This article was originally published in early November 2025, in issue #2 of International Marxism, international political journal of International Socialist Alternative. Click here to subscribe or to buy a copy of the full issue.
The war of extermination in Gaza will go down in history as one of the greatest crimes of our age. It has exposed afresh, and to a new generation, imperialism’s callous disregard for human life. The Israeli regime, along with all its international facilitators, apologists, and enablers, will be forever defined in history by this genocide. For our part, International Socialist Alternative is fully active in the global movement against this atrocity.
We are witnessing a profound watershed moment in the Middle East. The full force of the paradigm shift it will create is yet to be clarified. Indeed, it can be difficult to fully grasp the implications of such a turning point while it is still underway. But it is already crystal clear that the war has shattered any remaining illusions about a Palestinian state being established as a result of any deal with the Israeli state and U.S. imperialism. Netanyahu’s government is moving to full occupation and the crushing of all Palestinian structures and authorities.
The war has intensified every antagonism and contradiction that existed previously. It has deepened the divisions between Palestinians and Israeli Jews, while also sharpening the contradictions within Israeli society. It has exposed the culpability of Western governments in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians and divided them over how to respond to the increasingly rogue nature of Netanyahu’s regime. It has tragically revealed the unviability of the different “strategies” for achieving Palestinian freedom represented by both the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. There is an urgent need for a clear alternative, around which both Palestinians themselves and the solidarity movement internationally can rally.
ISA calls for building and expanding a global working-class movement to stop the genocide, for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, an end to the occupation and the blockade, and an urgent humanitarian response to end the crisis. Unions should mobilize to play a direct role in opposing the murderous Israeli regime and threaten its collaborators with strike action. Ultimately, a genuine and sustainable peace, which must include Palestinian national rights, can only be achieved by a socialist struggle to replace the decaying and war-ridden capitalist system once and for all.
The war on the Palestinian people that has followed the surprise Hamas attack on October 7 followed decades of national oppression, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing by generations of Israeli governments. It has re-conjured the memory of the Nakba, the “catastrophe,” which saw the first mass expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. Yet the current humanitarian disaster represents a level of barbarism that goes beyond the many horrors Palestinians have experienced over the last 77 years.
Historic Turning Point
The earthshaking impact of these events should not be understated. They are of global significance. It would be a mistake to view this brutality in isolation. It is part of a desperate, but so far successful, effort by Israel and U.S. imperialism to redraw the power balance in the Middle East. The Israeli military, fully backed by the White House, attacked seven different regions and countries in the course of this war.
The U.S.-sponsored “Abraham Accords,” which the Hamas attack meant to sabotage, envisioned a new Middle East with higher Israel-U.S. influence, where investments, goods, and tourism flow between Israel and the Arab countries. All of this is also meant to push back against Chinese encroachment into a strategically crucial region. To put it squarely, a U.S.-allied control of the Middle East is central to trade routes, technology investments, and natural resources.
This is also why Chinese imperialism is working hard to strengthen its own alliances in the region. The Middle East is again one of the main arenas of global conflict between the world powers.
For Trump, Netanyahu, and the international ruling class, who had hoped the Palestinian national question had disappeared into the shadows, the future of Gaza no longer includes any so-called “solutions.” It’s a debate about how much further this genocide can go. The Netanyahu-Smotrich government is absolutely clear in its aims. The plan is to fully conquer Gaza, to annex it under direct rule (either by Israel or the U.S.), to fill it with settlements, and to expel the Palestinian population. Among Western governments, including in Europe and Canada, there is significant unease about how this can rebound on them and undermine Western imperialism more generally.
For the working class internationally, the questions this war has posed are entirely different. Ordinary people are first and foremost concerned with how to stop this genocide. Such is the strength of feeling among the masses around the world that Gaza has become a major “domestic” concern for many governments, particularly in the West and more so across the Middle East, where this question threatens the existence of a series of reactionary and corrupt regimes.
