We have already developed and argued our views in two articles: “The Hope of the Colonized” (October 10, 2023) and “The Cursed Time of the Colonies” (November 4, 2023). Here, we present a summary of our analysis and positions on the situation in Palestine and the Palestinian resistance.
In Palestine, there is one main contradiction, and this determines the resolution of all other contradictions. This main contradiction is the contradiction between the Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation and Israeli settler colonialism.
Israel is a settler-colonial state, which distinguishes it from “classical” imperialist states and conditions the struggle against it. It is important to understand that the strategy for combating settlement colonialism, which is one of the forms of imperialist political domination over dominated peoples, cannot be reduced to the anti-imperialist strategies that generally apply in the case of “counter” colonialism and neocolonialism.
Israeli society is dominated by a colonial consensus, transpartisan and transclassist, that is hegemonic. Almost the entire Israeli political spectrum is colonial, from the right to the left. Recent social mobilizations in Israel, and the current sacred union around national defense, have demonstrated this universal fact of settler colonies: social and political struggles in Israel all operate within the colonial consensus. The problem is not Likud or Netanyahu, but rather the colonial consensus that goes far beyond them. The overthrow of the current government would only be a superficial change in Israel, as the colonial project and the colonial consensus would remain unchanged.
We must fight against the colonial consensus within Israeli society, and in particular among the settler proletariat, using internationalist slogans. However, historically there has been an objective trend in all settler colonies: settler proletarians defend their colonial interests (short-term) before their class interests (long-term). This is not an excuse to abandon internationalism, but an empirical historical and contemporary observation that informs us about the circumstances and real prospects of the internationalist struggle among Israeli workers. Without awareness of this fact concerning the colonial proletariat, internationalism can only lock itself into metaphysics.
The main contradiction in Palestine is national-colonial, and this has been demonstrated as antagonistic by the last 75 years of Israeli colonialism. Internationalism is not the denial of the existence of the main and antagonistic contradiction between the Palestinian people and the Israeli people, but the struggle for its resolution through national liberation. The priority of internationalists is therefore not to seek to unite the settler proletariat and the colonized proletariat, but to seek to resolve the main and antagonistic contradiction that opposes them in the case of settler colonialism. Only in the Palestinian national liberation struggle can there be real and truly progressive unity between the settler proletarians and the colonized proletarians. It is obvious that anti-colonial propaganda must be carried out among the colonizing proletariat. However, the struggle of the colonized cannot be conditioned neither on the union with the colonizer nor on his approval.
No resolution of the contradiction between Labor and Capital is possible in Palestine without first resolving the main national-colonial contradiction. Socialism in Palestine can only be built on the ruins of Israel. As a settler colony occupying Palestine, Israel has no right to exist. This means not only that the Israeli colonial state must be destroyed, but also that the Israeli nation, because it is intrinsically colonial, must be dissolved as such.
We advocate the creation of a secular and multinational Palestinian state on the ruins of the Israeli colonial state. Harmonious coexistence between Jews and Arabs can only exist if the relationship between the Israeli colonizer and the Palestinian colonized is first broken. To this end, the creation of a liberated Palestine must be achieved through the submission of the colonizers to the conditions of the colonized. Only when the main national-colonial contradiction is thus resolved will real peace be possible in Palestine between all religions and all nationalities. Only then can the contradiction between Labor and Capital be resolved toward socialism.
In national liberation struggles, the united front strategy is the right strategy. Palestine is no exception. This united front exists today in the Joint Operation Room. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are part of it, alongside more than a dozen other Palestinian resistance organizations, including the communists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are nationalist organizations with many undeniably reactionary aspects, including anti-Semitism, misogyny, and anti-communism. However, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are no more or less reactionary than Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist and anti-communist Kuomintang was in the Chinese anti-Japanese united front, or the equally nationalist and anti-communist National Liberation Front was in the Algerian united front. The Palestinian case is no different: for national liberation, the united front strategy is no less relevant in Palestine than elsewhere.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad must be criticized — like all reactionaries — and progressive and communist forces must retain their political and strategic autonomy — as in all united fronts. However, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are sincerely leading the Palestinian national liberation struggle by fighting the Israeli colonial state. This is the view of the communist organizations that are members of the Joint Operation Room, which justifies their involvement in it. The opportunism and reactionary positions of all Palestinian organizations must be criticized, but as participants in the national liberation struggle, they are waging a just war, whereas the Israeli colonial state is waging an unjust war.
It is impossible to equate Hamas with the Israeli state. They differ qualitatively and do not correspond to the same contradictions. Hamas is a nationalist organization seeking to create a reactionary bourgeois regime in Palestine, while the Israeli state is a colonial regime seeking to carry out a colonial project, which increasingly clearly implies the genocide of the Palestinian people. The mere existence of Israel, as a genocidal settler colony, is more reactionary than anything Hamas could possibly do if it carried out its program. Moreover, the communist position must assess possibilities and future prospects, but it cannot be built on the basis of a pessimistic “what if?” scenario.
