Palestine: clash between coward bourgeoisies

The uneven fight between Israel and the Palestinians won't lead to a decisive outcome as long as it is carried on between two opposing "national questions". Since its inception, the Hebrew-speaking and Zionist bourgeoisie was not able to solve the problem concerning its state on its own and was used by American imperialism during the fight against the old European imperialisms and the strategic penetration into the Middle East. The initial Zionist terrorism followed by the war forced the Palestinians to flee from their land, limiting them to the political orbit of the Arab nations. Some of these in turn had no choice but to accept the Soviet Union's devious and uncertain support.

The relationship of forces of the past, already pernicious to the Palestinians and Arabs in general, no longer exists. Nowadays less than ever, can the Palestinians solve their national problem by once again entrusting it to all the inconsistent and divided Arab bourgeoisies. At any rate, self-reliant national politics in such vulnerable area as the Middle East are nothing but a mere illusion: the Israeli bourgeoisie is at the mercy of the US , the Palestinian one depends on the Arab countries and the latter depend on the US world politics. Despite its ambitions of a political and economic independence from American imperialism, Europe too shows itself, in reality, to be impotent, dominated and even subservient.

Faced with these historical facts, Palestine's ambition to become an independent state clashes with an actual suicidal prospect: if it is the result of agreements amongst powers, it will rise on a disarmed and suffocated territory with no economy and no national sovereignty; if Israel "allows" it as a consequence of military operations, it will be a huge concentration camp arbitrarily abused by the force of the enemy. The "Palestinian Question" has no solution unless contained within a growing development of the proletariat - itself neither Arab or Jewish – in a prospect of a revolution which is proletarian, not nationalist.

Gone is the era of the national revolutions, the real resolution (under capitalism) of the fights amongst national bourgeoisies is a war between the States. This solution was however already tried three times by the Arab bourgeoisie; thus Israel's unyielding bourgeoisie, with US aid, answered back each time by defeating the attackers. An alleged new war can only end the same way the previous ones did. A national, bourgeois revolution has already occurred in that area and for international reasons it has an Israeli imprint. The brutal reality is that a second petty-bourgeois national revolution of Arab-Palestinian imprint has no future. That is why the situation becomes swamped in an obsolete, cruel, senseless massacre on both sides. Cruelty against "martyrdom".

"Right to self-determination" is the slogan that has greatly misled all supporters of the Palestinian question and many other similar ones. Communists insert it (right of self determination) into their campaign where its material and practical conditions allow an effective solution, and not because it is a revolutionary claim in itself. Instead, it interferes with the revolutionary prospect and it is inevitable to address it in order to get rid of it. Communists are in general, against a fragmentation of all existing states. Only if fighting for the right of self-determination has a historical and realistic sense, would we then support it, even taking active part in it. If possible, we would have done so in the 30s, during the general strikes in the area when many Arab countries were British mandates.

The "destruction of the State of Israel", assuming this is a realistic objective, would imply turning the situation upside down thus putting the Jewish population into the Palestinians' shoes. Surely the envisaged solutions amongst all yearly agreements are against this from every point of view: from the purely bourgeois point of view since two opposite national issues on the same territory have no solution; from a purely communist one since, instead of transcending (being freed of) the national question it is rendered more virulent than ever; from both bourgeois and communist point of views as they both don't promote the ideal conditions for either the Israeli nor the Palestinian proletarian development. The Palestinian struggle is one of those classic cases that may be solved only within a communist revolutionary perspective: though such outcome is still far in the future. It is neither an over-used formula; nor one which leaves every possible solution to an uncertain future, but is already in progress.

The tragedy of the martyred Palestinian population is already an integral part of a great groundswell; a movement of the "underclass" involving hundreds of millions of men and women engaged in allegedly "national" wars though actually reacting to the outcome of Capitalist world conquest, that is to say it is a product of the destruction of nations not their exaltation. In the 70s Palestinian fringe groups mentioned a solution: removal of leadership of the movement from the bourgeoisies and for a union of proletarians from both sides towards a unitary state, neither Arab or Hebrew, larger than the confines of present day Israel. Putting aside past confusions over "socialism", this route remains the best one rather than the bourgeois reactionary one: either Jewish or Arab. In such a context Palestinians may be able to defeat their common bourgeois enemy by being really autonomous from their false tutors.