The international solidarity movement that has developed over the last two years has rivalled the anti-war movement that preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq in terms of scale, while being sustained over a much longer period. Recently, under the pressure of working-class revulsion at their complicity, the governments of Britain, France, Canada, Australia, and Belgium tokenistically “recognized” a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly.
Hypocrite Governments Complicit
The grotesque hypocrisy of symbolic acts like these is lost on no one. Nor is the grim irony of taking moves to formally recognize a Palestinian state at the same time as the U.S. is reportedly working with the Israeli government on a plan to forcibly relocate Gazans to other conflict zones in Libya, Ethiopia, or Somaliland, and to set up concentration camp-style “secure zones” on the strip itself. Even the governments that have rhetorically shifted from full-throated support for Israel to words of apparent condemnation continue to offer practical support to the Israeli regime in the form of massive arms sales, intelligence sharing, and reconnaissance flights.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian activists internationally face some of the most extreme repression meted out to peaceful protesters in the West in recent history. In Britain, elderly people are arrested under anti-terrorism laws for silently holding signs expressing support for the banned direct action group, Palestine Action. In the U.S., foreign-born student activists are brutally detained and deported. In France, protesters are hit with tear gas and water cannons.
Even in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority reacted with police violence against Palestinians standing up with their comrades in Gaza, and within the Green Line (the Israeli state minus the Occupied Territories), the Israeli regime has imposed an array of oppressive measures, particularly against Palestinian protestors but also Israeli Jews, from banning any material criticizing the war to arrests, police violence, and job losses.
The surrounding Arab dictatorships, whose populations feel a deep and fierce solidarity with the Palestinians, also remain complicit in their ongoing subjugation. The Egyptian government continues to enforce the blockade of the Gaza Strip from the south, maintaining control at the Rafah crossing in direct collusion with the Israeli military. Saudi Arabia has continued to allow Israel to use its airspace, including during its war with Iran. The kingdom even remains on a path, albeit stalled, towards “normalizing” relations with Israel.
Meanwhile, despite diplomatic relations between Jordan and the Netanyahu government souring somewhat, King Abdullah’s regime continues to collaborate extensively with Israel both militarily and in terms of intelligence sharing. It’s been reported that billions of dollars in trade continued during the war between Israel and Arab regimes, especially the UAE, which has invested billions of U.S. dollars in Israel’s defense and cybersecurity.
In addition to business investments, it was revealed, in what was termed “Qatargate,” that the Qatari monarchy financed top Netanyahu aides and former heads of the IDF to advance its interests within Israel. Qatar is also a major funder of Hamas, and is home to its political leadership. Israel recently carried out a brazen attack on Qatar’s capital, Doha, in an attempt to assassinate the Hamas representatives. It is clear that the interests of those in power throughout the Middle East stand in sharp contrast to those of the Palestinian people.
The leadership of Hamas had hoped that its brutal terrorist actions on October 7, 2023, might force Arab governments in the surrounding countries to come to the aid of the Palestinians, while strengthening the Iranian-led “axis of resistance.” But what has taken place subsequently has looked nothing like this. Instead, the Israeli government has used the shock and horror created by the October 7 attack, which targeted hundreds of innocent civilians, to strengthen support for war internally and to justify new offensives throughout the region.
Beyond the humanitarian catastrophe the war has created, Hamas’ fighting capacity has been decimated, and Hezbollah in Lebanon has been dramatically weakened. Iran has sustained significant damage to its air defenses and crucial missile systems, as well as its nuclear program. Meanwhile, the collapse of the Russian and Iranian-backed Assad government in Syria has allowed Israel to expand military operations inside the country. In other words, the Israeli government has used this war to significantly alter the regional balance of power in its favor.
This reality emphasizes that there are no reliable allies for the Palestinian masses to be found among the ruling classes, either in the region or elsewhere. Nor is there a path to building a successful struggle for Palestinian national rights based on the support and funding of repressive regimes such as the Ayatollahs in Iran. Last year, Chinese imperialism was by far the biggest exporter into Israel and the third biggest importer of Israeli goods, after the U.S. and Ireland. Xi Jinping is fine with letting Palestinians get butchered, as long as China’s trade with regional powers does not face danger.
