YENİ DEMOKRASİ: LOOKING AT THE MIDDLE EAST THROUGH THE PALESTINIAN MIRROR – ONCE AGAIN THE PROLETARIAN SOLUTION
We publish a translation of an article by Turkish democratic newspaper Yeni Demokrasi:
LOOKING AT THE MIDDLE EAST THROUGH THE PALESTINIAN MIRROR
ONCE AGAIN THE PROLETARIAN SOLUTION
One of the two unhealed wounds of the Middle East: Palestine! Palestine has begun to bleed again. Israel is wiping Gaza off the map, innocent people, especially children and women, are being massacred. Words are not enough to describe the human tragedy in Gaza. Historians will certainly write about what happened in Gaza, but this heinous cruelty and the darkness that rules the world must first be described by writers. In this way, the true extent of what happened can be told and recorded in the collective memory of humanity so that it can never happen again. The realization of the lessons to be recorded in the collective memory is only possible with a correct political solution to the Palestinian problem. History and literature should contribute to the elaboration and development of this correct solution.
On the morning of October 7, Israel was shocked by Hamas’ “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack, the expected benefit of shock tactics materialized and the Palestinian problem, which had been “forgotten” for a while, became the number one political issue in the world again. The Palestinians in Gaza are paying with their lives for being at the top of the political agenda.
First of all, it must be made clear that Hamas’ attack on Israel is legitimate, that it is Palestine that is under attack, that it is the Palestinians who are living under unjust aggression. This was the case long before the morning of October 7. It is still the case today. The Hamas attack on October 7 was a small military counterattack to Israel’s systematic and massive attacks, including the building of new settlements. Its main impact is due to the shock tactics of Hamas, which took Israel by surprise. It is impossible to find a correct position on the Palestinian issue without taking into account Israel’s systematic attacks. It is easy to see that these attacks are somehow neglected in positions associated with insecurity.
The October 7 attack has not only brought Palestine to the top of the world’s political agenda, but has also raised many questions. One of these questions is: “Why now?” This is followed by the question of who or what has benefited from the attack and who has benefited from this situation. It should not be forgotten that dealing with the issue along this axis carries the risk of deviating from the core of the problem and drifting into conspiracy theories. In coordination with these two issues, it is essential to discuss the content of support for Palestine and to put the right political solution on the agenda. We have approached the problem from this perspective.
TIMING IS NOTEWORTHY
Hamas was forced to carry out this attack. It had to carry out this attack in order to have a place in the future of Palestine. The Ibrahim Accords normalized relations between Israel and the Arab states in the region and took steps toward a two-state solution. The Abraham Accords broke Israel’s isolation in the region, and Palestine’s greatest asset against Israel, besides legitimacy, began to lose its function. The Palestinian state to be established as part of the “two-state solution” is to be located in the West Bank. In other words, the plan is to establish a Palestinian state in a region where Hamas’ influence is limited and Fatah is active.
After the 2005 elections, Hamas staged a coup in the Gaza Strip in 2007 and expelled the revolutionary democratic Palestinian national liberation organizations, including Fatah, from the Gaza Strip. In return, Fatah expelled Hamas from the West Bank. The parties later agreed to open their territories to each other’s activities, but this opening was limited. Palestine was effectively divided in two, with Gaza under Hamas control and the West Bank under Fatah. In the current phase, Hamas has had to accept the negative consequences of the 2007 coup and pay the price for its behavior, which divided the Palestinian national movement and weakened it in its narrow interests vis-à-vis Israel. Under the current circumstances, Hamas is confined to the Gaza Strip and faces the problem of being excluded from the future of Palestine. Hamas has taken steps to disrupt this equation and create a place for itself in it. The October 7 attack served this purpose. Hamas needed a decisive step to exclude itself from the future of Palestine and to reverse, or at least interrupt, the process of Israel’s isolation in the region. The October 7 attack was a decisive step and shocked the world, including Israel. The balance has been seriously upset. In this context, it is easy to say that the October 7 offensive achieved its goal. Immediately after the attack, this success was concretized by Hamas’ proposal for a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages. The rejection of this proposal by Israel and the US. on the grounds that it would strengthen Hamas is due to the fact that they saw that the October 7 attack interrupted the positive momentum in the region that had developed in Israel’s favor with the Abraham Accords. It has developed an attitude of accepting Hamas as an interlocutor.
