In a socialist Middle East
There is no solution to the Palestinian question without the revolutionary destruction of the Zionist state
A succession of bombings of the civilian population of Gaza is occurring at this moment. No places of worship, schools or hospitals are spared, where especially children and women desperately seek refuge. A massacre. But perhaps the even more inhumane aspect is the total, medieval-like siege declared by the Israeli government against a territory where more than two million people live. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are forced to flee their homes, never to return. This is a new catastrophe for the Palestinian people, a new Nakba, comparable to that of 1948.
First and foremost, it is necessary to stop this genocide. The Palestinian people in both Gaza and the West Bank are resisting. They have been doing so for years, both with street mobilizations and with weapons. The Communist Workers Party, the Italian section of the International Trotskyist Opposition (ITO), stands unconditionally by this resistance, following the Trotskyist tradition, which in 1948 was the only current of the international workers’ movement that spoke out against the establishment of the state of Israel, while all the others, particularly the Stalinists, openly supported the Zionist colonial state against the Arab people.
The state of Israel gains the support of the “democratic” powers of the West. Political, economic, military support. The same support that is already being offered to the next announced land invasion. The same support Israel has enjoyed in its 75-year occupation of Palestine.
“The state of Israel is not to be touched.” This is the synthesis of world diplomacy, but also of public information. We have always denounced the reactionary nature of Hamas and its actions against civilians. But it is one thing to criticize Hamas within the Palestinian resistance camp, and quite another to cynically use Hamas’s actions to cover up Zionism’s crimes against the Palestinians and their resistance. The assimilation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is assumed as a cudgel in public debate, as a form of intimidation toward support for Palestine, as a protective shield of Israel’s crimes. “Two peoples, two states”, say the well-wishers, but where should a Palestinian state stand alongside untouchable Israel? Just asking this elementary question is enough to clear the cloud of smoke. Today the West Bank is occupied by 700,000 armed Israeli settlers who, unpunished and protected by troops, organize squad-like expeditions against Palestinian farmers. Gaza is under a genocidal siege. So, we ask again: where should a phantom Palestinian state respecting the state of Israel be located? In what closet should it resign itself to living?
Only a Palestine free of Zionism, a secular Palestine, a socialist Palestine, can realize self-determination for the Palestinian people, beginning with the right of return for millions of Palestinians driven from their land since 1948. Only this Palestine, recognizing the national rights of the Jewish minority, can enable the peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Jews.
The great mobilizations of the Arab masses in recent days, in Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, and especially in Jordan and Iraq, tell us that the vast majority of the Arab population supports the Palestinian struggle for liberation and redemption as its own. To develop and extend the Arab rebellion alongside that of the Palestinian people, to win it to an anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist perspective, is the task of Palestinian and Arab revolutionary Marxists. To extend to the maximum the worldwide mobilization alongside that of the Palestinian people is the urgent task of revolutionary Marxists everywhere.
- For an end to the siege and massacre of Gaza
- Alongside the Palestinian resistance
- For the liberation of Palestine and the revolutionary destruction of the state of Israel
- For a free, secular and socialist Palestine within the framework of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East