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Gaza has been transformed by the Israeli military into an unlivable hellscape. At least 70% of pre-war buildings have been destroyed, including over 90% of homes. A famine has been meticulously engineered and murderously enforced. Images showing the emaciated bodies of starving children are beamed around the world.
The openly expressed genocidal fantasies of the Israeli far right are being carried out. There has been indiscriminate carpet bombing, deliberate killing of children, systematic execution of journalists, repeated targeting of medics, bombardment of hospitals, schools, and refugee camps, massacres of starving people at aid distribution sites, and the displacement of almost the entire population.
Israel’s own military database records that, as of July 2025, 83% of those killed by the IDF in the course of this war have been civilians. Day by day, week by week, the death toll continues to climb. Hundreds have been recorded as dying of starvation in the last weeks alone. But even the horrifying official figures substantially underestimate what has taken place. Thousands remain buried under rubble, are missing, or unaccounted for. Estimates taking this into consideration suggest that at least 100,000 people have been killed, probably significantly more. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Gaza’s surviving population – around two million people, half of whom are children, are now crammed into an area covering roughly 13% of the strip – equating to less than 50 square kilometers.
One of the clear war aims of the Netanyahu-Smotrich government in this murderous campaign has been to close the door, once and for all, on the idea of any kind of viable Palestinian statehood. At the same time as Gaza has been bombarded, the West Bank has been hit with a new wave of murderous repression and the most significant campaign of settlement expansion in decades.
The farcical spectacle of “ceasefire talks” taking place in Washington without the presence of a single Palestinian representative, yet with the involvement of Trump’s son-in-law and real estate tycoon, Jared Kushner, highlight that “Trump Gaza” is not just a sick joke. It’s Trump’s very real aspiration. Any attempt at negotiations is repeatedly blown up by the Israeli regime, with the bombing in Qatar being the latest very literal example of this. This repeated sabotage is correctly seen in Israeli society as the government’s willingness to sacrifice the lives of the remaining hostages who are held by Hamas in the territory – a fact which has led to mass protests and general strikes demanding a ceasefire deal.
Yet despite the unthinkable horrors inflicted on the Palestinians, there remains among them a strength and resilience that will not easily allow any attempts to move the population out. Palestinians are well aware of their own history. They know that in previous periods those forced from their homes and land have never been allowed to return. So there is no clear path toward the U.S. and Israel achieving these diabolical aims.
Indeed, despite their horrific complicity with the Israeli regime, both the Jordanian and Egyptian governments are conscious of the domestic anger that would boil over if they were seen to facilitate the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestine. They have therefore both ruled out any involvement in such a plan.
Role of Mass Struggle
The question of how, in this new reality, the Palestinians can somehow emerge from this nightmare, let alone win genuine national liberation, is critical. Socialists draw on a rich tradition, going back to pioneers like Lenin, who sought to understand how national oppression and colonialism function, their role within the imperialist stage of capitalism, and, most crucially, how they can be overcome.
We start from the perspective that capitalism cannot provide a solution. Capitalist ruling classes in the imperialist powers base their power and super-profits on oppression. Their counterparts in oppressed/colonized countries are hopelessly tied to the system, which perpetuates oppression, which leads them to invariably sell out and betray the aspirations of workers and the poor. Therefore, working-class people must rely most fundamentally on their own strength, organization, and unity. It is mass struggle, led by the working class, which is by far the most effective challenge to both capitalism and colonialism. Such struggles typically garner mass support from workers and oppressed people internationally. This has been true throughout the long history of Palestinian resistance to oppression.
The First Intifada, which erupted in 1987 following the killing of four Palestinian civilians by an Israeli truck driver, was based on an audacious wave of protests, general strikes, and other forms of civil disobedience. While there were some acts of individual terrorism during this period, the fundamental character of the movement was one of mass struggle. The First Intifada was also organized without the involvement and direction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), but by democratically organized community committees. It was this which ultimately forced the Israeli and American governments to negotiate with Palestinian representatives, which they did with the aim of assuring their own interests and derailing the struggle.
