Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 08.02.2024
Palestine in 1850 had about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews. [1] After British imperialism occupied Palestine and according to the British census:
Population of Palestine, 1922–1945
Year Muslims Christians Jews Total
1922 589,177 73,024 83,790 757,182
1931 759,717 174,610 91,398 1,035,821
1945 1,061,270 135,550 553,600 1,764,520
After the ethnic cleansing of 1948 only about 200,000 Palestinians remained in Palestine.
The Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath wrote that the notion of “large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighboring countries” is a myth “proposed by Zionist writers”. He wrote:
“As all the research by historian Fares Abdul Rahim and geographers of modern Palestine shows, the Arab population began to grow again in the middle of the nineteenth century. That growth resulted from a new factor: the demographic revolution. Until the 1850s there was no “natural” increase of the population, but this began to change when modern medical treatment was introduced and modern hospitals were established, both by the Ottoman authorities and by the foreign Christian missionaries. The number of births remained steady but infant mortality decreased. This was the main reason for Arab population growth. … No one would doubt that some migrant workers came to Palestine from Syria and Trans-Jordan and remained there. But one has to add to this that there were migrations in the opposite direction as well. For example, a tradition developed in Hebron to go to study and work in Cairo, with the result that a permanent community of Hebronites had been living in Cairo since the fifteenth century. Trans-Jordan exported unskilled casual labor to Palestine; but before 1948 its civil service attracted a good many educated Palestinian Arabs who did not find work in Palestine itself. Demographically speaking, however, neither movement of population was significant in comparison to the decisive factor of natural increase” [2]
In 1947 the Zionists owned less than 6% of Palestine
“As of 1947, jews in Palestine owned under 7% of Palestine’s lands, and after the 1948 war, 80% of the Palestinian people were dispossessed of their homes, farms, and businesses” [3]
Ownership of land in Palestine, Share of Palestinian Arabs and Jews as of April 1st, 1943 (Survey of Palestine, p. 566)
| Category of land (Fiscal categories) | Palestinians & others | Jews | Total |
| Dunums (1000 sq. meters) | |||
| Urban | 76,662 | 70,111 | 146,773 |
| Citrus | 145,572 | 141,188 | 286,760 |
| Bananas | 2,300 | 1,430 | 3,730 |
| Rural built-on area | 36,851 | 42,330 | 79,181 |
| Plantation | 1,079,788 | 95,514 | 1,175,302 |
| Cereal land (taxable) | 5,503,183 | 814,102 | 6,317,285 |
| Cereal land (not taxable) | 900,294 | 51,049 | 951,343 |
| Uncultivable | 16,925,805 | 298,523 | 17,224.328 |
| Total area: | 24,670,455 | 1,514,247 | 26,184,702 |
| Percentage | 94.22% | 5.8% | 100% |
| Roads, railways, rivers, and lakes | 135,803 | ||
| Total Area including roads, railways, etc. | 26,320,505 | ||
In 1947 the imperialist controlled UN allocated in the partition plan 55% of Palestine to the Zionists who constituted at most 33% of the population and as we already wrote owned less than 6% of the lands of Palestine.
While it is clear why the imperialists supported the creation of a Zionist state on most of Palestine knowing that such a partition will lead to a war where the Zionist will likely win. The role of Stalinist Russia is less known. Until 1943 the Stalinist regime opposed the formation of a Zionist state. However, from late 1944, until 1948 and even later, Joseph Stalin adopted a pro-Zionist foreign policy, the apologetics for Stalinism claim that he believed that the new country would be socialist and would accelerate the decline of British influence in the Middle East. How was it possible to believe that settlers colonialists will form a socialist state only idiots know. In any case the reformists and the centrists who support the so-called two states solution are supporting the same position that Stalin held.