Israel’s disproportionate attack on Gaza forced the states in the region to distance themselves from Israel. It goes without saying that the main force forcing the states of the region to maintain this distance is the degree of solidarity that the peoples of the region and the world have developed with the Palestinian people, as well as the fact that these states, which are semi-colonies of imperialism, expect to improve their relations with Israel at the first opportunity.
It is too early to answer the question of whether Hamas will find a place in the “two-state solution” and the “future” of Palestine. Its resistance in Gaza is already etched in the memory of the Palestinian people, but its continued existence as a political force in the “future” of Palestine is something else entirely, and that question has yet to be answered.
FOCUS ON FACTS, NOT CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Every step taken in the class struggle has a positive or negative impact on the position of forces other than those waging it. Therefore, there will be those who are satisfied with the conditions created by the October 7 offensive and those who are not. This does not mean that the forces taking advantage of the new situation have played a direct role in creating the new situation. Concrete data is needed to make this claim. There is no concrete evidence that Iran or Russia are directing Hamas in this regard. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on the facts and not on the forces “behind the scenes” when dealing with the problem. Moreover, as we have shown in the question of timing, Hamas has the most to gain from the October 7 attack. Therefore, conspiracy theories should be ignored. Hamas’ political goals are clear and unambiguous. There are no secrets. There is only an unresolved national problem and an attempt by one of the national forces to carve out a niche for itself on the eve of the transition to a new phase of this national problem.
The theory that Israel turned a blind eye to the attacks is unrealistic. It is also impossible that the Mossad had no intelligence information about the attack. It is obvious that Israel’s technological equipment and expertise would not have allowed such a “sleep”. In fact, it has been reported in the press that even Egypt warned Israel three days in advance.
The “looking the other way” theory should be rejected first and foremost because it assumes an all-powerful Israel and the United States and gives the impression that those in power make the most objective and correct decision under all circumstances. It seems that the Israeli leadership did not correctly assess the extent of the “danger”. Had they assessed it correctly, they would not have allowed Israel’s image of “invincibility and impregnability” in the region to suffer such a devastating blow. They would have taken measures to limit Hamas’ss attacks and thus reduce its political influence. However, in such a situation where unequal forces face each other, the stronger side can more easily compensate for its weakness than the weaker one and turn the process in its favor. From this it can be concluded that many theories, including conspiracy theories, can be put forward that do not correspond to reality. Above all, such theories are used to devalue the legitimate efforts of the oppressed and powerless. We must not fall into this trap.
After Hamas, Iran is the power that has benefited most from the October 7 attack. The process of breaking Israel’s isolation in the region, which developed after the Abraham Accords, has been interrupted. This situation suits Iran’s strategic interests. It is known that Hamas has been developing close relations with Iran for some time. The deepening of relations between Hamas and Iran has been influenced by the distancing of powers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey from Palestine at the request of the US imperialism. Qatar still has very close relations with Hamas. The relations between Iran and Hamas should be analyzed on the axis of unity of interests. It is legitimate for Hamas to develop such relations on the basis of the Palestinian issue. Therefore, to criticize Hamas as an apparatus that is used through its relations with Iran would be to obscure the core of the problem. The nature of Hamas and the content of its relations is another matter. We would like to point out here that Hamas, like any other national movement, has the right to establish diplomatic relations and take advantage of the contradictions in the opposing camp.
The assessment that Russia encouraged or directed Hamas to carry out the October 7 attack because it would give Russia breathing space in Ukraine when the Middle East is again embroiled in the Palestinian issue is also unrealistic. Russia’s offensive in Ukraine has not significantly intensified since October 7. However, a Russia that wants the offensive and is aware of this would not miss this “opportunity”. Developments are not going in that direction. On the other hand, Russia will not ignore the fact that the aggravation of the Palestinian problem will strengthen the declining interest of the USA in the region and provide a justification for its new moves in the region. In fact, Aleppo airport was one of the first places attacked by Israel. The idea that Russia would risk losing Syria in exchange for Ukraine on the “chessboard” is not compatible with the military expansion (Africa, etc.) and imperialist perspective pursued by Russia. It is a fact that the US shift of attention from the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East will benefit China.