The Oslo agreements that resulted from these talks – in which the leadership of the PLO betrayed the mass movement – established the Palestinian Authority. While, in theory, this was supposed to create a pathway towards Palestinian statehood, in practice, it transformed the Fatah-led PLO into the junior administrators of the occupation. Meanwhile, the oppression of the Palestinians was in many ways increased during the years that followed. This period saw the establishment of military checkpoints and later the building of new separation walls and physical barriers, and the massive expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Political Failure
The capitulation of self-described socialist organizations to the pro-capitalist Fatah and the failure of the Palestinian nationalist left in pushing back the occupation, then allowed the space for Hamas to develop at their expense. The organization enjoyed a wide support base in Gaza, for a time even with Israeli funding and support as a counterweight to the nationalist secular left. This reached a point of explosive violence between different Palestinian factions following the 2005 elections, resulting in Hamas taking full control of Gaza.
The Communist Party of Israel, which has a majority Palestinian membership, and liberal parties, such as Labor and Meretz, which promoted illusions in the Oslo peace talks, were also blindsided by their own political weaknesses. Despite the hopes of those who genuinely wanted peace, Oslo was never truly meant to lead to an independent Palestinian state, but simply to transfer some of the occupation’s responsibilities into Palestinian hands. The Communist Party stands for a two-state solution along capitalist lines. Their failure to point towards a mass struggle for socialism left them vulnerable when the agreements collapsed and a new wave of violence and nationalist reaction erupted.
The Camp David summit in 2000, which failed to agree to a two-state settlement, laid the basis for a new mass uprising. But unlike the First Intifada, the Second, while beginning with mass demonstrations, rapidly developed in the direction of a campaign of individual terrorism, with over 100 suicide bombings carried out by different Palestinian militant factions over the period that followed.
While Hamas took a more uncompromising stance on certain issues – until recently refusing to accept the existence of Israel, for example – its political foundation is a form of pro-capitalist Islamism. Its methods are based not on mass action but on individual terrorism and indiscriminate attacks, including on civilians, as we witnessed on October 7.
Socialists put forward the need to return to the best traditions of the First Intifada in mobilizing against the occupation. For the people of Gaza now, the overwhelming struggle every individual faces is the most basic struggle to survive. But this does not mean that there can be no resistance to the Israeli terror state.
Palestinian workers inside the Green Line remain an important part of the Israeli economy and an important source of profits for the ruling class, particularly in the construction and healthcare industries. There is a tradition of general strikes among Palestinian workers throughout the region. As recently as 2021, a “unity general strike” was organized among Palestinian workers living throughout the whole of Israel-Palestine in response to the forced displacement of the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah.
But for the potential power of Palestinian workers to be fully realised, it requires both a fighting strategy and the development of political organizations with a socialist program to end national oppression and poverty, and which represent workers’ collective interests. These should be independent from nationalist forces which draw their membership from across different classes, including an aspiring Palestinian capitalist class.
The international solidarity movement also has huge potential to be escalated along similar lines. At the time of writing (September 2025), the Sumud flotilla is sailing towards Gaza in an attempt to break the siege. Dockers’ unions have pledged support for the action, with port workers in Genoa promising to refuse to handle Israeli cargo if contact with the Flotilla is lost.
This example shows the potential role that the workers’ movement can play in stepping up the pressure on governments around the world. Trade unions internationally should use their massive potential power and authority to help mobilize mass struggle against the genocide. In particular, this should include organizing those workers with the most strategic power – including dockers and transport workers – to completely block the ongoing supply of weaponry and arms components to Israel.
What Way Forward?
