Solidarity with Palestine Means Struggling Against our Own Ruling Classes – Midnight Sun

10. 8. 2024

Joseph Daher

An article published in July 2024 by the British medical science journal The Lancet suggested Israel’s ongoing attack on the Gaza Strip may have caused as many as 186,000 Palestinian deaths so far. Writing in The Guardian in September, Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, estimated that if mortality in Gaza were to continue at the current rate – about 23,000 deaths a month – it could reach about 335,500 deaths in total. Fighting to put an end to such atrocities is not a Palestinian cause alone, but a necessity for left and progressive movements around the world – and a struggle that is giving those movements fresh life.

Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza shows no sign of ending. Negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have not reached any successful conclusion. Israel has continuously added new conditions in the negotiations and refuses to withdraw its troops from Gaza: along the Netzarim corridor in the center of the strip, and particularly along the Philadelphi corridor on the border with Egypt, as well as at the adjacent Rafah crossing point. At the end of August, Brigadier General Elad Goren was appointed head of a re-established Israeli civil administration in the Gaza Strip, a new position within the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit – the defense ministry unit responsible for coordinating civilian and humanitarian affairs in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, further entrenching Israel’s occupation.

At the same time, a new large military operation began at the end of August in the occupied West Bank, with violence on a scale not seen in 20 years. Within a few days, neighbourhoods in several cities had been targeted, with dozens of civilians murdered, displaced, and besieged, and a lot of civilian infrastructure destroyed. In early October, an Israeli bombing of the Tulkarm refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank killed at least 20 people. It was the deadliest Israeli strike in the West Bank since 2000. These developments follow months of escalating violence against Palestinians by the Israeli occupation army and settlers in the West Bank, who have together assassinated more than 700 people since October 7. They have also seized more than 2000 hectares of land, declared them state property, and given Israeli Jews exclusive rights to lease them. Israel has now transferred vast swaths of sovereignty over the West Bank from the military to the far right-dominated civilian government and its ministries, granting the latter full authority over the acquisition and development of new settlements. The main objective of the Israeli strategy in the West Bank is its annexation, by dispossessing the Palestinians and confiscating their lands. Israel has also significantly escalated its criminal attacks against Lebanon in the past few weeks, leading to the death of more than 1000 people, the forced displacement of more than a million persons, and massive destruction.

The need to struggle for Palestinian liberation remains crucial today, a year after the beginning of a new Israeli genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and amidst a growing danger of all-out regional war. So what’s the way forward for the Palestinian solidarity movement in Western countries, and for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region more generally?

No alternative to organizing large popular movements from below

The most important task for those outside the MENA region is to win over the left, unions, progressive groups, and existing social movements to build a strong mass popular movement in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, and to support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Inspired by the South African struggle against apartheid, several hundred Palestinian civil society organizations launched that campaign in 2005, calling for sustained boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and basic human rights principles. The BDS campaign puts the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people at the centre of the Palestine solidarity movement. The campaign’s three main demands are 1) ending Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the wall that Israel has constructed alongside a long stretch of the West Bank; 2) recognizing the fundamental right of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to absolute equality; and 3) respecting, protecting, and promoting the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.

The BDS movement also includes a call for academic boycott, as promoted by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), launched in April 2004 by a group of Palestinian academics and intellectuals in Ramallah, the administrative centre of the West Bank. The academic boycott is a peaceful action that targets relations with academic institutions involved in human rights violations. It is important to clarify that the demand to suspend academic relations is not aimed at Israeli students or scholars, but at institutional relations. While a “scholasticide” has been taking place in the Gaza Strip, no Israeli university administration has asked the Israeli government to stop bombing Palestinian universities and intentionally destroying Palestinian higher education.

The main task of a large popular movement for Palestine is to denounce the complicit role of our ruling classes in supporting not only the racist settler-colonial apartheid state of Israel and its genocidal war against the Palestinians, but also Israel’s attacks on other countries in the region such as Lebanon. The movement must pressure those ruling classes to break off any political, economic, and military relations with Tel Aviv. No one should expect Western ruling classes to easily change their political positions regarding Israel. But never in history have the ruling classes granted genuine democracy or justice except under pressure from working-class mobilization from below.