On October 7, the USA and Israel came together. The new balance they tried to establish in the Middle East with the Abraham Agreement was shaken. The Palestinian problem was put on the world agenda in a way it never wanted. Along with Israel, it was directly affected by the October 7 attack and lost. Therefore, it is out of the question for the USA to turn a blind eye to Hamas. That is why the US. was the first country to act together with Israel to change the situation.
In addition to the US, the EU and Japan were also involved in the process. In short, the world’s dominant imperialist bloc was facing the risk that the process in the Middle East in its favor would first be interrupted and then fail completely. They are preparing to maintain their hegemony and turn the situation against them by force.
With the October 7 attack, Hamas disrupted the atmosphere created by the Ibrahim agreement in favor of Israel by reminding Israel that it must be considered in the “two-state solution”. In this context, the October 7 attack has complicated the overall interests of Hamas, Palestine, Iran, Russia, and China. The United States and its allies have been wounded in the person of Israel.
Turkey’s position requires a separate assessment. Suffice it to say: Turkey’s “mediation” efforts have failed. Moreover, it was not taken seriously on the international stage. Domestically, it was forced to adopt an anti-Israeli position due to the pressure created by the rise of political Islam. However, this position is not one that deals with Palestine. Its main goal is economic development. Otherwise, the expansion of NATO, which is preparing for war in the Middle East, would not have been allowed and trade with Israel could not have continued without losing momentum. Israel has reacted to the “tough” pro-Palestinian rhetoric in the domestic public by reviewing relations and downgrading the level of relations. We can already say that this situation will put even more pressure on Turkey in the future.
SUPPORT FOR PALESTINIAN DOES NOT REQUIRE SUPPORT FOR HAMAS
The Palestinian national question is a national question inherent to the era of imperialism. Therefore, it is the duty of communists to support the Palestinian national revolutionary movement. Just as the recognition of the right of the Palestinians to their own state is not a precondition but the criterion for the interest of the proletariat in supporting this movement, so too a distinction must be made between the Palestinian national organizations, revolutionary or not, and this distinction must be taken into account in determining the content and scope of support for the Palestinian national movement.
The massacre in Gaza has brought the question of support for national movements to the fore. Hamas is a fundamentalist national movement. To ignore the nationalist character of Hamas and focus only on its fundamentalist ideological character would be to ignore the national oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel. This would reduce the Palestinian question to a conflict between the Shariaist Hamas in Gaza and the Zionist Netanyahu government in Israel and distract us from the core of the problem. Specifically, this distancing would mean indifference/neutrality in favor of Israel. This is clearly untenable. What should we do in this situation, should we indiscriminately adopt every demand of the Palestinian national movement, should we support every organization? If we support, what line do we draw between ourselves and the affirmative action of the bourgeoisie, and where do we draw this line?
The answers to these questions will determine whose side we should be on and who we are. In this regard, communists have principles that have been drawn from the experience of their own class and national struggles. “They consist in the fact that we as communists must and will support the bourgeois liberation movement in the colonial countries only if these movements are truly revolutionary, if their representatives do not prevent us from educating and organizing the peasants and the broad exploited strata with revolutionary ideas.” (Lenin, 1998: 589)
When we analyze Hamas in the light of these two criteria, the attitude of the communists towards Hamas becomes clearer. The only criterion of revolutionism in the national question is whether the right to free secession (FSA) is defended or not. Hamas defends the FSA(THE RİGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION). In this context, Hamas is a national revolutionary. This is where the problem becomes complicated. Hamas wants to establish a Sharia state in Palestine. In other words, it wants to return Palestine to the darkness of the Middle Ages. “A people even has the right to return to the old order, but this does not mean that social democracy would approve of such a decision of this or that position of the people concerned” (Stalin, 1989: 270).