The current situation is a testament to the absolute inability of those working within a capitalist political framework to provide a real and lasting solution to the national question in this region. Even if the far-right government of Netanyahu were to collapse and be replaced by a more “liberal” Israeli administration, there would remain fundamentals that would not change. Indeed, those “liberals” have fundamentally supported the war of extermination, some even joining the government for periods, and arguing for more attacks in the region.
Israeli capitalism will not and cannot allow a Palestinian state – in any true sense of the word – to come into being. A genuine sovereign state, with control over its own borders, airspace, trade policy, and army, would be seen by those in power as a huge potential threat to Israeli capitalism – and U.S. imperialism’s – overall economic and strategic interests in the region, not to mention the Israeli state’s security.
Though this can seem far-fetched in the current situation, it does remain theoretically possible that a future Israeli government agrees, following some negotiations, to the technical granting of Palestinian statehood. But it would be in name only. And taking account of the complete destruction of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, even this is increasingly hard to envision.
It is equally impossible that full citizenship and democratic rights could be granted to the Palestinians in the occupied territories within the Israeli state, either in its current form or an expanded one. The fact that Palestinians are soon to be a demographic majority across Israel-Palestine means such an arrangement would be seen by the ruling class as an existential threat to Israel itself.
Of course, that does not mean the most genocidal wing of the Israeli ruling class is not very much in favour of a “one state solution.” Their aspiration is to complete the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and to establish direct Israeli control and sovereignty across the occupied territories. But it goes without saying that such a monstrous plan does not involve the granting of full citizenship and equal rights to the remaining Palestinians, nor will it guarantee security to the Israeli Jewish population.
A Socialist Solution
Marxists stand for the right of nations to self-determination. This is a fundamental democratic right – one which has been denied to the Palestinians for over 100 years. But its realization is fundamentally incompatible with the foundations of Israeli capitalism. Revolutionary change in the region is therefore a fundamental precondition for achieving Palestinian national liberation.
Any attempt to destroy the Israeli capitalist state militarily – for example, based on some kind of offensive on the part of the surrounding Arab nations – would not only generate an even deeper bloodbath, it would be doomed to failure. Israel is by far and away the most powerful military force in the Middle East, has a massive nuclear arsenal, and is backed by the strongest superpower in the world. Indeed, like in all the previous wars that have taken place during the history of this conflict, Palestinians would almost certainly be its primary victims.
The demand by some for a single Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” achieved on the basis of a purely nationalist movement, is therefore utterly utopian. But that does not mean that the Israeli state is somehow invincible. In common with every other capitalist society, Israeli capitalism can survive only on the basis of the ongoing exploitation of the working class (in fact, of Jewish workers most of all), whose labor generates the wealth and keeps society running.
The only viable “gravedigger” of Israeli capitalism is therefore a united, revolutionary movement of the working class throughout the region, including both Palestinians and Israeli Jews. And the only viable solution to the conflict is a socialist one.
This does not in any way mean Palestinians must “wait” for Israeli workers. In fact, Palestinian resistance that is based on mass struggle and working-class methods can also help undermine support for the Israeli ruling class among Israeli workers, as it did during the First Intifada. Nor does this mean that Palestinians must adopt exclusively “non-violent” methods, as some have argued.
Marxists oppose individual terrorism and the targeting of civilians. But we also recognize the right and necessity of Palestinian armed self-defense and resistance. Instead of this being carried out by unaccountable militias, we believe it should be run via the establishment of democratic organizations of the working class and poor, as part of a wider struggle that includes protests and humanitarian aid. Such organizations could also challenge the horrendous control of the IDF over food distribution and defend the population against desperate criminals, in the instances where aid trucks get hijacked.
We call for the revolutionary overthrow of Israeli capitalism, based on a mass united working-class movement. Such a movement would necessarily also challenge the existing, corrupt leadership of the Palestinian Authority and point beyond the failed and reactionary methods and politics of Hamas.
A movement like this would also inevitably be part of a wider revolutionary struggle across the Middle East, which could overthrow the rotten dictatorships that continue to subjugate the masses throughout the region.