International solidarity is absolutely needed as Palestinians face not only the state of Israel but its imperialist backers as well. This has been the case since the establishment of the Zionist movement, through to the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. From its origins in 19th century Europe to the killing and displacement of Palestinians today, Zionism has been a settler-colonial project. To establish, maintain, and expand its territory, the Israeli state has carried out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land, driving them from their homes and jobs. Throughout this process, Israel has allied itself with, and received support from, imperialist powers: first the British Empire, then the United States, which uses Israel as its agent in its fight against the various forms of Arab nationalism and socialism in the region, and against any other actors challenging its imperial influence. It is also important to note that in 1947 the USSR voted with the United States at the United Nations to partition Palestine, and Czechoslovakia was the first state to deliver arms to Israel. Soviet leaders hoped that newly created Israel would ally itself with Moscow and serve as a counterweight in the region against British-aligned Arab monarchies such as Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt.

The United States and other imperialist powers, such as Canada, France, and Great Britain, have deputized Israel to be their local police force mobilized against the revolutionary transformation of the region, an event that would challenge American control over the MENA area’s strategic energy reserves. Because Israel is a state predicated on the displacement of a people with deep roots on the land the state claims, which arouses the anger and hostility of the region’s masses, Israel is forced to rely on imperial patronage and make itself such an instrument against radical change in the Middle East.

Palestine as a political compass for leftist and progressive forces

At the same time, within the mobilizations in solidarity with Palestine throughout the world, many participants have increasingly made connections between Palestinian liberation and how feminism, ecology, anti-racism, and anti-imperialism can be advanced in their own societies. In mobilizations for a free Palestine, we can find large numbers of people who want a society radically different from the one we’re living in, and who are willing to work towards it. The role of left activists and networks here is to help organize Palestine solidarity movements that challenge our own ruling classes by showing their political, economic, and military connections with the Israeli ruling classes. The ruling classes of the world share experiences, lessons, and other resources with each other to defend their authoritarian neoliberal order. For example, in addition to remaining a key ally of US-led Western imperialism, the Israeli state exports its arms throughout the world. It markets the weapons, security systems, and various advanced technologies used against Palestinians, helping other states repress their own populations and militarize their borders against migrants. According to the Israeli defense exports department, the country’s arms exports totaled $13.1 billion in 2023, an all-time high. Israel has nearly doubled its arms exports in the last five years.

The genocidal war on Gaza is a reflection of our time’s deep global political crisis. Israel’s outspoken, unapologetic racist repression of the Palestinian population has become a model that far-right and right-wing neoliberal parties around the world would like to follow: ignoring international law and dealing however they want with non-white populations, whether those are new migrants or other minorities. This is partly why solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and support for the BDS campaign have been increasingly criminalized in Western states. The criminalization of Palestine solidarity today serves to normalize attacks on fundamental democratic rights by the ruling classes and the state, expanding state control. To differing degrees, those attacks may befall anyone who challenges those in power and the system they administer.

Similarly, a large majority of the MENA region’s popular classes identify with the Palestinian struggle and see their own local battles for democracy and equality as bound up with that struggle’s victory. When Palestinians fight, it potentially triggers the regional movement for liberation, and the regional movement feeds back into the one in occupied Palestine – a dialectical relationship. It is necessary to consider the Palestinian and regional popular classes as the central social forces capable of creating the conditions required to achieve liberation, with our support.

No shortcuts

Of course, there are many obstacles to building a large popular movement able both to stand in solidarity with Palestine and to offer an internationalist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and feminist perspective. Such movement-building is difficult in many countries of the world, but even more difficult in Palestine and the wider MENA region. This difficulty can lead some groups and individuals on the left to lose faith in the possibility of change from below and instead to place their hopes for the liberation of Palestine in the actions of allied states. In the aftermath of October 7, 2023, Gulf monarchies and Turkey did make a show of support for the Palestinians, condemning Israel’s war. Yet most states in the region have remained relatively passive in the face of Palestinian suffering over the past year, as well as when Israel has again bombed Lebanon.