Although Hamas has a revolutionary position on the national question, it is a political organization of the Palestinian feudal-reactionary forces. It wants to build and realize the Palestinian national identity on the basis of religion. This is the position of Hamas and the fundamentalist Palestinian national movements. This means that the Palestinian nation is organized on an extremely backward basis. The Palestinian people are not united on a single line in the process of nation-building. In other words, the question of the ideological, political and cultural line on which the Palestinian people will realize their national unity has not yet been resolved. In this context, there are two main currents within the Palestinian national revolutionary movement. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc. want to realize national unity on the basis of Islamic Sharia, while Fatah, PFLP, PFLP and others want to realize Palestinian national unity and independence on the basis of bourgeois-democratic principles that are opposed to socialism. It is clear which of these two lines can be supported by the communists and which line in the Palestinian national revolutionary movement will lead to results in favor of the Palestinian proletariat. In fact, this situation was discussed and resolved in the draft resolution on the national and colonial question written by Lenin for the Second Congress of the Comintern. We will limit ourselves to quoting the part that directly concerns our subject: “Secondly, the reality of their struggle against the clergy and other reactionary and medieval remnants influential in the backward countries; thirdly, the necessity of the struggle against pan-Islamism and similar currents which seek to combine the liberation struggle against European and American imperialism with the abolition of the position of the khans, landlords, mullahs, etc.” (1998: 580)
As can be seen from the theses, this struggle includes the ideological and political struggle. Therefore, the reaction to the Israeli atrocities in Gaza must never turn into sympathy for the ideological-political line of Hamas. Communists must be clear about this. As for the second criterion of support mentioned by Lenin: with its coup in 2007, Hamas ignored the will of the Palestinian people, established a political monopoly in Gaza and prevented parties and organizations representing the revolutionary-democratic line of the Palestinian national revolutionary movement from educating and organizing the Palestinian people with revolutionary-democratic ideas, and continues to do so. In the case of Hamas, the first criterion is negated by the second. This means that Hamas is objectively revolutionary because, regardless of its political character, it supports the right of nations to self-determination in solving the national question and undermines the interests of imperialism in the region through its struggle. Subjectively, it is counterrevolutionary because it systematically prevents the components of the Palestinian national revolutionary movement from educating and organizing the Palestinian people with revolutionary ideas and because, as the political representative of the Palestinian feudal classes, it wants to establish a Sharia state in Palestine and condemn the Palestinian people to medieval darkness. The political program of Hamas is in open and irreconcilable opposition to the goal of socialism of the Palestinian proletariat. It is therefore unthinkable for communists to support Hamas.
Therefore, support for the Palestinian question must be distinguished from support for Hamas. Support is directed to the struggle of the Palestinian people against national oppression and for their right to their own state in Palestine, and to the overthrow of imperialism through this struggle. Only to the extent that Hamas is successful in this struggle can it play a positive role for the Palestinian cause. This requires a distinction between the Palestinian question and the ideological-political line that Hamas represents as a solution to this question. In the context of the Palestinian question, the legitimacy of Hamas ends at the limit of Palestinian rights. Neither its actions in Gaza since 2007 nor its policy of taking hostages and massacring civilians during the October 7 attack are right and should be supported. The policy of solving the Palestinian problem with Sharia law and expelling all Jews from the Middle East, on which this policy is based, must not only not be supported, but must be the target of an active ideological and political struggle. The only sympathy that Hamas should arouse among all peoples and communists whose hearts beat for the Palestinians is that, despite its reactionary character, it has objectively dealt a blow to imperialism. This is an objective fact, not because of the character of Hamas, but because of the character of our era, the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. To return to the present: The Israeli aggression after October 7 and the massacre in Gaza, even if it involves various calculations on a global scale, is essentially aimed at accelerating the two-state “solution” to the Palestinian question. Although the two-state “solution” sounds very logical, it was put on the agenda from the beginning as a solution against imperialism, as an alternative to the proletarian solution of the problem. With the post-October 7 conjuncture, this imperialist solution is to be concretized under the most unfavorable conditions for the Palestinian nation.
THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION IMPOSED BY IMPERIALISM
The Palestinian question is a national question specific to the age of imperialism, which is intertwined with the Jewish question. In this respect, it has a peculiarity that is unprecedented in history. Neither Israel is a classical colonizer nor Palestine is a classical colonized. Israelis and Palestinians are two nations living in one land. Imperialism paved the way for the establishment of the state of Israel. It fulfilled the need of the hegemonic imperialist Britain for an “outpost in the Middle East”. The need to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, which the Jews have always claimed as their property, was propagated 50 years before the establishment of this state. Theodor Herzl’s book “The Jewish State” was published in 1918 and Israel was founded as propagated in this book! The Imperialist War of Partition and the Balfour Declaration (The Balfour Declaration was the result of the attempt to establish a Jewish state during the first imperialist war of partition, led by Arthur Balfour, Foreign Secretary in the British cabinet under Lloyd George. This state was proclaimed in 1917), they received certain rights and guarantees. With the end of the second imperialist war of partition and the revelation of the genocide (Holocaust) committed by the Nazis against the Jews, public opinion in favor of the Jews essentially supported the steps taken in this process. The US., which had taken over the hegemony from Great Britain, supported the establishment of Israel in order to realize the British policy of “outposts,” and Israel was established in 1948. Israel was not created because “the Palestinians sold their land to the Jews”, but because imperialism needed an Israel in the region. Contrary to what some circles claim, the amount of land sold by the Palestinians to the Jews is very small. Israel has appropriated all the land by force from 1948 to the present.
Unlike classic colonialism, there is no class of cooperative landowners in Palestine on which Israel can rely when it tries to exist on the same piece of land. This is because Israel does not want political hegemony and exploitation, it wants land, even a country. This leads the Palestinian nation as a whole, with exceptions, to position itself against Israel. This is the unique aspect of the Palestinian question. The Israeli policy of annexation does not offer the Palestinians any possibility of compromise. This affects the scope and scale of violence in the national struggle.
The establishment of Israel may have “redressed” the historical injustices suffered by the Jews, but this was never the aim of imperialism, it led to one of the greatest injustices of modern times, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their land. The Palestinian question is a tragic part of the imperialist policy of “divide and rule” in the Middle East, for which the Palestinians are partly responsible. With the creation of Israel, imperialism has permanently divided the peoples of the Middle East and created favorable conditions for dominating the region by keeping the Jewish-Arab enmity alive. Imperialism has divided the peoples of the Middle East, played them off against each other and shaped the region according to its own ideas by tying all parties, especially Israel, to itself. In this respect, the Palestinian question is a mirror in which the international conjuncture, the imperialist policies in this conjuncture, the contradictions between the imperialists and the positioning of the peoples can be observed.
The development of the Palestinian revolutionary national struggle runs parallel to the development of imperialism’s regional policy. With the establishment of Israel in 1948, a part of the Palestinians was expelled from their land. A large part of the Palestinians who had to leave their land emigrated to Jordan. Jordan is actually part of historic Palestine. Its establishment as an independent state was aimed at dividing historic Palestine, fragmenting the Palestinians, and creating secure political conditions in the region in which Israel could flourish. Jordan was established as a confederation of local non-Palestinian Arab tribes and Circassians who had settled in the region during the Ottoman period. The Palestinian exiles who immigrated to Jordan soon began to take an active role in Jordanian social life and to direct Jordan’s political agenda toward Palestine. This led to an attempt to dethrone King Hussein. The US and the Jordanian rulers took advantage of this and expelled the Palestinians from Jordan in a massacre similar to that in Israel. Most of the Palestinians expelled from Jordan went to Lebanon. The influence of the Palestinians on Jordanian politics soon showed that Jordan must survive if Israel is to survive, and that the Palestinians should not be concentrated in one region. Otherwise, a “Greater Palestine” could emerge and crush Israel in its infancy. After the Jordanian exile, one of the foundations of imperialist policy toward the Palestinians was to spread them over as many different countries as possible. Thus, during the Lebanese-Israeli war in the 1950s, some of the Palestinians from Lebanon were resettled in Tunisia. After their expulsion from Jordan, the center of the Palestinians and the revolutionary Palestinian national movement shifted to Lebanon.
The 1960s were the years in which the international economy began to change and the revolutionary wave swelled. National wars of independence broke out in the colonies and semi-colonies, major upheavals such as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China and the 1968 movement in Europe and America took place, and the participation of the masses gathered around revolutionary communist ideas in national and international politics increased significantly. In this process, the face of the Palestinian revolutionary national movement also changed. The struggle against Israel, which until then had been conducted mainly on a peaceful basis, took the form of armed guerrilla warfare.