In any case Russian Stalinism supported Zionism at the UN during the 1947 UN Partition Plan debate. On 14 May 1947, the Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko announced:
“As we know, the aspirations of a considerable part of the Jewish people are linked with the problem of Palestine and of its future administration. This fact scarcely requires proof. … During the last war, the Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering. …
The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference, since this would be incompatible with the high principles proclaimed in its Charter. …
The fact that no Western European State has been able to ensure the defense of the elementary rights of the Jewish people and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own State. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration” [4]
On May 17, 1948, three days after Israel declared independence, the Russian Stalinism legally recognized it de jure, becoming the first country to grant de jure recognition to the Zionist state. In addition to the diplomatic support, arms from Czechoslovakia, part of the Stalinist bloc, were crucial to Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
The first Intifada led to the fake solution of the two states. The Oslo Accords marked the first time Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formally recognized one another. British and American imperialism pushed for this accord in order to end the intifada. Many at that time were led to believe by parties like the Israeli Stalinist party that this was a step in the right direction. But what followed has revealed that Israel merely used the agreements to justify the further expansion of illegal settlements in the territories it occupied in 1967.
These days the American, the British and other imperialists and their servants are speaking again on the two states solution in order to save Israel from the path of destruction. While it is permissible to form a united front against the war of Israel and call for an exchange of all Palestinian prisoners for all the captive Israelis before the Zionist army will kill all of them, it is not permissible to support the fake solution of two states. The Stalinist front of Israel -Hadash says: “Hadash – (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) was established in 1977. The aim of its founders was simple: to unite most of the supporters for peace, equality, democracy and workers’ rights, Jews and Arabs, in order to create a political alternative to the government’s policy of occupation and exploitation. Activists from the main protest movements of the time – the Land Day Protest against expropriation, and the Black Panthers Protest against discrimination; as well as adherents of different peace movements and academics, joined in the establishment of Hadash.
The basic principles of Hadash as a broad leftist movement included the unique demand for the evacuation of all the territories which were occupied in June 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel – a claim that other movements began supporting only in later years” [5]
The right centrists Socialist Struggle the Israeli section of the ISA says: “We stand for a socialist program that would guarantee full material, democratic and national equality — as part of socialist change across the Middle East” [6]
The national right for the Zionists is a program of the continuation of the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. A program that all the imperialist states that have supported the genocide of the Gazans are now saying they are for a form of two states.
The only solution is one democratic socialist Palestinian state from the river to the sea that the Palestinians refugees will return to and the Israelis who will not escape will be a minority with civil rights like: labor, housing, religion and language.
Lenin and Trotsky never called for the right of self determination for the imperialists and for the settler colonialists but only for the oppressed nations.
Lenin wrote: “Our theses say that the demand for the immediate liberation of the colonies is as “impracticable” (that is, it cannot be effected without a number of revolutions and is not stable without socialism) under capitalism as the self-determination of nations, the election of civil servants by the people, the democratic republic, and so on—and, furthermore, that the demand for the liberation of the colonies is nothing more than “the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination” [7]
Lenin also wrote: “imperialism means the progressively mounting oppression of the nations of the world by a handful of Great Powers; it means a period of wars between the latter to extend and consolidate the oppression of nations; it means a period in which the masses of the people are deceived by hypocritical social-patriots, i.e., individuals who, under the pretext of the “freedom of nations”, “the right of nations to self-determination”, and “defense of the fatherland”, justify and defend the oppression of the majority of the world’s nations by the Great Powers” [8]
In a letter for South African revolutionaries Trotsky wrote:
Black Republic
“Under these conditions the South African Republic will emerge first of all as a “black” republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for the whites, or brotherly relations between the two races – depending mainly on the conduct of the whites. But it is entirely obvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from slavish dependence, will put a certain imprint on the state” [9]
Needless to say, the reformist and the centrist that recognize the right of self determination to the imperialist Zionist apartheid state are, under the pretext of the “freedom of nations”, “the right of nations to self-determination”, and “defense of the fatherland”, justify and defend the oppression of the majority of the world’s nations by the Great Powers and specifically the Palestinians.
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[1] Scholch, Alexander (November 1985). “The Demographic Development of Palestine, 1850–1882”. International Journal of Middle East Studies. 17 (4): 485–505.
[2] Porath, Y. (1986). Mrs. Peters’s Palestine. New York Review of Books. 16 January, 32 (21 & 22).
[3] https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story573.html
[4] UN Debate Regarding the Special Committee on Palestine: Gromyko Statement. 14 May 1947 77th Plenary Meeting Document A/2/PV.77
[5] https://hadash.org.il/english/
[6] https://internationalsocialist.net/en/links/israel-palestine
[7] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/x01.htm
[8] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/oct/16.htm
[9] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/04/safrica.html