Take the case of Iran. Hamas’s main regional ally, Iran has sought since October 7 to improve its standing in the region so as to be in the best position for future political and economic negotiations with the US. Iran wishes to guarantee its political and security interests, and is therefore keen to avoid any direct war with Israel. Its main geopolitical objective in relation to the Palestinians is not to liberate them, but to use them as leverage, particularly in its relations with the United States. Similarly, Iran’s passivity in the deepening war against Lebanon, and in the wake of the assassination of key Hezbollah political and military cadres including Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, also suggests its first priority is protecting its own geopolitical interests. Iran has also not hesitated in the past to reduce its funding for Hamas when their interests did not coincide: Tehran significantly decreased its financial assistance to Hamas after an historic mass uprising erupted in Syria in 2011 and the Palestinian movement refused to support the Syrian regime’s murderous repression of Syrian protesters.

Despite Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s criticism of Israel and his government’s ban on domestic trade with the Israeli state (in place since May 2024), Turkey and Israel maintain close economic ties. According to data released by the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly (TIM), Turkish businesses appear to be bypassing the trade ban by routing exports through Palestinian Authority customs: there was an 423% increase in exports to Palestine during the first eight months of 2024, with exports in August alone surging by over 1150%, climbing from USD $10M last year to USD $127M. Trade between both countries has also been ongoing through third countries such as Greece. In addition, Turkey and Israel found common ground during Azerbaijan’s recent military aggression in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, controlled and populated primarily by Armenians. Israeli and Turkish drones, as well as support from both countries’ intelligence services, proved essential to Azerbaijan’s victory over the Armenian armed forces. More than 100,000 Armenians, nearly the entire pre-conflict population, were forced to flee Nagorno-Karabakh and become refugees.

The interests of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf and Arab states are very much entangled with US imperialism. These states are unlikely to endanger their relationships with the US for the sake of the Palestinians. Rather than advance the Palestinian struggle, these regimes tend to restrict their support for the cause to areas where it advances their own regional interests and betray it when it doesn’t. 

More generally, grassroots progressive forces need not align themselves with imperialist or sub-imperialist states that each compete for political gains and strive to intensify their exploitation of resources and working people. Of course, US imperialism remains exceptionally destructive and deadly through its military, political, and economic powers. But to choose one imperialism over another is to guarantee the stability of the capitalist system and the exploitation of popular classes.

Re-organizing for the future

Left and progressive forces must of course defend the Palestinians’ right to resist Israel’s racist, colonial apartheid state violence, including through military resistance. Similarly, the Lebanese have the right to resist Israeli aggression. Defending the right of people to resist oppression should not be confused with political support for the specific political projects of Hamas or Hezbollah in their respective societies, or lead us to imagine these parties will be able to deliver Palestinian liberation or that they have a strategy in this direction.

That said, in Western societies the best way to serve Palestinian liberation today is, as described above, to build strong local popular solidarity movements and push forward BDS campaigns. We need also to cultivate regional and internationalist analyses in our movements, believing in the common interests and common destiny of popular and working classes. 

Despite the ongoing nightmare we have witnessed since October 7, 2023, with the genocide in Gaza persisting and fresh threats of regional war, two positive points can be made regarding the Palestinian solidarity movement. First, the BDS campaign has made substantial gains, with many companies divesting from Israel, academic boycotts, and workers’ strikes and walk-outs in solidarity with Palestine. The post-October 7 radicalization towards the left among particular sectors of the organized working class is particularly significant, as noted by the website Workers in Palestine: “Workers and trade unions around the world have mobilised for Palestine in a number of ways. Actions have been organised at arms factories, transport workers have refused to handle arms and unions have issued statements committing to not be complicit in Israel’s crimes. More recently, education unions in the US have begun organising strike action in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

Perhaps even more significant, the immense mobilizations of solidarity with Palestine, which have contributed to turning Palestine into a political compass, may be creating the conditions for a potential resurrection and re-organization of a left pole within our societies. There is a growing awareness that a victory for the Palestinian cause would be a victory for the entire left – for the whole progressive camp opposed to the destructive impulses of neoliberal capitalism and the rise of fascist movements, which are the two dominant political projects threatening popular and working classes today. Weakening Western ruling classes weakens Israeli apartheid, and vice versa. Struggling for Palestine, important in itself, is also a way to defend the rights of everyone engaged in challenging this unequal, authoritarian world system.