In this transformation, the victory of Karameh occupies a special place in Palestinian history. Al-Fatah guerrillas crossed the Lebanese border at Karameh, stopped the Israeli army’s attack, and forced it to retreat. This conflict, which can be defined as a minor border conflict in military terms, gave the Palestinian people great self-confidence and broke the passive line of resistance that had existed since 1948. Karameh’s victory also changed the balance within the revolutionary Palestinian national movement. The political leadership of the PLO, which had been dominated by the Saudi-backed passive resistance organizations, shifted to the armed resistance organizations. Arafat became the new leader of the PLO, and Fatah quickly became the largest organization of the Palestinian revolutionary national movement.
It was in this line that the revolutionary Palestinian national struggle developed from the 1960s to the late 1990s, albeit with ups and downs. This line followed a revolutionary armed military line as well as the perspective of building a revolutionary democratic, secular, socialist Palestine. The first major break in this line came with the Camp David Accords (1978). At Camp David, Al-Fatah reached a compromise with the US. and Israel, accepting the two-state solution as an imposition of imperialism and postponing Palestinian independence to an uncertain future. The Camp David Accords were not accepted by the Palestinian people. Al-Fatah has also suffered a serious loss of prestige since the signing of the agreement. Most of the organizations of the Palestinian revolutionary national movement rejected the Camp David Accords and launched the Second Intifada, including some groups within Fatah.
Hamas entered Palestinian history with the Second Intifada. Hamas is the youth organization of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was active in this form until the Second Intifada. It is known to be openly supported by Israel. Hamas cooperated with Israel against Palestinian resistance fighters in Israeli prisons. When the Second Intifada broke out, Hamas youth called for armed struggle, but this proposal was rejected by the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Egypt. As a result, Hamas severed its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and remained an independent Palestinian national resistance organization. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, one of the founders of the organization, has a dark past. He is said to have maintained ties with Israel and the United States, but was assassinated by Israel after he decided to join the armed resistance.
The Camp David Accords were signed at a time when the revolutionary wave of the 1960s was beginning to fade. Then, in 1990-1991, the Warsaw Pact and the USSR disintegrated, and the “first great political defeat” of communism by capitalism was sealed, even if it dated back to earlier times. In the days leading up to the “end of history,” the US. and Israel also mobilized to roll back the Palestinian national resistance.
The second intifada continued unevenly until the end of the 1990s. During this period, Hamas intensified its military attacks against Israel, but the revolutionary Palestinian national movement continued to be led by Fatah and other revolutionary democratic organizations. These were the main targets of the Israeli attacks. Many revolutionary democrats and communists were assassinated in Israeli attacks, and these organizations suffered heavy losses in their leadership. Mustafa Barghati, the leader of the Palestinian Communist Party, was assassinated in his office in Ramallah; Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the Fatah resistance line, and Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the PFLP, were captured and are still in Israeli prisons.
The US. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the acceleration of the BOP paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam in general in the region. Hamas, which took a place in the Palestinian national revolutionary struggle during the Second Intifada, was actively involved in Palestinian politics after the BOP. If the support of Hamas in Palestinian politics by the imperialists is one phenomenon, the alienation of al-Fatah from the Palestinian cause and its rapid degeneration with the partial takeover of power is another phenomenon and contributed to the rapid rise of Hamas in Palestinian politics. Hamas participated in the elections and won. It used the opportunities provided by the elections to consolidate its power among the Palestinian people and to put pressure on its political rivals. This kind of politics did not go down well with the Palestinian people. Palestine could not be governed according to Sharia law, and the Palestinian people demanded their own future and put an end to Hamas. In the 2005 elections, which took place in this atmosphere, Hamas failed to win a majority outside the Gaza Strip and lost the elections. Hamas, which did not recognize this result, delayed the completion of the political process in order not to give up power, and finally carried out a coup in Gaza in 2007 in order not to give up the opportunities it had gained. Hamas attacked Fatah and other revolutionary national parties and organizations in Gaza and prevented them from organizing the Palestinian people. Hundreds of Palestinian revolutionary democrats were massacred by Hamas in Gaza during the coup and the ensuing clashes. With this bloody coup, Hamas became the sole political power in Gaza and has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. Since then, Hamas has been trapped in Gaza. Hamas is thus “threatened” with becoming an ineffective element in the future of the Palestinian question as it moves toward the imposed two-state solution. This confusion and exclusion from the future of the conflict forced it to attack on October 7.