On the basis of a united movement of working-class people that crosses national divides, workers could take into their own hands the region’s natural resources and key levers of the economy. This could help lay the basis for a real and lasting solution to the national question in Israel-Palestine – offering peace and decent living standards to all, eliminating the ongoing economic drivers of exploitation and oppression, and creating a foundation of solidarity.
Overcoming Division
A united struggle is what is needed. But it must be acknowledged that, at the present moment, the idea of a joint mass movement of Palestinian and Israeli workers can seem fanciful. October 7 was exploited by the Israeli government to spark a wave of nationalist reaction. And yet, due to its position in society, the force that poses the biggest threat and has the highest potential to bring down the Netanyahu government and end the war is the Israeli working class.
A clear majority of the Israeli public now supports an end to the war. Over the summer, there has been an increase in the participation of Israelis in demonstrations calling for an end to the bloodshed and the return of the hostages. A protest strike calling for a ceasefire took place on August 17, following a call made by some of the hostage families. Despite bosses also advocating for the strike, the leader of the union federation Histadrut supporting the army, and the focus being on the hostages, the strike showed the potential strength of the class struggle.
Moreover, there is a growing (minority) sentiment at mass protests of principled opposition to the massacre in Gaza. There have also been large protests in Palestinian cities within the Green Line, attended by a large number of Jewish Israelis. These examples point towards the space for a united struggle.
Meanwhile, small groups of workers have recently been expressing more explicit and comprehensive opposition to the genocidal policies of the Israeli military. A letter signed by 400 social workers in Israel – Palestinian and Jewish – recently demanded their union take a position against the “criminal harm” being done by the Israeli military in Gaza. A statement expressing solidarity with Palestinian journalists has also been circulating among Israelis of the same profession, despite the (reprehensible) silence of their official union structures. Over 4,000 Israeli artists also signed a petition titled “Stop the Horror in Gaza.” There is also a growing number of Israelis refusing to join the military or be part of the war.
All this is a reminder that Israeli society is deeply divided, including – and crucially – along class lines. There’s an urgent need to build a fighting working-class party in Israel as an alternative to both the far-right and the so-called “opposition,” as well as replacing the conservative right-wing union bureaucracy with a fighting democratic leadership that points towards working-class solidarity.
Mass protests also took place across the West Bank during the month of August in solidarity with Gaza. Even small and tentative steps towards coordinated and joint actions between Israeli and Palestinian workers, including inside the Green Line, can help to develop the sense of solidarity that is built through shared struggle.
The Right to Self-Determination
Socialists support the right of nations to self-determination on principle, up to and including the right to separation. Also, as a matter of principle, we support the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
Karl Marx famously said that it was not his job to write the recipes for the cookbooks of the future. Much discussion on the left focuses on the details of what might be the borders of a potential Palestinian state, or on the issue of whether there should be one state or two. For Marxists, these questions are not matters of principle. We cannot say definitively today how the revolutionary workers’ governments of the future will arrange things.
However, it is integral to a socialist program that the national rights of all groups are taken into account. This includes rights for minorities within nations. There is no path for socialists to organize and win workers over to a socialist struggle without that guarantee.
In laying the basis for a socialist society in the region, the existing Israeli capitalist state machinery would necessarily have to be dismantled along with the state machinery of all the other reactionary regimes in the region. Yet it would be impossible to build the movement needed to achieve that without a clear approach to the right to self-determination for Israeli Jews as well as Palestinians – something which would become a pertinent question in the context of the abolition of Israeli capitalism.
Taking the logic of those who argue that the Israeli state should be destroyed based on a nationalist movement to its conclusion, how in such a scenario could the national question actually be resolved? What possible approaches could there be, taking into account the existence of a seven-million-strong Israeli Jewish population?
Some imply that there should be an attempt to turn back the clock to a time before Israel existed as a nation at all. The logical conclusion of this would be an attempt to expel Israeli Jews from the land altogether – clearly an idea which is completely incompatible with workers’ solidarity and unity, and which would be a new historic crime. Another approach, frequently represented in the demand for “one democratic Palestinian state from the river to the sea,” would require an attempt to force Israeli Jews to live within a (capitalist) Palestinian state, whether or not this was their democratic desire. This would naturally drive the Israeli masses definitively into the arms of armed nationalist reaction and again, undermine the basic principles of class solidarity.