The united front strategy, like all strategies, offers no guarantees, but it does offer possible paths forward. In national liberation struggles, progressive and communist forces must accept partial alienation to avoid total alienation. By allying themselves with other organizations for national liberation, progressives and communists take the risk of strategic defeat to avoid the certainty of strategic defeat. Rejecting the united front for national liberation would not only be a misapprehension of the contradictions in Palestine, but above all an absurd strategic suicide. Within the united front, communists and progressives can fight to place themselves at the head of the Palestinian national movement, but outside the united front, they condemn themselves to placing themselves at the tail end of the Palestinian national movement. The struggle for the leadership of the Palestinian national resistance and against the reactionaries can only take place within the united front of the Palestinian resistance, not outside it.
The Iranian scenario (the seizure of power by Khomeini’s theologians in 1979), the Algerian scenario (the ousting of the PCA communists by the NLF in 1962 and then in 1965) or the Chinese 1st united front scenario (which ended with the massacre of communists by the Kuomintang in Shanghai in 1927) are still possible, and this risk is an inevitable necessity in any united front strategy. However, the scenario of the 2nd Chinese united front is just as possible. There is never any certainty, but there are possibilities and struggle. In the 1st and 2nd Chinese united fronts against Japan, the Chinese Communist Party was in the minority compared to the Kuomintang, which was reactionary (nationalist and anti-communist), opportunistic (having sometimes collaborated with the Japanese), and supported by imperialist powers (notably the US, to serve their interests in their inter-imperialist struggle). Nevertheless, ultimately, the united front strategy remained the only possible one and proved successful for the communists. If the Communists of the Chinese Communist Party had radically abandoned the united front strategy after the failure of the 1st Chinese anti-Japanese united front in 1927, they would not have won in 1949, and the future of the Chinese nation could have been compromised by Japanese colonialism.
The October 7 offensive, in which all the Palestinian resistance forces of the Joint Operation Room took part, was justified. Armed struggle is the only possible path to the liberation of Palestine. However, war is never clean or ideal. The tactics chosen by the united front of the Palestinian national resistance should not condition our support for it. Either we accept violence as it really is (dirty, chaotic, and necessarily reactionary in some respects), or we reject violence, but we cannot demand or expect ideal (clean and pure) violence.
In the October 7 offensive, there was an undeniably anti-Semitic aspect, as well as an equally undeniable patriarchal aspect, however, the main aspect was national: the violence of the Palestinian fighters was first and foremost the violence of the colonized against the colonizers. As such, the violence of the October 7 offensive was a just violence. Not all acts are justifiable in the name of national liberation (it is not an absolute), but if the main aspect of the violence is just, then it is just. Anti-Semitic or patriarchal violence is never just, but these were not the main aspects of the violence of October 7. It is well known that the Red Army massively raped German women when it entered the territory of the IIIrd Reich, despite strict instructions from the Soviet leadership relayed by political commissars. However, it remains clear that the main aspect of Soviet violence against Germans during World War II was not patriarchal, but national-anti-fascist. Patriarchal violence is inevitable in all wars involving men, for as long as patriarchy will exist. Such violence must be denounced and combated everywhere and without delay, but it does not represent the main aspect of the wars and violence in question.
Communists must criticize and combat all reactionary positions and actions, but we believe that focusing one’s discourse on a secondary aspect of the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive is to dissolve into bourgeois propaganda. Furthermore, reducing the October 7 operation to Hamas, when it is the work of the Joint Operation Room, plays into the hands of reactionary rhetoric.
We maintain that it is materially impossible to fight against a colonial settler state without also fighting against its settlers, whether or not they actively participate in settler colonialism, because they are the physical extension of the colonial project and the colonial state. This cruel reality remains an inevitable fact. There are no ideal wars in which the colonized could free themselves from colonization without also fighting against the colonists. Not all colonists are consciously and actively an extension of the colonial project and the Israeli colonial state of settlement, but they are nonetheless its extension. The indifference of some settlers to the colonial project or the colonial state of which they are part and of which they are unconsciously and/or passively an extension does not make them innocent.
The particularities of settler colonialism cannot be conflated with the generalities of other forms of colonialism. The specific concrete conditions imposed by settler colonialism determine the struggle against it. Moreover, this struggle is that of David against a Goliath, i.e., it is extremely asymmetrical. In such a situation, strategic imperatives and objective conditions necessitate unconventional warfare tactics.
In the short term, we can only hope that Israel’s diplomatic normalization process fails and that the IDF becomes bogged down and humiliated militarily in its ground operations in Gaza. In the medium and long term, we hope that the armed struggle of the Palestinian resistance will intensify until Israel is routed and completely destroyed.