The “two-state solution” was on the agenda from the beginning, imposed by imperialism as a “solution” and defended by the collaborating states in the region. Israel rejected this “solution” because of the strategic depth that Jordan and the Arab states would create for an independent Palestine. With its systematic annexation since 1948, it has tried to leave very little of Palestine. The Palestinian communists insisted on a single state.
Today, Palestine does not even have the 1967 borders, let alone the 1948 borders. Palestine has been partitioned as much as possible, and the partitioning continues. Palestine consists of a small coastal strip in Gaza and small settlements in the West Bank! Under these conditions, an “independent” Palestine cannot be truly independent. Palestine is totally condemned to small-scale production and agriculture. Such an “independent” Palestine would be at the mercy of Israel and Jordan for access to the resources necessary for trade and production. However, the existence of a Palestinian state is seen as a direct threat to Israel, and possible changes in the international balance of power will keep Israel on its toes. Israel is therefore not prepared to give up Palestine.
The October 7 attack provided Israel with the long-awaited “opportunity” to “get rid” of the Gaza Strip, which will continue to exist as a Palestinian canton and has the potential to be Palestine’s gateway to the world. Israel’s ability to use this opportunity depends on the resistance of the people of Gaza, the degree of solidarity of the peoples of the world with Palestine and the degree of contradictions between the imperialists.
The solution of the most reactionary and chauvinist cliques of the Israeli rulers is to leave nothing in Palestine. The solution of the most reactionary and chauvinist Palestinian sectors is to expel all Jews from Palestine and accept, at best, a life as second-class citizens (according to Sharia law). But the Israelis have no homeland to return to. This means that the destruction of Israel would constitute a new historical injustice against the Jewish people. The historical injustice suffered by the Jews has been “compensated” by a new historical injustice against the Palestinians. Now we are faced with the fact that the injustice inflicted on the Palestinians cannot be fully redressed for nationalist reasons without committing a new injustice against the Jews. It is obvious that all the bloodshed and injustice has increased the tendency to perpetuate enmity on both sides, and the “final” solution that nationalism wants to bring about is the total annihilation of the other side. This is not a solution.
The only solution to the problem based on the brotherhood of peoples is a bi-national solution within a single state. The Palestinian question can only be solved under the umbrella of a socialist state based on the full equality of peoples, in which the right of nations to self-determination is guaranteed, and this socialist state can remove the obstacles to the construction and development of a society in which the Palestinian and Israeli peoples live in brotherhood and security, and it can prevent new injustices from being committed.
To achieve this goal, the Palestinian proletariat must put all its forces into the struggle for an independent Palestine and creatively oppose the Zionist Israeli occupation in all forms of struggle. The most important lesson from the rise of Hamas is that it is impossible to win over the Palestinian people without embracing the struggle for an independent Palestine and resisting the occupiers. To do this, we must succeed in moving away from the line that considers all Israelis as enemies simply because they serve in the army, we must put class politics and class brotherhood above chauvinist nationalism, we must consistently oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestine and its massacres, and we must be uncompromising in the ideological struggle against Zionism. Only such a struggle under the leadership of the Palestinian and Israeli proletariat can unite the Palestinian and Israeli peoples in common interests and prevent the peoples from being used for the interests of imperialism.
Zionism and political Islam are two sides of the same coin. These two faith-centered ideologies are the expression of the theoretical and political line of the most reactionary and chauvinist sections of the Israeli and Palestinian rulers. Both promise the peoples nothing but more blood, tears and death. The proletariat, on the other hand, promises the peoples of Palestine and Israel a future based on full equality, in which the right to free secession is guaranteed and the brotherhood of the peoples is realized.
Source:
1.On the National and Colonial Question V.I.Lenin 1st edition 1996 /Inter2.
2.Works 2nd volume Stalin 1st edition 1989 /Inter
YENİ DEMOKRASİ NEWSPAPER, ISSUE 149-150