For these reasons, these options should be rejected. The approach that socialists should support is one that takes seriously the right to self-determination for all national peoples. This would include the right of Israelis, as well as Palestinians, to exercise the democratic right to self-determine their future – including the right to a separate state, with full rights for minorities, if it were desired by a majority. This is in line with the approach Marxists take in all countries in which there is an unresolved national question. We will fight within any country for equal rights for all minorities and for a socialist struggle to overthrow capitalism.
In the recent past, one way in which socialists clarified the right to self-determination for both national groups was the demand for two socialist states, with a shared capital in Jerusalem, and with borders to be determined on the basis of democratic negotiation between equals. This demand included the removal of all physical barriers restricting the movement of Palestinians, the dismantlement of the settlements, walls, and checkpoints, as well as a provision allowing Palestinian refugees who wished to, the right to return.
However, it is worth emphasizing that it would be completely impossible to have any kind of solution on the basis of the existing division of territory in the region. The destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, displacement of its population into small enclaves, and the overall unlivable situation of the strip, as well as the further Israeli expansion in the West Bank, make that especially clear. Moreover, there is now widespread disillusionment with any idea of a “two-state solution” among Palestinians themselves.
With the Israeli nation’s existence an established fact, socialists call for a socialist Palestine and a revolutionary change in Israel to overthrow the rotten system of capitalism. The fight for socialism inevitably requires a high level of solidarity among the working class of both communities. Solidarity is built in shared struggle.
Nonetheless, given the long history of bloody conflict, genuine trust between different communities can still require time to fully embed, even in a socialist future. It may be that a period in which two equal, socialist states exist would be a necessary foundation to build mutual confidence. This would have to take place in the context of a broader socialist confederation of the Middle East. But it is also quite possible that in the course of this struggle, both communities will come to see their shared interests, build deep solidarity and trust, and therefore put forward the idea of a bi-national socialist state.
Ultimately, however, the details of the region’s post-revolutionary territorial arrangements will have to be worked out by working-class people. In the completely changed situation which would result from a united working class revolutionary movement, the boundaries of the “possible” would be vastly different to those understood today.
The shared role of workers from different national backgrounds in democratically planning the economy would provide the necessary basis to fully challenge deep-seated prejudices and build trust between people over time.
ISA says:
- Stop the genocide. For an immediate and permanent ceasefire, an end to the occupation and the blockade. Dismantle all Israeli settlements in the West Bank. For an urgent humanitarian response to end the crisis in Gaza.
- Organize the mass opposition to the war across the Middle East into a huge, working-class-led movement to break the siege, end surrounding Arab governments’ complicity with this genocide, and overthrow dictatorial regimes that exploit and oppress their own populations.
- No more arms for Israeli state terror – Genoa dockworkers show the way. The workers’ movement around the world should use its strength and power to help block the ongoing supply of weaponry and arms components to Israel.
- Reclaim the best traditions of the First Intifada. For mass Palestinian resistance across both the occupied territories and inside the Green Line. Build democratic, working-class organizations to escalate struggle via mass demonstrations, general strikes, and, where necessary, armed self-defence.
- Step up the anti-war movement within Israel and fight within it for a clear and comprehensive opposition to genocide, war, and occupation. The workers’ movement in Israel must take action to bring the Israeli economy to a standstill, to bring down the government, and force an end to the war, including an “all-for-all” exchange of hostages. Build links and solidarity between Israeli workers fighting back and Palestinian workers.
- For revolutionary change throughout the Middle East to end Palestinian national oppression. Build the struggle for socialist change to provide peace, democracy, and national rights to self-determination for all the peoples of the region, including a free, socialist Palestine.
Photo: UN Women/Suleiman Hajji
