourage Israeli citizens to refuse serving their mandatory military service, becoming conscientious objectors. Encourage Israeli citizens already enrolled in the IDF to refuse participation in military activities in Gaza and the West Bank.
• Fight against anti-Semitism wherever it is encountered in order to show that Israel is not the only “safe haven” for the Jewish people as per the Zionist propaganda.
• Reverse the policy of expanding Israeli settlements, i.e., of expanding Israeli settlements, now numbering 700,000, in the occupied territories (considered as a war crime by the Fourth Geneva Convention).
• Defend, at the same time, the right of the Israeli people to have their own homeland.